Hack Mule Notebook

Volume 1, July 26, 2026

As we head into the final month of summer, I thought everyone might like a little beach reading. Welcome to Hack Mule Notebook, a round-up of ideas, observations, and rabbit trails — basically the strings too short to weave into a full Hack Mule story.

Let me know what you think and whether you’d like to see this every week, every other week, just occasionally, or never again.

And enjoy this “beta edition.”

Overheard: Guy One: “Montgomery County should convert all the new bus lanes to moving-van lanes, because that’s what people will want when they see their property-tax bills.”

Guy Two: “Well, at least the county’s keeping moving companies in business.” — Overheard at Aventino in Bethesda.

Messaging: I was commiserating about the heat last week with a young assistant at my physical therapist’s office. He said, “It’s hot because all these data centers are sucking up water. That’s why we have drought around here. I’ve heard it. They’re all over.”

True or not, that statement says less about data centers’ water use than it does about their communications strategy. When ordinary people start filling an information vacuum with speculation, someone has failed at stakeholder engagement.

It’s also a signal that the data-center industry is blowing a chance: What could have been a “hero” technology is becoming a villain. “Move fast and break things” is not a community-building motto.

Listening to: Apple Music’s New Music playlist teed up “Enemies,” a new song from Jordan Rakei’s upcoming album, “A Safe Place To Be Wild.” It’s got a mellow, groove-driven vibe that might remind you of Tom Misch. The full album drops on October 30, but “Enemies” is available now.

Watching: “Ride or Die” on Prime. Hannah Waddingham (aka Rebecca from Ted Lasso) stars as a Bond-style assassin whose best friend — played by Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer — is the wife of a rising member of Parliament. It’s fun to see a buddy thriller with two smart women. It’s stylish, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and it lets Waddingham have a lot more adventures than when she owned AFC Richmond.

Reading: “The Rush,” by Nathaniel Philbrick. I just started reading it, but I’m already getting sucked into Philbrick’s tale of the California Gold Rush and how it fueled the Civil War. The book comes out on October 6, but I’ll have a full review soon.

Brain Drippings: ChatGPT told me not to worry about the story this week that an AI “escaped” the lab at OpenAI and hacked into another system. And then it lowered my thermostat.

First-world problem: I like playing brown noise while I sleep to drown out street sounds. Alexa has always been perfect for this, but she’s particular. If you tell her “Play brown noise,” she will announce that she’s playing the free Amazon Ambient Sounds version of brown noise, which sounds like a microwave having an asthma attack.

To get “good” brown noise, you have to use the magic words: “Alexa, please ask Brown Noise to play for eight hours.” Not nine hours. Not seven hours. Not even 42 minutes. She likes to play for eight hours. Push her beyond that, and she screams, “Connection lost!” at 3 a.m.

Amazon recently raised the price of premium “Gold Edition” brown noise to $1.70 per month.

So, I now pay for deluxe, curated noise. I don’t mind. I was never a “standard noise” person anyway.

I’ll bet my ancestors are looking down and thinking, “We fought in the Revolutionary War for that?”

Have a great week,

Kristen