March 2025: AI-assisted creativity and the race to claim the future
In this issue we grab the future by its shiny metal cranium and hold on for dear life while we look for the control panel.
Using Perplexity.ai's Spaces as a life raft in an age of AI slop
It's well-known at this point how poor traditional search engines have gotten. That was before Large Language Model (LLM)-generated slop flooded the field. Which means it's weird to see me talking about a good use case for LLMs if you've only seen and
February 2025: fox populi, foxes in space, and more
A collection of scattered adventures over the last month. Saw a few sparklies from the Quadrantids meteor shower. Got to see the International Space Station and Hubble Space Telescope fly over a few times. I also saw several bright space objects fly over. They weren't listed in my
January 2025 newsletter: it's got links! And it's early!
This will be a short links-only newsletter to close out the year. Hank Green makes the case that not only are all the problems in the world not evidence that we're stupid, our ability to see that the problems are problems is rare and possibly unique among species
December 2024 newsletter: taking back the web
1. Trying Vivaldi 2. Subscriber goodies update 3. The Login Wall 4. Music Commissions Open 5. Links Hello! Welcome to another exciting installment of my little monthly newsletter. Links are coming back into fashion. User agency is ascendant. The hot new social network is committed to credible exit. There is
Hurricanes and Halloween
We have another "life stuff" month for the October newsletter, which is why it's coming in November, but at least it's new stuff largely brought on by Hurricane Helene. The hurricane flooded much of North Carolina. I'm a long way from it,
Nobody cares about decentralization until they do
A recurring line in discussion of federated, decentralized social media is that no one cares about it. They just want their Twitter without the Nazis. Which is okay. But how it looks on the backend matters. When the illusion of a unified user experience breaks, how accessible the escape pod
Wonder
I used to look up into the night sky and wonder. Then I went there. Among the trillions upon trillions of stars, none had that kindred spirit I longed for. I found a machine civilization, a sentient black hole (I called him Phil, which he enjoyed very much), and others
Free and affordable music production resources
This is all stuff I use or have used and still recommend as of publishing. * Black Octopus Sound has a 1GB royalty-free sampler. This was my go-to pack when I was just starting out and couldn't afford anything. * Sonniss has a huge collection of free and royalty-free sound
There is a best Digital Audio Workstation
A DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation, is a big, fancy environment for working with sound. The common truism is, to an extent, true: you can do anything in any DAW. But the more advanced you get, or the more niche your need, the more friction you'll encounter if
TV on the internet before YouTube
Just a little note to get this all in one place. This was prompted by my comment here: On-demand was a thing before, but it was mediated through slow, glitchy cable and satellite boxes. There was also a thriving scene of RSS-delivered web TV shows. * The technology (RSS) that delivers
The case against Threads
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time." - Maya Angelou It's the same case made against Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and every other profit-focused social media silo. And every time, the case is right. I'm going to call it Facebook,