Link Rot
Jason Morehead laments the way content is disappearing from the internet. He brings up the way technology news site CNet deleted a whole swath of older pieces.
In the grand scheme of things, deleting old tech articles may not seem like a big deal. But what frustrates me is that there’s no real good reason for it, just as there’s no good reason for Disney deleting titles to save money. Not when they’re shelling out stupid amounts of money to executives, anyway. And if it turns out that CNet is clearing up space in their archives just to make room for more (error-filled) AI-generated content, then that’s simply adding insult to injury.
This phenomenon can be absolutely be frustrating, and it's one I seem to be running into more and more every day. In fact, I run into it so frequently, I have almost stopped noticing, but rather just move on to the next task.
After advising the younger generation to download things that they love, Matt Birchler ran an experiment to see how bad link rot really was. He breaks down the raw numbers, which are fairly concerning. He comes to this conclusion: "My takeaway here is the same as it was in my previous article: save the things you really love."
I recently noticed a classic album from the 2010-era chillwave explosion was no longer on Apple Music. I have it on vinyl but wanted a digital copy. Thankfully, it was still available as a download on Bandcamp. The concerning thing is that, with less music being released on CD, we're relying on specific platforms like Bandcamp to have the music available digitally. Otherwise, we're out of luck. I've actually started downloading WAV files of the releases I buy on Bandcamp and burning them to CD (for listening now as well as archival).
I don't recommend being a hoarder (even a digital one), but Birchler and Morehead are right, you should keep copies of things you cherish.
No Country for Rich Men North of Richmond
The question is whether Anthony's message is worth a listen. Should we get pulled into another fleeting cultural moment?
Tyler Huckabee is someone who listened to "Rich Men North of Richmond" and thought it was worthy of a response. Politicians who are pretty easy targets seem to get their fair share of the singer's ire in the hit song. Since Anthony also goes after the poor, though, Huckabee wanted to straighten some things out. So, he wrote an open letter to Anthony about the song.
You can be mad about the taxes that Washington is scraping off the top of your paycheck, but are the rich men north of Richmond the chief culprits here? Think about it. You’re blowing up on Spotify right now. Take a look at the paycheck you get from those guys when it comes in and ask yourself if it seems fair. You did all the work of writing a song, performing it, mixing it and producing it. If you didn’t, you had to pay someone to do it for you. Why aren’t you getting more money for it?
The reason is that a billionaire named Daniel Ek owns Spotify, and he’s decided the best way for him to maintain his billionaire lifestyle is to pay you a fraction of a penny per stream and save the rest for himself and his investor friends. He’s worth $2.3 billion, man. I know we get a little numb to numbers like this but $2.3 billion? Dude. You and I literally cannot fathom that kind of money. He is making more money in a year than you and me and everyone we know will make in our entire lives. We are — no hyperbole — millions of times closer to being homeless than we are to being as rich as he is. Does Daniel Ek have all that money because he works millions and millions of times harder than you and is millions and millions of times smarter? Or is there something else going on?
I think Huckabee is correct that some of the righteous indignation contained in the song is misplaced. Since we are examining the song, though, it is interesting to see how else it is being used in current discussions. The song was played to kick off the GOP Presidential Debate this week. Alan Elrod wrote for Arc Digital about the similarities between the song and the debate itself.
But, much like the song currently dominating the charts on the back of right-wing enthusiasm, the debate did not take long to devolve into a display of the feverish and conspiratorial politics that have become the norm for the Trump-era GOP.
The article then descends into the kind of left-wing conspiracy-mongering that at least gives Vivek Ramaswamy's wackier ideas a run for their money. Included are strains of thought that liken assertions of the primacy of family to fascism. There's a sort of irony in a writer calling out the ridiculousness of the GOP fear-mongering then turning around and linking the building blocks of human civilization to authoritarianism. Those who look at Huxley's Brave New World as a user manual seem relish the idea of government superseding the family. If nothing else, the Arc Digital article shows those smashed in the middle yet another example of the ridiculousness of both sides of the spectrum.
Site-Specific Browsers
At the recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple previewed their new OS for the Mac, macOS Sonoma. I have to admit, at first, I didn't pay too much attention to the announcements. I used to believe OS updates could be life-changing, but that was before these operating systems reached the level of maturity that they have currently. Now, I have more of a casual level of interest in the evolutionary offerings that a new OS brings.
Once I took a second look at macOS Sonoma, a few things jumped out at me. One new feature that I could see myself using pretty heavily is web apps. Web apps could perhaps more appropriately be called site-specific browsers (SSB). They are a browser instance dedicated to a single site. This could be a web app, but it could also be any other page. It is likely that the feature will mostly be used for apps, though. This concept has been around for some time. Years ago, I used an app called Fluid that performed the same function as the new web apps feature in macOS. It made a lot of sense for frequently used apps like Gmail to have their own space. Admittedly, in 2011, it seemed a lot more revolutionary than it does 12 years later. If Fluid were still in active development, you might even say it was being sherlocked.
One question I have is how much this will impact my usage of the Arc browser. I love Arc, but I mainly use it for its ability to "favorite" web apps, so they are pinned in a specific space and can function more like standalone applications (with notifications, access to common functions, outbound links opening in a different tab, etc.). With Apple's new Web Apps feature, I might no longer have a compelling use case for Arc.
I can see myself using the new web apps capability for Micro.blog, Ghost, Matter, etc. For what sites do you imagine yourself creating site-specific browsers?
🎵 Keep It To Yourself
If all goes as planned, I will be going to see the bands TOPS and Men I Trust at the Ritz in the fall. While I mentally prepare to see those bands live, there is a new track from TOPS spinoff Marci, the "solo" effort of Marta Cikojevic (with plenty of help from David Carriere). The video has a tight focus on Cikojevic as she wanders around an urban landscape lip synching into a microphone.
The song is more of what we've come to expect from the pairing of Cikojevic and Carriere — smooth stylings heavily indebted to 70s sensibilities. It's theme, though, centers around appreciating the person you are with. There are consequences for stepping out, and Cikojevic warns us that it's a mistake. Cheers for monogamy.
Issue No. 59
It has been an eventful week in the news, with the former president and his cadre of criminals coming under indictment. NYT columnist Ross Douthat has taken the opportunity to answer some questions about the expected Republican presidential nominee.
What matters most about him as a presidential candidate?
Douthat: That his second term was foretold in the Necronomicon, written in eldritch script on the Mountains of Madness and carved deep, deep into the white stones of the Plateau of Leng.
What do you find most inspiring — or unsettling — about his vision for America?
Douthat: I believe that before the sixth seal is opened, the sun becomes black as sackcloth and the moon becomes of blood, he will deliver more winning than we have ever seen, and I look forward to it.
The privacy-focused browser Brave just released a public version of the app with vertical tabs.
The more horizontal tabs you have open, the smaller and more squished they become—often to the point of not being able to read any text on the tab. Vertical tabs, however, provide much-needed breathing room, allowing for more information to be displayed at a glance, so you can find the tab you’re looking for faster.
I've been waiting for this development for some time, and it makes Brave a contender for my browser of choice. However, it does affect which themes you can use. Brave just sends you to the Chrome store to get themes. The issue is that those themes aren't built with vertical tabs in mind, so they usually don't look good, and you're stuck with the default theme. Hopefully, someone will adapt some Chrome themes in the future to take advantage of the new functionality.
Some of you will know of my quest to spend less of my discretionary time with the terminally online and more of it reading and playing video games. When I was working at a video game store in my early twenties, I was a big fan of turn-based RPGs. My friend had me pigeonholed as someone who liked games with little elves running around everywhere. So, it's no surprise the game Sea of Stars, an old-school styled turn-based RPG in the style of a game like Chrono Trigger (and featuring the same score composer), is pretty appealing to me.
Gamespot reports that Sea of Stars will be available on Xbox — my son's preferred console of choice — and other platforms on 8/29.
Anna Lembke has a problem with her kid not wanting to stop watching cartoons when it's time for bed. She writes about the powerful effects of dopamine for NPR and how you can counter those effects by knowing what you are up against.
"People have this idea that, 'Oh, well, if I let my kid play as many video games as they want or be on social media as much as they want, they'll get tired of it.' And in fact, the opposite happens," Lembke says. Research indicates that over time, some people's brains can actually become more sensitive to the dopamine triggered by a particular activity. And therefore, the more time a person spends engaged with this activity, the more they may crave it — even if the activity becomes unpleasurable.
I really need a technique to curb my youngest son's craving for video games, so I'm going to be keeping these facts in mind when dealing with the issue.
Michaeleen Doucleff
Robbie Punarich writes about what was, literally, his first trip to the rodeo. He witnessed the mingling of patriotism and prayer and found himself feeling a bit on the defensive.
I'm a believer in the liberal ideals on which our nation was founded — individual liberty, rule of law, and equal treatment under that law — but liberalism's universal appeals have always been haunted by their tenuousness. This is especially true when its claims have no greater authority to which they can appeal. That is perhaps why John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Adams's intuition may account for the appeal of what is commonly called "Christian Nationalism".
Punarich wrestles with the tension between the haunting specter of Christian Nationalism and a recognition of the power of faith and faith to shape us (and our civic engagement) in positive ways. It's a tension not easily resolved, but the direction from St. Paul to "pray for everything, including those with charge of our political life" seems like a good start. At my church, we pray for "the president, armed forces and civil authorities" several times at every service, and it gives me a measure of comfort. I like the feeling of petition for the common good of the people of our nation, without getting into political idolatry.
I found this article by Rani Molla about how the Tulsa Remote program is going — 5 years in — to be pretty fascinating. My mom is from Tulsa and I still have some top shelf relatives who live there. In 2018, Tulsa Remote started offering $10k to remote knowledge workers who settled down there. It piqued my interest at the time, but of course, I wondered how well the program would work. Quite well, it seems. Tulsa appears to be having a sort of revival, the kind of which can be measured partially by rising home prices, as well as other positive quality of life indicators. Previously, the city was on the decline.
But in the latter half of the century, oil capitals moved elsewhere, highways were built around downtown, and people left for the suburbs and brighter cities. Tulsa has dealt with years of population stagnation as a result. The city lost its vibrancy, its economic strength, and many of its young people.
The program wisely uses technology to attract and retain the technology-literate group of remote workers. A main component of the glue that holds the new residents together (90% stay past the mandatory period for the cash award) and gives them a sense of community is Slack.
But what’s perhaps most integral to building the community is much more quotidian: Slack. This software platform is best known for helping coworkers communicate from anywhere, but in this case, it helps people in the program connect with their new neighbors. When someone is accepted into Tulsa Remote and schedules a visit, they’re allowed to join five introductory Slack channels, where they can begin talking to existing members. Once they’ve joined the program, they’re privy to 160 such channels, which cater to a variety of interests and purposes, from parents with kids in certain age groups, to book and biking clubs, to a marketplace channel akin to Craigslist. The channels have guidelines and 10 community moderators to make sure nothing goes off the rails. People seek advice, invite others to join them at concerts, and organize community service.
I work in a hybrid environment, with a couple of days in the office, but if I was fully remote, I can honestly say that this sort of arrangement would be an appealing option.
Rani Molla
Open Culture has the story of Madonna's late 70s post-punk band, The Breakfast Club. The band rips through 4 demo tracks in 8 minutes and really captures the energy and dynamics of the New York post-punk scene. Madonna plays drums as well as having vocal duties in the band, so she's got cred here. The band couldn't contain the future superstar, though, as she always had the blonde ambition to be famous.
With the exception of the last track, I dig these tunes and wish they had benefitted from a proper recording session and release.
Via Kottke
🎵 Tides Turn
We haven't yet made it through the first half of the year, but I think I have a contender for my favorite song of 2023. "Tides Turn" has a sound that blends R&B, dream pop and trip-hop. It is another standout track in a collection of soulful tunes from Patrick Fiore. Fiore is the mastermind behind the Noble Oak moniker and wrote, recorded, produced and mixed the track.
"I found my voice, but it sounds different now than ever before," Fiore sings in an affecting falsetto, leaving the listener to imagine a realization of some sort of subtle but important change. The title, "Tides Turn" and the references to the changing tides hint further at some shift in Fiore's life with which he is coming to grips. The song is relatable in its wistfulness at remembering the way things used to be while accepting or even embracing a new reality.
The video for "Tides Turn" features quite a bit of footage of Nicola Cyr-Morton riding a motorcycle at dusk. The viewer gets the sense that the rider is driving away from something as well as toward a fresh start. It's a vision of losses tempered by hope.
RIYL: Chad Valley
Directed by Max Ciné, cinematography by Maxime Cyr-Morton & Robert Fiorella.
Noble Oak's When It Finds You LP comes out 7/7/2023 on Last Gang Records.
Issue No. 58
I realize that Wordle probably isn't as popular as it used to be. However, the game is still fun and I'm looking at it as better than social media for a way to stave off that interstitial boredom that creeps up in between real activities. The New York Times is promoting playing Wordle Golf as a way to keep things interesting.
By
I'm making plans to play Wordle Golf with my lady friend. When I played Wordle previously, I was already keeping my playboards and my score in my bullet journal. Now that I've got legit golf-style scorecards, I can get behind a little competition.
via Adam Wood
Speaking of golf...
The PGA Tour is in talks to merge with the Saudi Arabian LIV Tour, which they've been characterizing as immoral since its inception, even linking it to 911 and castigating the players who signed up for the rival tour.
At least the PGA Commissioner has the self-awareness to recognize his appalling level of hypocrisy in seeking to merge the two tours.
Monahan struggled to explain his flip-flop. “I recognize that people are going to call me a hypocrite. Anytime I said anything, I said it with the information that I had at that moment, and I said it based on someone that’s trying to compete for the PGA Tour and our players. I accept those criticisms,” he said during a conference call. “But circumstances do change. I think that in looking at the big picture and looking at it this way, that’s what got us to this point.”
One interesting angle to this story is that the Republicans who loudly spoke out against the NBA making concessions to China have been silent on the proposed merger.
Jemele Hill
I used to pay attention to golf when it was a way for me to bond with my dad. Since his death 16 years ago, I haven't been keeping up. After the controversy with the LIV tour, how many already-wealthy golfers sold their integrity for a bigger slice of pie, and now this cynical and disgusting move, I'm glad I no longer have any emotional investment in the sport.
Scott Galloway gives his take on the new Vision Pro virtual reality headset that Apple announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference last week. He sees biological preferences as dooming the headset to failure.
The obstacles are seeded deep in our DNA. We’re highly discerning about what we put on our face, as it must enhance, not impair our ability to assert dominance, attract mates, and make connections. Jewelry signals wealth and strength. The $250 billion cosmetics industry helps us mimic visual cues for health and reproductive fertility. There is no version of a headset or goggles that makes us seem more appealing. None.
What seems to frustrate Galloway most about the new product, though, is that it ushers in new forms of isolation.
Real grief, rejection, joy, eroticism, victory, and love are experienced in the presence of others. Headsets render us nauseous, uncomfortable, and alone. Worse, they make us less human.
I've seen these sorts of concerns expressed in other opinions about the announcement, and I think it's going to be difficult to refute some of them.
Dave Davies writes for NPR about an increase in allergies. There is a shift in thinking around allergies, and it goes along with something I've long believed we are too protected, too clean, so we become hypersensitive.
Prior to 2016, when the advice changed, we were, as just normal best practices, telling parents to not only avoid certain allergenic foods like peanuts, strawberries, eggs, milk when they were pregnant, but also to avoid giving them to their younger children until after the age of 3 — and it turns out that was exactly the wrong advice. And the way we figured that out is there is a researcher from Israel [who] actually noticed that in places that supplemented their young children's diet with ... peanut paste, they actually had incredibly lower rates of allergy to peanuts.
So, it turns out early exposure to all sorts of different allergens may have a protective effect. Beware of avoidance when it comes to nature.
The Atlantic also recently featured a piece of grim portent called There Is No Stopping The Allergy Apocalypse. One of the main theories that the article focuses on is the effect of climate change on intensifying allergies.
Nick Catucci interviews the editor-in-chief of The Verge, Nilay Patel. The interview is a fascinating look at internet culture and services from one of the most plugged in and knowledgable sources. Patel, like many others, is souring on the Twitter experience and cutting back his usage.
It’s also amazing how tiny and unimportant Twitter drama seems when you drop out of the platform and only check in once or twice a day—you can really see why Twitter was always the smallest and least lucrative social platform. It’s just not fun unless you’re committed to letting it eat your life.
Patel also speaks about TikTok, Tumblr and other services and does so with wit and clarity.
One of my favorite working bands, Small Black, is rereleasing their 2013 album Limits Of Desire as a coke bottle clear 2xLP for its tenth anniversary. This record is the closest you will probably come to documentation of how late aughts chillwave morphed into the new sophistipop. This is even more true given that the reissue comes with the Real People EP, which contains a pitch-perfect cover of the Blue Nile sophistipop standard, "Downtown Lights," from the much revered Hats LP.
Limits of Desire 2xLP Reissue
<div class="kg-product-card-description"><p><span>Small Black - Limits of Desire</span></p></div>
<a href="https://www.secretlystore.com/small-black-limits-of-desire-deluxe" class="kg-product-card-button kg-product-card-btn-accent" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><span>Pre-Order</span></a>
</div>
</div><p>Small Black is also touring to support the reissue. I saw them play before they put this album out, but would love to hear these tunes live, so I'm disappointed they aren't playing anywhere in NC.</p>
The Heavenly Option
Bandcamp just featured a primer on indie pop deep cuts in Bandcamp Daily, and I was surprised to find quite a few buried gems, some of which I probably never would have dug up on my own. The piece starts off with Heavenly's Le Jardin De Heavenly album, a touchstone of my early college experience. My girlfriend had the CD, and it went through many spins in her dorm room. "C Is The Heavenly Option," the duet between vocalist Amelia Fletcher and Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, Dub Narcotic, Halo Benders, etc., probably got the most play, spreading its charm, innocence and undeniable catchiness across a few mixtapes. Fletcher and Johnson's vocals ping pong back and forth during the verses with perfectly timed volleys. The chorus melds Johnson's baritone with Fletcher's soprano to achieve a sweetness that was somehow even greater than the sum of its parts.
"C Is The Heavenly Option" was a gateway drug into the world of indie pop, bringing our friends into the genre. Heavenly would try to recreate that magic with Johnson again on their next album, with "Pet Monkey," to diminishing returns. The song was solid, but not as exceptional as the first collaboration.
After saying all that about the standout track (about as close as you can get to an anthem in the world of underground indie pop), I have to admit that my favorite track is actually the third song on the album, "Orange Corduroy Dress." This song, an homage to a twee girl wearing a (probably thrift store bought) corduroy dress, more than any other, captures the spirit of indie pop. This was an early preview of the "manic pixie dream girl" archetype that would later consume the imaginations of disaffected high school boys. Listening now, older and slightly more jaded, the song is so sugary it almost gives me a toothache. Nevertheless, I'll happily consume it until my stomach can take no more.
Some new introductions
The indie pop profile did more than kindle feelings of nostalgia. It actually introduced me to new bands that hadn't ever been on my radar. Glo-worm, featuring Pam Berry of Chickfactor fame, was unfamiliar but not exactly surprising. However, the Paris-based Acetate Zero caught my attention by being described as "near the intersection of indie pop and post-rock;" and being compared to Hood and fellow Parisians Movietone. Indie pop and post-rock was a mix of genres I hadn't expected, but that filled some key spaces on my sonic bingo card. Acetate Zero has the clean guitar tones, understated melancholy and jangle associated with indie pop. To go along with that, though, there are some interesting time structures, introspective instrumentals and slow builds that suggest their post-rock inclinations. Then, of course, there are the song titles, like "Variant critiques to conclude there's nothing" — which put them squarely in a ponderous post-rock aesthetic. On the very first song, "Contemplating the existence of the leaves," you get lush strings, the kind of which would be hard to find in most stripped down indie pop offerings.
There's a certain winter wistfulness to the music of Acetate Zero that seems out of place as we enter summer here in the Northern Hemisphere. Despite it feeling a bit out of place, I'm more than happy to take this time to dive into their work.
Exploring
This is where I have to admit that I haven't even gone through all the music in the referenced piece. I've been going deep on the bands I've mentioned, but not broad on the total music highlighted. With the rewards of what I have explored, though, I'll be going forward with an expectation that the rest of the lot are well worth my time.
Unravel Two
I started playing Unravel Two on the Xbox at the insistence of my 11-yr.-old. Playing cooperative video games is one of the best ways I've found that we can bond and enjoy our time together. In this game, you each play as an adorable creature called a "yarny" made from, yep, yarn.
It’s a platforming adventure game seen from a unique perspective, or two. Play as a pair of Yarnys – small beings made of yarn and connected by a single thread – in local co-op or as a single player. Run, jump and swing through platforming puzzles, foster friendship, and shed light on a world covered in shadow.
I'm not certain how these yarnys came into being, but an unusual sort of sparkly light that travels with them hints at a magical origin. The two characters emerge for their adventure having just survived a shipwreck. They use spare threads from their bodies to devise clever solutions to get past obstacles on the forest floor as they travel away from the coast where they were deposited by a raging sea. So far, my son and I haven't encountered any enemies, though, this being a video game, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they showed up at some point. The challenge has been mainly to overcome falling to your death as you navigate jumping and swinging from your yarn. Death is extremely temporary, as you quickly respawn to a nearby checkpoint. You usually materialize right before the present obstacle. It can take a few tries to get your timing right when navigating through some of the terrain with nothing but your yarny appendages to assist you.
Helping your fellow player is the name of the game. Only by extending each other's capabilities can you complete your quest. If Unravel Two is on your system of choice (and it's on just about all of them), and you have a buddy, I would recommend checking it out. The metaphor is brilliant. Just as your characters are attached to each other by yarn, you and your partner will enjoy the time bonding.
🎵 Romantic Piano
Gia Margaret caught my ear a few years ago, after she contracted a vocal illness that forced her to create instrumental music for her second album. I was mesmerized by the ambient track "Body" and the accompanying video.
Margaret just dropped a new album entitled Romantic Piano. It still follows a pattern of going light on the vocals. When it appears, her voice is treated almost like one of the other instruments.
After a long vocal hiatus following her illness in 2019, it is even clearer here that Margaret uses her voice as another instrument, a textured layer of warmth over sparse piano. “I can almost feel you,” she sings on an exhale as if the words spill out as merely a side effect of breathing.
On the track "La langue d'lamitié," a collaboration with Pedro The Lion's Dave Bazan, Margaret affects a sound that comes across as lo-fi with a bit more to ponder. The song ends with a sample concluding that music "is a language of feeling." Indeed.
For bonus points, check out this video of Margaret and her friend Zoya Zafar doing an accoustic stripped down cover of Slowdive's "Alison."