Christopher Masto

For me, this is a feature. The last thing I want is celebrities and news outlets clogging up my feed of nice people’s sandwiches and cat pictures.

My partner is allergic to coconut. That also means no palm oil. You know what has palm oil in it these days, often randomly replacing the previous oil in something that used to be ok? Everything.

I worked at Google for over a decade. The issue isn’t that the engineers are unaware or unable. Time and time and time again there would be some new product or feature released for internal testing, it would be a complete disaster, bugs would be filed with tens of thousands of votes begging not to release it, and Memegen would go nuts. And all the feedback would be ignored and it would ship anyway.

Upper management just doesn’t care. Reputational damage isn’t something they understand. The company is run by professional management consultants whose main expertise is gaslighting. And the layers and layers of people in the middle who don’t actually contribute any value have to constantly generate something to go into the constant cycle of performance reviews and promotion attempts, so they mess with everything, re-org, cancel projects, move teams around, duplicate work, compete with each other, and generally make life hell for everyone under them. It’s surprising anything gets done at all, but what does moves at a snail’s pace compared to the outside world. Not for lack of effort, the whole system is designed so you have to work 100 times harder than necessary and it feels like an accomplishment when you’ve spent a year adding a single checkbox to a UI.

I may have gone on a slight tangent there.

I’ve made this cake a couple of times. It’s quite good.

https://youtu.be/Yi1W5qgtNYU?si=l6cvn5YZTbAsZZzb

What do you do for entertainment?

Mostly silence, but when I was in high school (some decades ago now) I had a CD of Mozart music I would put on while doing homework. I still associate Symphony 40 in G minor with grinding through tasks.

Stopped eating so damn much.

I read the The Hacker’s Diet by John Walker (who recently died, sadly) and followed his advice.

At the risk of facts getting in the way:

1. You can install ad blockers
2. Apps are not able to do that

There are plenty of home gamer quats too (just look for active ingredient: yadda yadda ammonium chloride) My favorite is Formula 409. I buy the industrial refills and just top up the sprayers.

One thing if you’re actually trying to sanitize: they have a contact time. You need to let the surface stay wet for a minute, or 10 if you’re trying to kill the andromeda strain.

Browser bookmarks. My trick is I make a new folder every month, for example “2024-01 Bookmarks”, and put it in the bookmarks bar. Whenever I realize I’m leaving a tab open because I want to look at it later, I put it into the current folder. That way I know it’s not lost and I give myself permission to close it.

When a new month comes around, I stick the previous folder in an “Archive” section and make a new one. It costs nothing to keep them forever, but avoids the current list getting out of control.

Leaded gasoline.

The 6502 was from MOS.

Instacart and Uber Eats, mostly.

Waiting out this winter’s covid surge living in the hot zone.

I haven’t left the house in months.

I was around pre-Internet, and it wasn’t any better. In fact, this “virtual world” has been a huge positive for me and has given me many opportunities to expand my social group and have a more fulfilling life. I don’t see the value in fetishizing disconnection.

My subscriptions are public: https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisMasto/channels?view=56&shelf_id=0

Kind of a mix of well known science and tech stuff, and some out there things.

I flipped through and grabbed a few from different genres:

• https://www.youtube.com/@KathyLovesPhysics
• https://www.youtube.com/@CrimePaysButBotanyDoesnt
• https://www.youtube.com/@HenryPhillips

• Roderick on the Line
• Risky or Not?
• Penn’s Sunday School
• This Podcast Will Kill You
• Reconcilable Differences
• Accidental Tech Podcast

Zeiss wipes.

That, but I actually get a lot out of my hobbies and personal unfinished projects (they’re always a learning experience).

It’s more about the cost of struggling with things and thinking I’m lazy or a failure, and the real-world consequences of not having gotten any help until my late 40s.

I have ADHD.