Joan Westenberg –

Fuck it man. Just put on some Grateful Dead. Put on some Aretha. Print some kind of zine. Paint a sign. Start a band. Write a manifesto. Bootleg a t-shirt. Hand out stickers. Throw a party. Keep it weird.

Have you checked out Poker Face on Peacock? It’s a really fun show that came out last year. Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie Cale, a casino waitress who can tell when people are lying. She gets into all sorts of trouble when she goes on the run from a mob boss. Of course, she’s solving crimes while on the lam. The writing is superb, the guest stars are fantastic, and Lyonne nails it in every scene.

The whole show is set up exactly like Columbo. The audience knows what happened, but watching Charlie figure it out is the fun part. The mystery usually has a good twist, too. I thought the first season was excellent with a 70s, but modern vibe.

The good news is that season two is coming in May, and they have just released a teaser trailer. It’s our first look at all the high-end guest stars and showrunner Rian Johnson teases minor league baseball, big box retail, funeral homes to alligator farms and even a grade school talent show as settings for the next go-around.

I just added it to my list of streaming shows I must watch. The list keeps growing.

Jason Fried –

One of the great lessons of nature: Randomness is the most beautiful thing.

Every forest, every field, every place untouched by humans is full of randomness. Nothing lines up, a million different shapes, sprouting seeds burst where the winds — or birds — randomly drop them.

Stones strewn by water, ice, gravity, and wind, all acting on their own in their own ways. Things that just stop and stay. Until they move somehow, another day.

The way the light falls, the dapples that hit the dirt. The shades of shades of shades of green and gold that work no matter what’s behind it.

The way the wind carries whatever’s light enough for liftoff.

The negative space between the leaves.

Colliding clouds.

The random wave that catches light from the predictable sun. The water’s surface like a shuffled blanket.

Collect the undergrowth in your hand. Lift it up. Drop it on the ground. It’s always beautiful.

However it comes together, or however it stays apart, you never look at it and say that doesn’t line up or those colors don’t work or there’s simply too much stuff or I don’t know where to look.

Nature’s out of line. Just right. You too.

Rick Beato sits down with Willow Smith, the boundary-pushing musician, creative visionary, and daughter of Will and Jada Smith. He explores her evolution as an artist, the inspirations that fuel her unique sound, and how she balances self-discovery with making music that resonates.

Her Tiny Desk concert is entertaining, but that’s more due to her talented band than her performance.

Sue Halpern, writing for The New Yorker, has the story regarding what I think is the most important thing that’s likely to happen between now and the next election—If there’s even going to be one.

So far, it’s a tossup which of the Trump Administration’s wrecking balls will prove most destructive: the one that accelerates global warming, the one that abandons our allies, the one that torches the economy, or the one that compromises public health. Yet all of these are distractions from the President’s long-standing pet project: decimating free and fair elections. It may be that we have become so accustomed to hearing Donald Trump’s false claims about rigged elections and corrupt election officials that we have become inured to them, but in the past seven weeks he has pursued a renewed multilateral program to suppress the vote, curtail the franchise, undermine election security, eliminate protections from foreign interference, and neuter the independent oversight of election administration. And, as with the rest of Trump’s calamitous agenda, he is doing it in full view of the American people.

Democracy is a complex machine. Trump, Musk, and his Cabinet are systematically dismantling its core components.

First, they are targeting election security. For years, they’ve been chipping away at voter verification processes, compromising ballot handling procedures, and undermining the integrity of voting systems.

I expect 2026 will be a trial balloon to see how much they can get away with at the Federal level. What they learn will be crucial to 2028. The goal is to make future elections either impossible or irrelevant. Trump, if he’s still alive, will undoubtedly run in 2028 and it won’t matter who he runs against.

He will hold all the cards and there won’t be a trusted authority to turn to or established process to fall back on when questions inevitably come up about the results. This might even happen if it’s Vance or some other Republican running.

This is how democracy dies – not through outright revolution, but through a calculated dismantling of its foundations.

Patrick Rhone answered the question, “How much do you need to know?”

There was a coup. It was successful. It is ongoing and escalating. Elon Musk retains more or less total control over a huge amount of the federal government’s apparatus and its spending. Protests are building. Congress largely hasn’t reacted. The Democratic Party shows few signs of behaving like an opposition party. Some of the purges are being walked back, piecemeal. The judiciary is weighing in, slowly. There’s talk of cracks in the conservative coalition. We’re in a weird sort of stasis where each day’s events are both extremely significant and also just more of the same.

When I saw these new “Overlap” hats, I couldn’t wait to make fun of them from a pure design/branding perspective. Then, I learned there was a real problem. A really hilarious problem.

From the ESPN News Source (there’s not even a byline):

A hat has been pulled from the Texas Rangers and Major League Baseball online stores after it was discovered that a mashup of the team’s cap and jersey logos created the appearance of a vulgar word in Spanish.

The hat, which is part of New Era’s Overlap 5950 collection, has the Rangers' block “T” that appears on the team’s caps superimposed over the middle “X” in the block “Texas” logo that usually appears on the front of the team’s jerseys.

By doing so, the mashup of the logos created a visual of a vulgar Spanish word used for women’s breasts.

These are so, so bad. Anyone lucky enough to snag a TETAS hat should keep it safe, as it will undoubtedly become a monster collector’s item. I’m also rather partial to the Houston ASHOS and the Anaheim ANAELS.

Mark Manson –

Here’s how to stop fearing the unknown and do something with your life.

1️⃣ Get good at feeling bad. Uncertainty is an uncomfortable feeling. And the only way to make yourself more resilient towards discomfort is by sitting with discomfort. Let the uncertainty be there, it won’t hurt you.

2️⃣ Build habits and routines into your life because dealing with the uncertainty of the unknown is a lot easier when you exert agency over the parts of your life that you can control.

3️⃣ Get creative. This might seem strange but being more tolerant of uncertainty is actually linked with being more creative. It’s not clear if tolerating uncertainty makes you more creative or if being creative makes you tolerate more uncertainty, but I would guess it’s almost certainly a two-way street. Go on, take that origami class you’ve always been too scared to.

So, are you now willing to choose action in the face of uncertainty? Well, if not, that’s a problem.

Tapbots, the company behind the late and loved Tweetbot app, plans to release a new app for the Bluesky social network this summer called Phoenix.

After Twitter/X stopped supporting third-party platforms like Tweetbot, Tapbots pivoted to Ivory, an ‌iPhone‌ and Mac app designed for posting on the Mastodon social network. Both Mastodon and Bluesky are popular alternatives to Twitter/X.

For half a second, I used Ivory, but then I realized I did not particularly like Mastodon and deleted it from my phone. Tweetbot was one of my most used apps, and I mourned when it stopped working. Of course, Twitter pretty much turned into dogshit soon after, and I’m only still on because I’ve curated it to perfection, and there are still accounts I follow that have yet to migrate to Bluesky.

While I have not done much on Bluesky, I will likely purchase Phoenix. I will also look for that public alpha email to get in on the action as early as possible.

Maybe, just maybe, I’ll take the time to curate my follows on Bluesky the way I have with Twitter/X. I don’t know. I still might just walk away.

Disney has uploaded the first three episodes of season one of Andor to YouTube.

With the push of Season 2, I thought I might start a rewatch of Andor. It is my favorite Disney+ Star Wars show, after all. Now, I can just pop it on easily enough. This was done, obviously, to build momentum for the April 22nd premiere of the new and last season.

I love it primarily because it lacks any of the trappings of Star Wars other than the universe. Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of Michael Clayton (also a movie I need to rewatch), created this show and did the homework on fascism, dictatorships, and rebellions. It shows. What an interesting thing to be watching in our current political climate.

If you want an in-depth read, science fiction magazine Red Futures released an entire issue devoted to Andor analysis.

I don’t know how many times I linked to a post by Kevin Drum. Probably a lot. His takes on the current political landscape were thoughtful, nuanced, and reality-based. He understood what was going on and wrote about it eloquently.

Recently, his blog posts have included updates on his health. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and he fought to the bitter end as he succumbed last Friday. He blogged constantly. I was amazed at his output and read his stuff voraciously. His takes were never hot. They were well-researched, intelligent, and worth your time to revisit.

I only knew him by his writing. When you read a lot of blogs and articles, sometimes you get a little insight into the person. I’m going to miss his words.

The world is a little less informed today. My thoughts go out to his loved ones.

Charlie Jane Anders -

Fictional villains: my motivation involves a complex backstory around lost love and a deep yearning to be understood

Real life villains: being cruel makes me feel like a big strong man

I am so incredibly proud of my daughter as she embarks on a new life with her husband.

Warren Ellis –

That winter light with just a little mist in it, the mist that reflects the light everywhere. The air glitters. That pearly newborn morning when winter feels like the start, not the end, and anything is possible.

Janus Rose, writing for 404 Media, has an article about a practice I was already doing, but never had a name for, but now I do: digital packratting.

Amazon’s recent decision to stop allowing people to download copies of their Kindle e-books to a computer has vindicated some of my longstanding beliefs about digital media. Specifically, that it doesn’t exist and you don’t own it unless you can copy and access it without being connected to the internet.

The recent move by the megacorp and its shiny-headed billionaire CEO Jeff Bezos is another large brick in the digital wall that tech companies have been building for years to separate consumers from the things they buy—or from their perspective, obtain “licenses” to. Starting Wednesday, Kindle users will no longer be able to download purchased books to a computer, where they can more easily be freed of DRM restrictions and copied to e-reader devices via USB. You can still send ebooks to other devices over WiFi for now, but the message the company is sending is one tech companies have been telegraphing for years: You don’t “own” anything digital, even if you paid us for it. The Kindle terms of service now say this, explicitly. “Kindle Content is licensed, not sold, to you,” meaning you don’t “buy a book,” you obtain a “digital content license.”

The situation brings to mind an interview I did over a decade ago, with the executive of a now-defunct streaming platform. He told me candidly that the goal of all this was to make digital media a “utility” like gas or electricity—a faucet that dispenses the world’s art as “content,” with tech companies in complete control of what goes in the tank and what comes out of it.

Hearing this was a real tin foil hat moment for me. For more than two decades, I’ve been what some might call a hoarder but what I’ve more affectionately dubbed a “digital packrat.” Which is to say I mostly avoid streaming services, I don’t trust any company or cloud with my digital media, and I store everything as files on devices that I physically control. My mp3 collection has been going strong since the Limewire days, I keep high-quality rips of all my movies on a local media server, and my preferred reading device holds a large collection of DRM-free ebooks and PDFs—everything from esoteric philosophy texts and scientific journals to scans of lesbian lifestyle magazines from the 1980s.

Sure, there are websites where you can find some of this material, like the Internet Archive. But this archive is mine. It’s my own little Library of Alexandria, built from external hard drives, OCD, and a strong distrust of corporations. I know I’m not the only one who has gone to these lengths. Sometimes when I’m feeling gloomy, I imagine how when society falls apart, we packrats will be the only ones in our village with all six seasons of The Sopranos. At the rate we’re going, that might not be too far off.

I have a pretty extensive MP3 collection, but I haven’t listened to them in years. Maybe decades.

I have binders of DVDs that I’ve collected over the years. Recently, I started ripping these DVDs to digital and using a Plex server to access them.

I do not own a Kindle, but my wife does. She happily uses the Kindle app to download books. Although she likes her Kindle, she’s been reading physical books and amassing many “BookTok” favorites. I’ve always collected physical books, but I also have an eclectic assortment of ebook nonfiction and fiction in a digital folder.

Amazon’s Kindle terms of service shift mainly emphasize what I’ve always thought about digital ownership. When you “buy” an ebook from Amazon, you’re actually purchasing a license to access content Amazon owns. This change transforms digital media from an asset you possess to a utility you simply use. I think it’s easier to understand with Netflix. With a Netflix subscription, you can access movies and television shows but don’t “own” them. You buy access when subscribing to a streaming service like Netflix or Spotify.

Over the years, I’ve curated my digital assets and created a personal library. My nostalgia for physical media has been focused solely on vinyl albums, and I’m slowly adding new ones to my collection. I don’t regret getting rid of my cassette or CD collections because digital packratting offers a way to preserve my favorite media without the physical clutter.

Digital ownership is moving toward subscription models. Building your collection of DRM-free content allows you to maintain control over your media. It’s a way to safeguard your digital possessions against potential future access restrictions or content removal and preserve a slice of digital culture for yourself. By curating your collection, you’re creating a digital time capsule of media that matters to you, accessible on your terms.

I like having my own personal digital library. You might, too.

I recently started following Jamelle Bouie on Instagram. A couple of days ago, he had a walk-and-talk video that outlined what he thinks is going on psychologically in Trump’s head. It’s just revenge.

In The New York Times, he expanded on that commentary in an opinion piece that went into more detail.

Some of our presidents have been complicated men. Consider Richard Nixon, a nearly Shakespearean figure of great talent and ambition whose paranoia, personal demons and lust for power proved to be his downfall.

Trump, by comparison, is not a complicated man.

His every executive function exists to satisfy his ego. He is a covetous person consumed by an insatiable desire for acquisition, a man who seems to take the seven deadly sins as a seven-day challenge. He sees every relationship as a game of dominance and seems to reject the very idea of a mutually beneficial transaction. He treats everyone around him, from employees and political allies to members of his own family, as tools to use and then discard. To cozy up to Trump is to sacrifice your dignity to his cravings and desires.

Understand these basic traits about Trump — and there is not much more to understand — and you can all but predict his behavior in any given situation. Yes, he is erratic, volatile, capricious and compulsive. But the common conceit that he is unpredictable is belied by the ease with which even a casual observer can plot his movements from A to B.

What a small, insecure man.

Bouie goes on to point out that this revenge tour is not just against the most obvious personalities, such as Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and others. It’s a much larger target.

And while Trump went on to win the 2024 race, even capturing the national popular vote for the first time in his political career, it’s not at all clear that his rage and resentment have subsided. It would actually be shocking, given what we know about his behavior and personality, if he could regulate his emotions well enough to turn his anger into something more constructive.

If this is his psychological state, then it stands to reason that Trump would want revenge against the public that denied him a second term as much as he wants revenge against the officials who have tried to make him answer for his illegal actions.

It is hard to describe Trump’s first month and a half in office as something other than a retribution campaign against the American people.

I cannot see a way that this does not backfire on him one way or another.

One of my favorite shows is ready to return for its epic second and final season. After recently tantalizing us with an incredible trailer, Lucasfilm has released a special behind-the-scenes look at what awaits with Andor Season 2.

The promo focuses on the many people who will decide to stand up to the fascists destroying the galaxy. It also includes plenty of new footage and insights from the cast and crew.

Several television shows in my queue have recently captivated me, including Severance, The Diplomat, Shogun, and Dark Matter. However, Andor holds a special place in my heart. I can’t wait to binge-watch the first three episodes.

Anne Applebaum in The Atlantic writes about Trump and Vance and calls them the bad guys.

In just a few minutes, the behavior of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance created a brand-new stereotype for America: not the quiet American, not the ugly American, but the brutal American. Whatever illusions Europeans ever had about Americans—whatever images lingered from old American movies, the ones where the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and honor defeats treachery—those are shattered. Whatever fond memories remain of the smiling GIs who marched into European cities in 1945, of the speeches that John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan made at the Berlin Wall, or of the crowds that once welcomed Barack Obama, those are also fading fast.

Quite apart from their politics, Trump and Vance are rude. They are cruel. They berated and mistreated a guest on camera, and then boasted about it afterward, as if their ugly behavior achieved some kind of macho “win.” They announced that they would halt transfers of military equipment to Ukraine, and hinted at ending sanctions on Russia, the aggressor state. In his speech to Congress last night, Trump once again declared that America would “get” Greenland, which is a part of Denmark—a sign that he intends to run roughshod over other allies too. These are the actions not of the good guys in old Hollywood movies, but of the bad guys. If Reagan was a white-hatted cowboy, Trump and Vance are Mafia dons. The chorus of Republican political leaders defending them seems both sinister and surprising to Europeans too. ‘I never thought Americans would kowtow like that,’ one friend told me, marveling.

It will turn, as it always does. It just won’t turn fast enough.

Wicked: For Good is still far away, and the Oscars just wrapped up. Luckily, Randy Rainbow is back to defy gravity. Wait. Check that. Ah. Not defying gravity. He’s calling out Donald Trump as he defies democracy.

He’s so good at this. “Dimestore dictators…”

My father asked me the other day what was this Bluesky that he’s kept hearing about lately. I explained that it was a micro-blogging service similar to Twitter that recently came on the scene along with Threads, Mastodon, and others that have since dropped off the map. I went on to say that once Elon Musk purchased Twitter, a lot of users migrated to these other platforms because they didn’t like the direction of what Musk planned to do with Twitter. Bluesky is the most old school Twitter-like and it has grown because it isn’t owned by a billionaire (Threads, Twitter/X) nor is it incredibly complicated to navigate (Mastodon).

He was wondering because he kept seeing it on screen in relation to the MSNBC hosts he was watching.

It reminded me of this article from a few days ago asking the question, “Are we Self-Segregating on Social Media?”

The answer is yes. If any social media platform amplifies fascists, racists, misogynists, and disinformation, you should leave. Maybe you’ll find a new home. Maybe you’ll just walk away altogether.

In her piece, Allison Hantschel argues that it only makes sense to avoid those toxic places and create new spaces. She also cites a couple of journalist type folks who have written pieces on the migration calling places like BlueSky an “echo chamber” and a “silo.”

There is a very real danger in getting all of one’s information filtered through one social media outlet, of course. You cannot follow every reporter, or even every news outlet, on X or Facebook or TikTok reliably enough to get the kind of generalized understanding of the world once provided by, say, a nightly TV newscast.

But that’s not what these commentators are complaining about. They’re not concerned you might miss out on a proposed solution to a tax loophole or a change in water reclamation rates if you don’t follow your local government or regional newspaper online. They are throwing a fit because they can’t express hate speech.

They’re complaining that Americans are underexposed to fresh new ideas like “non-white races are inferior” and “trans people shouldn’t exist” and “we should hunt the poor for sport” and without algorithmic pressure will suffer without such content. They’re upset that they’re not allowed to promote their toxic work into the eyeballs of people who aren’t looking for it.

Manufactured outrage is big business, after all, and they don’t want to lose a paycheck.

Personally, I don’t want to be outraged every second of every day. It’s exhausting and I have better things to do. I spent years curating, crafting, and following exactly who I wanted on Twitter. I never saw the crazy. You can’t avoid it now.

I used some awesome tools that no longer exist like Tweetbot and Tweetdeck. I was probably considered a high-end Twitter user. Not anymore. I deleted thousands of old tweets. It was cathartic.

I have accounts at all of these micro-blogging platforms, including Twitter, but my only post consists of a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Today, my Twitter/X account is locked down so I can’t share, so here’s the same post on my account on Bluesky:

“Turn off the social media, think about your biggest insecurity, and go start working on it out in the real world. Go outside, exercise, talk to real people. Stop listening to these influencers and what they think you need.” — Arnold Schwarzenegger

— Sean McDevitt (@seanmcdevitt.bsky.social) 2024-11-06T21:43:24.516Z

I’ve self-segregated myself straight off these platforms. If you haven’t already, you should too.