This week’s email is coming at you live from my phone’s Notes app, where I stab at the screen hurriedly while sitting in a tram on the way to work. Previously I had only used Notes to performatively apologise to my fans, but it turns out it’s useful for actual notation as well (iCloud sync, baby).
Anyway, today I’d like to talk to you about music.
Specifically, the podcast Dissect. Specifically, the season focused on Frank Ocean’s album Blonde.
(Though the season on Kanye West’s album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is also amazing, I figure Ye is a tougher sell these days/always ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Dissect is a serialised album podcast. Every episode, the softly-spoken host Cole Cuchna deeply examines one great album, track by track, digging deep into the artist’s history, lyrical meaning, and music theory. Cuchna is a knowledgeable, generally chill dude who has a genuine passion for music, and he is super prepared to do the legwork. Said legwork involves reading every interview with an artist, visiting all the fan forums and subreddits where people apparently hotly debate this stuff, and (I think?) learning to play some of the music he discusses.
But there’s always a fun part in a season where he goes off the rails a bit, and you start to picture him Beautiful Mind-ing. He becomes like a frenzied musical detective (a Lester Freamon-type), with a wall full of important facts and figures, people’s faces labelled in messy handwriting and joined by wool.
In the Blonde season, this happens at the episode focused on the song “Nights”. I’m not gonna tell you what he discovers. You should listen it. And you should really listen to everything up until that episode. “All the pieces matter,” as Freamon would say.
I will say the episode blows the whole case wide open, and stopped me in my tracks.
If you don’t have time to listen to a season of a podcast (I really struggle to relate to this point of view), Vox’s Earworm series of videos is also excellent music nerd content. I especially enjoyed this episode, about Stevie Wonder’s excellent track Sir Duke.
Two By Two
Check This Out
Tandem looks like a great way to easily screenshare or snoop (in a positive way) on remote teams.
This is the “Twitter bot that mashes up emoji” you didn’t know you needed
It’s the vibe of it, it’s Mavo
(Try/Learn This)
Use upcoming fonts in your work, right now.
If you search for things related to anxiety, Pinterest will offer resources to help
An intro to Mavo, a new (to me) way to create reactive apps using pure HTML and CSS
I Can’t Quilt You
Some Silly Things
Kind Words sounds like the nicest game ever.
How can it feel like last August was a million years ago, but at the same time like two weeks ago was also a million years ago? The internet did it. I’m actually beginning to feel like writing that last paragraph was a million years ago too.
Tired: Fortnite.
Wired: Competitive Farming Simulator
Coming soon: Kafka’s The Metamorphosis: The Videogame
Finally, meet Swemp Thing. He is very good.
Call to Action
Reply to this email and share a cool thing you’ve built! And then also send me an email telling me more about yourself and your deal!
I had a few more of these lil bios come through last week, and if anything the pictures I’m receiving are getting even better. It is very nice to just have people emailing me to share how cool they are, so if a few more people do that, you too can have that feeling. If that’s not an incentive, what is?
👋 See you next week 👋
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