Saturnian BloodstormLamp of MurmuurI hadn’t listened to—or even heard of—this band before, but I ran across this album on Popmatters’ "20 Best Metal Albums of 2023" list and I really like it. I agree with the reviewer’s comment that it is reminiscent of Emperor/Immortal, but Lamp Of Murmur puts enough of their own spin on the classic Scandanavian metal sound to keep things interesting.
Google and Apple, The Beginning – Asymco:
Android was built to counter a Microsoft mobile OS monopoly with a “zero cost” option vs. Microsoft’s end-user-license model. Microsoft made money selling software. Both system software (Windows) and application software (Office.) Google would give away system software (Android) and services (Gmail and Docs) but make money on advertising.
Interesting, and something I had not thought about before… Android was a strategy to compete with Microsoft, not Apple.
In that sense, it was quite effective, but it was aimed at the wrong target.
I have now seen a bunch of people share this post about how terrible the Trim Silence feature is: One of the more distressing qualities of humanity, in my mind, is the emphasis we collectively put on “efficiency.” It saturates our professional existence. It haunts our socioeconomic barometer. And it drives our current approach to both creating and appreciating art. It’s insidious, the inordinate amount of power “efficiency” holds over our daily lives, without even drawing much attention to itself, creeping up in unanticipated ways: the life hacks bombarding us on TikTok; the large language models we use to reduce the amount of effort we need to put into writing an email to our colleague; the Trim Silence feature on our podcast player of choice.
🔗 Effective obfuscation - by Molly White - Citation Needed
It is interesting, isn’t it, that these supposedly deeply considered philosophical movements that emerge from Silicon Valley all happen to align with their adherents becoming disgustingly wealthy.
When walking the wasteland, bring a stout companion.
Finished reading: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer 📚
I read this book years ago, but as with many novels, I could recall only the barest outline of the plot. A friend of mine was reading it, though, so I decided to pick it up again.
Having tried to read a few of Vandermeer’s novels in the meantime and finding them too inscrutable to be worth my time, I did not have high hopes. Thus, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really enjoyed Annihilation this time through. I think it is just the right balance of vague weirdness—his other stuff I’ve tried veers too far toward this end of the spectrum—and solid storytelling.
My pet theory with this book is that it is a metaphor for writing and storytelling. Area X is the world of the storytelling and the Crawler is the author. Characters in the story get too close to the godlike powers of the author and are driven insane, killed, or are otherwise irrevocably altered, and Area X as the realm of storytelling impinges upon the real world with its unclear, shimmery boundaries, both consuming and altering the real world.
In a recent episode on the Evolution Of Horror Patreon feed—a review of the top 50 horror performances—the hosts got to talking about Tony Todd’s portrayal of the title character in 1992’s Candyman. I saw this movie in the theater when it first came out. Before it came out, actually—when I was in college, the campus film society would regularly host free preview screenings of new movies. You never knew what the movie was going to be; they would just announce that there would be a free preview this evening at the auditorium and then you would should up and find out what it was when it was starting.
It seems I am now “needs to put an extra pillow behind his back when sitting on the couch” years old.
Why, Ulysses? WHY?!
The recent troubles at OpenAI indicate that the company lacks identity and direction. It is overly dependent on a personality rather than its own identity. Microsoft is willing to do whatever it takes to keep its position. Most importantly, we witnessed a change from OpenAI to CommercialAI. It’s not about robot Gods, humanity and openness. It’s about making money.