“Waiting is the nurturing of a moment that holds a gift.”
This first Sunday in Advent, we light the Hope candle. đź•Ż
I was contacted by eBay, and they confirmed that the second buyer I had on my camp stove was another hacked account, just like the first. Something needs to be done about security on that platform.
This week’s Friday night video is taken from a series of intimate live studio performances by Bathe Alone. It’s cool to see the track “Limbo” performed with a fleshed out band.
I was enjoying posts from Paul Kingsworth, but he lost me after his anti-vaccine rant this week.
A cool selection of Star Wars Wallpapers created by Virginia Poltrack.
Ellane W. has a blog post on the capture and find methodology and implementing that with Drafts + Obsidian. She uses Drafts for capture and Obsidian for find.
Medium.com is a hot mess right now. All of the gamification and financial incentives to attract followers has overwhelmed their recommendation algorithm. Unless you want to read about how to make money on Medium, there is almost no reason to browse there.
I remember a time, not long ago, when we laughed at the introduction of Space Force from then-president Donald Trump. It was easy to jest, with the name that itself sounded like a parody, coming from a president that never could quite get anything real done. Of course, some of us remember “Star Wars,” the space missile shield that president Reagan made up to psych-out the Soviets. Decades of science fiction speculation haven’t quite turned out the way they were depicted. None of us are using jet packs to get to work and we haven’t colonized the moon or Mars. We’ve been conditioned to be skeptical about outlandish sounding initiatives involving space.
Snickers the cat likes to hide behind Henry Tudor’s girth.
Any attempt to stop my wife from putting up the Christmas tree today would be completely futile. 🎄
On the Weezer appreciation scale, I’m at the end next to Leslie Jones character in the infamous SNL dinner time fight skit. I appreciated the first two albums, went to see them on those tours and then they lost me after their return from hiatus. However, I do consider them to be an amazing cover band. Their “Teal Album” of takes on the classics brings me joy. I especially like how the vocals are handled on “Take On Me.”
Over the years, I’ve had three eBay ID’s. eBay used to allow logins from a single-sign on provider at some point (though I can’t remember which) and I used that. Then they removed that feature and I had to change my ID. I made several transactions under the new ID. Now, a few years later, eBay will no longer recognize that ID and I had to create a new one. What is the problem with a new ID, you ask?
When my oldest was younger, we used to read a Berenstain Bears book about prayer. While the books about these anthropomorphic bears are designed to be simple lessons for kids, the particular angles in this book struck me deeply. The take on prayer was nuanced and mature.
Cory Doctorow has made himself an expert on digital privacy. This essay is mainly about surveillance capitalism and Doctorow uses Vizio as a negative example. When he takes on the now old adage, “if you’re not paying for the product, you’re the product,” his insight really resonates.
Nice to see Twitter following through on its promise to decentralize with a more open API.
Ever since I started trying to post to Micro.blog with Ulysses, I have had all kinds of bugs. Double posts, posts not appearing, etc.
Just on the heels of my posting of an old iPod Sock sitting in my dresser drawer, Basic Apple Guy has a piece on the similar AirPod Beanies.
It has been a long time, my old friend.
Does calling our actions “radical” or “revolutionary” make us feel better about ourselves?
B.D McClay points out how everything we do is being reframed as political.
Rest is a radical act. Cooking is a revolutionary act. Joy is an act of resistance. Savoring a pleasant moment is a radical act. Excellence is an act of resistance, but so is procrastination. Being thankful is — you guessed it — a radical act. Reading is a radical act. Ted Lasso is not, itself, a radical act, but it does provide “radical optimism,” which is almost as good. These are descriptions culled from a variety of sources, from Apartment Therapy to the New York Times. The verdict is in: the most radical thing you can do is probably the thing you were going to do already.
McClay goes on to point out that actions can have their own intrinsic rewards. You don’t have to couch them in the language of revolution to enjoy them without guilt. The things that are typically the building blocks of our everyday lives are not, in essence, revolutionary.
A few weeks ago, I blogged about Quebec artist MUNYA and her upcoming album, Voyage to Mars. MUNYA just released a new track off the album, the disco-inflected “Voyage” and filmed a video to go with it. In the video, lots of construction is going on, but the viewer is never really given a total picture of what is being built. It’s almost as if she’s creating something that can never be completed. The lyrics repeated over and over in the chorus may speak something to this.
We now have billionaires deciding whether to pay taxes to the government based on rudimentary Twitter sentiment analysis.
I had never heard of Dave Depper before this week, but I’m glad to make his musical acquantance via a new cover of Air’s Moon Safari album.
The little guy did American Gothic as Minecraft.
On the iA blog, Oliver Reichenstein argues that apps are more like coffee makers than the cups of coffee to which they are always related.
If there is a valid coffee comparison it’s the coffee maker. Productivity apps are not consumed. Productivity apps are tools. They help you make things. Great apps help you make nice things. Pro apps help you make pro things. How could a text editor compete with an espresso machine?
Since I don't buy a daily cup of coffee, I never got the frequent comparison of subscription prices to cups of coffee. It's overused and doesn't provide context for many people. I think the suggestion that a writing app is equivalent to a coffee maker is a better analogy. Which ultimately means, a piece of software makes more sense with a perpetual license like that which is employed with iA Writer.
On the post rock blog, A Closer Listen, Richard Allen reviews the new Hammock album, Elsewhere. I’m looking forward to giving the album an intentional listen, when I have a chance. The songs are shorter, relative to those on other Hammock releases, so hopefully finding the time to give them attention should be less difficult. Allen calls out an excerpt from the liner notes on how the music approaches life.
But as Wyatt Marshall writes in the liner notes, the duo encourages listeners to “live their lives” in whatever condition, battered or blessed, they may be.  Hammock neither shies from the pain of the world nor offers a simple solution.  They imply that the ways out may include forward, sideways, or through, but never backward or standing still.  Hope is hard work.
With all of the upheaval we are going through now, Allen recognizes that Hammock’s transcendent music can be a balm for our souls.
