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.

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

Sure there's gonna be some short-term pain, but in 20-30 years we'll have established all the expertise, materials, and infrastructure we need to build and assemble a $25,000 iPhone right here in the USA.

posted at 5:10PM on April 7, 2025

Everything is a hellscape but I've compulsively gone to the art museum more times in the last month than the previous five years so at least there's that.

posted at 1:38PM on April 6, 2025

People in the streets is unequivocally good.

posted at 4:20PM on April 5, 2025

If you've never taken apart a piece of electronics before, it's worth doing for a lot of reasons but today it's a good lesson in how every single piece inside it, and there are a lot, was manufactured separately, often by an entirely separate company in a different country, down to the screws.

posted at 9:29AM on April 5, 2025

The Verge completely owned the story of the last time Trump tried to bring manufacturing back to America. www.theverge.com/c/2150796... "The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage."

posted at 9:17AM on April 5, 2025

Every ad during the Premier League half is for a company that is now completely fucked.

posted at 8:12AM on April 5, 2025

Do you miss American manufacturing or do you miss large union memberships and income tax rates on the rich well north of 50%?

posted at 4:26PM on April 4, 2025

You can follow all my notes on Mastodon or Bluesky.