It's fair to say I'm a big fan of the Skull Trumpet - the one second absurd video meme. I don't really care about the world of alternate doots or orchestra doots or HD Doots (tho I do appreciate a Clarinet Doot). Meme culture always takes a good joke too far but I can still appreciate the original.

I enjoy it so much that when this 45-minute video on the origins of the Skull Trumpet came my way, I watched it immediately, in full. It's a well done dive into how the graphic was made and where it actually came from. Watch it and you'll know the true name of the meme, who made it and where they are now. What more could you ask for?

Like many of us, I have too many tabs open. Here's a smattering of what I currently have open to give myself the permission to close them for good.

• Please Honk, I'm Texting Bumper Sticker - we all know someone that needs this.
• monFade - modest stadik - new side project of this guy that embraces lo-fi studio tools. It's all instrumental and beat based and I am really enjoying it. A more proper review would be appropriate but I'm doing my best to spread the word here.
• macOSpilot AI Assistant - intrigued by this add-on that "answers your questions about anything, in any application." Basically, it takes a screenshot of what you're doing, sends it to ChatGPT Vision and tries to answer your question. The demo isn't all that speedy but the promise is undeniable.
• Precision Pressing Pricing - not really relevant to most folks but this vinyl manufacturing pricing is nuts. I'd be a fool not to try this?
• Grant Lindberg - "Too Fast" - at one point in time, Grant and I talked all the time. We drifted for no particular reason but I've been keeping up with his latest musical output and it's quite good. He's even got Kellii Scott from Failure playing drums on a number of these tracks.
• Various Artists - El Teatro Esta Cerrado (The Theater is Closed) - this compilation was released by a label I enjoy called Dead Currencies. They often do short run lathe cut vinyl for some of their releases and always have an interesting smattering of musical styles. This is a nice sampler to get familiar with them. The Mount Olympic track is a nice place to start and the High Aura'd track is destined for your Halloween playlist.
• Faircamp - is this meant to be a Bandcamp alternative? It certainly looks like it and I'm very keen to figure out how it works under the hood.

Even if you have zero interest in running your own LLM, this is an excellent rallying cry for open source solutions as the way forward

The recent Spotify layoffs were unfortunate, like all layoffs are. One of those laid off was Glenn McDonald, originally of The Echo Nest and creator of Every Noise at Once. One of the extra unfortunate byproducts of that downsizing is that Every Noise at Once no longer functions.

For the unfamiliar, Every Noise at Once was a massive mapping of every genre that appeared in Spotify as a giant word cloud that you could easily sample. Want to know what "Lithuanian EDM" sounds like? "Czech Electronic"? "Doomcore"? "Lezginka"? "Post-Grunge"? It's all there as a giant word cloud jumping off point to hear something new. There were many additional projects that involve a lot of data wrangling - so much that it boggles the mind (see "Every Record Label at Once, 2023 Around the World, The Approaching Worms of Christmas). Many of these still work but some relied on internal scripts that McDonald ran while he was employed. After his termination, that is no longer an option.

One major feature that was offered was "New Releases by Genre." By itself that's a powerful tool but there was an additional level of filtering by region. For years, I referenced the Nashville New Hip-Hop Releases, an absolutely crucial list of information that is nearly impossible to find anywhere else. It's gone now. Reading through McDonald's blog about the project, it won't be coming back either. Spotify's API does not offer the data in such a way that this information even could be retrieved. A real bummer.

The upside is that good things come from fresh starts. McDonald's blog has loads of interesting and meaningful insights about the work he did and what he's looking to do moving forward.. neither of which would have happened had the site not been turned off. It operated for ten years.. not a bad run. RIP Every Noise at Once.

If you're a fan of this blog, you likely need no introduction to the names Jean-Jacques Perrey or Gershon Kingsley; two absolute pioneers of electronic music.

This episode of "I've Got a Secret" from 1966 has both of them appearing and performing a track from their collaborative album The In Sound from Way Out (no, not the Beastie Boys record of the same name). They don't actually sit down to play until about 8 minutes in but the rest of the video is entertaining enough for a viewing.

I'm a little late on this one for maximum 2023 enjoyment but please tuck this NIN Christmas Album away for 2024. Jump ahead to "4:43" for "Last (Christmas)" and you'll be giving yourself the greatest gift.

If you encounter a commercial from the late 80's featuring a bunch of adults dressed as vegetables singing about how to stay healthy.. well, you save it and hope it inspires a niche Halloween costume for someone, somewhere, someday.

Gotta be honest, 2023 was weird. So much stuff happened that it doesn't even feel like a single year in the slightest.

In January, Vimeo laid off 11% of the workforce. My job was spared but many many people on my team were not. We were given a new boss and told "you're on your own" - meaning that Vimeo OTT (fka VHX) was not a priority and we should figure out how to be successful without interaction from the larger org. I am happy to say that the remaining team - including the new boss - were fantastic and absolutely crushed. Seriously inspiring to see such a small squad take on so much and actually make it work!

After 11 years of working on VHX / Vimeo OTT, I didn't have the gusto to continue. I departed and now work at Mosaic. My new role is focused on using generative AI to power apps and improve internal workflows. It's a breath of fresh air to say the least!

Due to the eight months of intensity of Vimeo, I ended up neglecting some of my side projects. We Own This Town hasn't published so little in years. My own podcast put out fifteen episodes this year. Last year I put out 52. It's not a great feeling but it also provided me with an opportunity to actually think about what I'm doing any regroup a bit.

On the positive side, yk Records released twelve treats this year and I'm extremely happy with all of them. I'm planning on writing up a more in-depth bit about the label but we'll see if that actually happens. I often feel weird posting these long personal updates but, hey, it is a blog after all. Where else should I put this information?!

I'll close out with some lists of enjoyables from the past year that have found their way into my regular routine. Maybe they'll find their way into yours as well.

• Ben's Bites - daily email of AI news and projects to take note of. Someone recently commented to me about AI, "There's no going back." I think this is true, so you might as well be brushed up on what's happening.
• Today in Tabs - I've mentioned this before but it's a great grab bag of Internet absurdity. Sometimes the writing is so dense that it's incomprehensible but you'll adjust. If you're into Internet Culture, this is a good way to stay abreast of it all.
• Garbage Day - this pairs well with Today in Tabs but tends to be more long form reflective than a barrage of links. I've really enjoyed many of the insights here.
• Stretchery - new to me but I'm sure old hat to many. Lots of tech industry reflections, insights and pulling together strings over time. Thoughtful. A great one to spend real time with.
• What the F**k Just Happened Today? - a daily newsletter summarizing the top headlines. You can have your NYT newsletter, WTFJHT breaks it down quite nicely for me.

In terms of other goodies for the year, I keep on ongoing playlist of songs that I enjoyed throughout the year. I don't know that I'd call this a "Best Of" list but if a song strikes me, I toss it in there.

Next year, I hope to launch a few new projects and clean up some technical debt here at ole yewknee dot com. I'm 100% confident the commenting system doesn't work anymore and that makes me think it's time for another simplified redesign. We shall see.

If you made it here, thanks for continuing to read. I've had this site for 22 years and hope to have it for many more! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

I know the answer to my question is "ego" but why would he do this show? I understand Ziwe is not considered a journalist but she is considered no bullshit! Santos is all bullshit!

Anyway, Must See TV is back.

TIL about the existence of OK Soda, a Coca-Cola failure from the early 90's that embraced nihilism and negative publicity in an attempt to reach a Gen X demographic. If that weren't weird enough, the can designs were done by Daniel Clowes (of Ghost World), Charles Burns (of The Believe) and Calef Brown. The soda even had a manifesto that consisted of eye-rolling catchphrases like "What's the point of OK? Well, what's the point of anything?" Brilliant.

Unsurprisingly, it flopped but it seems this "Coca-Cola Company" is doing alright despite that.

Of course, nothing is niche anymore so there's 20-minute deep dives on YouTube, exhaustive histories and plenty of think pieces - should you care to dive deeper. It's worth it to see the can art which, frankly, was legitmately great all around.

The title is really all you need. Enjoy these Fruit-Shaped Bus Stops in Konagai, Japan. You can also look them up on Google Maps and see them with slightly more context.

I've watched a great deal of Taskmaster, the British competition / comedy show hosted by Greg Davies and Alex Horne. And by "great deal" I mean I've seen every episode and enjoyed each of them. Even the weird Christmas one-off specials.

YouTube knows this and has now started urging me to watch Taskmaster New Zealand, the same show with different hosts and different comedians. I am not particularly sold on it yet but all that is just context to why I'm sharing this Paul Williams video.

Williams is the co-host of the New Zealand version of Taskmaster and his stinted personality on the show is certainly not that of a pop star singing falsetto and hitting some undeniably impressive choreography. Worth noting, some of those dance moves are shared with Rose Matafeo and Brynley Stent - both New Zealand comedians who have also appeared on Taskmaster.

No dots to connect here beyond that; just found it enjoyably interesting.

David Cross has a new podcast called Senses Working Overtime (inspired by the XTC Classic) in which he interviews guests at length about anything and everything. There's a conceit that he's going to interview these guests about their actual senses - i.e. "What's the loudest sound you've ever heard?" - but based on the two episodes I've listened to, that's nothing more than a safety net.

Anyway, David Cross interviewing Bob Odenkirk - that's really all you need to know. It's goofy. It's great. It's something you want to listen to.

The rest of the show, thus far, is also enjoyable. Put it in your podcast app.

15 months of negotiation dropped. Pretty surprising turn of events! 2023 isn't done with us yet!

It’s the history of Yahoo Pipes! How could you NOT want to read it?

The folks at Runway are pitching a new idea called General World Models which essentially boils down to training an AI on text, video, audio and other multimodal inputs. Pretty sure this was already happening anyway with GPT4 and others but they have packaged it up rather nicely. The video is really well made and makes a great case for them. Worth a watch to say the least.

if you ever wondered what the future would look like, here it is. there is a twinge of uncanny valley but it is mostly believable all around. text to news anchor. wild.

TIL the whole 50 albums thing was just a PR stunt

if you have not seen it, you need to see it. The Verge created a wonderful archive of Good Tweets as a eulogy to the service.

Back in June, Tower Defense released their single for "Running Out" (backed by a killer B-52s cover). They even shot a video around the same time! Well, the wait is finally over and I gotta tell ya, the wait was worth it!

Everyone in the band sings but it's rare that Jereme (drummer) sings lead. So, the band really pulled out all the stops for this one in celebration. The production is homegrown but entertaining as hell. It's clear the band is having a great time and I love to see it.

The video really kicks up around 45s and gets nuts at 90s. Treat yourself with this little gem. The single is available on Bandcamp and streaming everywhere, too.