This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode Kobe thirty two

This is kind of a fun thing I learned from Ace's speech therapist. Now I'll probably mangle the linguistics of it, so you'll have to infer what I was probably trying to say, and then diplomatically correct me.

Basically, p's and b's are very similar, d's and t's are very similar, and g's and k's are very similar, and the difference mostly comes from vocalization. So you can make a popping p/b sound that is more-or-less indistinguishable until you vocalize. Same with d/t's and g/k's being indistinguishable.

So she said that one of the main tricks that beat-boxers use is to say phrases without vocalization, and the example that she gave me is "bouncing cats". Here's a guy doing it if you want to see it, but it's probably more fun to try it yourself and suddenly sound plausibly like you're carrying a rhythm. Just repeat it a few times, with no vocalization, but really intentionally popping the b/s/k sounds, so that you're saying "b---s---k--ts" to the rhythm of "bouncing cats". Have fun.

Lurid Keyaki writes: The assless Metaverse:

1) I gleaned information from this essay, but also kind of hated it for being too long and didactic. (It can be skimmed.) Maybe others will enjoy it more? Maybe other people have read better things about the Metaverse? I'd reluctantly skim them too!

2) Honestly, there aren't that many fun things I know how to do with only my upper body, and even fewer that I'd want to do in a group.

Heebie's take: First of all, I had thought that "Metaverse" was Zuckerberg's version of "Microsoft Suite" or Kraft/Nabisco: just an umbrella term so that we'd realize he's a whole suite of products and not just Facebook. But now I gather that we're really talking about some '90s reboot of your virtual reality skin suit and motorcycle visor, where real life is pixelated. (And in between proper scenery you might catch sight of pure blackness with only a horizontal green grid stretching off to the horizon. That means you're seeing the code behind the illusion, which is, like, deep.)

So now, with that context, here's Zuckerberg's plan for you:

[W]hat Zuckerberg is trying to build is a child's idea of utopia, a world without internal boundaries, where your friends can't ever leave and go home, where they don't have their own space, where everyone has to stay around and play in your world, designed by your rules. It's not a fantasy of connection but a fantasy of control, where you never have to grow up or change, ever. And of course there's no sex because as a child you're pre-sexual for eternity.

The central tension of the OP article is thus:

Digital technology, like the holodeck, is made for sex. As soon as images became available online, naked bodies were everywhere. "The internet is for porn," sing the puppets in the musical Avenue Q. In a recent piece for Vice titled "Zuckerberg's Metaverse Is Screwed If It Doesn't Allow Sex," Samantha Cole explains the game developer term "TTP," which means "Time to Penis"--that is, how long does it take for users to insert a dick in a game where it doesn't belong. TTP is considered by game designers to be merely a when, not an if: if you build it, dicks will come. Virtual environments have always been especially fertile ground for the erotic imagination, allowing people to express what they often can't express in real life, or to act out in ways that would be frowned on in physical space. The human erotic imagination is indefatigable, especially online, where the infamous "Rule 34" holds that anything you can imagine, no matter how sexless or banal, has already been turned into porn.

I actually enjoyed the article quite a lot!

It was a foregone conclusion that Cheney would lose the primary, but it's still wild. Fox and others are clearly trying to disentangle themselves from Trump and back DeSantis or whatever, and the base is just not going to deviate from their cult of personality, and I fervently hope they tear each other to shreds.

Also I'm posting on my phone from a meeting which is such a poor use of my time that it's making me actively angry.

An article on the ethics of keeping pets, which I saw on Pocket, has this bit in it:

Veterinarian turned philosopher Bernard Rollin recalls pet owners in the 1960s putting their dog to sleep before going on holiday, reasoning that it was cheaper to get a new dog when they returned than to board the one they had.

Yowza, that is cold!

(We have a running household joke to channel Lisa Simson and intone "I had a cat named Snowball. SHE DIED, SHE DIED! My mom said she was sleeping. SHE LIED, SHE LIED! Why oh why is my little cat dead? I wish the Chrysler had hit me instead.")

This NYT article about tracking worker productivity makes my skin crawl. It's how all the worst parts of automated tracking for blue collar workers has been applied to white collar workers, and how shitty it is, and all the perverse incentives and mismeasurement and sheer indifference to workers-as-people that becomes even more baked into the system and more impossible to refute.

It feels like an employment offense that we already know and understand. But it also feels like the kind of thing where, in 2032, we'll retrospectively consider our 2022 selves to be incredibly naive and unprepared for how it would ratchet up.