A personal weblog written by Robert: Mere Christian, aspiring minimalist, inveterate notetaker, budget audiophile and paper airplane mechanic.
Heart was the band that broke the glass ceiling and bought women-fronted hard rock to the masses. By 1985, they had expanded beyond just pummeling riffage and Renaissance Fair folk that betrayed their love for Led Zeppelin. They didn't completely eschew the hard stuff, but they had synths and they were going to use them. "These Dreams" was the hit from Heart's self-titled LP, which proved to be a…
Designer Jon Hicks’ obsession with music apps left him with a problem — he couldn’t find any that met all his needs. So, like many others in the age of LLMs, he built his own. Hicks calls his app Jacket, and it’s easy to understand why when you see all the references to physical media. Giant artwork, extensive liner notes integration and perhaps most surprising and impressive, spines. The spines…
Reading the Claude watermark topic reminds me of how my son in college, who doesn't use LLMs when writing his papers, has to check them with an LLM to make sure they don't sound too much like AI. If they sound like AI, they'll get flagged, even though the tools for detection are notorious for false positives.
Reviews of Dinosaur Jr.'s Green Mind don't always focus on what a shift it was for the band. For the first time, it was J. Mascis' unadulterated vision, updated to fit perfectly with the alternative scene that was strengthening in the early nineties. However, nothing about it presaged the success of Nirvana's Nevermind bringing sludge rock to the mainstream. It was at once denser than anything the…
Bluesky CEO, Toni Schneider, was interviewed by Nilay Patel on a recent episode of The Decoder podcast. I like Patel's interview style and thought he brought a good selection of questions to the discussion. After much business strategy and technical discussion, Patel asked Schneider about the common perception that the network is full of left-leaning users. Schneider acknowledged that as an issue…
I've been playing a new video game called MIO: Memories in Orbit . I have a bit of a soft spot for what they called Metroidvania's (a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania), having grown up loving games in the genre. In this game, you "Play MIO, a nimble robot with extraordinary abilities, and unravel the mysteries of the Vessel, an enormous technological ark overgrown with lush vegetation and…
I was going through my social media feeds this morning and realized that it was just a bunch of disconnected thoughts with no coherence. I wondered why I even bothered. Then I remembered posting about seeing a movie last weekend and the ensuing conversation on Micro.blog and I had my answer. There is value in bonding over a shared appreciation for certain media. I've continued to be fascinated by…
Benjamin Wallace writes for the NYT ( gift link ) about A.I. companies such as Anthropic hiring philosophers. Beyond all the jokes about philosophy grads actually getting jobs, it's a worthwhile examination of the place of the discipline within the tech space. What struck me was the concern that some philosophers interviewed had about the well-being of the artificial intelligence itself. Mr. Long…
The new Pastebot 3 Mac app looks enticing. The interactions seem really fluid. https://bsky.app/profile/tapbots.com/post/3mrndw2y4y22q The site for the app has some lovely illustrations. The conveyor belt is inspired and the arcade machine rocks. I just wish there was an iOS companion app. I use Paste now and occasionally the cross-platform functionality comes in handy.
Memoryhouse consists of Canadians Evan Abeele and Denise Nouvion. The band had a minor hit with their piano-driven live cover of My Bloody Valentine’s “When You Sleep” for Yours Truly in 2011. They capitalized on their success with that cover and the well-regarded EP, The Years , by signing to indie heavyweight Sub Pop Records. When their follow-up full length, Slideshow Effect didn’t garner as…
Brave is apparently selling subscriptions to a stripped-down version of its browser called Brave Origins . I’m really not sure how I feel about that. As Adam Davidson opines in the How-To-Geek piece about the deal , it’s like they’re admitting their product has a bloat problem. Which, when you look at all of the features they are removing, seems like a pretty legit perspective.
Jason Kratz runs down the set of solid blogging platforms in this post which serves as a rebuttal to OMG.lol ’s Adam Newbold. Newbold believes if you use indie blogging services you are not truly on the indieweb. Even if your data is totally portable, he’s convinced that somehow you’ve given up control of your content. He’s written a tutorial on how to create a blog from scratch. Personally, I…
Jake Meador, editor-in-chief of print and web publication Mere Orthodoxy , has noticed the rise in Christian denominational distinctiveness that stands in contrast to a "mere Christianity" type of ecumenical approach. Younger people who have grown up without tradition or custom and often strapped to a screen for hours every day desire belonging, desire to enter into something that offers moral…
“Cross My Heart and Hope to Die” marks a distinctively different sound from the early days of Yumi Zouma. The track kicks off their new album, No Love Lost to Kindness . With their first couple of EPs, especially, the New Zealand band distinguished themselves with a fresh, balearic, breezy sound. The tunes were as light as air, and even the the subject of difficult interpersonal relationships came…
Jay Peters reports for The Verge about the year-over-year rise in the number of CDs being purchased . The data suggests that “the CD has been recontextualized from a functional audio format into an affordable collectible,” Luminate says. “This behavior underscores that for younger generations, the act of buying physical music is as much about aesthetic ownership and direct financial support for…