I don’t like Halloween. It celebrates death and decay. I like a little of that—I loved the Addams Family and Beetlejuice. But an entire month of zombies and skeletons is too much.
Also, while I like people changing up their identities, confining it to a single day seems unhealthy. People should change up their identities all the time.
This is just me. If you love Halloween, I’m fine with that.
Christmas, on the other hand, is awesome. I’m a Jew for Christmas.
The dog usually has to be coaxed down the front outside stairs to the front gate. I think it’s because we only go down them once or twice a week so she’s not used to doing it. It is a slow process, and she stops to thoroughly sniff every third step.
But this morning I paused on the top landing, because I realized I had not checked my podcast downloads to see what I’d be listening to on our walk.
When I looked up from my phone, she was already down at the foot of the stairs, looking alert and happy.
And there was a big cat sitting on the outside wall of the house beside the front gate.
For the dog, there’s little that’s more interesting than a cat. And ours won’t go anywhere near her.
Overheard: There’s over 7 billion ppl in this world and I’m really the best driver, that’s so wild to me
Overheard: Just wait until conspiracy theorists discover they’re part of a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation via conspiracy theories.
Cory: Why creative workers get screwed in labor negotiations (until very recently):
Creative workers are part of a class of workers who suffer from “vocational awe,” the sense that because your job is satisfying and/or worthy, you don’t deserve to get paid for it.
Also:
The attempt to divide-and-rule “knowledge workers” from “industrial workers” is a transparent bid to shatter solidarity and make it easier to abuse and exploit all workers.
And:
A strong, unified labor movement is necessary if America is to save itself from inequality, racism, the climate emergency – the whole polycrisis. The idea that creative workers aren’t workers is bullshit – and so is the lie that all workers are uncreative.
The goal now is to attract users by the hundreds of millions, so Facebook is making Threads great for users. And it’s working—Threads is, indeed, a great place.
For now. But soon, Facebook will pivot to wanting revenue from Threads, and so Threads will become great for advertisers and steadily worse for users.
Then once all the advertisers and the users are locked in, Threads will become shitty for everybody but Facebook itself. Enshittification will be complete.
We saw this happen with the Facebook blue app. It happened with Instagram. And it’ll happen with Threads.
Until then, sure, I’ll use Threads. Why not? But I’m not getting settled in.
Dave Winer: We can do better than Threads.
Running from the arms of one billionaire to another is a bad idea.
Musk is the second worst thing that happened to social media, but Facebook is much worse, because they’re so much more competent, but lack any vision other than sucking up as much of the world into their silo as possible and never doing anything that could possibly benefit anyone else.
Ask a Manager: I want my coworker to stop giving me “psychic messages” from my dead family members. The coworker also has messages from dead pets.
Why’d I take speed for twenty years?
Podcaster PJ Vogt writes about his 20-year use of prescription stimulants, as well as coming to terms with the suicide of a friend.
Vogt struggled to understand what his friend’s depression was like from the inside and was surprised to learn his own thinking was a product of depression.
I had been like Ahab hunting for Moby Dick, not realizing the boat he’s on is actually a large whale in a boat costume.
