I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. Some end up on Disquiet.com earlier, sometimes in expanded form. These days I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. I take weekends and evenings off social media.
▰ The sole downside to opening the living room window is the terrible music that people play in their cars
▰ I saw Brad Mehldau two weeks ago. I’m seeing Bill Frisell and Hank Roberts together in a few days. Both times as part of larger ensembles (quintet and sextet respectively). Life is pretty good.
▰ Are there any recordings of Bill Frisell and Brad Mehldau playing together other than those on the soundtrack to the Wim Wenders film Million Dollar Hotel?
▰ It’s extraordinary that a subset of the consumer electronics manufacturing class happily foresees a future in which everyone openly records every interaction, including face-to-face ones. It’s a glimpse at a potential radical realignment of what it means to speak not only in public but in private.
▰ Amazing how those AI discussion summary bots that join calls can totally diminish the small talk and casual interactions. It’s like someone purposefully set out to make video calls worse.
▰ I just noticed that April 14 isn’t just a favorite holiday of electronic music fans. It also was the first time, back in 2016, that the Disquiet Junto projects began appearing as part of the Lines BBS, after 223 weeks just on SoundCloud, Disquiet.com, and social media.
▰ If keeping a journal is a struggle for you, write a letter. You needn’t even mail it. Think of an ideal audience — friend or family, alive or not — and write to them. Much of my journal is excerpts of stuff I say to people in emails and texts I’d never have written had it not been intended for them.
▰ Honk if an email subject line about “markdown” makes you think file type not cost reduction
▰ Alert: We are now 25 weeks from the 666th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project.
▰ There’s a unique memory hole related to software that’s sunsetted before there’s a Wikipedia page to document it having existed in the first place
▰ My hotel room’s one, tiny window did provide a view of the Empire State Building.
▰ The spellcheck in Slack doesn’t recognize “Akihabara.” Oh, neither does this one. Must be system-wide.
▰ After seeing that new Taylor Swift album art, I kinda expected a Joy Division cover or two
▰ I saw a lot of mysterious doorways in Manhattan. This one was a definite favorite:
▰ When you get home from a vacation and start receiving the inevitable email offers from restaurants, bookstores, and other places you visited and are now 3,000 miles away from
▰ End of day:
