Dan Guy

@danguyf.fivesided.com

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One who is much delighted in good company. Born last millennium and died several times since.

I do the web stuff for Neil Gaiman, Gene Yang, and other creatives.

flexible in spirit (pan) but less so in body (aging). he/him.

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"I'm sorry you had to go through that" has to be the most insidious linguistic dagger. No one HAD to go through the thing. To suggest that someone HAD to be decimated implies some sort of weird predestination that sounds uniquely American-Calvinist. "I'm sorry that happened to you", please.

Though much is taken, The Dude abides. And though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that rug really tied the room together, man.

Throwback to the time that my hyper-intelligent, classically educated girlfriend, the Diane Court to my Lloyd Dobler, admitted that she hadn't known that "indubitably" was a word and wondered if I might be an imbecile whenever I used it.

Sometimes just before I fall asleep at night I wonder: Has anyone written an analysis of dandyism in America, with special attention given to the through-line from Lord Buckley to Fonzworth Bentley? I want to read that but I don't have time to research and write it myself.

I know that the grieving don't need to hear this, but the only theology where the departed become angels is found in Warner Bros. It's Looney Tunes. Man and angel are different orders of creation, it's a central fact in the whole story of the rebellion of Lucifer and the war in Heaven.

My Tori teens have swiftly become midlife Midnights.

As a new convert 24 years ago I would hear about "Catholic guilt" and not get it. I'd been plagued by near constant Protestant guilt prior, always worried that I wasn't doing it right; at least as a Catholic I had someone telling me my sins were absolved rather than listening for an inner voice. 1/2

This is still true.

Has anyone created a Bluesky app yet that lets you resume where you left off in your timeline? My most needed feature.

On a lark, I decided that this year's beach reads will be all Hollywood memoirs. Ed Zwick, @feliciaday.bsky.social, @nphstuff.bsky.social, Wil Wheaton, Parker Posey, Bernie Brillstein, etc. I finished the first two already and am excited to start the third.

Very annoyed that last night's The Good Doctor featured sleep training without making it clear that it's child's abuse. Maybe they're leading up to that next week.

Take out the first comma and you have a Lovecraftian prompt.

Have you heard about this, God? It's me, Jay Leno

My mortgage company's automated system wouldn't stop texting me, even after I asked it to repeatedly, so for $400 I filed a lawsuit to get their attention. It turns out they can't process replies from Google Voice. The texts have finally stopped and they offered a $7.5 k settlement.

Why is Robot Dreams trying to rip out my heart like this?

Today is the 23rd blogiversary of @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com's blog. I believe that a skidoo is traditional, or possibly something Discordian.

In 1996 I started keeping my journal on the web. "Weblog" hadn't yet been coined and strangers said I was crazy to invite the world in. Less than a year later I was warning about the "false sense of intimacy" that it instills; if only I'd realized how much catchier "parasocial" was!

Neil Gaiman Frank Herbert Douglas Coupland N. K. Jemisin John Scalzi Max Barry Isaac Asimov Robert Anton Wilson John Green Scott Westerfeld

I've read at least 5 books from these 10 authors Elmore Leonard Margaret Atwood Carl Hiaasen Douglas Coupland Jay McInerney Charles Bukowski Cormac McCarthy Anthony Doerr Raymond Carver Kurt Vonnegut

This year we are finally doing Jólabókaflóðið. I've been meaning to for years but I keep forgetting until after I've wrapped all of the books

How many people brought shelves and some portion of their personal library with them to college? Not your whole library, obviously, just a few hundred pounds of books or so.

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Bingo, Remember kids, tax credits to businesses owned by billionaires is stimulus, while money for people to buy groceries, go to school and start small businesses is socialism!

We are willing to do an insane level of experimentation with the economy, as long as it doesn't involve giving no-strings money to whoever we think of as "them". Because "they" can't be trusted with it. But we'll give no-strings money to Elon and ilk in a heartbeat. Data be damned.

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When my mother told me “anything is possible,” I didn’t realize she was making an existential threat

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Who would have thought that giving people money, a thing we made up as a requirement to access what we need to to stay alive, would help people access those things more easily. Such a conundrum.

Another basic income pilot focused on homelessness has released preliminary results after only 6 months because halfway through the experiment, it is already showing incredible effectiveness. $750/mo for 6 months led to homelessness dropping to 12% versus 23% in the control group on a wait list.

$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless peoplewww.latimes.com A study by USC and a San Francisco-based nonprofit has found that a $750 monthly stipend improves the lives of homeless people.

LiveJournal informs me that today is the 22nd anniversary of my joining. I have a few friends who never left but I haven't been back in ages. Is it still an arm of the Russian police state? I imagine it humming away quietly, like occupied Casablanca.

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Don't sleep on these first results from the world's largest universal basic income experiment ever. 1. Entrepreneurship skyrocketed thanks to the UBI functioning as both startup capital and spending power for people to be customers at those businesses. 2. NO INFLATION! www.npr.org/sections/goa...

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The results from the world’s largest Universal Basic Income study are now in. Findings: “A monthly UBI empowered recipients and did not create idleness. They invested, became more entrepreneurial, and earned more. The common concern of “laziness” never materialized.”

Early findings from the world’s largest UBI study | GiveDirectlywww.givedirectly.org Money always helps, but for the poorest, one large lump sum can last a long time. A long-term universal basic income also looks promising.

When I was 12 I read The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and spent the next year wishing I was mute. That feeling never went away, only faded. I feel somewhat vindicated by later generations feeling horror at the thought of someone calling them on the phone.

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Let’s just call them “Tweets” not “Skeets.” Twitter no longer exists anyway. Let the word go generic! Over at The Bad Place, they can call them “Xits” (X pronounced like President Xi, as others have suggested).

We paid for it, right?

Any film shelved as a tax write-down should immediately and permenantly enter the public domain.

Has anyone created a Bluesky app yet that lets you resume where you left off in your timeline? My most needed feature.

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While researching my next book I discovered a hilarious, wild, unlikely story that I ALSO knew wouldn’t fit! Today, I bring it to Decoder Ring. So… Here is the story of how Melrose Place became home to a multi year long experimental art installation:

The Secret Art of Melrose Placeslate.com How an art collective smuggled their provocative work onto prime time TV.