Previously on Phil’s Newsletter: I mused on… muses, and we previewed Leftoverfest II
This newsletter is free, so you can share it with your friends! But you can also pay for this newsletter or my Patreon to get some perks and directly support me. Phil’s Newsletter is brought to you by paid subscribers Jessica Nelson, Jeff Powers, Vikas Reddy, David Demchuk, Ian Scott, Adam Rodnitzky, and Kat Angus. You are each, individually, the best.
—
Computer programmers are often bad at messiness. It throws our carefully-constructed models into chaos, and worst of all it hurts our feelings. December already, huh?
Omicron-willing i travel back to Michigan on the 21st. It’s hard to put into words how much I treasure this time. There is no trope more absurd or broken than “going home again” but so many of us desire it. There’s a great Twilight Zone episode, the opening of which I once recited to an audience, called Walking Distance. In the episode an overworked overtired executive named Martin Sloan ends up time-traveling back to his hometown when he was a boy. It does not go as he’d hoped. Rod Serling’s narration intro is reprinted below:
“Martin Sloan, age 36, vice president in charge of media. Successful at most things, but not at the one effort that most men try at some time in their lives— “trying to go home again.” And also, like all men, perhaps there will be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he’ll look up from what he’s doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there’ll flit a little errant wish that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he’ll smile then, too, because he’ll know it is just an errant wish. Some wisp of memory, not too important, really. Some laughing ghost that could cross a man’s mind, that are a part of The Twilight Zone.”
I think about this particular one a lot, and have written about it here before. I guess it isn’t a confidence. Omicron willing I head back to Michigan December 21st…
Fixing The Boss
Today my beloved ASAT had to go under the knife/screwdriver to finally solve the neck pickup issue I’ve been having for several months. Turns out it was just a badly twisted wire. I re-twisted it and added some better heat-shrink and it’s all good. Now… do I bring it to Michigan with me?
Watch This: F.D. Signifier
I’m still going through the history of this channel that I followed a few weeks ago. F.D. Signifier does these very thoughtful video essays on Black media and culture. After watching quite a few I really like the dude and appreciate his perspective. His videos on the fall of Kanye West (Part 1, Part 2) are great, and he uses a lot of pro wrestling terms like kayfabe, babyface, heel etc, to explain his point even featuring an extended clip of 1950s star Gorgeous George. I also really enjoyed “The Complex History of Mike Tyson” and “Bo Burnham's Inside and “White Liberal Performative Art”” and recommend those.
There is a Patreon if you want to help him make more of these.
Phil’s Good Links
I came, I saw, I fell asleep at 7pm.
Nothing like a small town scandal. “They Say She Rigged a Homecoming Queen Contest. She Faces Decades Behind Bars.”
The positions of the stars in the sky of Majora’s Mask for N64 are randomized based on the player’s name
“The top 10% of traders account for 85% of [cryptocurrency] transactions” So much for the revolution, then.
A deep dive into Cole Pro Media, the awful PR firm helping cops escape bad press for their crimes
A declassified Inspector General report shows the CIA’s official pattern of covering for sexual abuse by operatives
Evangelical douchebag Joel Osteen’s church reported a theft- now a plumber has found cash literally stuffed in the walls of the church
Cory Doctorow on the lack of slack (not the app, shut up) in the lives of kids today and how having lots helped him. I can testify to this for myself as well.
The parents of a 15-year-old Michigan student accused of shooting 4 of his classmates are being tried for involuntary manslaughter
— Phil Nelson
Wizard Tower Gamma, South of Market, San Francisco, California, United States of America, Earth
12.03.2021