It feels like this month has been about 500 years long; I can't quite believe it's finally over!
I've spent a lot of time this month thinking about social media, how toxic it can be, and how to quit it properly (hint: how I did it was about as bad as you can do it!). I want to organise my thoughts on that or, better still, find someone else who's already done it way better than I could hope to.
A bit of a slow start to the month but picked up nicely with a trip to the F1 Exhibition at Excel in London. This was such a fun day, and wholeheartedly recommend it to any fans of F1 whether you're a brand new poser like me, or a veteran like Tommy.
Animals continued to be annoying, learning bad habits immediately, and taking an age to learn good ones, continuing to balance being very cute, and getting me up at 6am to watch cartoons like I'm 8.
I continued to whinge about being Sussex Junior Badminton fixtures secretary, and how it's totally incompatible with my personality; that's always good for a laugh.
I dragged Charlotte out to go and take a photo of (what I think is) a Kestrel that's been hunting on the A259 for ages now. I kinda got the shot but not really?
More whingeing in the form of how much software annoys me, and some rare complimentary words about some good software.
Charlotte and I went to see the back of some guy's head whilst listening to The Horne Section live, I got some new shoes, and I made pizza in the dark.
We also had family over to visit and went to a roller disco (I haven't been to a roller disco for literal decades). I had such a good time, but didn't take any decent pictures or have much to say apart from "I loved this".
When I look back on it, it makes sense that this month felt long. We did some cool stuff.
Bit of a slow month for music - I listened to much less than I normally would, even though it's been a ridiculously good month for new releases and discoveries. Sometimes I just want quiet when I'm working, and then I want to listen to music when it's least convenient to!
New stuff this month that I've been into:
- Chat Pile - Cool World. Builds on the sound of their previous record; much heavier, far more atmospheric. I've looked forward to and listened to this a lot.
- Sugar Horse - The Grand Scheme of Things. Strange record to pin down; I can't think what genre I'd put it into. If you're into very heavy stuff it might annoy you because there's prolonged bouts of quiet here, but it's punctuated by extreme heaviness. I love Sugar Horse live, and I'm going to take the soonest opportunity to see them.
- Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere. The only death metal I can bear to listen to.
- Touché Amoré - Spiral in a Straight Line. Solid post hardcore.
- Oranssi Pazuzu - Muuntautuja. I feel like Oranssi Pazuzu used to be a lot more chaotic, but I'm probably just thinking of a different band. This made me want to listen to Portrayal of Guilt's latest record, for some reason, which I wasn't expecting.
- Bon Iver - SABLE,. I've never been a fan of Bon Iver - when I go to folk, I go to José González, but Dan showed me a couple of things I liked, and now they've probably changed places. The right amount of weird for me.
- SOPHIE - SOPHIE. Not new, but new to me. Honestly I think this is a bit too chaotic, but I see why people like it.
- Charli xcx - BRAT. Eli said I should give this a try and I did and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.
- Better Lovers - Highly Irresponsible. I wasn't expecting much from this - the EP had evidence of greatness but overall left me feeling unfulfilled. Enjoyed the LP a lot, though.
- Tyler, the Creator - CHROMAKOPIA. Before this record, Tyler had about 3 songs I actually liked, and he seemed to be going more down the jazz road as he matured as a person. This is more of a return to hip-hop, and I enjoyed the whole thing so much I listened to it again straight away. Glad, really, as he seems like a good guy and I want to like his music.
I got an email that ITHACA are splitting up, which sucks. Their LPs are some of my favourite progressive hardcore (is that a thing??) and they're amazing live. Hoping to catch their final show.
It's been a good month for links, and I've been adding them as I find them so hopefully this is more coherent this time! And, happily, editing this list has reminded me of some cool stuff I'd already forgotten.
- Tekken boss doesn't think a retro Tekken collection would work. Poor take, in my opinion, and risky given the proliferation of 3D games. Are we saying that everything now is going to age poorly? It's definitely been the case, on average, for early 3D especially. I personally prefer Tekken 2 and 3 to more modern games - simpler mechanics, more focus on fun, less feeling like it's a job. I'd rather play 2 than 7 any day.
- I've wanted a KVM for switching between my laptop and media server for ages but SSH works just well enough and orion works well enough the rest of the time
- "no way to prevent this" is a surprisingly flexible headline. I apply it to all sorts, on a reasonably regular basis
- this dactyl is almost definitely going to appear on my blog in the next year
- the ability to debug things is a valuable skill, that pairs nicely with stubbornness. This story about MRIs crashing iPhones is mad
- satellite imagery of every outdoor basketball court in America
- a modern, FOSS chiptune tracker that I definitely want to try. I read somewhere that tildearrow made this almost out of spite because of how the owners of another popular tracker handled monetisation. Spite is such a great motivator.
- Signature Plastics is getting acquired. Legendary keycap makers; I'm very glad they're not going away, and the new stewards seem to actually care about the company.
- I used to hate QR codes, too, but I have come around to them a lot in recent years. I even have a QR code contact card on my phone's lock screen. Super interesting to learn about how they work (even though I was just barely hanging on for a lot of the maths!)
- Penny Arcade coming in with some perspective, as per.
- the data wall is billions of years of evolution
- Blood Incantation - The Stargate. Hey kid you want a 20 minute Blood Incantation video? Course ya do
- The Stig vs Leclerc in the sim. Cool video but it just sorta ends with very little fanfare.
- Kaytranada + Childish Gambino - Witchy
- Chat Pile records on my life
- Saosin practice
- Danny MacAskill riding Adidas HQ
- Fiction and Finance, interesting and lots of further reading for my infinite reading list.
- Every Time I Die sheet music
- How will Turing tests look in the future? I'd never really considered that a Turing test would be something we always need but, of course, the more convincing computers become, the greater our need for effective tests. Interconnected is a brilliant blog, well worth subscribing.
- Ground. Tabitha is very interested in current events, and this feels like a good way for her to learn about things and retain some balance. I love the idea of having political leanings factor into the presentation of stories, and I don't trust the Apple News app.
- Duralex Picardie - I love a good glass, and I hate it when people use my glass. If these were available in the UK I would get one.
- We loved The Boy and the Heron, and I have to get one of these for the kid.
- Caroline Polachek is amazing
- and so are Thrice
- Marques on Panels is how you do damage control. Can't say I'm surprised with Marques; he just gets it. And even when he doesn't, he does. Do I need a paid wallpapers app? No I do not; I'm a solid colours guy. But for people who are into all that, why not have a way to support creators in there?
- Cabel Sasser at XOXO we love cabel
- new Breaking Benjamin
- Dune Prophecy is looking goooood
- '99 Legends match highlights
- Austin Reaves' basketball IQ is high
- Dan reminded me about meditations for the anxious mind. I love this guy
- Pumphrey on Nike SB. I love his new channel.
- Peter Dinklage on Hot Ones
- new Anberlin. Didn't realise their singer had left - I thought such a distinctive voice leaving would be the end of it, but I'm into their new music.
- Lena and a book of short stories that also goes on the list...
- The Children of Time trilogy made me realise that I'm very interested in the far future. Wikipedia's timeline of the far future makes me want to go and live in the woods.
- Gruber and Rad History talking about Goldeneye on the N64. This was a huge game for me as a pre-teen. I pretty much had a 4-person social group solely focussed on playing this game and that probably sounds sad but it doesn't feel it.
- Connected to the post about Turing tests, an extension of why they'll be important. Do we need to stop the internet archive from becoming polluted with AI dreck? I mean, rhetorical - I'd get rid of it all today if I could. But do we?
- Someone asked me what the 0-60 of my car is, and I didn't know. Of course there's a website for this.
- How iA is making sure we can tell the difference between text a person authored, and text that should be deleted.
- Cunk on Food. The modern Ali G.
- Mayan city found by reinterpreting LiDAR scans from a different perspective. I've always been a bit confused, I guess, about how old stuff just gets buried. But here we are with whole temples that just got buried and rewilded. This is the kind of history that fascinates me - a whole civilisation gone, and we'll probably never know how/why it happened.
- Don't buy haunted domains. I like this term for it. Ranking on a search engine is difficult enough without setting yourself back before you even start!
- POSSE got me thinking about maintaining a healthy relationship with social media, and I still resolved that I'd rather just not. Of course, I miss some of the interactions I used to have on Twitter, but that era is over. It can't be fabricated in little self-managed echo-chambers, and the sooner we stop kidding ourselves that twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, Threads, et al are anything but a net loss for humanity, the better. I wish I'd grabbed some people's contact information before exiting Instagram, and it sucks that it's basically impossible for me to follow Mathcore Index, some shops, and the local music scene, but that's not going to bring me back, I don't think.
- I was busy in 2003 so I didn't watch this at the time, but the Interlagos 2003 Highlights are crazy. Pretty hollow victory, but maybe better than ending the race with zero cars on the track? One thing that struck me about this was how slow they used to be to safety-car and red-flag races. I feel like Alonso's crash would never happen in 2024, and it's wild to me to have marshals jumping over the barrier to avoid being hit by a crashing car whilst they're trying to remove a car that had previously crashed! I know some people say that all the new safety stuff makes F1 less fun, but I bet the Brazilian marshals working this race would disagree.