Las Vegas is Open for Business… So Far
For better or worse, my city of residence is taking the latest CDC guidance and running head-down into it. Unlike checking for legal drinking age, there isn’t a facility in place to check for actual vaccination per person, so the honor code is in full effect. With at least one positive test for the B.1.617.2 variant of SARS-CoV-2 (if you’re keeping up on the situation in India, you’ve heard about this variant) in Clark County in a person who did not travel, I have my concerns.
A YouTuber who ventures out on weekends to stream the crowds and goings on witnessed this on 15 May (Saturday) on Fremont Street in Downtown Las Vegas:
(Technically there are still some limitations in place for an 80% capacity cap, while larger casinos have been able to move to 100% with removed social distancing and mask requirements for “vaccinated” persons, but do check your destinations and it probably makes sense to keep a mask handy if you’re out and about).
UPDATE: I received email last night (as I type this now, before I click “publish”) from EoS, the gym I just signed up to use post-pandemic, that they are allowing mask-less gym usage for those fully vaccinated. If you were keeping track, gyms where among places where spread was a concern. I’m a little bit disappointed at the general rush to convenience without so much consideration… fingers crossed, I guess.
Podcasts!
I just published the weekly HugoFloss podcast, this week we talked more about CasaNunzia and a little bit about the new mask policies.
Check out this week’s HugoFloss episode: Getting Out of the Way
I am just about to record an episode of QuogglingSand, which has languished a bit… ironically, it’s about random things I’m working on and I’ve been too busy to speak into a microphone about what I’m working on… one of these days I would like to add a guest or two, and get on a weekly schedule. To sleep, perchance to dream…
And yes, FFS (aka FFS Talk for the purposes of social media and specificity) is on deck with a new episode that, as it turns out, defines what the entire show is supposed to be about. Ideally this is a show where others with specific ideas and expertise can join in the conversation about making things better (no cursing the darkness without bringing a flashlight!).
Subscribe to these three shows (presently hosted and distributed via Anchor.fm and related tributary sites, which will remain true into the future as we kick off websites and whatnot as well) and be on the lookout for some other engagement projects!
Newsletters and Social Networking
I’ve mentioned previously once or twice, my desire to step back from emphasis on social networking platforms (I don’t actually like using those words for Twitter and Facebook and others, but here we are), and so I’m trying out the newsletter idea (not to mention podcast shows). Here is where I am so far on this transision:
Direct engagement with opt-in readers is a good idea. If you received this newsletter via email, great! If you found the browsable version by some other means, also great!
Flexible publishing is also a good idea. The notion that one must publish an image of a certain size, a certain amount of text, and then be concerned about whether something will ever be seen by anyone is a high bar. Here I type the words and use the wonky browser-based editor and voila, newsletter.
Content ownership is the bottom line. Technically, I’m posting this on Substack and they are sending out an email-friendly version and managing subscriptions and monetization and whatnot, but it is pretty easy to capture my content (I am a subscriber, afterall), no graph api or huge “takeout” file download needed.
I discovered as I was writing this that one of my Twitter accounts (for my QuogglingSand podcast, as yet unused) was suspended for a mysterious, undisclosed reason. I emailed Twitter and it was un-suspended a few minutes later. While I am not POTUS or conducting crucial communications via any twitter account (yet?), this is the sort of stuff that gets all of the attention lately… self-publishing, self-hosting, self-control, these are things we as internet consumers (and producers) should re-acquire as a matter of personal (or business) agency.
The only real problem I have with Substack (and Revue, and possibly other platforms doing this) is, it’s very simple. Yes, team support for multiple contributors (eg substack journalism) but and the end of the day it would actually be useful to have a proper api to construct a newsletter and other administrata, including use of other editing tools. A completely self-hosted newsletter platform is ultimately the way to go, I think, which is strangely the same opinion I have about blogging, photos, and all of the other stuff that ends up on Facebook today.
Bonus, while this is certainly sort of possible with substack and revue and others, a workflow focused on flexible embedding would be valuable. While Revue enables connection of sources (RSS feeds, twitter feed, etc) in the newsletter production workflow, how much more interesting would it be to connect surveys, graphs and charts, and so on to the newsletter (most email clients will not play nice with dynamic content, so this is still about how the materialized newsletter view connects to some dynamic, interactive elements). The arrows are pointing at self-hosting newsletters for the best experience on the production and consumption sides.
How Funny
Sharing some stand-up comedy that I come across in my travels or algorithmic recommendations, thanks to YouTube. By the way, Pandora (the audio platform famous for using a ridiculous number of parameters to match tunes with listener preferences) was a great place to discover new comedy, but it really is more fun to join the fun in person.
Aisling Bea was first spotted on 8 Out of 10 Cats, and in my opinion she does rather well in the “bank of comedians” setting of that show (sparring with Jimmy Carr now and then).
Dylan Moran was first spotted with a travel book down the front of his trousers in Notting Hill, but that was hardly a good display of his talents. I enjoy his take on forming sentences in unusual ways now and then.
Stewart Lee is one of the more unusual comedians I’ve come across, if ever I could see him live I most certainly would. His longer shows are really good, but he’s not for everybody, to be honest.
Alex Justalex was a javascript developer I had met soon after moving to Las Vegas back in 2013. I think I met him at Atomic Liquors, I certainly ran into him there now and then. When he was running an open mic at The Dive near UNLV, I got up twice to give it a go, and discovered I’m better at consuming rather than producing comedy. An old clip, but Alex is still touring around by all indications.
Light Reading
While I have been reading since a very young age, I’ve jumped on the audio book bandwagon with both feet. Great for working some of the brain cells while exercising. Do audio books count as reading? Well, different brain cells, and it’s tricky to refer back to something read, but printed versions of audio books are usually available as needed…
21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari, on the heels of my finishing his Sapiens missive, this one is about the present day (as the title may imply). I’ve only just started it, and his Homo Deus book is on hold (the Clark County Library has loads of audio books, for the win!), and while this is the third book, I’m reading them in calendar order… so far, so good.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl is a bit deeper by comparison, in that Harai writes about humanity, Frankl is writing about humans (if I may over-simplify). I got through Part I, his accounting of his experience in the camps in Nazi Germany, as a lead-in to his discusson about Logotherapy in Part II. This seemed like as good a point as any to take a break and hear what Harari has to say about modern day.
I mix Audible and Library for audio books, and while I suppose I could link to physical books on, say, Amazon, I’m not quite to the point where I want to stuff affiliate links everywhere. If you are interested in supporting my habit, you know you can Buy Me A Coffee…
Thanks For Reading!
The Monday Newsletter is still in its infancy, hopefully there will be more and more interestingness week over week, as projects launch, ideas form, discussions happen… as I get back to The Old Ways (less facebook, more direct connection!), I hope you’ll join me by reading and sharing things like this, creating your own newsletter or other self-published (and self-hosted?) project(s), and telling me about them!
A lot of post-pandemic revelation on this end, tell me about yours!
Of course, you can also Buy Me a Coffee if you’d like. I’m not really interested in bombarding people with affiliate links and monetization schemes all over (this newsletter specifically is a personal outreach project) but if you are interested in dropping some bread into the basket for various projects en masse, this is one general way to do it (relevant projects will also have their own paths to monetization, where applicable).