MJ was last year’s reluctant golden boy. I wore the record out, and love this video. He’s from Asheville, so my kid and I went to his record release at a record store and I saw him two nights at the Orange Peel.
So You’re Saying There’s A Chance
Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered several weeks ago.
Between 100 to 300 feet across, it has something like a 1.5% chance of striking earth in 2032. Anything larger than 150 feet with a 1% chance of impact gets put on the watch list of the International Asteroid Warning Network.
An asteroid that size could easily cause something as significant as the Tunguska Event in Siberia in 1908, estimated at 1000X the explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb.
And still not remotely close to the Chicxulub impactor at the end of the Cretaceous. When it struck the Yucatan, the 10 – 15 kilometer meteor caused a rim of mountains higher than the Himalayas to form around the impact zone, blasted debris that achieved escape velocity and left the atmosphere, and brought instantaneous extinction as far away as what is now North Dakota and New Jersey.
NASA (funding pending) and Jet Propulsion Labs, among others, will follow YR4’s progress. If they upgrade this current threat, presumably some half-baked plan ensues to mitigate damage. I have personally volunteered Makerbot – the youngest, spryest, least whiny bastard – to lead Space Force on that dangerous mission.
First Monday After The Holidays
Steady as she goes.
40 Years Ago Today!
Dylan shows up to play Letterman with a punk band (the Plugz who later became Cruzados) and it absolutely rips. They never played with him again, but apparently had spent a month or so playing with him at his house.
A good interview with the bass player here talking about how it all went down (from a very good book about musicians who played with him).
On a side note, I saw Bob last night here in Beerville. I loved it.
The Internet’s Inevitable Enshittification
How platforms decay, as explained by Cory Doctorow to NPR. Finally a name for what we may not consciously recognize but deep down know is going on.
… I think Facebook’s a good example. Facebook went through the whole lifecycle of platform decay. They started off by offering a really good deal to their end users. They said, “Hey, leave MySpace, come to Facebook. It’s just like MySpace, except we only show you the things that you asked to see, and we’ll never spy on you.”
And then once those users were locked in — because once you’re in a place with all of your friends, it’s really hard to leave — they started to take away some of that good stuff they gave them, and they handed it to advertisers and publishers.
To the advertisers, they said, “We were lying when we said we weren’t going to spy on these guys. We’re totally spying on them. Here’s all the data you need to target them for ads that we’re not going to charge you much money for.”
And to the publishers, they said, “We are also lying when we said we’d only show them the stuff they asked to see.”
And then once the publishers and the advertisers were locked in, well, they took away those surpluses. The ads got more expensive. Publishers had to put more and more of their content — not just to get recommended, but even to be shown to the people who subscribed them. And that’s the final stage, the stage where there’s just only the residual value left on the platform that the platform owner thinks will keep the users and the business customers they bring in stuck to the platform. And that’s when we’re at the beginning of the end.
Further reading.
Sunshine and Holidays / Postcards to Write
This is just impossibly sweet. Apparently the song was the 1970 Eurovision winner from Ireland. Rest in Peace to both.
Children of Despair
In the 50’s or 60’s, Marshall McLuhan coined the term “class transvestism” to describe the then-recent trend of leisure-class youth wearing jeans, which previously had been worn mostly by people who actually worked for a living. I think the term also applies to some current well-heeled parents who expensively dress their children like storybook orphans or 18th C. French peasants. It’s just not cool to look rich, but you need to be rich to look poor in a non-Walmart way. Throw in some kids who are very good at looking grim, and you’ve got something that looks straight out of the rollicking Werner Herzog.
There are more videos about clothes. They’re all hilarious.
But wait! There are toys too.