Matt Seybold

Adam Kotsko @adamkotsko.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 11:51 UTC

"If the center doesn’t concede that the left has earned a bite at the apple even after bailing the center out of its own self-inflicted problem, then this entire effort will have been an exercise in staving off the inevitable, rather than a genuine turning point." itself.blog/2024/07/08/w...

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 21:01 UTC

Goldman Sachs shorting OpenAI is like if the Proud Boys throttled the Patriot Front.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 20:56 UTC

To quote Michael Burry, “What I think you mean is Goldman Sachs has acquired a net short position & is ready to accurately mark these assets because it’s now in their fiscal interest to do so.”

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 03:39 UTC

I don’t feel this for Blockbuster, but I get it because of my own nostalgia for record stores. Yes, I get all the music I want for the price on 1 CD, but the pleasure of browsing the bins, reading the liners; the genuine elation of finding the album you didn’t even know you were looking for.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 08, 2024 at 03:06 UTC

I think the parties severely underestimate how many people have experiences with cognitive decline in parents, grandparents, spouses, etc. It’s a kitchen table issue.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 21:08 UTC

I believe both our presidential candidates are in the early stages of age-related dementia. Maybe my trauma deludes me. But that’s what I see. And I see their parties treating them as familiar political brands rather than geopolitical decision-makers. It terrifies me. END

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:57 UTC

It lulls you into a false sense of security. I can manage this. I can protect him from himself. I can predict what he needs. The slowness of it will make it easier to accommodate. No drastic measures. We can wait it out. This is folly. 12/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:57 UTC

It was more than five years between the first signs & my grandmother’s death. Not everybody is affected the same way, but nobody gets better. It is always a downward slope, steepening over time. Part of the cruelty of the decline is what it does to loved ones… 11/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:56 UTC

Possibly the worst experience of my life: seeing him reduced to the opposite of what he had always been. And we’ve spent a lot of time wondering what might have been if we’d taken a less laissez faire approach to his early stages of decline. 10/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:56 UTC

His daughters needed me there for the hardest confrontation: taking away his car keys. He didn’t fight me. But he wanted to. And he didn’t hold back because I was his grandson, but merely because of the cold, animal calculation: he didn’t think he could win. 9/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:56 UTC

Doctors would later call it “Sundowner’s Sydrome” & it was the reason why he eventually had to be moved to a special unit. He would be arrogant, dismissive, vulgar, even bigoted, & sometimes violent. He had never been any of these things. But we saw it for ourselves. 8/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:55 UTC

Maybe, in her weakened state, she fell. It was nighttime, he didn’t know what to do. She was dead long before the paramedics arrived. But also, we would find, as we spent nights with him thereafter, he was often most upset during the evenings & sometimes well after dark. 7/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:55 UTC

My grandmother “died unexpectedly” as the obituary read, in her home, at the age of 87. She had a head injury. My grandparents lived in a tiny rural community. Everybody knows everybody: Police, EMTs, coroners. Nobody wanted to investigate. Me included. 6/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:55 UTC

But mostly she worried that as she battled cancer she wouldn’t be able to give him what he needed: routine, simple pleasures, gentle reassurance, protection from the unfamiliar & from his worst instincts. We started the difficult project of moving them, but too late… 5/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:55 UTC

It wasn’t until she got sick herself that she told the truth about how bad he was getting. The bouts of confusion sometimes turned angry, even threatening. He was still a big man in good physical condition. He scared her. 4/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:54 UTC

For years, we treated the changes in his memory, demeanor, & cognition as normal symptoms of age. Nobody encouraged him to see a specialist My grandmother, to whom he had been married more than 60 years, protected him & defended him ferociously when he made public mistakes 3/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:53 UTC

He was a kind, generous, brave, tireless, & unerringly just man. A WWII vet who worked two jobs - as a mail carrier & a bookkeeper - for 40 years to build a nest egg for his daughters (& grandson, for that matter). There is nobody I have ever admired more in this world. 2/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 20:53 UTC

This is really hard for me to talk about, but it’s the reason why I’ve waded into this discourse, so I’m going to put it out there & thereafter I’ll have nothing more to say on the subject. In his early 80s, my grandfather started showing early signs of Alzheimer’s… 1/13

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 15:20 UTC

Not endorsing (yet), just saving to download later.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 14:44 UTC

Before the debate, before the interview, before the campaign trail gaffes, roughly 13% of registered Democrats in deep blue New York took time out of their days to submit an empty ballot because they were ALREADY so disappointed with the Biden candidacy.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 07, 2024 at 01:57 UTC

Seems like a good time to say that the next season of American Vandal, “A Tale of Today: The Gilded Age,” will prominently feature HBCUs as the vanguard of the fight for education. Morehouse has long been in the crosshairs of Vista Partners, the world’s leading EdTech investor.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 19:51 UTC

Biden has some significant Ws, and some major Ls, most of all his enabling of Netanyahu. But I have far more trust in Harris’s ability at this juncture than his.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 14:07 UTC

Yes. The polling industry is a mess of bad methods, antiquated technology, conflicts of interests, etc.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 14:05 UTC

I would definitely prefer Biden step down as President.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 14:04 UTC

I disagree. I have cared for people in cognitive decline. I cannot ignore what I see. I understand the media environment very well. I’m not saying it has been friendly to Biden’s reelection. But denying the reality of his limitations actually legitimizes lies & manipulations coming from the right

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 13:18 UTC

I mean, I hear you, but I expect your ability to distinguish between consciousness and dreamstates during the sundown hours is still pretty strong.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 13:02 UTC

The reason for Biden to step aside is not the polls. He’s right about that. They probably are wrong. The reason for him to step aside is cognition decline. And same for Trump, of course. They both need rest, routine, regular caretaking, & locks on the gun cabinet. They are not well.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 02:02 UTC

Got a reservation for 4:30 PM at his favorite restaurant. His grand-nephew was the waiter. We were in & out in 45 minutes. They kept the Cadillac out front. Pop-pop still spilled his soup, tried to tip with coupons, & told the hostess he “runs the world.”

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 06, 2024 at 00:58 UTC

There. Have. Been. Worse. Interviews. I. Guess.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 22:25 UTC

Yep. You’re ready for X.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 20:31 UTC

Virality on Twitter is always the same, even since before Musk: Hours 1-12: This is fun. People are interested in talking about this thing. Hours 12-24: People will say some silly stuff to strangers on the internet. Hours 24+: Nothing but randos calling each other pedophiles in my mentions.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 17:27 UTC

This thread has achieved that stage of vitality on Twitter where randos lecture me about Mark Twain fACtS.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 16:00 UTC

And:

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:59 UTC

If y'all wanna go really deep:

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 05, 2024 at 15:54 UTC

Unfortunately, there's not many recordings of Holbrook's thousands of performances, but you can listen to his 1959 audio recording (based on the original Off-Broadway run that made him famous) & watch the 1967 TV version. He had to negotiate with CBS, but the '67 show is still way edgier.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 18:07 UTC

Probably my favorite posthumous collection, although case can easily be made for "Devil's Racetrack" (best of "Fables of Man" & "Which Was The Dream," "Weapons of Satire," or "Damned Human Race."

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 17:25 UTC

I have. I even have an LP of it being read aloud (not by Twain). Possibly the peak of fart jokes.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 17:16 UTC

Strongly second the rec of "War Prayer," but just a small correction. Twain only uttered the famous "only dead men can tell the truth in this world" line after he failed to find a publisher to run it. He was ready to take the blowback, but no magazine was, despite Twain's enormous popularity.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 17:02 UTC

First episode we ever made, so it's a little LoFi, but I stand by the narrative.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 16:08 UTC

Holbrook’s one of my heroes. Produced the podcast which features his last appearance as Twain. After performing “United States of Lyncherdom” at Ole Miss during integration with National Guardsman in the trees, he was never again afraid to go hard.

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 15:27 UTC

…against the next gang of ‘robbers’ who came to steal it & DID - & became swollen-hearted patriots in THEIR turn.” The birth of a nation is an accident of history & one which never goes too long without being remedied. END

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 15:25 UTC

“Patriotism I s a word which always commemorates a robbery. There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting & re-ousting of a long line of successive ‘owners,’ who each in turn, as ‘patriots,’ with proud swelling hearts defended it… 8/9

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 15:25 UTC

Year after year long lists of casualties were published during the week that followed. Twain didn't think the "odious pandemonium" stood for anything. It was an imitation of Guy Fawkes Day, an excuse to fire pistols in the air & set things ablaze, crying patriotism. 7/9

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 15:25 UTC

Widespread public drunkenness & fireworks were a reliably deadly combination. "We lose more fools on this day than on all the other days of the year put together," Twain wrote, "We destroy more property every Fourth of July night than the whole of the United States is worth” 6/9

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Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social [ View ] Jul 04, 2024 at 15:25 UTC

…not because it is not American, but merely because this nation goes insane, & by the help of noise & fire turns into an odious pandemonium. The nation calls it by all sorts of pet names, but if I had the naming of it I would throw poetry aside & call it Hell's Delight." 5/9

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