News and Updates

1. The semester is now officially over and there is nothing left but the graduating, which is always a good place to be. I turned in the last of my grades this afternoon. I’ll miss those students – they’re all most of the way across the state and some of them I’ve had for the entire year, and I’ll not be seeing them again unless something very unusual happens. My advisees down at Home Campus who are graduating I will see at least once more, most of them, but then they’re off as well. It’s the circle of academic life, I suppose.

2. I won’t miss all of them, though, particularly in my other class. AI has made a qualitative leap forward in the last few months and I have had too many performances of the Academic Integrity Song & Dance routine because of that. AI is making people exponentially more stupid in a way that you can actually track in real time, and having a front-row seat to that debacle has been dispiriting at best.

3. We may need to call it a day for Oliver’s tree. When Oliver was a baby there was a huge straight-line windstorm that blew through Our Little Town and wiped out dozens of trees in our neighborhood, so one of the local tree-centered alliances offered to plant a tree in the terrace of everyone who asked and we ended up with a European hornbeam. It grew pretty well until a couple of years ago when the neighbor’s maple tree split and had to be removed and from then on our tree had no protection from the storms and high winds that seem to be more and more common these days. It lost its top third a few weeks after that, and today when I came home from work after two solid days of high winds and occasional storms both of the major branches on the north side were either on the ground or hanging by a thread. We’ll take the latter one off and see if the tree survives or not, but I’m not really optimistic. It was a nice little tree. Still is, at least for now.

4. I’m not much of a bicycle person. I haven’t ridden one for more than five minutes at a go in decades, and while I am a fan of a fair number of rather niche sports (curling, for example), long-distance cycling races have never been my thing. But after I got home from last summer’s visit to the Italian hill town where my great-grandparents were born I signed up for the town Facebook page and it’s been nice being able to keep up with the place and have that connection. A couple of weeks ago they announced that the Giro d’Italia – the Italian version of the Tour de France, as near as I can tell, or maybe the Tour is the French version of the Giro – would be passing right down the main street of Ruoti on May 15. Given the time differences there was no chance of me seeing it live, but when I got home from work yesterday I found the replay of that stage (complete with vibrantly Irish announcers for some reason) and watched until I saw things I recognized. It was really lovely to see the riders zip along the crowd-lined street and think, “I know that place! I have met some of those people!” It is the sense of connection that makes us human, I think, and you need that reminder now and then. Buon giorno, Ruoti!

5. I’m not Catholic, but I suspect I’m going to like this new Pope.

This is on top of the fact that, as a Villanova University graduate, he may be the first pope in history to have ever eaten a genuine cheesesteak. Chicago has claimed him, but that’s just an accident of birth. He went to the Philadelphia metro area voluntarily.

6. Now that the semester is over I have time to look at the things we’re planning for the summer and I think I will rest when classes start up again in the fall. It’s going to be that kind of summer. All good things, mind you, and in the end I will be glad I did them. But very, very busy.

7. I am mystified by spreadsheets. If I play my cards right I will retire before ever being asked to learn Microsoft Excel in any systematic or in depth sort of way. There are a lot of computer programs that I feel that way about, to be honest, but Excel is the only one that I get asked to use at work. It took me a decade to figure out how to freeze the first column of a spreadsheet, and every time I want to sort anything I have to spend fifteen minutes relearning how. So I leave the spreadsheets to Kim, as she enjoys them. Much of our summer is sitting on at least four different spreadsheets now and it’s all rather overwhelming.

8. This is the year when I may not actually bother with my annual Books Read post. I’m just not reading much these days. If I hurry, I may finish my fifth book soon – one per month, in other words – which just three or four years ago was something I did by the end of January. It’s been a time. There’s a great little meme that floats by my social media feed a lot recently where the original post is lamenting how little they accomplish nowadays and then “the tiny me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers” says, “Boss, it’s the fascism.” Yeah, I feel that.

9. On the other hand, I hope springs eternal and it turns out that Christopher Moore and Fredrik Backman have both published new books this year so perhaps things will rebound. No promises.

10. The hockey playoffs are continuing even though my Flyers didn’t get anywhere near them. The Premier League has a few more weeks to go and Wolves won’t actually be relegated as looked all but certain in January. Eurovision has returned with its usual assortment of camp, gender fluidity, power ballads, lasers, and inexplicable voting decisions and that will likely get a post of its own soon because sometimes you just have to spend some time talking about the harmlessly weird things that entertain you. Home Campus had its semi-annual potluck this week and you cannot go wrong with a potluck in the midwest. My Wordle streak and Spelling Bee “Genius” streak are still alive and I am learning by osmosis what a Pikman Bloom is even if I am not personally involved in that quest. There is good in this world, after all.

A Graduation in May

We spent most of the weekend up at Main Campus University because after four years of hard work and fond memories, Lauren is now a college graduate.

On the one hand this does not surprise me in the least. She has put in the work, handled the responsibilities and done well there, and as someone who works in higher education myself I know how this process goes. If you do those things for long enough they will hand you a diploma. On the other hand, even as a professional historian it does sometimes sneak up on me how quickly the time goes by.

There were two ceremonies, when all was said and done.

Oliver, Kim and I headed up on Friday for the small ceremony – the one that was for the people in Lauren’s specific program. MCU is a very, very big place – big enough that they might have named the movie franchise after it, for all I know – and it’s good that they have these human-scale ceremonies where each graduate gets recognized by name and everyone gets to see them up close.

Parking around MCU is never easy and on a day where almost every sub-unit of the place was having a ceremony for their own graduates at the same time that the first-year students were moving out of the dorms it was particularly tricky, which is why I ended up dropping Kim and Oliver off a short walk from the site of the ceremony and then venturing off to find a place to deposit the vehicle. Fortunately I know where the lots are and knew there’d be one with space. Unfortunately there reason it had space is because it was in the next county over. But I am a fairly fast walker, so I made it to the ceremony with plenty of time to spare.

I got in a lot of steps this weekend. It is healthy to see your child graduate, it turns out.

It was a lovely ceremony. For these events they let you all sit interspersed with the graduates and each other and we sat at a table with a couple of Lauren’s friends and their families, noshing on the provided tasties and generally enjoying ourselves while waiting for the event to begin.

Eventually someone official went up to the podium and there was a welcome message or two, after which they called up all of the graduate students being awarded their degrees and then the dozen or so undergraduates with this particular major. The department chair handed them a certificate and posed for pictures, and we all applauded. I like that they call the students up by name. There is a lot of work that goes into this moment, and these students should be recognized for it.

Afterward there was much milling about and happy conversation, some posing for pictures, and a general sense that this was, indeed a very good day.

It was a gorgeous late spring day – the kind of day that makes you think you should just hang out and enjoy the sunshine – and we took full advantage of it by wandering around the campus, taking photos at various places, and generally basking in the glow of Lauren’s achievement.

The first stop, of course, was the Terrace by the lake because that’s what MCU is known for. It’s a vibrant place, and after a while we found some seats and ate the chocolate covered strawberries that they’d told us we could take as we were leaving the ceremony because they don’t really keep and someone should eat them, right?

From there we walked up the hill to the Lincoln statue. Every college should have a Lincoln statue.

It’s interesting how even with as often as we’ve been to this campus there are still a few places we’d never visited and Lauren took us around to some of her haunts. We spent some time in a quiet classroom in the building where her Department is mostly located and mostly just enjoyed ourselves in conversation. There’s a nice little courtyard right outside of the building that I’d never seen before, and it’s a nice place to spend time.

Eventually we started to get hungry for dinner, though, and Lauren had requested that we go to her favorite little spot on campus – a low-key and friendly Peruvian place where the food is good and the vibes are better and we had a grand time hanging out, just the four of us. This is how many of our best moments as a family are spent, after all, gathered around a table filled with good food, talking about everything and nothing in particular.

They had a backdrop on the wall where you could get your picture taken and they’d put you on their Instagram story, and how could anyone turn that down?

We rode the bus back to the car after that, took Lauren home briefly so she could drop off her stuff and then deposited her at a friend’s gathering before heading home.

Saturday started a bit earlier, and it was just me and Kim heading up to the big ceremony at the football stadium. Oliver had work to do – he knew he could only go to one of the ceremonies and chose the more human-scale one, which was a good choice. We were all suitably attired for the day, however.

Kim and I went straight to the same remote parking lot because we knew that was where we’d end up anyway and then met up with Lauren’s roommates Aleksia and Anita at their apartment. Eventually we gathered up a pretty good sized crew and then hiked over to the stadium.

MCU has been holding graduation ceremonies for more than a century and a half now. They’ve seen this one coming since September and no doubt by sometime last month they had a fair handle on how many of the roughly ten thousand graduates were likely to attend and based on that, at least from a statistical perspective, how many guests they would probably have invited to see them graduate. Somehow, though, word of this did not reach the people planning the actual event, and getting into the stadium was quite an experience for both guests and, according to Lauren, graduates as well. It took us nearly 45 minutes to get into the stadium once we’d gotten in line and then only because they started opening other gates for us right before the ceremony started, and we ended up sitting about three rows from the very top of the stadium.

Admittedly the view was spectacular from that vantage, and the weather was glorious – breezy and mild, though with enough bright sunshine to sunburn the unwary if they weren’t careful. If you look carefully, you can see Lauren in the very last row of the block of students second from the right at the back of the graduates. She’s the blonde one.

We couldn’t hear much from our vantage point – it was kind of like being in Charlie Brown’s classroom, in some ways (WAA-wa-WAA-wa-WAAAAAaaaa) – but apparently the sound was much better further down and the graduates could hear pretty well. They laughed and applauded in what seemed like the right places, anyway. The speeches were subtitled on the big screen so we could follow along, and they were livestreamed as well. At one point Kim actually logged in and listened to the main speaker that way. He seemed to understand the assignment, which is always a good thing in a graduation speaker.

At the three-quarter mark we all did the Jump Around, because that’s what you do at MCU.

And at the end they shot off fireworks, which were very impressive but they didn’t think too carefully about where the wind was blowing and for a while you couldn’t see anything inside the stadium, and that’s probably as good a signal that you should be leaving as any, really.  They piped us out to the tune of Pink Pony Club.

After an abortive attempt to meet up at a local landmark after the ceremony was defeated by the sheer weight of the crowd, we went back to Lauren’s apartment and mostly just hung out for the afternoon. Anita’s parents were there, as was Chase, and Owen stopped by with green-tea shots. We got take-out wings for lunch because we could do that – my guess is that every sit-down restaurant in the county was probably jammed with parents and graduates at that moment so take-out seemed the best option and who can say no to good wings? – and enjoyed ourselves.

For dinner we had reservations far enough outside of town to escape the graduation crush, at a Genuine Wisconsin Supper Club – the sort of place where the salad bar has iceberg lettuce and Bacos and you get the prime rib because that’s what you do and it's good. We met Kim’s parents and brother there, as well as Aleksia, Chase, and Kyler, and it was a lovely time indeed.

We stopped at a supermarket on the way back into town to stock up because even graduates have to eat, and eventually we dropped Lauren off at her place and went back home, tired but happy.

Congratulations, Lauren. You worked hard and did well, and I’m proud of you.

News and Updates

1. So it looks like these quick posts are the best I’m going to do for the moment. What can I say? It’s been that kind of time.

2. I keep thinking I’ll get to another Further Notes From the Coup post but every day is another avalanche of Fascism and right now I just don’t have the time or spoons to write about it. All I’m going to say is that if you’re not incandescently angry about the ongoing and fully intentional destruction of the American republic from within you’re not paying attention.

3. Today was my annual day to try to care about horse racing. It’s not that I have anything against the sport other than the fact that the main actors involved are all people with way too much money and not nearly enough social skills, and the people I know who enjoy watching this sort of thing are perfectly fine. But horses have never done much for me and watching them run does even less. Nevertheless, every year we sit down and watch the Kentucky Derby because why not? It’s a whole day of buildup for about 2 minutes of action which is kind of like … uh … never mind … but the actual race is kind of fun to watch. This year they held it in a swamp and by the time it was over everything was so covered in mud that nobody could actually tell who won other than it wasn’t the horse I picked at random right before the race because the horses I choose generally take several days to finish. If you go to Louisville right now and see a horse rounding the third turn in the dark, that’s probably the one I was cheering for.

4. I spent much of today making stuffed shells, a process that requires me to make gravy (spaghetti sauce to the uninitiated) beforehand, and now my house smells like my childhood. I suppose there are worse things it could smell like.

5. The semester is rapidly coming to an end and pretty soon the chaos and activity of summer will descend upon me. At some point I really do need to clear out my office as it is a mass of paper and vague intentions.

6. I should also mow the lawn. Perhaps tomorrow. It is a task that offers no rewards at all, but at some point you realize that it is approaching harvest height and needs to be chopped down. But the pollinators, I cry! Yeah, right, says the City. Cut the grass.

7. We’ve been back to working in the office for almost four years now and somehow I still haven’t quite remembered how to pack a lunch. It’s always such a scramble in the morning. I don’t remember it being that much of a trial before the pandemic, but then that was another world.

8. It is a strange thing working in higher education in a country whose pig-ignorant rulers are determined to destroy every vestige of independent thought and scholarship. At this point it is entirely likely that I will not have a job in the fall and that this will be the least of my problems. If I suddenly stop posting, have someone check El Salvador for me.

9. In the last two weeks it has been anywhere from 28F (-3C) to 85F (30C) here in Our Little Town. It has rained. The sun has shone. The next town over got baseball-sized hail. So far no tornadoes, though the sirens did go off at one point. It's been a time.

10. I put up a little poll every Monday morning in the lobby area where my office is, and students and staff have gotten into the habit of coming by to cast their vote – they put their hash marks down, and sometimes add answers to the ones I listed and then those get hash marks of their own. It’s a nice little distraction and it gets people talking a bit. Last week’s poll was a question about what you would do if you discovered the True Meaning of Life but it was really embarrassing, and the responses were pretty much across the board though there was a clear winner (“Spread the word anyway”). My favorite response, though, came from the person who wrote “Bokonon” as an answer. There are still a few Vonnegut fans left after all, it seems.

News and Updates

1. It’s registration season down at Home Campus which means the days are busier than usual and that’s an achievement in a place with as few employees as we have. But it’s nice to see my students and usually they end up getting what they need, which is what they would have wanted had they known.

2. I keep trying to put together another one of those Dispatches From the Coup posts because I feel things need to be documented and protests made, but every day there is just so much more of it to keep track of that I fall behind. I’ll probably end up putting together themed posts rather than a catchall. Today: the slide into Fascist dictatorship! Next: destroying the economy for fun and profit! And on and on. I saw someone online point out that the US has had presidents who wanted to be dictators, presidents who were bigots and assholes, presidents who were corrupt, and presidents who were blisteringly incompetent, but never before have we had all of that in one gaseous package. It’s a lot to follow.

3. The rabbits are outside now, enjoying their hutches and the nice spring breezes. We’re optimistic that this will be permanent, at least until the winter sets back in. The poor bunnies have been yanked in and out repeatedly over the last few weeks as the weather becomes springlike and then winter comes storming back like it wanted one last word in an argument. But the other day they got to play in the grass and that is their definition of bunny paradise.

4. Speaking of bunnies, the Rabbit of Easter brought of the chocolate last weekend (apologies to David Sedaris for stealing that joke) and it was a good time. Easter was never a big holiday in my family growing up so I always forget about it but Kim got the baskets prepped for all of us, and we picked up Lauren on the way to visit my in-laws for the holiday. There was an intense amount of good food and good company, and we made a lovely day of it.

5. It is a strange thing when a moderately known local figure passes away and my social media feed is full of loving paeans to their character and all I can think of is the two-week period I spent interacting with this person over a decade ago and how my big takeaway from that time was “Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, what a two-bit grifter.” Maybe it was just a bad time for this person. Who knows.

6. Every year I think “this is the summer where I will take it easy and do as little as humanly possible, and perhaps even catch up on some projects I have been putting off” and every summer that does not happen. We make plans. We make plans on top of plans. Plans get made for us. And those plans are always wonderful. I have a great time. I make fantastic memories and acquire lovely stories. And the next summer the cycle repeats. I’m not complaining about this. But someday there will be a summer of not much, too. This is not that summer. I suspect next summer won’t be either. At this point I think we’re pretty much booked solid until early August. I will enjoy it all, but I will be tired. Oh well. I’ll sleep later.

7. I finally decided to spring for a subscription to the Newspapers.com side-hustle that Ancestry runs, and I’ve been having a good time entering random names from my family to see what I can find. Mostly what I have found is that we are not a very newsworthy bunch, though every now and then something does come up. My grandfather played on a handful of sandlot baseball teams in Philadelphia in the early 1930s and I see his name in a lot of box scores, for example. He was apparently a very good contact hitter.

8. I got to give my “Witchcraft in America” talk to my friend’s religious studies class again, today, and I had a very nice time doing so. Every year I tweak it about 5%, adding new details, taking out bits that didn’t work as well as I wanted. It has some fun stories that I enjoy telling, and it’s always interesting to see how people react to them.

9. Now if we could only get the technology in the room to do what it says it can do, we’ll be ahead of the game.

10. It’s been interesting watching the preparations for the next Pope now that I have actually been to the Vatican. I see these news stories and mostly I think, “I remember that place!” I’m not sure this is what I am supposed to think under these circumstances, but the mind is a lonely hunter and it goes after the thoughts it wants.

Thoughts on the Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence has an odd place in American history.

For one thing, it’s not part of the legal system. Unlike the Constitution, you can’t cite it in court. It has no force of law. It exists outside of the legal framework of the United States, a thing unto itself.

For another thing, it was not actually the way that the colonists chose to declare their independence from the British Crown. That happened on July 2nd, 1776, when the Second Continental Congress formally adopted Richard Henry Lee’s resolution on independence – “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”

This vote prompted John Adams – who would later become the nation’s first president not named George Washington – to exclaim that “the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

But of course we don’t celebrate July 2nd as our Independence Day. We celebrate July 4th, the day that the Second Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, a document that was simply meant to explain why the vote two days earlier had turned out the way it did.

“WHEN in the Course of human Events,” the Declaration begins, “it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.”

It is basically the manifesto of the American Revolution, the only place where the Founding Fathers ever sat down as a group and explained why they were rebelling against the premier military power of the day.

Most Americans forget this.

When most Americans walk down the street thinking about the Declaration of Independence – as one does – what they think about is that one exquisitely crafted jewel of a sentence, the first sentence of the second paragraph:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

That sentence has become as close to an American Creed as we have, our secular catechism. This transformation began in the 19th century, long after the Revolution had been safely won, forgotten, half-remembered, and then mythologized, and was largely complete by the time Abraham Lincoln made it one of the key parts of the Gettysburg Address in 1863.

But as far as the Founders were concerned that sentence was just part of the introduction, a piece of rhetorical flourish before the important bit which was the justification of a rebellion already in progress. The shooting war had begun over a year prior to this, after all. We already had an Army, a Navy, and a Marine Corps. It all needed to be justified and given a rationale, and the Declaration provides it.

[T]o secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Most of the Declaration of Independence is in fact just a long list of the abuses committed by King George III, at least in the eyes of the Founding Fathers. There’s a reason for that. In English revolutionary tradition – and you may wish to pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that the English do this sort of thing often enough that they have established traditions for it – if you want reform, you blame all of the ills and issues on Parliament or the agents of the Crown (royal governors, customs officers, and so on), and you saw this with the Revolutionary Crisis of the 1760s and 1770s. But when you want revolution, you blame it all on the King personally, and that’s what you see here.

The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.

It is a fascinating list, in light of current politics, as our present self-declared King of the United States wages war on the American people in order to establish his own Tyranny.

He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

It always surprises people in this country today to discover that one of the things that the Founding Fathers felt justified the American Revolution was the fact that new immigration was being restricted and the immigrants already here were being legally harassed. The current tyrannical and lawless assaults on immigrants in the United States would have horrified the Founders.

He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their Substance.

Someone needs to let Unelected Co-President Elon “Sieg Heil” Musk and his band of feral teenagers know about this item, as it speaks directly to them.

He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

There are a lot of such jurisdictions and the specific one referred to here isn’t really an issue anymore, but we have been subjected to a new one instead. Much of what Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump is doing has no Constitutional basis, as the courts have been repeatedly forced to rule. The United States was not set up to be a dictatorship and for this guy to decide he can simply rule by decree is a betrayal of everything the American republic stands for. The Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution these days is our own president, sadly enough, though DOGE fits here as well.

For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:

Trade war, anyone? Random bizarre tariffs? Yeah, right here.

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

A tariff is a tax on you, the consumer. Foreign nations don’t pay those tariffs. You do. Congress had no role in these tariffs. Your representative did not get any voice in whether these should exist or not. The American people did not consent, yet we are taxed just the same.

For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:

Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump and his minions, cronies, lackeys and slaves have been all over the news in recent weeks declaring that they had no obligation to provide due process of law to those they have accused of crimes – that they can act as judge, jury, and executioner without any further input. This is a doctrine alien to the laws of the United States and one that the Founders felt was sufficient to justify revolution.

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:

Did you catch the preparations that Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump is making to start ripping American citizens out of their homes and shipping them off to prisons in foreign nations? Did you think that would stop with the people he’s testing it out on? You are not safe, my fellow American. Without due process, without restrictions on his power, there is nothing to stop this lawless regime from disappearing anyone they want. Eventually that will be everyone. Even you.

He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us.

This all could have been avoided if the US legal system had responded appropriately to the Trump Insurrection of January 6, 2021. The Founding Fathers likely would have had everything resolved permanently by sundown on January 7 and we wouldn’t have had to deal with this any further. Yet here we are.

The historian Charles Beard once observed that “You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the struggle for independence.” But there are times when such things are necessary, when we all must “get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America,” as John Lewis said.

These are such times, and the facts speak plainly.

The History of the present self-declared King of the United States is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

The Founding Fathers didn’t stand for it.

And no American today should do so either.

A Small Windfall

I got a check in the mail today from Facebook.

Or, rather, from whoever it is that handles their finances when they lose class-action lawsuits, which I suspect is going to be a pattern for as long as this country allows legal action to proceed against the rich and powerful. Not sure how much longer that will be, but it’s fun while it lasts.

I didn’t even remember joining this lawsuit until the check arrived. Years ago I got some kind of email notification sent to the address I’d provided when I first signed up for Facebook. It was before the pandemic and for all I know it was over a decade down into the deep well of the past. I joined Facebook in 2008, so there’s a wide range of dates on which I could have received this email. “This you?” it said. “Fill out this form and preserve your rights and maybe get some cash for the nefarious things that this megazoid company has done to you!”

Sure, I thought. Why not.

And today I am $40 richer.

I’d like to say that I’ll try not so spend it all in one place except that with the current inflationary spiral caused by the chaotic and dimwitted economic policies of the last few weeks it is getting harder and harder to do that. Kim, Oliver, and I went out to dinner last night at the local hibachi place – the sort of restaurant where you order at the counter and they bring it to your booth – and while this $40 would have covered that a year ago it most certainly does not now. It is a good thing that our tastes don’t run to the sorts of restaurants where they have separate menus for beverages.

So I’m not really sure what I’m going to do with this windfall. Probably blow it on groceries or gas, being the wastrel that I am.

But it’s nice to have, and nice to know that every now and then the rich and powerful still have to answer to the justice system. I can think of a long line of further examples of that I’d like to see, all of which need to pony up a lot more than $40 to make me feel that justice is served, but you have to start somewhere and this is as good a place as any.

Redwhat?

So it’s been a month now and I’m still trying to decide if I should keep my Reddit account or just delete it.

I’ve signed up for a couple of forums so far, mostly vintage photos but a few others. Some of them I’ve deleted because there is only so much one-upmanship I can take now that I have graduated from middle school, and others I’ve just stopped looking at because mostly they’re full of people telling other people everything that is wrong with what they just did. The vintage photo ones are mostly still fun, though an increasing percentage of them are clearly modern AI forgeries and that annoys me.

The more I deal with AI, the more I think that particular genie needs to be stuffed back in the bottle and fired into the nearest star along with most of the soulless tech bros who promote it and the plagiarists and bullshit artists who use it. As one meme I saw put it, AI has accidentally made me believe in the existence of the human soul because I’ve seen what art looks like without it.

I have made a total of one comment so far in my Reddit experience – a recommendation for Hank’s Skedatil sauce in a hot sauce forum, in response to a question that was explicitly looking for such recommendations. It’s a great hot sauce if you’re looking for something that is tasty and won’t rip your lips off, which isn’t really what most of the people on that forum want if their posts are anything to go by. Mostly there’s a lot of preening along the lines of “This stuff is also used for crowd control in a number of police states, but I found it too weak to put on my pizza” and so on. It took several days for my comment to post because apparently you can’t just post things – you have to be approved to post things. I understand this, as it keeps the nonsense to a minimum, though it does make me question the approval process for some of the things I’ve read.

I think my comment got an upvote, though I don’t know if that was from someone else or if I just accidentally clicked on something (can you upvote your own post?), and I don’t know how one would go about checking that. I suppose it’s moot now. That was a week or so ago – an eternity in internet time – and nobody but me remembers that thread ever existed now.

I think the hardest thing about Reddit is that it feels like you’re standing at the edge of a vast sea of, well, not quite knowledge but at least information, with no particular way to find any of it. There’s no real index. I haven't figured out how to see a list of the things I've signed up for. You can search for topics, but I haven’t really found the tricks that one is supposed to use to get any meaningful results from those searches and in any event every time I stare at the home page my mind goes blank and I forget everything I was ever interested in.

My life chugged along just fine for decades without Reddit, even if you limit that to my internet life, and I don’t think I’d miss it if I just walked away.

But so many people keep telling me that it’s this cornucopia of information, amusement, random nonsense, and/or train-wreck fascination that I keep thinking I’ll give it another day, another few days, just to see if any of that materializes.

We’ll see.