Imagine building a digital stadium or house party in Unreal Engine where the musician can release their music at an 82% profit margin and then charge for tickets to their own virtual concert while making extra money selling sponsorships or advertising at said concert.
We saw hopesfall play as a local band and came home and wrote the riff of “Walls” that night. A direct influence. Not from a certain riff or the record but from what they were making happen on the stage as a local band — that feeling, chasing that feeling, was the riff of “Walls.”
Matt Carter
Emery Guitarist from The BlackSheep Podcast
Emery’s “Walls” is an all-timer. It would make perfect sense that the band behind that band is another all-timer.
The quote comes at the 1:10:20 mark.
Listen to “Matt Carter: Emery” on Spreaker.
Heads up: There are spoilers in this section.
I recently saw the movie Pig. On its surface, it’s loaded with the Nic Cage fanboy treatment. Cage plays a man who refuses to speak, lives in the woods with his (very) valuable truffle-finding pig, pig gets stolen, his idiosyncratic, mythical figure must exact revenge and get his pig back.
Except he doesn’t exact revenge. He takes beating after beating. When he is (constantly) presented with the opportunity to leverage violence as his means, he improbably relents and pursues peace. It’s not “Taken but with a pig.”
The movie was a critical darling, but by all accounts, it didn’t make money. The best estimates have it slightly above breaking even, others have it as a million-dollar loss. I found the movie lost momentum towards the end, undermined its climax, and that fantastical elements of the plot distanced it from the reality it was trying to create. I wasn’t enthralled by the result, but I very much enjoyed a number of its individual mechanisms, including its cinematography and the risks it took in its storytelling.
There should be more movies like this one, though, ones that don’t just take a left turn when we’re expecting a right — ones that are written from an entirely different place on the map. That’s why I believe it’s important that the movie got made. My feelings on its final assembly aside, it’s important that Pig was recognized so broadly and publicly in the hopes that more movies like this will get greenlit. It’s wild that an esoteric movie leveraged the real-world fandom of Cage’s acting choices to pursue an unexpected narrative. It’s emblematic of a creative approach that plays on the real-world expectations of fans, further blurring the fourth wall between our art and our lives. And when new creative approaches are pursued, we get further innovation and collaboration and remixing and rebuilding.
These results are rarely perfect out of the gate, either, but that’s rarely the point.
In today’s economy, video games are bigger in terms of the size of the business than movies and music and TV all put together. And what are they? They’re about going into the world and changing it and interacting with it. … My fundamental opinion is, the more we can see together, the more together we’ll be.
Alex Klein
Co-Founder of Kano Computing in GQ Magazine
Alex Klein is the co-founder of Kano Computers; Kano created the Stem Player device with Kanye West. GQ Magazine interviewed him about his work on the new product where he discusses, among other things, the inspiration for its design: Kano’s see-through computers, the machinery used in music studios, children interacting with it at Ye’s Yeezy Christian Academy, a destroyed Apple laptop, stress balls, (literal) rocks, arcade machines, products designed for people with autism. The two of them found inspiration for it everywhere. It was a communal process.
Jayme Odgers is a graphic designer most known for his work with collage and new-wave in the 1980s. Also notable, he was an apprentice for one of the most famous designers of all designers, the visionary Paul Rand.
Odgers had a hell of an anecdote about Rand in Print recalling his first day on the job (recounted by another hall of fame designer, Steven Heller, in one of his columns):
On that very first day I began working for Paul, he had a book jacket design due. I watched as he reached into a drawer and chose two sheets of colored paper, … a red-orange and a complementary green color. Using scissors, he cut three smallish green shapes and in seemingly random manner glued them onto a square of the red-orange paper. With a circle cutter he cut out a doughnut-like shape about six inches in diameter and one inch wide, which he glued onto a sheet of white paper. It was like watching a magic act. I was mesmerized.
Jayme Odgers
Covering the entire doughnut shape with acetate, he used a rather large nib pen dipped in white ink to deftly draw a linear serpent eating its own tail over the torus shape — an ouroboros appeared as if out of nowhere. Done. No sketches, no indecision; in less than 15 minutes, with minimal material, he had created the cover art for Erich Neumann’s book The Origins And History Of Consciousness for Bollingen Publishers.
The Daily Heller: The Assistant, Jayme Odgers, Works for Paul Rand
Here is that work:
What would pay him for that? Would that number change for you if it were the same outcome but he spent 15 days on it instead?
In the second season of Euphoria, a hard cut towards the end of episode four showed Sydney Sweeney’s character, Cassie Howard, staring forlorn towards nothing in particular, face tabula rasa, brain bridled with overwhelming anxiety.
It’s so good. So so good.
Director of Photography Marcell Rév spoke about this shot directly, with the framing and positioning built from imagery prominently found surrounding Mary, the mother of Jesus. “(This episode’s) montage I really like: iconic images of our characters in a setting that’s not totally real or in a light that’s not totally real. … Our inspiration was Mexican murals.”
The subtle nod to this spiritual realm — you see the references in the shot when you’re told about them, and maybe it was even in your subconscious before that, too — is propping up a vein in the second season of the show, too, as Levinson introduces religious undertones and alludes to spiritual purpose in the plot.
“Mexican murals from the turn of the century, Cassie with all the flowers… It became a way for us to be inside their worlds without having to break down everything on a logical level and to allow for a slightly more metaphysical perspective to take over the show. It became a way of exploring that on a visual level as opposed to just words, words, words.”
Sam Levinson
Writer and Director, Euphoria
Even if you cut all that out and it was only the shot as a frame, you’re still fixated on it, fascinating and angelic.
Permalink: PassivityVoters, activists, and political leaders of the present day are in the position of medieval doctors. They hold simple, prescientific theories about the workings of society and the causes of social problems from which they derive a variety of remedies — almost all of which prove either ineffectual or harmful. Society is a complex mechanism whose repair, if possible at all, would require a precise and detailed understanding of a kind that no one today possesses. Unsatisfying as it may seem, the wisest course for political agents is often simply to stop trying to solve society’s problems.
In Praise Of Passivity
Michael Huemer
Permalink: Love Alone“The game’s going on rather better now,” she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little.
“‘Tis so,” said the Duchess: “and the moral of that is— ‘Oh, ’tis love, ’tis love, that makes the world go round!”
“Somebody said,” Alice whispered, “that it’s done by everybody minding their own business.”
“Ah, well! It means much the same thing,” said the Duchess.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderful
Lewis Carroll
Easily the most eloquent and insightful work I’ve read to date on the new web3 ecosystem.
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Silk Sonic
Sign me up for basically anything Bruno Mars.
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Baby Keem feat. Kendrick Lamar
Horns are classic and straightforward, perfect for the minimalist beat and Keem’s thin, higher-pitched rapping style. Fantastic beat-switch halfway through amid his torrential output. The video is also an astounding art piece.
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BROCKHAMPTON
The artistic collective BROCKHAMPTON had frontman Kevin Abstract on a podcast with Rick Rubin this year (Broken Record). It gave me a new appreciation for their work and specifically this song.
Permalink: Then It Doesn’t Much Matter“Would you tell me, please, which way I out to go from here?”
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
Lewis Carroll
A beautiful logo for Philo, a fashion house from Italy, designed by Cosimo Miccoli. I wish I had designed it.
Here’s the old logo for reference:
Permalink: For No Reason“And it means that sometimes a whole population of frogs, or worms, or people can die for no reason whatsoever, just because that is the way numbers work.”
Christopher Boone
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
By Mark Haddon
Permalink: The GadflyHe paused a moment, and went on again: …
“I think that perhaps I have misjudged you, and that there is in you something better than what you show outside. To that better self in you I appeal, and solemnly entreat you, on your conscience, to tell me truthfully — in my place, what would you do?”
A long silence followed; then the Gadfly looked up. …
“We atheists,” he went on fiercely, “understand that if a man has a thing to bear, he must bear it as best he can; and if he sinks under it — why, so much the worse for him. But a Christian comes whining to his God, or his Saints; or, if they won’t help him, to his enemies — he can always find a back to shift his burdens on to. … Go back to your Jesus … Consent, man, of course, and go home to your dinner…”
The Gadfly, p. 329
E. L. Voynich
Permalink: Nonbinary ChristI’m reading this book about new theories about transgender and nonbinary people and so forth. The previous book I’d read was about early Christianity. It struck me how similar these things are. So much of the debate about gender now, in a weird way it’s like these early Christians debating the nature of Christ and the trinity. Basically they were asking, was Christ a nonbinary person? Is Christ divine or human or both divine-human or neither divine and human? It resonates with many of the debates that we have now about the nature of humans and the person. Can we be both? Can we be only one? And if you don’t think like me, then you’re a heretic.
Yuval Noah Harari
This Simple Story Can Save the Planet
My company, Mainline, organizes collegiate esports tournaments for all skill levels. When people ask what I do, my wife’s most common response is, “He works in computers.” It’s hard to sum it up in one sentence.
Recently, Nicole Lapointe Jameson, the CEO of Evil Geniuses, joined Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman on his podcast Deep Background to discuss “The Billion Dollar Industry of Esports.” She was staggeringly astute in her definition of esports:
If you’re coming from zero, esports is competitive gaming where we bridge industries that resemble a lot of traditional sports but also resemble modern-day entertainment. So the best way to think about my universe — I run an organization called Evil Geniuses — think of us like the University of Michigan, like U of M’s athletics department where they have basketball and football and soccer that have distinct players on distinct schedules and a very robust back office that bridges athletics to sponsorships to brand to health and wellness all to support the different players in their seasons.
Nicole Lapointe Jameson
She’s young, vibrant, articulate, effective, and definitive. Send this podcast to anyone who wants an Esports 101 crash course.
Permalink: The Modern StateNot a single stable package that’s persisted all the way from pharaonic Egypt to today, but a shifting combination of, as they enumerate them, the three elementary forms of domination: control of violence (sovereignty), control of information (bureaucracy), and personal charisma (manifested, for example, in electoral politics).
William Deresiewicz
“Human History Gets a Rewrite”
The two sides are engaged in an eternal jousting match. They attack each other with giant weights pushed from their chests, a metaphor for their relentless drive toward wealth while they were alive. These tormented souls are so busy with this activity that the poet and his underworld guide do not even bother attempting to speak with them.
Josh Brown
“The New Fear And Greed”
Josh Brown describes Twitter.
Permalink: Describing Twitter“You could make the computer both run and not run, at once, and that’s just a warm-up. You could, in fact, make it not run and nonetheless extract the answer to a computation. The computer will be sitting there waiting for someone to press ‘Run,’ yet will have produced a result. …
George Musser
“It works because, in the quantum realm, things that can happen, but don’t, can leave their mark on what does.”
Schrödinger’s Zombie: Adam Brown at the 6th FQXi Meeting
I live for this.
Permalink: Things That Happen Don’t
Insightful, subtle marketing from Amanda Goetz, something that took true knowledge of an audience (and guts to employ):
Something that has been core to my thesis when marketing to women — both across The Knot and now House of Wise — is that women are looking for ways to feel less guilt and shame about things that they’re experiencing in everyday life. With The Knot, for example, the guilt and shame came from wanting to do something for their weddings that was “not traditional,” or something that their families might not approve of, like not doing traditional vows, or not having her dad walk her down the aisle.
Amanda Goetz
When I went to The Knot, I realized that our brand positioning was not speaking to that woman, and that we needed to help her feel supported in her decisions. That involved removing all “dos and don’ts” across all of our content and editorial, and saying, “Here’s ten ways that you can walk down the aisle,” or, “Do X, Y, and Z instead of just one.”
Quoted in The Morning Brew
Going to your boss at such a massive platform and telling them you’re going to remove popular content for the long-term benefit of the company is a hard ask. Knowing it’s the right thing to do and following through on a hard decision is a difference-maker. Don’t do what you’re told to do; don’t do what everyone else is doing. Speak to the truth of the matter and to your user’s actual needs.