S2:E1: Sorry I just have to jump off this Zoom for another Zoom
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Oh yay, a preamble!
In 2019(!) I concluded “Season 1” of this newsletter due to the arrival of my daughter into this world. I figured I’d probably take a good amount of time off, maybe six months or so, until my/the world had “settled down” and I had some time to dedicate to this.
While I’m still waiting on the world to “settle down”, I think the time has come for a season 2. I’m not sure what final shape it will take but rather than worrying about that, let’s just dive in. (Of the unsettled nature of the world in 2020 to now, I will say: I hope everyone receiving this is doing OK, and the various crises haven’t touched you or your loved ones too directly.)
With that necessary throat-clearing out of the way: today’s email will be some new stuff, plus some stuff I enjoyed during the intervening decade that was 2020.
So I’m thinking I’ll start off doing these monthly while I work out scheduling and things. Babies take up a lot of time!
This time in “everything is a metaphor, nothing is real”:
Tab-FS turns your open tabs into a file system, which lets you do (nearly) everything you do with files, but with websites, instead. What are websites, anyway? What are files?
The electronic musician Kieren Hebden, most commonly know as Four Tet, also has several other aliases and projects, including ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ As far as I know that name doesn’t mean anything, but neither does Four Tet, no? It’s fun though. And he follows through on the bit:
Just look at this review of two new-ish albums which bring under the Four Tet name previously released material for ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ Any attempt to cite their original album names sees weird unicode leaking down the page. I would love to see how their CMS handled it. I’m kinda interested to see how your email app handled it.
For more, here’s his Spotify playlist:📍☢️🧘♀️🦕⓪≽◟⋌⋚⋛⋋◞≼⓪̵̨̛̱̥͕́̎́̐͝/̸̠̜̅̐͊̋̿̐̓\̸̧͔̰̳̦̣̪̈̏̓🧞♀️❄️🏵 ꑡ᷉ˋ͈ˊ͈ꑡ᷉༄🎷🔋̵̨̛̱̥͕́̎́̐͝/̸̠̜̅̐☢️📍 – Four Tet (The Substack CMS panicked over that one.)
And his long-running (since October) live YouTube video - 🔴🌏⭕🔵🌕📀🌍⚫💿🌎🐦🐧🐤🌎💿⚫🌍📀🌕🔵⭕🌏🔴 . I’ve been visiting every few days and he’s gone from (I think?) an actual live set, to a recorded progression (suite?), to debuting new tracks, to its current incarnation as a single morphing track and videos. I love projects like this where it’s not clear what’s planned, or if there is planning. The video regularly has some of the nicest chat on the internet, too.
Related: read this article about the genre/aesthetic/vibe glitchcore, and then listen to this Song Exploder episode about the band 100 gecs and how they played at a Minecraft musical festival. It all makes me feel like a frozen caveman who was thawed and then given a computer. But in a good way.
Since it’s been a minute, let me remind you. I’m Adam and this is Parentheses, a regular missive covering positive, inspiring, slightly nerdy stuff for you positive, inspiring, slightly nerdy people. You hopefully signed up on purpose; you can always unsubscribe using the button below.
A couple of coding-as-art Instagram accounts you should add to your particular mix: Generative Hut, which has some lovely image curation, along with tutorials! And Pr0ject Polygon, which is mainly made in JavaScript library p5. Need just one image to entice you? Vaporwave Sunset, baby!
The Science Museum Group with a fantastic, simple new idea: be the first to see an item in their collection. I got this guy.
The Traveling Swordsman Problem: a YouTuber is playing through Zelda: Breath of the Wild without ever crossing their own trail. A brilliant, creative way to play one of the best games ever made. I’m not saying every minute of every video is captivating, but watch a few minutes to see someone agonise over a very simple task that other people complete without thinking. Extremely relatable content.
This edition’s trust me: last year I somehow got access to a beta of Holovista, an immersive augmented reality puzzle game focused on the intersection of social media and our lives. You should pick it up if you’ve ever worried about how much you care about social media. Yes, it’s a game where you do social media.
Here are a few newsletters I’ve been enjoying lately. I might keep doing this as a sort of “blog roll”. I am subscribed to too many newsletters.
Money Stuff (daily) - Matt Levine at Bloomberg discusses all the interesting, often stupid things in the world of finance. Makes me feel like I know a lot about finance.
Bnet (thrice a week) - Brian Feldman shares fun internet stuff. This often makes me feel out of touch with internet culture, but in a good way.
Platformer (daily, paid) - Casey Newton covers the intersection of social media and politics better than anyone else.
Drawing Links (one email for free subs) - Edith Zimmerman shares these wonderful, surprising comics about her life. Very good vibes on this one!
And you’re subscribed to Robin Sloan’s already, right?
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Finally, some recommendations for things that aren’t online:
Read:
Lurking: How a Person Became a User: Joanne McNeil
New Waves: Kevin Nguyen
Uncanny Valley: Anna Wiener
The City We Became: NK Jemisin
Annabel Scheme and the Adventures of the New Golden Gate: Robin Sloan
Watch:
Watch a series of movies (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings). During the second Melbourne lockdown last year, my wife and I watched a Star Wars movie every Friday, then did the same with Harry Potter. There’s something about having that locked in, as an event once a week, that helps psychologically with dealing with lockdown….
…..
OK so fine if you’re asking, we watched Star Wars in episode number order. So Phantom Menace, Clones, Revenge of the Sith, New Hope… etc. This is a good order in my view because it starts off hilariously bad, then the middle is extremely good, then the newer ones are rocky (but arguably have a top three episode in the Last Jedi), and then we end on hilariously bad territory again. Do you disagree with me? Would you like to discuss this?
That’s all for now. It’s good to be back! I would love to hear from you if you have the will to email with an update on how you are and what cool things you did in the last year and a bit. But either way, I hope you’re doing well and wish you well in your next Zoom meeting.