Canned Dragons

In this retro-futuristic video, the members of Automatic live through the final days on Earth and are transported to locations that look like they came from the original Star Trek TV series. In their new home, they make do with gardening, liquid food and excursions in outer space ensconced in protective bubbles. Meanwhile, they are making time to rock and sing about the traveling far away "in the service of desire."

Automatic evokes the simplicity of the sixties while bringing in some of the 90s K Records and Teen Beat sounds. Stereolab would be another appropriate aesthetic comparison, even if their Moogs were used quite differently. Automatic utilize a bass, synth and drums combo, which works really well to establish pop hooks that are interesting but never sound cliché. If this is what escaping to space sounds like, I'm there.

I bought Tommy Guerrero's album, A Little Bit Of Somethin', when it came out in 2000, based on the strength of the first track, "Blue Masses." The track has a haunting groove, a guitar part with enough negative space to drive a truck through, and a bass line that isn't shy about steering the song. It sets the scene for the rest of the record, a California production that takes on the psyche of the location. The album is indebted to desert noir, Mexican vibes, samba, and lo-fi among other influences. Completely without vocals (aside from some samples), the record springs to life with a voice all its own.

Some may remember Guerrero as a member of the original Bones Brigade, a pro skater with a street skating style that pushed his peers shredding concrete. Guerrero left pro skateboarding, but remained a part of the scene, starting Real Skateboards and making music with in a similar vein to fellow Powell Peralta pro skater Ray Barbee.

Road To Nowhere, the 2018 album by Guerrero, brings to mind contemporary favorites Khruangbin (and indeed, Bandcamp recommended Khruangbin to me when I was checking it out). The guitars slither in and out like rattlesnakes along the dusty desert floor. Anyone who has been paying attention to Khruangbin will immediately recognize the style. Frankly, I needed more of this in my life, and I can't believe I waited 23 years after my first purchase to check out the rest of the Guerrero catalog. Lesson learned.

A few months ago, in my Orthodoxy 101 class, we discussed Aristotle's "doctrine of the mean." I immediately felt attached to the framework, as I tend towards moderation. In Aristotle's conception, the golden mean is avoiding the extremes of any given characteristic.

A common example given to explain the doctrine of the mean is the virtue of courage, which is seen as being balanced between the feelings of fear and confidence. Too much confidence could lead to reckless actions; too much fear could lead to cowardice. An individual who has mastered the virtue of courage is said to be one who avoids both extremes.

In the middle of the two extremes, you get a virtue and on the two opposite ends you have vices. Austin Kleon's conversation with a friend about stoicism led to a discussion of the Aristotelian philosophy (also shared by Chinese philosophers). Kleon then made a zine about the concept. The illustrations are charming and descriptive.

Maya Salam writes for The New York Times (gift article) about how close Seinfeld was to capturing many of the sociocultural aspects of our present age. She particularly hones in on the adults in the show living their lives in a sort of perpetual state of childhood, eschewing typical adult responsibilities like steady jobs, covenantal relationships and children.

Today — as cracks in the facade of hustle culture continue to spread; as a growing library of books and articles promote the value of rest and fun; as more people delay or forgo marriage or children — real life seems to be catching up with “Seinfeld.” Even from a less rosy perspective, with the realization that long-held images of adulthood may not be as attainable as before, the show has taken on a fresh relatability, offering new reasons for a little self-deprecating humor.

While Salam seems to almost celebrate the portrayal of adults without the usual goals of maturity, I have to wonder if these characters exemplified how we want adults in a functioning society to behave. I'm uncertain if the increasing infantilization in our culture is a trend we would ultimately want to promote.

Another question in my mind is: Is it that Seinfeld was so ahead of its time in predicting current attitudes, or did it help shape those current attitudes? It seems incredible for a sitcom to alter the course of societal values, but 76 million people watched the final episode. The show was well regarded and influential.

Seinfeld is still going strong in syndication. Dialogue from the sitcom is still deeply embedded in popular culture and discourse. I find myself uttering the phrase, "it's like that one episode of Seinfeld" fairly frequently. It seems at least possible that this show has had a culture shifting impact greater than what once seemed realistic for episodic television.

John Herrman writes about the failure of the metaverse concept. He's clearly disillusioned with legless avatars and unearned hype. The premise for the piece is that there is no "there" there. The metaverse as a concept is simply lacking a reason for existence. Herrman references Ed Zitron, who in writing his obituary for the meta verse, tends to blame one particular CEO.

He lays a great deal of responsibility for the hype at the feet — or in the space below the floating torso — of one man. “Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession, and then killed it the second that another idea started to interest Wall Street,” he writes. Which is fair: Changing Facebook’s name to Meta was a bold attempt not just to rebrand a company but to set an industry agenda, and while it ultimately failed, it sort of worked, for a while.

There may not have been a compelling reason for anyone to latch onto the metaverse concept, but Zuckerberg's ideas seemed to appeal to one particular class of individuals with one thought pattern: paranoid managers who, during the pandemic, felt they no longer had control over their employees. They craved a solution to help keep tabs on workers, and thought they had found an answer to their prayers in the offering Meta was pitching.

A rational CEO thinking about his shareholders certainly could have made any number of bad or misguided choices in Mark Zuckerberg’s position, especially under the strange circumstances of a pandemic; still, it’s hard to explain Meta without an unusually empowered CEO becoming intensely committed to a fantasy that, then and now, didn’t resonate much with anyone but him, and maybe an audience of similarly disoriented corporate leaders.

It's clear that Meta is shifting away from their namesake, now that AI is the rage. I never saw the benefit of the metaverse, so I can't say that it seems like a loss.

Source: Zuckerberg Led the Tech Industry Into a Metaverse Wasteland

Malcolm Harris writes for Wired magazine about Doug Rushkoff, a techno optimist who had his predictions and assumptions about the future challenged. As a consequence, Rushkoff had to overhaul his outlook on technology. Rushkoff is a prolific author and Harris writes about his various books, including one called Survival of the Fittest.

The bulk of Survival of the Richest isn’t about apocalypse escape routes for the super-wealthy. It’s preoccupied with something Rushkoff calls The Mindset, which roughly translates to “the way Silicon Valley technocrats think.” The Mindset is about a strategy of acceleration without a destination. It’s about blowing up humanity’s corpus of existing knowledge in favor of something—anything—new. In this relentless drive, Rushkoff perceives a self-destructive impulse. “Instead of just lording over us forever,” he writes, “the billionaires at the top of these virtual pyramids actively seek the endgame. Like the plot of a Marvel blockbuster, the structure of The Mindset requires an endgame. Everything must resolve to a one or a zero, a winner or loser, the saved or the damned.” This isn’t just Facebook’s old “Move fast and break things” motto; it’s Zuckerberg’s personal mantra: “Domination!” Why are the world’s richest people obsessed with preparing for the apocalypse? Because they’re edging us all toward it. It’s as if, Rushkoff writes, they’re trying to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.

Rushkoff actually had some of these technocrats invite him to talk with them about how to escape from the mess they've made when it all comes crumbling down. If that kind of thing won't shake your faith in the inevitable progress that is pushed by Silicon Valley, I don't know what would.

Source: Doug Rushkoff Is Ready to Renounce the Digital Revolution | Wired

Last updated 05/14/2023

What Information is Collected and How

Canned Dragons is a personal blog. When you opt-in to join the site, you are asked for your email and name. You can provide your full name or only your first name or an alias. You are asked if would like to also subscribe to the Treasure Hoard newsletter digest email.

You will not be asked to create a password for this site. Instead, if you become a member, you are emailed a link to login to the site.

This site does not collect any sensitive personal information.

How Is The Information Used

Your email address is never shared with third-parties and is only used for the purpose of sending the newsletter. You always have the option to unsubscribe from the newsletter.

How the Information is Stored and Protected

Your name and email are stored in a MySQL database that is the backend for the site. The database is protected by a strong password and this is a low-volume site that would not be an attractive target, but there is no guarantee against unauthorized access.

Use of Cookies, Log Files and Tracking

This site does not track your web history or use cookies in any way other than to validate your status as a logged-in user.

The Legend of Zelda Gets An Update

The latest The Legend of Zelda installation, Tears of the Kingdom, came out yesterday. Although this piece by Zachary Small in the New York Times gets a little too ambitious with typography and integrating videos into the text, it's still a great read. The article goes into the history of the iconic Zelda games and the direction they are headed in, and underscores the legacy they have left.

“Someone might write an entire university dissertation on a specific part of the worlds created by Tolkien,” said Ed King, a 26-year-old British gamer who translates the mysteries of the Zelda universe for his 700,000 YouTube subscribers. “Zelda lore isn’t quite on that level yet, but it does have depth.”

Small goes into detail about what has been changing in the franchise and focuses on the ability to combine certain elements into tools. The designers prototyped this in a modded version of the original game (I wish I could get my hands on that).

Multiplicative gameplay encourages players to combine actions and objects in ways that allow for a vaster set of solutions. Developers created a prototype to test their theories, recreating the original Legend of Zelda with an interactive environment where the player could burn trees, pick up the logs and then make rafts from the timber. Those mechanics were incorporated into Breath of the Wild, alongside a physics system that allowed players to manipulate rules like the conservation of momentum.

The game franchise keeps evolving and if the excitement for the new game I've seen on social media is any indication, fans are staying loyal.

Andor Season 2 in Jeopardy

Tony Gilroy has ceased writing and producing for Andor, which I assume puts the second season of the show in jeopardy. Lesley Goldberg writes about how the showrunner is striking in solidarity with the WGA (Writers Guild of America), after being called out on social media, for continuing to provide production services after the strike had begun.

“I discontinued all writing and writing-related work on Andor prior to midnight, May 1. After being briefed on the Saturday showrunner meeting, I informed Chris Keyser at the WGA on Sunday morning that I would also be ceasing all non-writing producing functions,” Gilroy said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. When reached by phone late Tuesday, Keyser — the co-chair of the WGA’s negotiating committee — confirmed his conversation with Gilroy. Lucasfilm, which produces Andor, declined to comment.

The WGA is a union of writers for various types of media and is striking for greater compensation and various concessions that would increase wage/job stability. IndieWire has a piece documenting all the TV and film productions affected by the strike.

Source: Showrunner Tony Gilroy Ceases Producing Services on ‘Andor’ | The Hollywood Reporter

Pixies Stop The Alarm

You just missed your court date, and it's all the fault of Pixies. Jordan Potter reports for Far Out Magazine on how "Where Is My Mind?" by Pixies turns off set alarms on Google Pixel phones.

Recently, a Reddit user took to the platform to report a strange occurrence. After setting their alarm to use songs at random from a playlist, one morning, the alarm failed to activate. Fortunately, they had woken up earlier and investigated the issue. As it turns out, Frank Black yelling “stop!” at the beginning of the song pre-emptively disables the alarm on Google Pixel phones.

The band apologized for the Surfer Rosa track messing with people's schedules.

Source: Pixies apologise for ‘Where Is My Mind?’ disabling alarms on Google phones

Signed, Your Pal Justin the Martyr

Plough Magazine features excerpts from a letter Justin the Martyr wrote to the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius around the year 150 AD.

We follow the only unbegotten God through His Son – we who formerly delighted in fornication, but now embrace chastity alone; we who formerly used magical arts, dedicate ourselves to the good and unbegotten God; we who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock, and communicate to every one in need; we who hated and destroyed one another, and on account of their different manners would not live with men of a different tribe, now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them, and pray for our enemies, and endeavour to persuade those who hate us unjustly to live conformably to the good precepts of Christ, to the end that they may become partakers with us of the same joyful hope of a reward from God the ruler of all.

I love this sentiment and the description of the transformation that comes with a life lived in Christian faith. It is because of these types of documents that I look to historical artifacts as witness for a true witness for Christ, rather than being discouraged by what contemporary Christians in the Western world exemplify.

Source: Dear Emperor | Plough Magazine

Tangled in Semantics

Isaac Saul from Tangle posted about some changes happening with the publication, specifically around the language that will be used. The writers and editors at Tangle have always strived to keep a balanced approach to the news. However, they've noticed that the words being used in stories tend to indicate bias to some readers.

One reason why, I believe (and have been told by those unsubscribing), has to do with the daily struggle of our language choices. Many readers on both the left and right have unsubscribed or written in angrily, not because of what we were saying, but how we were saying it. Whether it is calling cannabis “marijuana” (“that’s racist”) or referring to a trans person by their preferred pronouns (“that’s ceding the argument”), those readers didn’t even make it to the opposing arguments because they couldn’t get past the editorial decisions we were making on the way.

The post goes on to clarify some of the wording choices that they will make, going forward, and why they are making those choices. It shows how reactive we have gotten (and I definitely indict myself in this generalization) that even the smallest choices in language are construed to mean that the writer is taking a specific side in a debate.

I don't typically use fan-made videos for Friday Night Videos, but this one is just so perfect. The found footage of rollerskating archives, most of which looks like it was filmed at California beaches, fits so perfectly with the breezy, upbeat track by The Ice Choir. The lyrics about sun and spray and escaping winter contrast with the name of the band and their tagline, "winter synths abound, all year round."

The arrangements here are masterful, and each piece of the song, which despite its lightness betrays a fair amount of complexity, fit together in glorious harmony.

If you asked me what band I would most like to hear new music from, it would be The Ice Choir. The man behind the band, Kurt Feldman, has gone too long letting his musical skills languish. On a podcast from last year, Feldman talked about how he had been playing video games instead of making music but that he would get back to it at some point. I'm sure playing 60 hours of Elden Ring is fun and all, but putting this kind of art into the world is so much more important.

Feldman is not just a unique and visionary musician, he's also been a pretty prolific producer. His signature 80s influenced, meticulously detailed signature sound stands out on any production in which he is involved. Recordings from Kristin Kontrol, Julia Kwamya, or his former band, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart, bear his imprint. It's when he's able to control the whole process, though, that Feldman's genius really stands out. That's nowhere more evident than on music by The Ice Choir.

Recently, Kurt Feldman's shoegaze/chiptune influenced project, the Depreciation Guild, played a single show in New York. After getting requests about playing other shows in various towns, he responded by saying that whatever town you were requesting the band play in, they had probably already played there 13 years ago to about 3 people. I was fortunate enough to catch one of those shows.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about Amazon and my discomfort with a number of the practices that the company employed. After writing the post, I was on a kick in which I was shunning Amazon and avoiding being a consumer of their services. That lasted for about a year, and then my convictions started to wear thin. I started watching shows on Prime. I started ordering things like supplements from Amazon when I realized how expensive and inconvenient it was to buy them from multiple vendors. I began to buy home improvement items from Amazon when I couldn’t find them at any of the big box retailers around me.

I've become complacent about my shopping. My mentality has basically become, "if you can't beat them, join them." Last weekend, though, I talked with a friend at church who reminded me of why I put effort into avoiding Amazon in the first place. My friend is a mailman who hates Amazon — and rightfully so. He's one of those unfortunates to be directly and materially impacted by the practices of the company. Because of Amazon, he and his colleagues have to work Sundays. Because of Amazon, people work 9-10 days in a row. Because of Amazon, pay is variable based on a number of intrusive tracking mechanisms. The Postal Service has had to race to catch up with Amazon and their ever-advancing, inhuman efficiency, trampling on their employees in the process.

It's a sad thing to have to acknowledge, but convenience comes with a cost. In the case of Amazon, it's a very human cost. Whether it's in the warehouse, in the delivery trucks, or even in the corporate offices, Amazon treats its employees with a callous indifference that borders on cruelty. As they march towards more automation, they treat their workers like automatons, capable of the same relentless repetition as robots. Increasingly, though, it's not just their employees who are affected, but the employees of competitors and those who have to work within the framework that Amazon has constructed.

Before you make your next purchase from the internet retail behemoth, think about the downstream impact. That process may just convince you to take your business elsewhere.