Panda Bear Tiny Desk! Finally!
Panda Bear Tiny Desk! Finally!
We didn’t do couchella this year, so I’m just catching up on a few performances. Benson Boone’s performance of “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Brian May was everything I hoped it would be.
It’s worth your time to watch Chris Anderson’s interview with Sam Altman at TED.
I finished The Courage To Be Disliked today, sitting outside of gget in Los Feliz. It was one of those books that I had to force myself to finish, which isn’t something I usually do. I did not particularly enjoy the book, though I did enjoy learning about Alderian psychology. I would have rather have learned about it, not through what read like a fake interview (most of the time), but as different kind of book. All that said, I’m certain what I learned will stay with me for a while and I’ll be processing it for some time.
Had a good time jailbreaking my trusty 2013 Kindle Paperwhite last night before bed.
I couldn’t allow the day to pass without mentioning that Sublime is now open to the world. I’ve been using Sublime for many months at this point. I’ve attended webinars, I’ve given lots of feedback and have spent some time talking to Sari. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen an app build the way they did Sublime. Some of it is similar to other apps, but it really is unique and singular in a lovely way. Anyway, all of this to say congrats to Sari, Alex and everyone else at Sublime. Today is a Big Fucking Day.
The awesome people at Flipper Devices created a cool and extra nerdy Pomodoro timer called BUSY Bar.
I hadn’t tried the new Reeder until this week and it’s pretty cool. I think because I consider myself a power user of RSS, the newer apps like Reeder, Tapestry and Surf are just not as appealing to me as they might be to someone who is just getting into RSS. I have a workflow that works for me and if it aint' broke… But when I installed and started playing with Reeder, I kinda liked it. I get it.
I was looking through my photos. I know I have at least a couple of Dave and I from SXSW. Apple Photos couldn’t find any though.
I’m still processing that we lost Dave Allen. I really liked Dave a lot and I know I wasn’t alone. He was such a cool and kind person who I’d known personally since the early aughts. I think we might have met for the first time when I was at Topspin, but he’s a legend whose music I enjoyed so much. We would grab coffee or a meal when we visited one another’s home towns. He cared deeply about music artists getting paid and was very much in the mix in the early days of streaming, fighting to make sure things were “artist friendly”.
Last October I was out with my friend Parker, seeing Hania Rani perform at The Masonic Lodge at The Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Somehow Dave came up and I learned that Dave had been suffering from early-onset dementia of some kind, which explained why he hadn’t responded to texts. So much of his brilliant mind was gone and now his entire physical being is gone. While we have his music, I will miss him as a person. He made a dent. He left a mark.
Rest in power, Dave.
Middle-aged man trading cards are the wholesome thing I needed to read about today. The Internet still delivers every once in a while.
I’m really enjoying Marta Saraiva’s art. (via Dense Discovery, which is one of a few emails I actually look forward to receiving)
Been enjoying MeetingBar.
Mark and I caught up on Friday and as usual there was a lot of link sharing and discussion of the world. He shared this gem of a post from ye olde days of 2010.
Matt Webb is on People & Blogs today. It is, of course, a wonderful, link-filled interview.
I did one about a year ago.
New Aesop Rock is coming.
AI is getting very good at fighting health insurance denials. What do you have to lose?
The new new Superman looks good. I’m kind of excited. Feels like we kinda need a Superman right now.
Tyler Cowan on “Liberation Day”:
This is perhaps the worst economic own goal I have seen in my lifetime. I cannot think of any credentialed economist colleague—Democrat, Republican, or independent—who would endorse it.
Related: I subscribed to The Free Press, which you can do at 15% off
Skylight Social won’t make a dent in TikTok and maybe that’s not the point. Regardless, I think short form video is doing serious harm to our attention, especially in kids. All that said, it’s nice to see things happening on the AT Protocol.
Jon Haidt’s appearance on The Ezra Klein Show was a good listen. If you’ve read The Anxious Generation, you will have some idea of what to expect, but I thought the conversation was insightful and Ezra’s questions were generally good. He’s had some great guests on recently.
People will die. Diseases will not be cured. Treatments will not be developed. And so on. This is very very bad for America.
I’m excited to play around with ente, a new open-source, encrypted and private photo service and app that has been in the making for some time. I’m not sure I can be bothered to switch away from Apple Photos and Google Photos, which I find to be a better product, but I love ente’s mission.
I appreciate the thought that Adam is putting into omg.lol’s stance on generative AI. I’m still formulating my own personal policy, which of course is different than a policy for a platform. Given how fast things are changing, I feel an obligation to use all of the tools a lot. I don’t believe you can formulate informed positions on things by taking other people’s word for how you should think about them. You have to use them and do some soul searching of your own. One thing that is non-negotiable is that we MUST figure out how to get artists paid for their work. I fear it will ultimately be the pennies music artists see from streaming, but it can’t be nothing. The central issue of provenance must be solved. It’s a difficult problem, but then so is getting a computer to “think”.
I don’t plan to talk about the news often, but OpenAI closed the largest round on record – a whopping $40B, valuing the company at $300B, which is absolutely bonkers.