The SubVocal Company is a Y Combination backed startup that is focused on helping you talk to AI agents and coworkers without speaking aloud.

Subvocal detects subtle movements in your speech muscles and turns them into text at over 200 words per minute.

Our glasses send radar signals through your face. As you silently form words, tiny movements in your speech muscles change how those signals bounce back. Our AI learns from these signals and turns them into text.

So now you can control your computer without typing or speaking out loud.

This is, undeniably, insane. I respect the tech that they are developing and give them a break on the incredibly ridiculous look of the prototype but mumbling at your computer to control it seems like solving a problem that doesn't exist. I know I don't work in an office environment so I'm not the target audience but I do not care for the dystopian vision of an office full of humans kind of moving their mouths to make the computer do the next thing. Are we really so hellbent on output that typing is just unacceptable?

We're on the cutting edge of a lot of new tech. I don't want to be Old Man Yells At Cloud about any of it because I think a lot of things are going to change in the next few decades; especially how we interact with computers. This may very well be the future. Personally, I hope not but it may be!

I've had my TV since 2017. It's an Amazon Fire something or other and it is definitely showing it's age. It's unfortunate but TV's are computers now and they embrace the same planned obsolescence as any other modern tech. You may be thinking "What are you doing buying a smart TV? Buy a dumb TV and hook up an AppleTV or FireStick to it!" Sure, that's a fair critique but what if we didn't have to do that?

This Clean Your TV app seems to be tackling the problem of overly bloated software that's running on Android and Google TVs. From the looks of it, the new interface is very simple and very focused on only your apps. Which, frankly, is the only thing anyone really wants. Certainly not this. I've not run it myself because I don't have a compatible device I certainly would if I could. The code is all on GitHub, so you can point your favorite LLM at it and verify nothing malicious is going on.

Even if my TV wasn't showing it's age from bloatware, I think I would install this if I could. Turns out, TVs really are spying on you. Maybe not to the scary degree that some YouTubers would have you believe, but it is happening. Lots of things are tracking and listening to us.. can we just take our TV out of the mix? Please?

I can't believe it myself but this video about building a train for trash cans is riveting. The author does a nice job of showing the details of all the iterations they tried but never spending too much time on any of it. It just 14 minutes you see many trash trains and they just keep getting better. I am sure this took months to do and here it is all condensed and extremely satisfying.

Best Part Productions is the working moniker of brothers Chad and Trey McClarnon. Thank to weird Internet projects, I've known them both a long time. They recently finished, premiered, and toured a doozy of a feature film called The Other People. I had the pleasure of catching a screening of it and can vouch for it's craft and creepiness. It's horror but not in the Saw sense, more in the ambiguous thriller kind of way.

The brothers recently spoke with the Nashville Scene for an insightful interview. I rather enjoyed this saucy quote:

Chad: [Horror is] statistically the most profitable genre. Cinema would not exist without horror movies. The theaters would be gone years ago. Most platforms would be gone. Horror is the structure that holds cinema together.

I think my knee jerk is to raise an eyebrow to this but if you look at a list of horror movies since 2020, you will find some undeniable theatrical hits. Just thinking recently - Weapons, Obsession, Backrooms - all did very well financially and culturally. But I digress...

I wasn't sure when it would be available outside of the festival circuit but it looks like it's on Apple TV, Prime, Google Play, YouTube, et al now. It's certainly worth a watch.

It's Halloweve, so you know we gotta have a smattering of Friday Videos. Also feel free to revisit some previous offerings - 2025, 2020, 2018 (2), 2018 (1), 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and plenty more!.

Oh, and when you're done with the list below, be sure to take a cruise through the history of Heidi Klum costumes, always unhinged in the best way.

• Nosferatu Vogueing - Unfiltered joy through the visage of dracula himself.
• It’s a Wonderful Night of the Living Dead - this is, truly, deserving of its own post. 8 minute mashup of It's a Wonderful Life and Night of the Living Dead done so perfectly you can hardly believe it. It's 8 minutes but you will want so much more.
• Phantom of the Organ (Lawrence Welk Halloween, 1978) - from the Lawrence Welk Halloween Special, 1978, a true delight.
• Stefon's Hottest Halloween Tips - you've seen it. you're ready to see it again.
• Ghoulies but it's just the Ghoulies - the titular creatures of Ghoulies are on screen for all of 5 minutes. They're delightful scenes, enjoy them.
• Dead Man's Bones - Lost in the Night - 17 years between releases. Most impressive.
• KXVO Pumpkin Dance - Yes, it's the KXVO Pumpkin Dance again. Is it overplayed? Maybe. Is it a pure expression of joy and delight? Undeniably.

I have a very long list of album releases that I'd love to shed some light on but no hay mal from off to sleep has jumped to the very top of the list.

It'd be oversimplifying to call this "shoegaze" but the tags on Bandcamp give me the perfect descriptor - #gaze adjacent. There are plenty of hushed vocals, quiet-to-loud moments and a production value that speaks to many gaze properties but the whole of the work supercedes the sum of its parts. Largely this is due to the vocal delivery of Justin Ulibarri, often introverted, vulnerable, or dreamy. Inside a sea of giant guitars washing over you, it's a captivating listen. I've had this one on heavy rotation for weeks now and I don't see any signs of stopping.

I am not a game developer. I am hardly a developer at all these days. With the explosion of agentic AI, it's clear that even the most seasoned engineers are changing their ways.

Kyle Kukshtel is a seasoned engineer, game developer and one of those embracing AI... thoughtfully. The post "Your Game is a Harness" translates a 45-minute spoken presentation into a readable, entertaining, and very informative blog post. It covers a good deal of conceptual ground of how AI's operate and how best to interact with them but Kukshtel's insights are practical and easy to understand. Even as a non-programmer myself, I was glued to the goods.

Lots of other good posts in there. I'm diving into Will There Always Be Expert AI Users? now and I'm sure I'll enjoy what I find.

Like much of the Internet, I am abuzz with You Can See Everything. I won't spoil anything here but I will say, it's an incredible piece of work. I liked it and think you will too. Don't let that 3 hour runtime intimidate you, it flies by.

Once you've seen it, dig into this WIRED interview with Nathan Fielder. It gives some interesting context on how the film was made and how he approached it (with co-director Lance Oppenheim). Here's another 22 minutes with both directors from the NY Film Festival. Here's another 30 minutes with just Lance. Turn on the firehose.

When I first started working with Trash Man, we discussed some music video ideas. We both thought it would be fun to throw a tripod in a shopping cart and do your weekly grocery run at Aldi. A bit mundane on the surface but something about it felt fun (to make and to watch). After three years, we finally did it.

The new video for It's Over is the second single from his latest EP Direct Cremation and I am quite pleased with how it turned out! It's exactly as described.. Alex walking around a grocery shopping and I do find it entertaining!

Go for the shopping, stay for the largest Aldi sign you've ever seen in your life (gotta stay to the end of the video for it).

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I mentioned the work of Nick Stokes when I stumbled on the impossibly catchy jingle for Meatloaf Dippers (please watch that ASAP) but I would be remiss if I did not recommend a deep dive into the full portfolio of works from Stokes. It's a wildly varied offering - from hand drawn Harry Styles campaigns, to the best KFC ad featuring Reba Mcentire, to Miyazaki level immersions for Portland tourism. I love seeing a huge ad campaign right next to an untitled doodle, both equally enjoyable. Time well spent.

Showcase of the Stars dropped last week. On the surface, it's a cheeky music video for the Tower Defense song "Stop, I Think I've Heard This One Before"... and it is that but it is also a bunch of actual talent show performances. Over the next few weeks we'll be releasing longer cuts of some of these gems. It's a music video but also, hopefully, a serving of true public access TV goodness.

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This Max Fisher breakdown on The Oil Apocalypse is a fantastic watch. And I know you don't come to this site for insights about how the world's oil dependency is causing a financial crisis - you get that doom from plenty of other places - but this is a very straightforward, very consumable, primer on wtf is happening with many things in the world today. You're forgiven for not wanting to tune in to 35 minutes of this sort of topic but I am confident you'll come out the other side feeling better about being more informed. A little doom, sure, but a lot of understanding.

Over at yk Records, we reissued The Features 2004 major label debut Exhibit A as Exhibit A (Original Sweet Tea Mix). The process of reissuing a record requires going back through a lot of the original material - it's a blast! The upside to all that digging is that you occasionally get the chance to revive some gems from that era and, ideally, make them a little better.

One great example is the video for "There's a Million Ways to Sing The Blues." The original was released in 2004 and still looks great... but you can certainly tell it's from 2004. Director Chad Denning was able to source the original files and restore them into more modern standards. The results are pristine! The video is such a clever and artful use of projectors - creating layers on layers both behind and on top of the bands performance. I love the shots where the band is sitting perfectly still while the projection is going nuts. Here's some more choice GIFs from the video.

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I know zilch about the band half•alive but I recently stumbled on this rather incredible music video trifecta and I'd say they're certainly a band worth learning more about. The video is a highly choreographed piece for three songs - "Billions", "The Wolf" and "The Wonder." Executed and shot wonderfully. You may not have time for a 10-minute video but it's three songs! Watch it in parts!

I'd love to see a behind-the-scenes on all this.

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The NYC Subway system occasionally has vendors underground - variants of newspaper stands and bodegas. Maybe a Gyro stand, perhaps? But it turns out there's over 100 of those shops just sitting empty. Maybe people don't want to buy a Gyro from a subway bodega??

So the Metro Transit Authority has been bestowing some of the empty spaces to artists to create their own installations. It's called the Vacant Unit Activation Program. One great example is Rex's Dino Store - a seven foot tall paper mache dinosaur selling a number of customized (and pun-heavy) items. A delight if you ask me!

There are plenty more examples - past and present - but you're going to be hard pressed to beat that dino.

I want to take time to discuss the work of Nick Stokes but I'll do that separetely. For now, let's focus on Meatloaf Dippers - an incredibly infectious jingle for the signature dish at Howard's restaurant in Stillwater, MN - courtesy of Bon Iver with animations by the aforementioned Stokes. It feels straight outta School House Rocks. Absolute delight.

Truly can't believe I used to post Friday Videos weekly. How!? There's more video than ever these days but the time to see it all seems more fleeting. Anyway.. let's not ponder that!

Found this cover GIF from Stinky Zaba and I gotta say.. been a minute since I browsed a Giphy account but that one really satisfied.

Here we go...

• Dave Mustaine Concert Etiquette - a true gem.
• Kathy Don't Go! - sometimes Found Footage Fest founds a true bop. You gotta make it at least 90 seconds for the full enjoyment.
• Edward Furlong, "I'll Be Waiting" - absolute endurance challenge. Yea, you can make it through the narrated intro but can you make it through the song?? Big props for the SMB style title card.
• David Faustino, "I Told Ya" - what's that? You want more actor-to-musician cringe videos from the 90s? Bud Bundy delivers! Honestly, it's awkward but is it awful? Only one way to know.
• Stool Scanner - I believe this is a real product. The infographics are next level.
• Watch this Dove Hydrate in Seconds - it really does it.
• How Americans see EU Tech - unbelievably accurate. Ten minutes but satisfying start to finish.

The Mac Buttons Timeline is a single serving site documenting the Mac button styles from 1984 to 2026. Single purpose and shockingly satisfying.

I accidentally took a hiatus from my podcast - YK WORLD - but finally found the time to finish researching, writing, recording and editing the latest episode. So, we're back! It's a beefy one but I think quite enjoyable (I am certainly biased). Streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music give people access to a wealth of music but the payment systems are rather stacked against an independent creator. I don't fault anyone for having a subscription with a streamer (I have one myself) but if you're the type of person that seeks to support music directly, you must seek alternatives.

I've been a champion of Bandcamp for a long time. They do a great job of supporting independent creators. Their revenue share is fair and the value they provide is undeniable. Over the last few years they've hit some rocky shores - selling themselves to Epic Games, selling again to SongTradr, firing a ton of people along the way and then, again, having layoffs as recently as 2026. That tumultuous existence has led others to start their own versions of Bandcamp. There are tons of them out there.

That's all the preamble to the episode to say - let's explore those Alternative Music Platforms. I come up with a scorecard for judging each one and dive into what they offer. Bandcamp sets the baseline but Subvert, Ratio and Ampwall are all bringing something very interesting to the table as well.

The episode is not about choosing a side - streamer vs music platform. As an independent creator, you sorta gotta do it all. But it is my opinion that there will be more chance at success, validation and enjoyment if you invest time in one (or more) of these platforms.

The episode is on the web but it's also in every podcast app. Just search for "YK World."

Also there's a wild ambient soundtrack to the whole thing by Mac Burrus that I really want to release on its own. Stay tuned for that.

We're entering a delightful new era of desktop pets. Case in point, CAT.EXE - a little pixelated feline that runs around the bottom of your screen. It walks, it sleeps, it baps! You can even pick it up and drop it if ya like, it always lands on its feet.

Cute. Fun. Done.