Dan Sinker/notes

Most of the time my thoughts aren't long enough for a blog post. My shortform notes get posted on Mastodon and Bluesky, and also wind up here.

Sat down tonight, left my phone in the charger, and read an actual paper magazine cover to cover. A+, highly recommended activity.

posted at 9:38PM on April 16, 2025

I'm sorry they threw a what-themed wedding??? www.nytimes.com/2025/04/1... Amazon was the center of their life. They met at a conference for Amazon sellers in 2016 and had their first kiss at another Amazon conference two years later. They moved in together and grew their business, Treasures Gifted. When they married in 2022, they threw an Amazon-themed wedding, with guests assigned Amazon product numbers instead of table numbers.

posted at 12:15PM on April 16, 2025

being a parent of a nine-year-old means a lot of other parents ask you if your kid has read Harry Potter yet and so you get very used to the awkward silence that follows you saying "no because they were written by an anti-trans bigot, and besides there are a lot better books out there."

posted at 8:05AM on April 16, 2025

The nine-year-old has become obsessed with America's Funniest Home Videos which (1) still exists, (2) is now mostly people's doorbell cam footage, and (3) illustrates how we got into this mess more vividly than any NYT profile has managed.

posted at 8:12PM on April 15, 2025

wishing the last dude left at the IRS good luck in detangling my tax thicket.

posted at 5:44PM on April 14, 2025

So now it is demonstrably cheaper to import fully assembled Chinese-manufactured electronics than the parts to assemble them here. These are deeply unserious people.

posted at 4:51PM on April 12, 2025

"The world is a built environment, and I think understanding how it was built is key to being able to truly live in it." Yesterday I wrote about taking things apart and putting them back together. dansinker.com/posts/202...

posted at 4:34PM on April 12, 2025

Hey, I wrote a thing about how you can learn by taking things apart, about how geeky electronics were transformed by the global supply chain, and about how nothing happening in in the administration right now is about fixing broken things. dansinker.com/posts/202...

posted at 3:39PM on April 11, 2025

The administration adding fully-alive people to the Social Security "death file" in order to make their lives unlivable should be the mother of all red lines. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/1... The effort hinges on a surprising new tactic: repurposing Social Security’s “death master file,” which for years has been used to track dead people who should no longer receive benefits, to include the names of living people who the government believes should be treated as if they are dead. As a result of being added to the death database, they would be blacklisted from a coveted form of identity that allows them to make and more easily spend money.

posted at 8:25AM on April 11, 2025

Just end my life already please I am begging. I can not take how stupid this all is. "Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Makes America's Showers Great Again"

posted at 6:57PM on April 9, 2025

so how high will he go on China today before folding tomorrow? 200%?

posted at 1:53PM on April 9, 2025

I think what any company that wants to make a multi-billion dollar investment in domestic manufacturing that will take years to come to fruition and many more years that that to earn out is looking for is constantly-shifting decisions based on the ever-changing, chaotic whims of a mad king.

posted at 12:41PM on April 9, 2025

I think what any company looking to make a multi-billion dollar investment in domestic manufacturing that will take years to come to fruition and many many more years that that to earn out is the ever-changing chaotic whims of a mad king.

posted at 12:35PM on April 9, 2025

I have so many pals that in the last decade or so have gone into small-scale manufacturing: clicky keyboards, weirdo boardgames, hipster toys, niche electronics... every single one of them is entirely, 100% fucked right now.

posted at 8:17AM on April 9, 2025

I hope the me on the parallel earth where none of this happened is having the best fucking time.

posted at 7:26AM on April 9, 2025

January 2020 marked the year I was really gonna get my shit together. That didn't work out so well. Finally, after years of effort lining things back up, I was gonna really get my shit together in 2025.

posted at 7:09AM on April 9, 2025

It's OK I'm sure we didn't need coffee, bananas, literally all electronics, or the rule of law anyway.

posted at 7:01PM on April 8, 2025

Definitely emotionally fraught enough to really completely allow the Arsenal Football Club to fully destroy my afternoon.

posted at 2:06PM on April 8, 2025

Completely uninterested in getting out of bed this morning. A weather icon showing a sun partially covered by a cloud indicates that it's currently 27°C, with a "feels like" temperature of 18°C, and partly cloudy conditions.

posted at 6:36AM on April 8, 2025

Do me a favor and vote for Rebel Spirit in the Webby Awards. Literally everything is so shitty and I want this goddamn award. Thank you! vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVot...

posted at 9:00PM on April 7, 2025

You can follow all my notes on Mastodon or Bluesky.