I Hope This Helps

I stop paying attention to the news around 10 pm as a rule. I try to do something else. Anything else. Play video games. Write some short fiction. Clean my kitchen. My bathroom. Something else. I was listening to the third book in the Armored Saint trilogy and painting. I heard my front door unlock. I have four people that have a key to my whole living space and two of them are among my unofficial godchildren. “Hey,” I started to say as packed up my brushes and went toward the door. It was just another base coat anyway and one of my godchildren is standing there. And this look on their face. It’s not accusing. It’s not saying I hurt them. It’s the face of a scientist who has disproved a theory that another old scientist said was true. I say this all the time, that Baltimore is per capita no more dangerous than any major American city. And it’s not. Baltimore is barely a major American city in terms of population. But it terms of American Blackness, it’s among THE American cities. Th...

  EXT. High School Science Fair in the 1980s  INT. Science Fair, it's a bunch of people doing variations on physics. This one guy, who is extremely tall and has green skin is the only one taking a swing at a botany project INT. Herman is holding a rose bush so rich and lush against the dull space of the school gymnasium it catches the eye In the improvised hallway there are guys doing physics and Herman's Roses stand out even more.  Lily is the Student Judge, 

On Saturday I will turn 42. The "Life, the universe, and everything," birthday.  I have never felt so far away from all three of those things.  I have been unemployed since April 2022. I am not comfortable talking about why I quit my job.  I try to apply to four "cover letter" jobs a day and at least 10 "one-click" jobs daily.  It’s Not So Bad Once You Get Used To It Acrylic On Canvas, 20 X 16 Considering how much of American life is focused solely on work, money, status, and everything that I just don't have right now I feel disconnected from everything.  I have roughly one interview a week on average. Some weeks for reasons I'm not clear on, I get a spike in interviews. In the past year, I have had one follow-up interview for a job I didn't get.  No one is obligated to tell me why they didn't hire me.  One job had a ton of potential but it would have involved a move that I couldn't afford then and definitely cannot afford now. It wa...

"Totally meant to do that."   "The entire industry has moved from a world of Newtonian economics into a world of quantum economics, where two things that seem to be in opposition can be true at the same time: You can have a massive hit on your platform, but it’s not actually doing anything to increase your platform’s revenue. It’s absolutely conceivable that the streaming subscription model is the crypto of the entertainment business." —Steven Soderbergh to Vulture Magazine, June 6, 2023 That is from a fascinating and disconcerting article that you can read here . There is wisdom in staying in your lane, but there is also wisdom in finding lessons from sources that are - or just appear to be - out of your lane. What social media platforms and studio streaming services have in common is content and how it is everything. Netflix was the vanguard of streaming exclusive original content with House of Cards. Original is the key word here because for some time, Netflix an...

Caveat: This translation is from @wartranslated on Twitter so I am relying very heavily on their cultural intelligence and by extension their accuracy. Off we go, then.  The speech:  "PMC Wagner Commanders’ Council made a decision: the evil brought by the military leadership of the country must be stopped. They neglect the lives of soldiers. They forgot the word 'justice,' and we will bring it back. Those, who destroyed our guys today, who destroyed tens, tens of thousands of lives of Russian soldiers will be punished. I’m asking: no one resist. Everyone who will try to resist, we will consider them a danger and destroy them immediately, including any checkpoints on our way. And any aviation that we see above our heads. I’m asking everyone to remain calm, do not succumb to provocations, and remain in their houses. Ideally, those along our way, do not go outside. After we finished what we started, we will return to the frontline to protect our motherland. Presidential auth...

Here is a comic by Randall Munroe that illustrates one aspect of a single point of failure in terms of software and hardware.  The Original Comic  As a former member of the military and Department of Defense employee, a "single point of failure," was always something to be wary of from platoon operations to programming computers. Have a backup and a backup to that backup.  It has become increasingly clear to me that there is an obvious single point of failure throughout the private sector, and it is wealthy people who won't negotiate with unions or workers. The WGA strike has reached week seven. To refresh, here are the demands and the "offers" to meet them.   The current narrative still being pushed by studios is that the writers are the single point of failure for the entire studio system. If the public accepted that narrative on its face, there is no reason to accept that studios are NOT the cause of it, since at least one studio  has posted record profits ...