Recently I've been playing a lot of Snood - the 1996 Mac OS puzzle game. I did not have a Mac in 1996, so there's no nostalgia for me here - I'm just enjoying the weird characters and just challenging enough gameplay. I'm also learning that "Snood" is that fleshy protuberance on a turkey forehead and, in more modern parlance, a turtleneck + scarf combo. One could argue that those popular face coverings being leveraged by police / ICE agents are snoods. I welcome referring to them as exactly that.
But you aren't here to be reminded ICE exists, you're here for distractions. Honestly, the best thing you'll see this year is here but embedding Instagram is a pain, so you'll have to click through. Otherwise, here we go!
Breakdance Fight - a Friday Video style classic: a b-movie fight that doubles as a ballet breakdance.
Keyes on Van Nuys - endurance challenge. It's only 30seconds but it's maddening.
Tape Bowing Ensemble - this made the rounds a few weeks ago but if you missed it, do watch it. Playing Tape Machines with bows.. unbelievably cool.
If Deftones Wrote "Paranoid Android" - the ole Deftones are having a bit of a resurgence in 2025 (thanks to TikTok, I think?). This mashup cover from Mac Glocky is pretty spot on, imo.
Karl Pilkington in Zelda, Mountain Trail - it's also been a long minute since I thought about Karl Pilkington but this channel has created an unbelievable mash-up from his travel show and Zelda footage. Stranger still, there's lots more of it.
Star Trek Pen Infomerical - go for the transporter pen but please stay at least 28s for the phone operator. Please!
The Defy Film Festival turned 10 this year. I've been attending for the last few years and am always struck by the programming. They do such a great job with including a wide range of genres and never let the festival get too big. It's just the right size every year - 2 days, lots of films, no exhaustion just enjoyment.
For the 10-year gathering they released a zine at the festival for folks to pick up and asked me to contribute something. I didn't have much direction in my prompt but was inspired by the diversity of the festival. So, I put together a playlist of local Nashville artists that I think exemplified the kind of diversity that Defy embodies. While the film festival showcases experimental, horror, comedy, documentary and all emotional points in between - I tried to do something similar with this playlist showcasing the psychedelic, hip-hop, art rock, electro dance and more.
The playlist is available on Spotify and on YouTube. I hope you will take some time to give it a listen and discover something meaningful. Defy has done that for me for years and I hope this playlist will do it for you.
The band Paramore has always been on my periphery. They're from the same town I grew up in (Franklin, TN). They had a song mashed up with Apollo Up! - one of my favorite local bands. They even, supposedly, had a run in with my old boss as their potential manager way back at the start of their career (a great, possibly apocryphal, story I will happily tell you in person). It really wasn't until the band released "This is Why" that I fully locked in.
All that to say, when Hayley Williams released 17 standalone singles as part of a new solo endeavor, I was quite intrigued! The Scene has a great rundown on the whole endeavor if you are so inclined to learn more. Mostly I'd recommend starting with "Glum" and "Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party" - the former being an excellent addition to your "Perfect Songs for Melancholia" playlist and the latter being a highly respectable scathing review of the state of affairs in Nashville.
I'd also recommend taking some time to investigate the solo works of Paramore drummer Zac Farro (who, up until recently, performed as Halfnoise).
I do not know when this image is from but all details beyond its existence are irrelevant. I wanted to archive a version of it here on the site to ensure it was never lost in the Internet.
Last week, yk Records released the newest single from Jessica Breanne entitled "Over the Bayou." The accompanying video was shot in Caddo Lake and Uncertain, TX - a real place.
Breanne's voice is soulful and a bit rootsy, quite a contrast from a 30-minute experimental electronic, high concept sugar sk*-*lls EP but I see that as a good thing! YK Records maybe suffers from not having one aural identity but I'm happy to be involved with good music, in all forms. I hope you enjoy.
Found myself recently immersed in AUX, a site that combines bits of Reddit, Turntable.fm and StumbleUpon. There's a live element where you can watch videos submitted by community members but there's also an archival list of videos, website and other ephemera that the community votes on with a limited amount of faux currency (which is, surprisingly, on chain but don't let that dissuade you!)
I must admit, it largely reminds me of the original VHX. Long before it was acquired by Vimeo, even long before it was a platform for selling video directly to an audience at all, VHX was a space to watch video content shared from friends. I'm not saying AUX is even aware of VHX but there's a really nice familiarity there that will keep me coming back.
Presumably you have seen this Atlantic piece on AI Is a Mass-Delusion Event from Charlie Warzel. If you've only seen the headline and not dug in, now's a great time. The majority of the article runs through some hand wringing about the future we are building or, rather, having built for us by tech giants. Overall, it summarizes a great deal of the meaningful concerns that the technologically aware have and expresses them quite eloquently.
I consider myself "Pro AI" in general but not without plenty of concerns for how it is being used, how it is being regulated and where it may be headed. Put more eloquently by Warzel:
This is the AI era in a nutshell. Squint one way, and you can portray it as the saving grace of the world economy. Look at it more closely, and it’s a ticking time bomb lodged in the global financial system. The conversation is always polarized. Keep the faith.
The summation of the piece focuses on the shakiness of LLM responses and how quick tech companies are to force this Good Enough response down our throats. Hallucinations, Sycophantic Agreeability or just Ill Informed Responses are the norm and there's no lever to force improvement - only general market competition (which is sufficient at the moment).
I think we've all done ourselves a disservice by conflating "LLM's" with the general term "AI" - as one is a subset of the other. I'm no masterful thinker on this topic but AI has a lot of room to grow, LLM's may be hitting a ceiling. That's okay.
We just need a way to hold companies accountable for the Good Enough issue. Not sure what that looks like but it's gotta be something rather than nothing.
It takes longer to compile a solid list of Friday Videos these days but let's be honest, your Instagram and TikTok apps are keeping you plenty fed on nonsense. This is just a bonus.
What's that cover image? I haven't the slightest clue.
The Ballon Dare - I recently caught this on Instagram and enjoyed every single second of it. I look forward to any number of imitators.
Friendship extended scene - this is one of many extended cuts between Tim Robinson and Connor O'Malley. When Robinson says "What kind of guy are you!?" I lose it. I love this so much.
Aphex Twin - "Korg Funk 5" - artist Nadia Lee Cohen reimagined this 2017 track into what I'm calling a psychedelic Suspiria but others have called a "surrealist Hollywood hellscape." Tomato, Tomatoe.
It's rare when one of my favorite bands releases a new b-side from an album that is celebrating its twentieth anniversary. So, Supergrass releasing "Don't Leave Me Alone" from the 2005 album Road to Rouen was noteworthy. Is it my favorite Supergrass song? No. BUT it's new/old Supergrass and for that I am very thankful.
sugar sk*-*lls and Coupler have been collaborating for, roughly, 25 years. Ben Marcantel and Ryan Norris met in college around 2000 and found a shared interest in electronic music; particularly within the experimental and ambient realms. They have worked together on a number of projects over the decades and just recently announced a new one!
The Great Oxidation Event is a conceptual piece that manifests in three parts. To really comprehend the idea behind it all, it's worth explaining what that title is referring to...
“The Great Oxidation Event” was an environmental event caused by the development of early unicellular life releasing a mass amount of oxygen into the atmosphere and oceans, killing nearly everything but, eventually, resulting in life as we know it.
The three movements they have created, loosely, represent the stages of early life evolving, the planetary destruction and eventual oxygenic rebirth. For Part 1, Marcantel created this video - a fascinating hybrid of oceanic videos processed through code and effects. There's a metaphor for their electronic work in there somewhere but I'll let you jumble that one around on your own.
In 2025, a 9 minute music video may be asking too much of your time but this is one worth immersing yourself in. The visuals are beautiful and the journey is anxious. Turn off the lights and put this on your biggest screen.
Throughout the video a cellular visual will appear and I can not get them out of my head. Below is an example - I just love them so much.
This is vaguely noteworthy in itself but tapping through to read the replies from people is really a wonderful microcosm of why social media stinks. Google, a giant corporation that has next to zero impetus to do anything resembling good will, pairs up with a respectable type foundry to create a new typeface with 12 variations (Light -> ExtraBold) and then makes it free for anyone to use. The feedback? Curly braces hate. :facepalm:
Anyway, I think it's a nice looking font and worth giving it a spin. Also take a look at Hack or Input Mono or IBM Plex Sans. There's lots of options and all kinds of curly braces.
As of Sept 30, 2025, AOL will discontinue its dial-up service. I think anyone reading those words in 2025 will have likely assumed that AOL had shut down the dial-up service long ago but, nope! According to the article, there's still at least 163,000+ users accessing the Internet via this method and I imagine there are more in rural areas that use other services.
Obviously it's nostalgia but that modem handshake sound still tickles a positive part of my brain. RIP AOL Dial-up!
There's a scene in 30 Rock where GE CEO Jack Donaghy shares this flowchart of investments and ownership from the mega corporation - the joke being that GE doesn't release creative things, those kinds of endeavors are taken on by the lesser corps. Also, very funny that GE owns both a wig company and a "Party Meats" company (a subsidiary of Winnipeg Iron Works).
Of course, that joke is actually not really a joke because that is exactly how giant megacorps work. Case in point, research firm Water & Music has a similar chart they call the Music-Tech Ownership Ouroboros. In their own words, the chart's goal is:
Mapping the globalization and financialization of power in music and tech, with a focus on the rise in investments from media conglomerates, sovereign wealth funds, and private equity firms.
As you cruise around you may see interesting relationships like BlackRock is a top investor in Warner Music Group which has a 3% share in French streaming media platform Deezer. Or Sony Music Entertainment - which owns music distributor The Orchard - is owned by the Sony Corporation, which is an investor in Epic Games, which is an investor in Songtradr, which owns Bandcamp.
I'm not drawing any particular conclusion from this, I'm just remarking that it's an interesting bit of data to poke around in (tho, by their own admission, incomplete. Being 100% exhaustive would be impossible). Also worth noting that it's very well visualized - kudos to their flow charter.
When I was doing design mockups at VHX for clients, I would often use Hipster Ipsum for my filler text. It's a silly little twist on Loreum Ipsum copy that gave me a good chuckle. Without fail, the client would make a remark about the goofiness of the filler text. I wouldn't call it distracting but it did defeat the purpose of using gibberish text.
This list of fonts for wireframing would have been nice to have at hand. Little squibbles or random length rectangles would prevent the client from getting too hung up on text like " Snackwave pour-over small batch, artisan single-origin coffee same ramps tbh austin." Guess I'll go snag Redacted Script right away!
Laila directed me towards this piece on Designers! Designers! Designers! - a nice writeup about the role of Designers in a world where AI is demystifying app development. As the Preston Atterbery post (above) says:
"Once everyone can make an app, we will remember that the hard part about apps isn't making the app"
I'll let you go read the article (it's good) but the part that struck me the most was the bit about a Super IC, an Individual Contributor that does design, product strategy, engineering and, who knows, maybe a dash of marketing! We are living in interesting times to say the least. My gut says that burdening a designer with that many roles isn't going to result in a good end product. But the other hand says, the tooling may be nearing a point where making a proof-of-concept really isn't much effort, so why not dive in?
I'm not holding a strong opinion here because I think we're in a fluctuating time. Companies need to be responsible about the requirements they put on employees and folks need to be open to stretching outside their norms a little bit.
This 28-minute video essay on Undeclared: Why The Spin-off Failed is quite satisfying. There's a long list of shows that, for whatever reason, I've found myself a fan of but they've never lasted very long - Undeclared is one of them. If you've never seen it, I'm not surprised! After Freaks & Geeks, Judd Apatow went on to make a half hour sitcom about a group of college kids and their adjustments to the new found freedom. It may not have aged well but it hit the spot back in 2001.
Moreso tho, the video does a great job of cataloging the history of Judd Apatow's early works, his stumbles and how he shoehorned in a "backdoor pilot" for a spinoff of a show that was cancelled before it ever took off. The list of shows is impressive but the list of talent involved is even wilder - an absurd number of very funny people involved here that would find success much later. Apatow was just too early!
Vaguely related: if you have the means to poke around and find episodes of Other Space, Hyperdrive, Nathan Barley or No Heroics - you'll likely enjoy what you find.
Some years back, my friend Elizabeth Williams co-founded a design business entitled New Hat. She (along with her biz partner Kelly Diehl) took on a myriad of great projects - most notably a series of customwallpapersallovertown. Over the years, the design agency grew and morphed into focusing more on art projects; the latest of which is a giant art installation at the Nashville airport - Twine With My Mingles.
This Scene article walks through the process, the materials and the inspiration of it all. If it's not clear from a glance, the entire tapestry is woven wristbands - the same kind of Tyvek bands you'd get at a concert or festival. I've yet to see the whole thing in person but every single photo I've seen of it has been absolutely stunning.
Remember when the Friend pendant reveal trailer was released a year ago and the general reaction was "Is this a Black Mirror parody?" People could not comprehend wearing a small device that hears and sees everything you do all day and you can talk to it. Myself included among those raising an eyebrow.
Well, the device is now available to order. $129 one time fee, no subscription. That's the headline.
This Fortune article has more insight about Friend founder Avi Schiffman but most of the press coverage I've* seen is actually with Adam Lisagor of Sandwich video. For example, this episode of the Primary Technology podcast interviews Lisagor and trailer director Kailee McGee about the tech itself, the trailer, the vitriolic backlash and this genre of device in general. This was posted a year ago but I'm just now enjoying it.
Only recently have I come to think of this kind of device less as "a device" and more about "AI companions." I don't even know how I feel about any AI companion! It's a slippery zone for sure. But this is all brand new, so there will be pitfalls and there will be leaps in advancements. It's fascinating to say the least. I'm very much looking forward to a proper review of the device and living with it for a little bit.
* I'm biased in where I look. I know there's plenty of other coverage
Social media has watered down the "Internet" to a handful of sites hellbent on keeping you from going anywhere outside of that experience. But don't let that trick you into thinking there isn't some wild and enjoyable and wildly enjoyable websites still awaiting you perusal!
Emergence is one such destination. Aesthetically, it's absolutely stunning - an other worldly vibe akin to Fantastic Planet or Skyway Man. Sci-fi meets folk with deep, rich, traditions. The Shop has a slightly different vibe - a real world version of the prior aesthetic. It all works together very nicely.
The content could be boiled down to "art gallery" but that's kind of missing the point. There's a history being told here through the various tapestries - each enjoyed on a new level if you take time to read the supporting info that goes with each.
The story behind it all is enjoyable to unwind and contemplate for awhile. I urge you to read the Story page and heavily consider the artworks intro - which serves as a great reminder that tapestry threads make up a larger whole of which they are unaware. Even better said:
No matter how great you become, you will never know the pattern you are forming.
Back in 2023, Minneapolis band 12RODS reformed after a long hiatus. Possibly controversial as none of the original members aside from singer/ songwriter Ryan Olcott were part of the reformation but a new EP that same year was well received.
Along with that EP, the band has continuously been releasing their old demos over ensuing years. As a longtime fan, being able to hear the bones of the songs that I've loved for decades is a real treat.
These Block Rockin' Demos are from 1998; when the band began work on their 2000 album Separation Anxieties. If you've not heard the proper record, go treat yourself - it's a delight. Then come back to these demos and appreciate how fully realized many of them were and how far many of them became.
It seems the new incarnation of 12RODS has already Come to an end - with Olcott citing difficulties within the band and commenting: "ive poured out enough. Dont really see any reason or incentives that I should do more." Heavy!
It's a shame that the new incarnation may be over but I'm appreciative that they have shared so much of themselves and their process along the way.
