The Dann Chronicles: December 🎁
Non-human beings as zookeepers, a pseudonym uncovered, Kieran Culkin on acting, avoiding ripoffs, and the fantastic new world of tinned fish
December 2024
Hey all,
Usually, I use this opening section of my newsletter to share something personal before diving into five interesting things I found this month. But this month, I have two personal things I want to share.
First, I started a new job! In November, joined Squarespace to lead and grow its FinOps practice as the first employee dedicated solely to cloud spend. I'm super excited about the role, the company, and the opportunity. I'm back in the office three+ days a week now, too, which I love. I'm one of those odd ducks who enjoys commuting to work. 🤷♂️
Secondly, I just published my annual Year in Review post: My stats and more in 2024. I've done some version of this post for over a decade(!), and every year it evolves a little bit. This year, I focused more on analytics from my three main web properties: my blog, this newsletter, and YouTube. I share traffic, subscriber numbers, earnings, and more. Plus, my favorite movies, TV shows, and numerous objects that were particularly useful or meaningful. I always love reading other people's posts like this, so I hope you enjoy reading mine.
As 2024 comes to a close, I hope you're able to take a moment to reflect on the various things you accomplished and all the experiences you enjoyed.
In a few short weeks, 2025 is going to come shooting out a cannon, headed straight for us. I hope you're ready.
-Dann
🛸 The Garden State of Hysteria
In my newsletter last month, I talked about the House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on UAPs and craft/remains of non-human origin. Since then (and perhaps somewhat as a result of) the topic has gone mainstream in a big way thanks to "drones" appearing nightly in the skies over New Jersey. Here's a link to just one of many articles on the topic, this one from AP News.
I’m not going to get into the details of the NJ drone story here, because I don’t really care about this one story. Whether it’s UAP or not isn’t interesting. I can wait for time to tell on that and have no skin in the game one way or the other.
Instead, having just finished reading Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs by Luis Elizondo, Former Head of the Pentagon Program Investigating UAPs, I just want to summarize my understanding of the overall “alien” situation, as I understand it, based on how the top people in our government understand it.
The following reads like science fiction, but is based largely on first-hand accounts from respected current and former US government officials:
Earth is sort of like a protected biome, tended by non-human beings from off earth. These beings are interested in humans in the same way a human scientist studying the rainforest might be interested in a colony of ants.
These non-human beings have been here long before humans. Maybe they use our water for fuel, and water is a scarce resource in the universe. Or maybe they’re incubating life here, waiting for it to develop into interstellar beings.
Each UAP is purpose-built by giant “base stations” that live in our oceans. We think these base stations have been there about 100 years. Any time we try to get close to one of these stations, it protects itself and hides.
UAPs really started showing up when we dropped the atomic bomb, meaning they only really became interested in us once we had the ability to destroy the world. Maybe, across the universe, nuclear power is an indicator that a lifeform is nearing interstellar capabilities?
These non-human beings have the technology and the ability to instantly wipe out all of humanity. But they haven’t, so we don’t think they want to. Mostly, we think they don’t really care about us (like a scientist and ants) until we start threatening the planet
Phew. That’s a lot to take in.
If this is all true (and boy, it sure is convincing) then it has me a bit worried. If these non-human beings are waiting for humanity to be interstellar, and if we’re almost there, I wonder if they’ll even want us to reach that threshold. Human history is filled with wars and death—every new technology we discover is a new way to kill our enemies. I can’t imagine anyone being excited to have humans as their new neighbors.
So much has happened since the explosive 2017 NYTimes UAP article. For skeptics who don’t mind a little homework assignment, I highly recommend reading Lue Elizondo’s Imminent and judging for yourself.
✍️ What's in a name?
In the early 2000's, many print publications were trying to find new footing by publishing content online, with varying levels of success. One of the more radical transitions was Cracked—in print, it was a competitor to Mad Magazine, but online it became known for highly-detailed, thought-provoking articles, lists, and essays that explored various topics in pop culture, science, history, and more, often with a comedic twist.
The person behind nearly all of that content was "David Wong," the Executive Editor of Cracked and later also the author of the book (then movie) John Dies at the End (2012). I remember seeing and loving the movie, and then later learning that the author was also the writer of all my favorite Cracked articles.
Jump forward to today, and a self-proclaimed "geriatric TikToker" named Jason Pargin keeps popping up on my feed. After months of seeing his face, I finally realize that David Wong is the old pseudonym of Jason Pargin. They're the same person! Not only that, he has a new book out: I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom.
The book is a fast, fun read that's either 1) a much-needed wakeup call to the always-online youth of today or 2) what a Millenial/Gen-Xer might think is a much-needed wakeup call to the always-online youth of today. I can't really tell.
Either way, I enjoyed it. And I love to see an influential writer from two decades ago continuing to find an audience.
🍿 Actors Acting
One of my favorite films from my high school days is Igby Goes Down (2002). It's a darkly humorous coming-of-age story set in New York City staring Kieran Culkin (alongside stars such as Claire Danes, Jeff Goldblum, Amanda Peet, Ryan Phillippe, Bill Pullman, and Susan Sarandon).
Years later, I fell in love with Kieran Culkin again thanks to Succession. He may have been my favorite part of that show.
If you, too, are a fan of Kieran Culkin, you might enjoy the most recent episode of Variety's Actors on Actors series with Kieran Culkin and Colman Domingo (from Sing Sing). Culkin is promoting his newest movie, A Real Pain, which I’ve already seen and thoroughly enjoyed.
As is a familiar theme in this newsletter, I love hearing creatives talk about their craft, and these two actors have a lot of chemistry. Culkin shared some details about the filming of Succession (which was more like a play than a film) and how it's spoiled him in terms of working on any following projects.
🐪 Through the eye of a needle
I imagine that most people's holiday shopping is now long past, but this season reminded me of one of my favorite (free) tools for avoiding ripoffs on Amazon: Camelcamelcamel.
It's a price tracker website that allows you to see the full cost history for any specific product. So before you make a purchase, you can see how the current price stacks up against levels in the past.
If you connect it to your Amazon wishlist, you can get notifications when an item you want goes on sale. Without it, I find it easy to get seduced by a seemingly good deal. Now, I always check if that’s actually true, and largely limit deal-shopping to items I’ve pre-determined I actually want and added to my wish list.
🐟 Something fishy afoot
Most people's experience with tinned fish starts and ends with Bumble Bee Tuna. If that includes you, this is your official notice that you're missing out.
The tinned fish market has been quietly blossoming over the past several years, thanks to a growing public appreciation and awareness for "premium" tinned fish. There are even tinned fish influencers who taste and rate various products across various social networks.
One of the new brands to make a big splash (heh) is Fishwife. The company appeared on NBC's Shark Tank in January, closing a deal with Candace Nelson and Lori Greiner. Since then, I've been seeing them everywhere (with their colorful, eye-catching packaging, they're hard to miss). They're even Wirecutter's top pick.
I finally bit the bullet and shelled out $10 at my local grocery store for a tin of the Smoked Rainbow Trout and I must say: holy smokes. It’s amazing straight out of the tin and blew me away.
This could be a fantastic entry point if you're not yet a tinned fish fan, so keep an eye out next time you’re at the grocery store.
End note
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I'll be sending out these emails once per month, and I'm happy you're along for the ride. I'm trying to make it one of the best things that arrives in your inbox each month, so thoughts and feedback are always appreciated. You can just reply to this email.
Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.
Thanks for reading. Until next time,
Dann
"Secret drones" that for some reason keep their nav lights on... definite public hysteria.
See: Governor Larry Hogan mistakes stars of Orion for part of drone conspiracy.
See: 1954 Seattle - Windshield Pits
Aliens:
As an ardent "visiting aliens" skeptic with an astronomy background, here's some thoughts:
1) Water is not scarce in our universe. It's one of the most abundant molecules. Right here in our solar system, there's strong evidence that Europa contains oceans twice the volume of all of earth's water. Enceladus (moon of Saturn) as well likely has massive oceans. Comets are also massive balls of ice. Additionally, the ability to create water from even more abundant hydrogen and oxygen is already available technology to we primitive humans: fuel cells.
That the author suggested our water is what makes our planet valuable and that this was an idea by "respected" individuals is disqualifying. I would not trust a single word out of this person's mouth. Life does seem to need liquid water to exist, and this might be more rare. But an already existing alien life form that has the technological capabilities to see us as ants probably has the capability to melt ice. That the author's making this mistake reeks of someone who is just making things up off the top of his head and claiming it's authoritative. He's making objectively unreasonable and misleading suggestions and claiming that they're authoritative. That's a major red flag and a reason to dismiss any other claims he makes on the basis of authority. For what it's worth, the Pentagon does not accept his claim that he was director of this program.
2) Seems like a more likely reason for UAPs appearing after WWII is that it corresponds with a massive increase in both numbers and technology of human made aircraft.
3) So much wild speculation about alien motives. And the motives are all mysteriously understandable and relatable to human motives. Is it that aliens are conducting a very human-like experiment? Or is it that humans are imagining the experiment we might like to do with primitive aliens and then projecting this notion onto hypothetical aliens we know next to nothing about.
4) It's also suspiciously American-centric. Americans are the ones discovering them and hiding them. Why didn't the USSR discover them? Why wouldn't their secrets have come out with the collapse of the Soviet Union? How has the US been able to keep it a secret in spite of all of the massive intelligence leaks over the past 50 years? And why did the Pentagon allow the author to publish this if it's so secretive about it?
5) "There is an alien base thing that we can see but we can't prove it because it disappears every time we try to study it." So they allow us to know they're there despite having protective disappearing technology? If we can't study it, how do we know so much about it, like for instance that it's a base? It's a flying spaghetti monster argument. "There's a thing that's there, but we can never prove or disprove it, so just trust me."
Admittedly not having read the book (and not likely going to), the highlight summary does seem like sci-fi, and not at all convincing.