I’m really looking forward to reading the new book by Alan Noble.
A colleague and friend gave me this painting that she did. It looks fantastic in my dining room.
Do you write using the printer method or the pixel method?
Sunday morning newspaper.
As regular readers will know, I’ve been trying to rely less on Amazon and branch out into other retail spaces. I have written about the reasons previously, so there is no sense in rehashing those. What I want to impart is how difficult it is to get out of the Amazon ecosystem. Simply put, Amazon is just better than other retailers. There are reasons they are as successful as they are, and other companies have trouble matching their level of service.
Plans.
Jenn Champion first came to my attention when she covered Weezer’s blue album in full for the now seemingly abandoned Turntable Kitchen project Sounds Delicious. Turning the guitar-based record into a synthesizer journey, she remade the songs in her own image.
I really appreciated this piece on the perfect plants for windowless offices. Though my home office has windows, my desk doesn’t get direct light, so this is helpful.
Pitchfork recently revised ratings on 20 albums from the past, mostly raising scores, but also lowering some, as well. It was a kind of a strange move, but to be fair, some albums are sleepers and you can’t always tell which ones will stick with you. I’ve long wanted to do a classics review blog post series where I only write about albums that have stood the test of time. There’s a different kind of love that you have for music with longevity that carries you through different seasons of your life.
MUNYA is set to release her new LP, Voyage to Mars, in November. On tracks like, “Pour Toi” and “Cocoa Beach,” sounding much like fellow Quebecois, Men I Trust, she brings deep grooves and an impossibly smooth delivery. Sometimes, such as on “Boca Chica,” she throws in a little tropicalia-tinged bachelor pad ambience. Think a little bit less space age than Juan Garcia Esquivel but just as breezy as Astrud Gilberto.
Matter is a promising new read-it-later service that shies away from convention and introduces new ideas into a space already occupied by some heavyweight services. I can say, after only playing around with it for a short time, it handles highlighting the best of any service I’ve used.1 However, like a lot of opinionated software, you have to buy into the premises on which its based. One of Matter’s most prominent value propositions is that it is based around individuals, rather than publications. It’s a direction that’s not too far from the one Medium is taking (which looks pretty cool). This approach is front and center in the Matter introductory email.
Warning: This post contains spoilers for the second season of Ted Lasso, up through Episode 8. Originally written 9/12/2021 in my Day One journal (or as Matt Mullenweg would say, my private blog).
Revenge bedtime procrastination came up as a topic of discussion on Micro.blog a little while ago (I believe it was brought up by @omrrc and @jean). It’s easy to fall into this practice, which is one in which you stay up late doing all manner of meaningless things just because the time before you go to bed is the only time that feels like your own. You mindlessly scroll through Twitter or vapid news headlines.
~ Russell Moore, on the concept of spiritual warfare being used as a political tool
“In Camera” is just one of the many Balearic, breezy Yumi Zouma songs worthy of the single/video treatment. Boy, does it get it. This story of a square (by retro standards) boy who goes to a girl’s house for a date and gets treated to a dance routine is well choreographed. The dance itself involves a little Flashdance, a little Steve Martin King Tut and just a splash of Chris Farley as a Chipendale’s dancer.
Chris Hayes writes for the New Yorker on how the internet has brought about a kind of pseudo-fame that’s accessible to just about everyone. His view of fame is that it is a disruptive force, rather than something that you should strive to attain.
It may be just a bit too early for posts about Christmas. Frankly, it seems like it’s too early for Halloween decorations, but some of my neighbors started working on their haunting displays back in September.1 Despite our distance from the “happiest time of the year,” though, I had to post this because I’ve been enjoying this cover song.
I didn’t check out Hey for email when everyone else did, but now I’m kind of curious after reading this post comparing it to the Rolex of email. I especially like the Cover Art feature, which is minor, but a nice touch. Is anyone still using Hey and also Hey World?
I asked my wife, who grew up Catholic in New Jersey, about The Many Saints of Newark and she had never heard of a high concentration of canonization in that area. I think the show may be bogus.
It would be nice for Manton to commit to ending Finsta on Micro.blog.
Brothertiger comes the closest of any band I can think of in blending a 2010 chillwave aesthetic with 80’s sophistipop sensibilities. It’s the most obvious on the new Heaven EP, which compiles 4 singles that sound like they were recorded together. However, while it doesn’t stray too far from the formula of the other songs, Brothertiger’s John Jagos describes “Arizona” as being influenced by the early nineties and touring. The video and song paint a picture of the vast desert landscape being punctured at times by the intertwining highways of the city. The freedom of driving in that landscape dominates the lyrics.
The flickr blog has a post that looks at nearly two decades of Creative Commons licenses. The post shares some of the most popular images using CC licenses and includes some spectacular photos.
Alan Jacobs just published a blog post that made me chuckle.
The Washington Post: “The metaverse, to Sweeney, would be an expansive, digitized communal space where users can mingle freely with brands and one another in ways that permit self-expression and spark joy.” Users mingling freely with brands — if that’s not Paradise Regained I don’t know what is.
A couple of years ago, I compared contemporary Christians who expressed their desire for an authoritarian ruler to the ancient Islrealites who wished for a king. In both instances, the groups had lost faith in God to protect them and wanted to rely on a strong man. In the biblical book of Samuel, a king was requested of the prophet, a request which he initially rebuked. Eventually, after Samuel spoke with God, on the Lord's command, he relented and found the people a king in the form of a man named Saul. His change of heart came with a strict warning to the people of how a king would treat them.
I wish I had a t-shirt with colors and patterns as cool as those on this caterpillar.
