Canned Dragons

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 21:09:00 -0400

This blog post by Tessa Brown teases apart the difference between social networking and social media.

I suppose what the story above suggests is that social media became the pretense for social networking. I’m reminded of this article I used to teach about the role menus played in restaurant interactions between servers and patrons. Basically the finding was that all of the conversations between servers and patrons were about the menu. “Is this good,” “Do you have this today,” “Can I tell you about our specials.” So the implication for literacy theory, the study of reading and writing, is that people use artifacts in conversation to structure what they talk about–the same way you and your friend from high school just Instagram DM memes back and forth to each other. People are awkward and need something to talk about. What I want to conclude is this pat thing: media is the excuse for us to talk to each other.

Social media clusters the conversation around a media artifact. Maybe a video or song. The metaphor of restaurant servers and patrons centering communication around the menu works well here.

This may be why I’m focused on the blogging service I use having solid integration with a social site. I tend to post a fair amount of media and welcome the social aspect of conversation around that media. Whether that actually happens is another matter, but it’s part of the goal, anyway.

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 08:58:27 -0400

The team behind Matter, my favorite read-it-later service, has a new app out. It that promises to help you manage time on your phone one day a week. The app is called Sabbath, drawing from the ancient and holy practice of taking one day a week to rest. Unfortunately, it’s iPhone only (the Matter crew are an Apple shop) and I spend more time on my iPad and Mac.

The Wagon

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:00:00 -0400

Reviews of Dinosaur Jr.’s Green Mind don’t always focus on what a shift it was for the band. For the first time, it was J. Mascis’ unadulterated vision, updated to fit perfectly with the alternative scene that was strengthening in the early nineties. However, nothing about it presaged the success of Nirvana’s Nevermind, bringing sludge rock to the mainstream. It was at once denser than anything the band had done, but also more pastoral. On the lead single, “The Wagon,” The meandering guitar lines on the verses hint at straying through open fields on some rural route somewhere. It was no doubt this turn that helped Mascis get the role of soundtracking and appearing in 1992’s coming of age drama Gas Food Lodging.

“The Wagon” was my favorite video as a teenager. I had a copy of the video taped from MTV’s 120 Minutes on a beat-up VHS tape that my sister deliberately recorded over. I loved the claymation, the affection for aliens and the mother and baby being united by the cow and the ape’s heroism. The mother alien’s eye stalks sagging at the thought of losing her progeny, then doing a happy loop at his return, made it for me.

Dinosaur Jr. - The Wagon (YouTube)

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 08:52:42 -0400

Isaac Greene has the human interest angle on data centers through the lense of his brother, a farmer, who will have his farm surrounded on both sides by new data centers. Greene highlights the trivial or destructive ways A.I. is used to show the trade-offs we are making.

But for everyone else, there is such pressing need for data computation. Are we expected to make our memes by hand? We couldn’t live in a world that doesn’t know what Donald Trump Jesus would have looked like. We couldn’t create fake versions of loved one’s voices to scam grandmothers out of their life savings without these vital calls. Who will make all these robocalls? People? The indignity. We couldn’t surveil our citizens going about their days with flock cameras, or permanently save the footage of everyone who appears on our ring cameras. What would we do without these data centers? Do we expect corporations to employ humans (with their expectations of salary and benefits) to do their work? There would be no slop to post to Facebook, no way to adjust our faces and bodies so they look their best when we post our selfies and gym mirror shots. Someone must pay the cost for these essentials, and that someone is a family in Pennsylvania trying to live their life on a little bit of land.

It’s a compelling read if you want to know how the data explosion is negatively impacting real people.

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 20:03:39 -0400

Trying to teach the boy to skate last weekend and ended up with some road rash. I’m too old for this.

Jokes From Truth

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 18:00:00 -0400

Bluesky CEO, Tony Schneider, was interviewed by Nilay Patel on a recent episode of The Decoder podcast. I like Patel’s interview style and thought he brought a good selection of questions to the discussion.

After much business strategy and technical discussion, Patel asked Schneider about the common perception that the network is full of left-leaning users. Schneider acknowledged that as an issue and mentioned several times that he wanted to expand the user base. It’s certainly true that the social network is home to many emotionally dysregulated political progressives. I know several people who don’t use it primarily for that reason.

When some users on Bluesky heard the interview, they were frustrated with Schneider’s comments, feeling like they were the ones that made the service what it is rather than holding it back from what it could become.

Personally I would love to see Bluesky expand.

It shouldn’t just be the app for leftists who can’t stand Matt Yglesias!

It should also be the app for liberals who can’t stand Matt Yglesias. And apolitical folks who can’t stand Yglesias. And, yes, even conservatives who can’t stand Matt Yglesias!

Dave Karpf https://bsky.app/profile/davekarpf.bsky.social/post/3ms7mnufwt22n

Dave Karpf riffed on an incident in which political pundit Matt Yglesias was driven from Bluesky by a torrent of hate and users threatening to beat him with hammers, apparently because he’s too politically moderate. Karpf was joking of course, but jokes are often funny and appealing because there’s a kernel of truth to them. Many users on Bluesky are proud of this sort of mob mentality. Like the Tumblr diehards who want to keep the platform from appealing to the masses, they feel a sense of ownership and prefer that the user base not grow. This is of course, counter to the interests of Bluesky itself and certainly of Schneider.

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 17:30:00 -0400

I’ve been playing a new video game called MIO: Memories in Orbit. I have a bit of a soft spot for what they call Metroidvania’s (a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania), having grown up loving games in the genre. In this game, you “Play MIO, a nimble robot with extraordinary abilities, and unravel the mysteries of the Vessel, an enormous technological ark overgrown with lush vegetation and machines gone rogue.” My brother is playing at the same time, and it’s almost like being in a book club. Or, at least how I imagine it is to be in a book club, as I’ve never actually been part of one. We share updates and new locations we’ve found with each other as we puzzle our way through this organic sci-fi ark.

Shaker Style

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 20:41:19 -0400

I was going through my social media feeds this morning and realized that it was just a bunch of disconnected thoughts with no coherence. I wondered why I even bothered. Then I remembered posting about seeing a movie last weekend and the ensuing conversation on Micro.blog and I had my answer. There is value in bonding over a shared appreciation for certain media.

I’ve continued to be fascinated by The Shakers this week after viewing The Testament of Ann Lee. Not only have I been listening to the soundtrack (mostly because “Beautiful Treasures” gives me goosebumps), but I’ve been reading pieces about the movement and what is left of it. This article in Commonweal Magazine, in particular, was interesting. It focuses on the two Shakers still left at Sabbathday Lake, in Maine.

Tree of Life by Hannah Cohoon

On any given day, there are plenty of other people at the village. Staff and volunteers from nearby towns work at Sabbathday Lake: giving tours, overseeing gift shops, posting on Facebook, raking leaves, raising money, and tending the gardens. They help organize the Harvest Festival and Christmas bazaar. They teach soapmaking, bookbinding, and broomweaving, courses that generate revenue for the village. These workers are often also congregants. They attend Shaker meetings on Sunday mornings, then stick around for coffee hour. And yet, they are not Shakers. They don’t divest of their property. They don’t swear off sex. They don’t join.

The story is told mostly through the experiences of one of the Sabbathday Lake residents, a splenetic older man named Arnold. Unlike the sunny tour guides who lead visitors around the property, Arnold has plenty of complaints. His has been, and continues to be, a hard existence. If you have any romantic notion of Shaker life, his testimony will do much to dispel your fantasies.

Dream Shake

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 17:00:00 -0400

Memoryhouse consists of Canadians Evan Abeele and Denise Nouvion. The band had a minor hit with their piano-driven live cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep” for Yours Truly in 2011. They capitalized on their success with that cover and the well-regarded EP, The Years, by signing to indie heavyweight Sub Pop Records. When their follow-up full length, Slideshow Effect didn’t garner as much attention, the band unceremoniously parted ways with their label and went out on their own.

The next LP was a labor of love called Soft Hate which brought some more uptempo songs to what had previously been a mostly slowcore catalogue. Despite having some of their most accessible songs, Soft Hate didn’t generate the kind of buzz the band had experienced at their outset.

Soft Hate produced several videos featuring Nouvion, from which Abeele was conspicuously absent. I asked Nouvion about the missing Abeele, and she simply replied, “Evan who?”

“Dream Shake” features Nouvion’s dead-pan vocals, lovely in the same way as a blank stare from Aubrey Plaza into the camera in Parks and Rec. Fuzz bass gives some drive and force to the production and when the song accelerates to the chorus, it’s invigorating.

Memoryhouse - Dream Shake (YouTube)

Memoryhouse was supposed to record a studio version of “When You Sleep” in NYC with James Iha of Smashing Pumpkins fame. A car accident on the way to the studio prevented that and was perhaps an inauspicious sign for the band.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 20:53:58 -0400

Jay Peters reports for The Verge about the year-over-year rise in the number of CDs being purchased.

The data suggests that “the CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible,” Luminate says. “This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for the artist as it is listening to the music on the product itself.”

The surprise here is that approximately half of the Gen Z and millennials buying CDs don’t even own a device on which to play them. It’s still about that connection, though. I admitted the other day that I sometimes listen to a CD even when I could just as easily (more easily even) stream the album.

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 21:26:00 -0400

Dave Kendall, creator and host of MTV’s 120 Minutes, has passed away.

The British-born Kendall conceived 120 Minutes after joining MTV as a producer, pitching the network a dedicated program for the punk, post-punk, goth, synth-pop, ska, and other underground sounds largely ignored by corporate rock radio. 120 Minutes debuted on March 10th, 1986, and Kendall later served as its host from 1989 through 1992. “By far the most important thing about 120 Minutes was that it acted as a distribution channel for organic musical produce, if you will,” Kendall told CONSEQUENCE in a 2016 interview. “The only other outlet for non-mainstream music at the time was a few local college radio stations.”

Apparently, Kendall was the force behind getting the show greenlit. You know he must have had to push just to get a terrible time slot like 12am on a Sunday night. I think I learned how to program my VCR just so I could record 120 Minutes. It was a school night, after all.

Matt Pinfield, the last to host the show, offered a tribute on Instagram.

Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra & Avin Omar

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 19:07:44 -0400

Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra & Avin Omar by Goran Kajfeš Subtropic Arkestra

One problem with posting your listening habits on a periodically updated Now page is that those habits can literally change overnight. A couple of days ago, I updated my /now page, only to get deeply into a Swedish jazz EP very shortly after.

Though this new 3-song Bandcamp-only EP is from Western Europe, it couldn’t sound more Eastern. The time signatures borrow heavily from Eastern musical traditions. By far the biggest Eastern sounding element, though, are the vocals from Kurdish-Swedish singer Avin Omar, which are absolutely gorgeous. Heavily textured and rich with emotion, Omar’s voice adds authenticity and weight to the recording.

From the Bandcamp description:

The set of three tracks features the original compositions “Desmala Min” and “Monsoon”, latter with lyrics penned by the Iraqi Kurdish poet, Şêrko Bêkes (1940-2013). Additionally, the band & Omar tackle the re-arranged traditional composition “Sulemani” to epic effect. Avin Omar shines all the way through as the brilliant soloist of this set, leaving the listener to long for more.

As the text continues, you can always hit “play” again. I have been doing just that.

Fri, 10 Jul 2026 22:00:00 -0400

In another in a seemingly endless supply of misguided moves, the administration is putting in place a new federal rule under which a college program must prove that it’s gradautes earn more than if they had never enrolled or lose access to federal loans. This administration is so focused on money it’s inconceivable to its leadership that there could be any other purpose to an education.

“We know we need nurses. We know we need journalists. We know we need early childhood educators,” he said. “We don’t know how many artists we need, but I can guarantee that if you eliminate access, we will impoverish our cultural life nationally.”

It’s amazing that we could devalue and disincetivize these professions even more, but here’s a way to do it as well as adding to the bureaucratic load.

Poptimus Prime

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 22:00:00 -0400

Freddie deBoer writes about how poptimism has achieved so much success because of the cultural context in which it was born. A culture that considers it wrong to have standards that can identify one thing as better than another is fertile ground for the elevation of terrible art. That’s why we have record reviews that treat pay-for-play pabulum like Rebecca Black songs as if they were written by Neil Young. It’s a culture that feeds our desire for comfort rather than challenge.

The studios and record labels and platforms figured out that comfort sells and risk doesn’t, and simply gave us what the spreadsheets demanded – and what the spreadsheets demanded was familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. It’s surprising how well these three adjectives work across mediums and genres, by the way. Star Wars movies are familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. Zombie TV shows are familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children. Modern pop music, adolescent and thudding and written by Swedish 40-year-olds with a taste for literalism, is familiar, free of ambiguity, and made for children.

deBoer has made the infantilization of our culture a frequent topic in his writing. We are steeping in it, and this century, the trends have only gotten worse.

Via Alan Jacobs

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 08:30:36 -0400

Freedom Fuel gas stations sound like a J.R. Ewing scheme.

Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:15:40 -0400

I’m glad I don’t like lobster or I might have been tempted to act on the skate shop owner’s recommendation of the lobster rolls at Dollar General.

Tue, 07 Jul 2026 18:49:45 -0400

Sticker selection from the skate shop.

Sun, 05 Jul 2026 18:22:02 -0400

Bought the hype and started reading Galahad and the Grail Merlin’s Isle by Malcolm Guite 📚.

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:42:24 -0400

The ATmosphere plugin for WordPress doesn’t work most of the time. I posted a review to that effect on the plugin page and it was deleted by the moderator because it was taken as “reporting a problem.” So basically, you can only leave positive reviews of WordPress plugins or they will get removed?

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 17:28:00 -0400

Brandon writes about having Reverse SAD — seasonal affective disorder that occurs during the summer instead of the winter.

Research also suggests that high temperatures might play a role in reverse SAD. Notable differences between summer and winter SAD are that summer SAD individuals may typically feel manic, whereas those with winter SAD lack energy. Georgetown University psychiatrist and professor Norman Rosenthal, who first described and coined the term Seasonal Affective Disorder, notes that the drop in temperature can be calming for those people, who might otherwise find the summer heat oppressive and agitating.

I am totally feeling this. When it’s 100 degrees actual temperature outside, like it was today, it’s easy to feel confined and isolated.

Bandcamp Downsizing

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 11:54:20 -0400

Details are scarce, but a Bluesky post has people once again wondering about the fate of Bandcamp.

my 13 years at bandcamp are coming to an end - i’ve been laid off along with most of the remaining engineers. best job i’ve ever had, working with the best people you could ever work with. unceremonious end to quite a ride.

drew https://bsky.app/profile/grmnygrmny.bsky.social/post/3mpgvo7l2v22t

Some are speculating that Bandcamp’s owner, Songtradr, has enough engineers to fill in the gaps and keep the service running. I would not be surprised if that were the case, and I don’t think this piece of news is necessarily an indicator that the service is shutting down, but nevertheless, it’s not a good thing.

TuneFountain has a piece on the layoffs, but unfortunately, they don’t have any more information than the rest of us. However, they do frame the potential scope of the losses well.

For musicians, this is not only about headcount. Engineers are part of the invisible machinery behind Bandcamp: checkout pages, payment tools, storefronts, security fixes and the small artist features that make the whole thing usable. When those teams shrink, artists notice the risk even before anything breaks.

Many of us count on Bandcamp. I use it to share as well as buy music. Although my subscription to Qobuz allows me to purchase songs and albums, they are often more expensive there than on Bandcamp.

Ascension Serif

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 21:53:00 -0400

My pen-pal Adam thought I would enjoy this video and he was right. The short combines my love of fonts and of prayer books.

The new typeface, Ascension Serif, is used with an upcoming version of The Liturgy of the Hours. The video emphasizes the pursuit of beauty in conveying the Christian message and providing inspiration.

Sun, 28 Jun 2026 09:11:35 -0400

This morning, my power briefly went off, which took out my Dyson fan. Despite having an error code on the screen, I went through the Dyson app, their chat and the website to find out what the issue could be with no success. With Claude, I had the fan back working in under 5 minutes.

I Set My Face to the Hillside

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 16:50:24 -0400

Tortoise - I Set My Face to the Hillside (YouTube)

Last year, I bought TNT by Tortoise on CD from a Discogs seller.¹ I should tell you, this sort of activity is as sure a sign of my devotion to a particular album as any. After all, I’ve got access to high-quality digital copies of albums like this through streaming. I don’t need to seek them out on an online marketplace, where, let’s face it, you don’t always know the quality of the merchandise.²

I like to have physical copies of my favorite albums, though, for multiple reasons. TNT fits in that category. My wife asked what kind of music Tortoise was, and well, that’s a good question. The most common answer would be post-rock, but that seems a bit limiting.

On “I Set My Face to the Hillside,” from TNT, the band adds a bit of Western influence to their spare jazz. The negative space in the song emphasizes the quiet and reflective instrumentation. Guitar lines have plenty of room to breathe like every expression has been carefully contemplated. This live video, while giving the viewer some strange angles, emphasizes the intricate dynamic between the members of the band. It’s a dynamic that underscores the cohesion that makes such expressive instrumental music possible.

Via Opus

I also own a copy on snow white vinyl. ↩︎
I bought a Pizzicato Five CD a couple of years ago that was listed as very good condition but looked like it had bong water spilled on it, which I doubt happened in transit. ↩︎

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 14:56:27 -0400

The Economist looks like it has some interesting pieces and I think I would enjoy their coverage, but I’m a lot less likely to subscribe to a publication that doesn’t allow me to share articles for discussion.