I am outraged with the world, but still have plenty of rage left over for the petty stuff... because a Very Special "Shit I'm Done With" Edition of Bullet Sunday starts... now...
• Good Bye Alexa! And... looks like I'm dumping Amazon Alexa now. They've been spamming me with shit forever, but this morning I got an alert telling me that the movie Coraline is on sale for a special price and I am fucking done. Digital assistants should shut the fuck up and leave me the fuck alone until I ask them to do shit. Period. I'll be using Apple Siri and Google Assistant from here on out. Amazing how Amazon.com can build up the digital assistant market then piss it all away like this. Oh well. Fortunately my Sonos speakers can switch to Google Assistant no problem. I only have two hardware Alexa devices and those are going in the trash where they belong. I wish I could say it was good while it lasted, but, well... you know...
• Good Bye INSTEON! When I bought my new home six years ago, I did a deep dive on all the available smart home platforms. Each of them had pluses and minuses, just like anything. But even more problematic was that there were gaps in devices available, which meant I ended up having to mix-and-match instead of having a single platform for everything. Cameras were Nest (now Google), outlet plugs were Smart Life, temperature sensors were Govee, etc. etc. But the majority of my devices were INSTEON. Everything from my light switches to my garage door opener were a part of the INSTEON ecosystem. Then earlier this year INSTEON went out of business. Then they came back. But who knows for how long? Rather than sinking any more money into a dying platform, I'm putting all my eggs in the Thread/Matter smart home basket. It will be gradual because I'm not made out of money, but I'm starting with some light switches (by Eve) and going from there. Eventually everything will be Thread/Matter devices, because they promise excellent performance, true interoperability between manufacturers, and is relatively future-proof.
• Good Bye Junk Drawer! Now that my kitchen renovation is actually like... happening (after 3 years of trying to find people to make it happen) I am realizing just how much crap I've got that I never use. For all three years my kitchen has been torn up, my junk drawer" has been in my garage. I never once went out to get anything from it...
Anything useful will be transferred to my studio. The rest will be tossed in the garbage. It'll be kinda strange to not have a junk drawer since I've always had one. My family has had a junk drawer for generations. But given that Amazon can deliver practically anything in a couple days now-a-days, it doesn't seem necessary to have an entire drawer devoted to clutter. And I'll be donating a bunch of kitchen gadgets I never used to charity as well.
• Good Bye Political Donations! I have long supported two types of political candidates... Moderate Republicans who are working to get back to actual Republican ideals instead of whatever fucked up anti-humanist bullshit is on the current agenda of the faux-Republicans they're running against... and Democrats who are running against the fucked up anti-humanist bullshit. But... NO MORE! Because once your donate to a candidate they (and their entire party) WILL NEVER, EVER FUCKING LEAVE YOU ALONE! It goes something like this...
"Reply STOP to stop receiving these texts."
"STOP"
"LOL! Yeah, right. You donated to my campaign 12 years ago and I'll be spamming you until you die. And every time I'll use a different phone number so there's no way you can block me, and replying STOP doesn't actually do shit. Sucks to be you! Thanks for your support 12 years ago! Send more money!"
• Good Bye JK Rowling! I've never been a Harry Potter fan, but all this transphobic TERF bullshit with his creator, JK Rowling, has gotten out of hand... and now Ralph Fiennes coming to her defense? Really?
TRANS WOMAN: =exists=
JK ROWLING: STOP STEALING MY IDENTITY!!!
What the actual fuck?!? Her entire identity is built around trying to persecute a marginalized community which has done nothing to her. Her entire identity is being a transphobic bigot. Well, no worries, JK... nobody is stealing that identity from you. You work way too hard for anybody to ever even attempt it. Meanwhile Ralph Fiennes says the "abuse" towards JK Rowling is "appalling." Are you joking? How fucking dense could you be?!? It's not like she sat back minding her own business and people started calling her out... SHE WORKS DAY AND NIGHT TO FUCKING *EARN* WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT HER! She practically demands it, because every time it dies down, she starts being a piece of shit again. So yeah, I'm done with her, but that's easy because I never really got started in the first place.
• Good Bye Pantone! Fuck Pantone and their shitty color system sideways. Designers made them the premiere color authority, and we're being repaid by being gouged over the monopoly we handed them. We bought their color books. Printers bought their inks. All of us bought into their bullshit. But now they want to charge designers a $21 monthly fee for the privilege of eating their bullshit...
Fun times ahead for #Adobe designers. Today, if you open a PSD (even one that's 20 years old) with an obscure PANTONE colour, it will remove the colour and make it black. Pantone want US$21/month for access, and Solid Coated goes behind the paywall in early November. pic.twitter.com/BUxzViYFaQ
— Iain Anderson (@funwithstuff) October 28, 2022
My work would pay the $21 a month without even batting an eye. But I categorically refuse to give Pantone the money. I don't fucking care if this means that I have to manually create color swatches. I don't care that it adds time. I don't care that it's inconvenient. I will continue to buy their physical color books as I have been for decades (mainly because I have to) but I won't give them a fucking nickel to have their color swatches in my Adobe apps. And the second... THE VERY SECOND... that designers endorse a new OPEN color standard and the printers I use have access to inks for it... I will burn every fucking Pantone item I own then take a shit on the ashes.
Turning all the Pantone colors used in old projects black WHEN THE DOCUMENTS WERE CREATED AT A TIME WHEN THE PANTONE COLOR BOOKS WERE FREE TO USE is fucked up to an infinite degree. I detest these assholes and hope that their entire company as well as their shitty fucking business model goes up in flames.
With all the crap going on in the world, it seems petty to spend any outrage on all this stuff... but rest assured that I have plenty of outrage left. When it comes to outrage, my supply is infinite. And companies like Pantone are the reason why.
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I think I asked you this the last time you brought this up, but why didn’t you just have Alexa turn off advertising. It’s literally a toggle right in the app.
I have every single category OFF in “Notifications.” I still get ads.