Canned Dragons

A few days ago, I received a plea in my normal email from the media outlet Tangle.

The last six months have been a difficult time for media outlets. Overwhelmed by the news, many readers and listeners are tuning out. Those who are staying up to date are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence round-ups to get their news, which has caused website traffic to fall.

I feel bad about the situation that Isaac Saul, who founded Tangle, and his crew find themselves in. They have a publication that does a wonderful job balancing perspectives on the news of the day. They are trustworthy and thorough. Yet, I find myself deciding again and again not to upgrade to a paid subscription when I consider the option.

You know a CD is old when the insert explains compact disc technolgy. The Cure Staring At The Sea sounds wonderful on disc, though.

Zachary Brown writes for the Verge about a new game/utililty from Hank Green. The premise of the Focus Friend app is sort of like an updated Tamagotchi for phone addicts. You are the virtual caretaker of a character like Billy Bean King, a bean who can only work to upgrade its environment and wardrobe (it knits) if you put down your phone.

As it turns out, helping furnish a virtual bean’s lo-fi room is exactly what I needed. Over the last week, Billie Bean King and I have been on an absolute grindset. We’ve been locking in for half an hour and hourlong chunks of work: Billie knitting while I clack away on a keyboard. The longer I work, the more Billie can produce, and the better the decorations I can buy for their space. (I’m saving up for the gorgeous plant-covered furniture in the Greenhouse set.) The gamified nature of the app has helped quiet the static and improve my focus. I’m motivated to work because I want to unlock the best decorations for Billie’s home, and, like a Tamagotchi, I want to care for them.

Brown, who admits to struggling with attention for most of his life, found Focus Friend to be effective, but having blown through other methods of avoiding distraction, wonders if it will stick. Fortunately, Green is adding more pieces to the game to give its bean something else to work towards.

In honor of Tops’ new album Bury The Key being released yesterday, I’m featuring one of the tracks, “Falling On My Sword,” as the Saturday Night Video this week. 

“Falling On My Sword” is my favorite among the early singles from this LP and probably the one that most closely matches the 70’s prog rock-inspired cover art. It’s a bit of a left turn for Tops. Based on their previous work, you would think anything born of a seventies influence would be more in line with late-decade disco (and the remainder of the album features some of that).

The third edition of John Brady’s This & That. zine reached my mailbox this week. As I read through it, I thought about the slower pace of communication from the past. In the book Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham, the residents of a small British town at the turn of the 20th century share a newspaper, each taking shifts throughout the day.

Soon after breakfast Mary Ann brought in the Times. Mr. Carey shared it with two neighbours. He had it from ten till one, when the gardener took it over to Mr. Ellis at the Limes, with whom it remained till seven; then it was taken to Miss Brooks at the Manor House, who, since she got it late, had the advantage of keeping it.

There’s something quaint and romantic about having such little and proscribed access to information. It’s almost the exact opposite of what we have today, with the glut of news and entertainment that we can barely hold off.

I was going through Clive Thompson’s latest Linkfest and showing my wife some of the more interesting shares when I clicked on a link and was shocked to find myself face to face with one of my own blog posts.

Cool!

Guess The Atlantic moved E.B. to a new beat.

My brother loves his wife and wants to do things that she likes but I sense that he’s not super thrilled about going to tonight’s Rod Stewart concert to hear an octogenarian sing about how sexy he is.

My wife decries political rot whereas I tend to be more concerned about cultural degradation. We have fun together.

Occasionally I participate in the deluge, but I think about this tweet from years ago quite a bit.