611 entries from "Toronto"

BASU: BASU (2021)

Badass, unapologetic burst of weird energy from David Binney and Kenny Wollesen. Filled with swirly saxophone solos, glitchy effects, synth accompaniments. Constantly mixing electronic with analog, improvisation and composition. Lots of multi-layering soloing. Note the separate cover art for each track.

Tom Misch: Tiny Desk Concert (2018)

Uses simple, common musical forms and devices, but with tasteful harmonic surprises. Everything is rhythmic, including the singing. Body-shaking, head-banging grooves, makes you go ‘ooooh yea’.

Blood and Dust: Around Your Grave I’ll Light a Ring of Fire

(2021 single). This new release very quickly enters a world of their own creation. Kind of impressed how someone like me who doesn’t listen to music with this aesthetic can thoroughly enjoy it—still not sure why. The intense and dark beat becomes into something simultaneously slow and fast. Love the crunchy noise synths throughout.

[Sign language illustrates reality as opposed to representing it.]

The global streaming boom is creating a severe translator shortage

[Netflix lost about half a million subscribers in the United States and Canada, but gained over a million in the Asia-Pacific region.]

[Translating Korean to French through English makes as much sense as translating English to French through Korean.]

Try these two smart techniques to help you master your emotions

[Having a small emotional vocabulary makes it easier to reduce situations with a broad brush.]

[People with larger emotional vocabularies tend to have less health issues.]

[Make the butterflies in your stomach fly in formation.]

[Categorizing as 'not about me' saves energy when you're down, and is useful when you're up to put the emotions in perspective (the result of social reality).]

Daniel Vassallo

[Good interviews help me understand something new about myself or good ways to phrase things.]

[With 5000 email subscibers before launch, endorsements from Netlify/Vercel, number one on Product Hunt, $1500 revenue on launch day, it seemed like the signals were pointing in the right direction. Yet it didn't grow as expected and ended up earning $10,000 over two years.]

[Can't validate an unpredictable market.]

[I work to sustain my ideal lifestyle.]

Jacob Collier, Mathis Picard: Improvised Piano Duet At The Blue Note (2017)

So much beauty in people making music socially, just having fun, enjoying the experience together. Re-assuring to see professionals accepting rough edges, not having professionalism as the primary objective; less thinky, more youthful and playful. 10:59 has notes of Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett, stride pianists, so many textures and styles referenced. 57:16 has a surprise vocal duet of My Romance a cappella with Bobby McFerrin style accompaniment. Music is a language.

• Now is a practice.
• How now can we get?

Yaeji: Raingurl

From EP2 (2017). Manages to use repetitive elements with cliché chord progressions without sounding tired or stale. Infectious chorus makes body move. Slight bongo/hand drums keeps it from having a ‘pure electronic’ sound.

Groovy Kaiju: Destroy All Monsters (2021)

Groovy, tasteful mixing with warm upbeat vibes. Reminds me of J Dilla’s Donuts with more modern music.

You should use forums rather than Slack/Discord to support developer community

Frames the issue not only in terms of information architecture or participant usability, but how it fits into the larger Internet ecosystem, including search engines. Although the title suggests a particular course, it drives the reader to use both more thoughtfully.

See also:

• Discussion is ephemeral
• Designed to disappear

Piracy and the four currencies, part 2

[Piracy is unauthorized access and duplication, whereas stealing deprives the owner of something.]

Stay in touch with hundreds of people.

[Automate keeping in touch to stay in sight. A List: very important, every 3 weeks, B List: important, every two months; C List: most people, every six months; D List: demoted, every year to make sure you have their correct info.]

[Find out how they're doing without asking something in return.]

[It's easy to forget and some people will appreciate you making the effort.]

[Therapists are responsible for maintaining the container, the walls of a safe space.]

[You can open things up when the container has integrity.]

The Memex Method. When your commonplace book is a public…

[If it seems significant I will blog about why I think it's important and what it adds to the picture.]

[It's neither my last word nor a repetition of what I have to say.]

it represents the synthesis of recent events with a long run of earlier events, interventions, scandals and actions. Further, it represents the evolution of my ability to convey these complex and thorny ideas, based on the reception earlier pieces on the same subject received.

[If writing is about clarifying your thoughts, your older work will naturally make you cringe. But systematically reviewing older work to observe what you got wrong and right makes it easier to avoid your own pitfalls. The structure can even be a public recap of what happened 5, 10, and 15 years ago on this day.]