What YouTube was made to share

Happy to report I've been getting into Finnish instrumental/surf rock band Laika & The Cosmonauts. I'm also happy to report that it's delightful to say aloud that you're getting into a Finnish instrumental/surf rock band.

Topshelf Records recently tweeted that Bandcamp had contacted them to petition them to cease supporting the unionization of employees at Bandcamp. The thread is a worthwhile read and, certainly, a surprising one.

Bandcamp has always been a service that I admire. I've been a fan since the very early days, sing its praises often and leverage it as the primary hub for audience building on yk Records. Reading that they are working against unionization is disheartening and surprising. If any company is going to get the benefits of unionizing; it seems like it would be a company that helps independent musicians build a career.

The workers organizing to form the union - Bandcamp United - have not called for any action against Bandcamp; they're just working through the process of trying to establish their charter and not be squashed before things are even given a chance to begin.

This Game Developer piece has an update on the proceedings but I'm a little unclear on the timeline. The article is from Apr 6th with clear commentary from Bandcamp co-founder Ethan Diamond but the Topshelf Records tweets are from the next day. So, did Bandcamp contact Topshelf to ask them not to support the union after Diamond said Bandcamp was open to the union? Perplexing!

I was optimistic that Bandcamp being acquired by Epic Games wouldn't lead to much but I also knew that could be naive. It's all early days right now but certainly a topic to keep a look out for.

Bookmarking so I don’t forget this exists but also letting you know this looks quite useful.

Seeing these advances in AI tools is blowing my mind. I feel 100% the opposite of how Bitcoin made me feel. The usability of this is obvious and exciting. There’s some scary aspects too but mostly it’s just wildly cool.

An intriguing thought piece on how AI images are homogenizing history through a lack of context. Sort of a tricky piece because the images are just silly selfies but there’s lots of quality ideas here to roll around in your noggin.

for a long period of time, I was very into this Minneapolis band. They broke up years ago but recently re-emerged with new stuff. They sound very much the same; which I am quite pleased about.

enjoyably difficult. Guess what year the photo was taken.

nice piece on some recent trends in horror cinema. not my preferred genre but I do enjoy reading these sorts of thoughts from Forest.

an excellent website to browse (even if you have no interest in the content, the presentation is stellar).

the Belgium Techno Anthem

remastered from the 1984 film. Personally, I think the original is perfect but anything that gets this movie into theaters is a good thing

i glazed over every single word on this site but the flythrough is worth the trip

intrigued by this conceptually but hesitant on the practicalities. anyone tried making their own pod?

Yet another editor. I'm sort of desperate to get off VS Code; not a fan.

Reminder I should try to play Hyper Light Drifter again. This looks well made tho

Grimace has an uncle?? McDonaldland goes deeper than you know.

Long blog reads about being a Product Leader are not my thing but this piece about the fallacy of The Big Project speaks to me more than I can say.

For years, I've been trying to get Mac Burrus to release some music of his own. He has been the bass player for the band Self for as long as I can remember and contributed a bunch of great work to that project. I just wanted to hear Mac songwriting. With the upcoming release of Telefone, I got my wish!

The band is a collaboration between Burrus and brothers Justin & Brandon Tapp. The former lives in LA, the latter two in Austin. Across thousands of miles and many years, they wrote, recorded, mixed, re-recorded, re-mixed and anguished over their debut album. It's set for release on March 22nd via yk Records and it's damn good. Obviously I'm biased but it does such a great job of embracing its influences while building something new; exactly what you want from a project.

The first video from the undertaking - for the Burrus-penned track "Indigo" - is out today. If you're a fan of Self, you should keep your eyes peeled to try to spot the 9 Easter Eggs floating in there. If you have no idea who Self is, don't worry - it's still a damn good video and an excellent song to kick things off with.

Watch the video!

New (old) earworm just dropped