Honestly haven't had much interest in Burning Man (at this age it mostly just sounds itchy) but I always like hearing about the art and various activities there.
Day 4:
I'm not sure anything off Modest Mouse's best album can be considered a deep cut but this (and the next track, Cowboy Dan) is the best 1-2 punch for when you've had too much brown liquor and your overflowing with existential anger.
Best played loud, bottle in hand, screaming the lyrics off key back into the speaker.
This is, quite literally, the nerdiest football software deep dive that drops every year.
Perhaps only 100 people care about this post but it's the best analysis in the business of top end consumer-facing football analytics software.
If you are one of the rare 100, it's worth reading. If you're not, that's OK!
So many tracks from the 1990s college radio scene have somehow been completely forgotten. This track has <1,100 plays on Spotify and I am at least 50 of them.
Musical/lyrical deep cuts, part 2:
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I tend to think certain genres have particular lyrical strengths and weaknesses. Rap, for example, excels at wordplay. No one does it better.
Indie rock is best when it bleeds ambiguity. This track might not make my top 3 from this album but the line "What will I do when I don't have you? / When I finally get what I deserve", told from the perspective of someone whose marriage is falling apart? Exhibit A in indie ambiguity perfection.
Discovering this delightful piece deep in the Seabird catalog. I had no idea Bob and Bey both had whiskies.
I'm less of a Rye guy, though, so at that price point I'm out.
For no other reason than I can, I've decided to share some of my favorite songs on Seabird this week. A lot of them are 20+ years old and they still slay me.
I love the simplicity of this one musically (just some finger picking and a few chords) but "I feel Jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers / I feel Judas in the long odds of the rackets on the corners" is such a killer couplet.
If you haven't heard it before, it's worth the two and half minutes of your life to listen once.
Ding dong, the witch is dead.
A fair reading on the important strengths and many, many weaknesses of Cathy Engelbert, the soon to be ex-commissioner of the W.
"If your stance is instead that AI is evil and so is looking for AI, then ultimately you’re contributing to the sloppification of the internet. You’re making it harder for people who write their own text to distinguish themselves, and providing cover for authors who are definitely not writing their own text."
I did not create this. But I find its existence fascinating.
Potentially useful for those with strong opinions in the upcoming Portland school closure debates.
I did know that most ocean plastic came from rivers or via rivers in Asia. I did not know the value of a ceramic mug vs. a plastic one and it makes me feel better about my takeout coffee habit.
I was honestly a bit surprised to see this settlement happen. The way I read it, Zillow/Redfin basically rolled over rather than lose in court to the FTC.
Seems as though despite the best efforts of the admin (see: Trump v. Slaughter), the FTC might still be somewhat independent.
It is bad practice to share an article before you read it. It's against the whole ethos of Seabird. And, yet, based on the headline and byline alone, I am doing it here.
Will delete it later if I regret that decision.
It's ok, sometimes even necessary, to be in coalition with people who don't like or respect you. What matters is (at least in a narrow sense) a shared value or vision of the future.
Having extreme ideas is not crazy. But becoming more extreme based on others' (bad) arguments against your extreme ideas is a dangerous way to navigate the world of ideas.
As usual, a good Andy Masley post. (And for once not about data centers.)
Business insider is kind of a slop periodical but I do appreciate the simplicity of this piece (answer: high difficulty task, common need, low risk when the robot fails, good first entry point into the home)
In another Kawhi Leonard scandal... he is an investor in a Pawtucket, RI minor league soccer team?
I'd like to follow Uncle Dennis around for a week just to see what he gets up to.
This is partly an AI slop issue but partly just a Boomers with no taste issue. Even pre-LLMs I can't tell you the number of self-published kids books I've read that are garbage, and they all fail in the same way (soulless art + way too wordy).
Editors exist for a reason!
While the woke Nolan discourse has been exhausting, I have found the details about Imax and moviegoing more generally quite illuminating.
Or, to quote the article: "An Imax ticket comes with a promise of baseline quality that used to be free with every movie ticket"
I ultimately haven't decided yet to what degree I think Flock is a menace vs. a tool to fight crime but I at least think there's value in knowing to what degree it has blanketed my community.
I realize civil service administrative reform (i.e. changing the way we hire and fire) is empathically unsexy but I genuinely think it could be transformative, especially at the state and municipal levels.
Gustafson's (pronounced GUS-stuf-son) Corgi is what put her over the edge into my favorite Fire player right now. (Also, long live the Fire, since we may end up losing the Blazers due to a cheap-ass owner.)
