Depending on how you count, in a year or two I will have been an impresario longer than I was a hacker.
So what should I do in Season Three?
72 Responses:
-
Recent Posts
- "And it's a great looking skull plate"
- I liked it better when he had me blocked
- Butt Stuff
- Meanwhile, at Apple...
- Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen
- Sex Work Bollards: Not Actually Bollards
- AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test
- Sex Work Bollards: Erectile Dysfunction
- There's No Such Thing As a Smart Fascist
- Car Dealers: Even more horrible than you could possibly have imagined
- Die On It
- Castro library limits Wi-Fi to hinder homeless after pressure from supervisor Mandelman
- DNA Lounge: Wherein we roll a D20
- Eating Disorder Helpline Fires Staff, Transitions to Chatbot After Unionization
- Em like a boss
- Subtitles
- "Tough love"
- The Whales have declared war on the Spanish Fleet
- Techbro SF
- Dropbox fuckery
Recent Comments
- Dim on Butt Stuff
- mattl on "And it's a great looking skull plate"
- Colinaut on Butt Stuff
- JohnB on Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen
- Jonathan on Butt Stuff
- MattyJ on "And it's a great looking skull plate"
- jwz on Butt Stuff
- Boris on Butt Stuff
- Doctor Memory on I liked it better when he had me blocked
- vince on "And it's a great looking skull plate"
- CSL3 on Butt Stuff
- joe on Butt Stuff
- joe on Butt Stuff
- Jacky Alciné on I liked it better when he had me blocked
- Marko on Meanwhile, at Apple...
- Inhabitant of Carcosa on "And it's a great looking skull plate"
- MrPickles on Car Dealers: Even more horrible than you could possibly have imagined
- k3ninho on AI-Controlled Drone Goes Rogue, Kills Human Operator in USAF Simulated Test
- Kyzer on Butt Stuff
- Benjamin Arnold on Giant isopod with creamy chicken broth ramen
- Riku Voipio on Butt Stuff
- Line Noise on "And it's a great looking skull plate"
- narf on Butt Stuff
- Martin on Butt Stuff
Archives
- 2023 (142)
- 2022 (367)
- 2021 (389)
- 2020 (473)
- 2019 (376)
- 2018 (525)
- 2017 (583)
- 2016 (518)
- 2015 (633)
- 2014 (709)
- 2013 (728)
- March 2013 (90)
- February 2013 (48)
- January 2013 (52)
- December 2012 (65)
- November 2012 (59)
- October 2012 (95)
- September 2012 (87)
- August 2012 (76)
- July 2012 (50)
- June 2012 (52)
- May 2012 (65)
- April 2012 (73)
- March 2012 (134)
- 2012 (870)
- 2011 (767)
- 2010 (725)
- 2009 (590)
- 2008 (519)
- 2007 (374)
- 2006 (505)
- 2005 (578)
- 2004 (524)
- 2003 (634)
- 2002 (496)
Run for the Board of Supervisors, of course.
or, go all Falling Down on the ABC.
Nah, too quick. Actually having to become part of the SF political sausage factory guarantees at least a decade worth of indignant blog posts.
I was about to suget politician, San Francisco mayor, but your suggestion also work O;-)
SF Mayor is really more of an appointed position: I don't think it's open to anyone who's called Rose Pak "the vampire of Chinatown." But we've already established that any idiot can get elected to the Board.
I think you've got the right general idea, but jumping up the political hierarchy much too fast...
1. Become visible in the political scene. Help with a campaign, volunteer heavily for a non-profit, get on the board of a non-profit, etc.
2. Try to get appointed to one of the various boards, committees or task forces for the City/County government. SF Bicycle Advisory Committee? Tenant seat on the Unreinforced Masonry board? It's common for some of these boards to have a seat that each Supervisor appoints.
3. Run for one of the lower elected offices. School board? something like that.
4. Run for an office up the hierarchy a bit. Board of Supervisors?
Imagine the years of entertaining Blog rants that jwz on the school board could lead to. Even the Bicycle Advisory Committee is likely to lead to all sorts of entertainment for us...
> Imagine the years of entertaining Blog rants that jwz on the school board could lead to.
Sure, but the final entry would just look like the cover of Dawn of the Black Hearts.
Get into geology. It's really interesting.
I've observed, read about, and known a lot of lives and their arcs.
Either you:
See a technological itch and decide to scratch (although that seems to be happening with DNA)
Open a second space somewhere, maybe not even in SF, to try life not under an oppressive regime
Become a teacher or someone pass knowledge on, via a book or similar
Totally move somewhere completely else, like the UK.
We could do with a DNA-like place in Newcastle, UK.
Ha! It's not just me! :D (Music for me is Series 3; I'm only at, like, episode 4. ^_^ )
Research and genetics was fun (Series 1), hacking was less so but still interesting (Series 2), which pointed me at biointerface stuff, which was totally cool. I almost did machine-human interfacing for my third series; look up some of the work Dr. Bach-y-Rita did on that and also brain plasticity in sensory processing, and generalise from there. Lots of potential there from the bio side. You'll have to pick up some bio background, but honestly, it's not that hard. There's a lot of it, but it's not difficult - just abundant.
If that's too close, have you considered large-scale kinetic sculpture? I've never done that, but I know people who do and it looks kinda awesome.
(Oh, in ref. the Board: I had a recurring guest role throughout Series 2 over in a separate politics series. AVOID AVOID AVOID oh god so horrible.)
You just added an impresario layer without stopping the hacking. Just add another layer, say, philanthropist-impresario-hacker.
-S
philanthropist-impresario-hacker
-ballerina-veterinarian-astronaut-superhero.
...: Across The Eighth Dimension!"
Thought of a better one - poet/impresario/hacker. Having read jwz's pithy mcom code comments before they were sanitized to prepare for open source release back in the day, I'd bet he could pack quite of bit into a haiku.
-S
I'm pretty certain one could argue that jwz's role as impresario counted as a form of philanthropy.
Batman.
Yeah, on second thoughts, ignore my other suggestion. This is the one to go with.
I gotta third this motion. Hopefully it carries.
I was going to suggest "greatest sword fighter the world" but I guess Batman would do.
Win.
Shhh! That's a sekret.
Steve Wozniac is saying he wants to move to Australia. Why not do the same? We still have an economy, and we solved the whole "should poor people be left to starve in the gutters and die of hangnails" firmly in the negative some years ago (ie we're all socialists). The night club scene stinks, but at least you'd have an excuse here for bands not bothering to show up for their bookings.
Though aren't your fundies as bad or worse than ours, with regards to their influence on government?
Nowhere near. Our current PM is an atheist, and while she won't be around much longer (she's as popular as buboes) the guy who will probably be the next PM (who is not the current opposition leader, but will stage a coup at the appropriate time and romp it in on the wave of nationwide relief) is similarly irreligious. Some religious groups have entirely too much influence, but compared to the US system it's paltry.
A bigger problem is the effect of Rupert Murdoch, but that's a constant.
"No-where near"? The state-required religion-in-schools in Vic and NSW doesn't phase you?
Not compared to some of the rubbish I've seen Americans putting up with. Creationism in schools? Orwellian pledges of allegiance with sinister anti-communist religious amendments? Mention of a particular religion's deity on every piece of currency? Insane. Doesn't happen in Oz.
It's more a problem of anti-fundy sentiment, part of the Azaria Chamberlain fiasco was FUD over Seventh Day Adventism.
Australia still has a bit of a problem in deciding that people who don't actually need help or supervision get it regardless, without the supervisors having adult supervision of their own, and jwz can get that at home.
Yeah, bit of a nanny state at times, though it varies with the local council. Nothing like as horrible as the Tales From Kafka's Nightclub that jwz regales us with, though.
I think Intervention beats the bawdy house tales.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Unless aforesaid poor people are foreigners and are so desperate they arrive in an overcrowded and badly leaking boat. In which case it appears that so far Australia is still going with "fuck it, send 'em back" or "lock 'em in a cage". Keep at it though, plenty of worse places than Australia, that's for sure.
Well, yeah. It's not perfect, just better.
As far as I'm concerned, "chronicler of the absurd" already covers hacking, head butting RMS about emacs, your time at Netscape and Mozilla, running a club, posting fun stuff here and battling the local authorities. I have no idea what you'll do next, but you'll be a pragmatic in a world where people are a problem, so you won't be running out of absurd any time soon.
If you really want to get out of your current line of work and return to your original competence, I would like to be a spectator to you picking a big technical problem of some sort and trying to solve it.
Embittered recluse helicopter pilot?
...only drawn out of retirement because some dapper one-eyed man in a white suit says that it's just you and Ernest Borgnine vs. the world?
YM "ornithopter" HTH.
Phil Greenspun's already done that.
Where's the 'previous' link?
Previously.
Hey, I'm stopping my life as a hacker on 1/31. For lack of any better ideas I'm planning to learn how to be a business weasel so I can say phrases like "synergize paradigms" with a straight face and take most of the money while engineers do most of the work. I like music and have a few years of experience promoting raves though. Should I open a club instead?
Droll, sir. Very droll.
Public-service politician, congress. CSPAN viewership could go through the roof with snark-laden tirades from the house floor debates. We need more of your flavor of unreasonableness.
Become the Walter White of kombucha.
Alternative energy if you want to be the most beneficial to mankind (read up on peak oil to know why).
As someone who knew you back in the Emacs days, I would vote for a return to create an actually modern Emacs. But that seems about as likely as me finding significant time to work on Emacs again.
So I would say SCUBA diving instead - much less stress than hacking and the scenery is better. As long as you aren't an instructor you should rarely feel the need to pound your head into a wall.
So that's what happened to your wall.
Move to Chile.
I've wondered for years; you dig music much, obviously.
Ever tried MAKING it? Sharing it with the world?
Why not (assuming a negative on either or both)?
Furry.
As a programmer that's been turning progressively into a musician, I strongly recommend it.
The hegemony isn't going to undermine itself.
Father.
Because for your third act you might need something that can strike your soul with genuine fear.
Also, although slightly obvious, because it will make for an epic "I for one welcome our new ___ overlord" post. Also also, it requires a suitable breeder, and the assemblage of previously links would be amusing on that process (which you would be obliged to conduct in public, at least in the theatre of my mind). Final also, as the progeny \w{2}Z absorbs knowledge this too will get a previously to such things as Roomba posts.
You could make drawings of a really big boat and sell imaginary condos to Libertarians.
Hacker > impresario > mountebank. I like it.
I can't wait to play this Dominion expansion...
Metalwork.
May I suggest that you write a book or some sort of fictionalized account wherein you can share all the REDACTED fun from both the club and your hacker days.
Also, it would be fun to see some hardcore club analytics.
Invade & conquer Canada.
Improve the lives of others.
I go for "write a book," because that's what I've always wanted to do and never done. Projection > all.
Rockstar.
Kill off a major character.
Make a dozen babies.
there are people who want to go work for a bar to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful bar.
Having already taken some steps in that direction with recent Kickstarter contributions, you should go whole-hog and become a fulltime patron. Not nearly enough of those around these days, and numerous bands that could doubtless use them.
Biotech. You've already got all of these DNA domain names.
jwz, will you start a band with me? I think we should call it "Stable Island Glisten." I'll do vocals and beeping noises and you can do booping noises and bouncing cow.
In all honesty I think you'd make a good D6 sup, assuming you live in that district. You're self-obsessed (and bar owning) like Chris Daly, minus the nuttery, but with knowledge of how a city works like Ed Lee. D6 still needs a lot of help, and since you have the business background like Newsom had, you'll be able to help out small biz all over your district and the city.
It is all a question of hiring the right political adviser to pave a road for you to city hall and getting endorsements. 4-8 years, what could possibly go wrong, other than hours of boring meetings full of complaining citizens?
Holy shit.
Well, season three is usually the time travel episode.
when they have the time travel episode, that is.
A catgirl, evidently.