Happy Third Weeknote! This one covers the last couple of weeks.

  • This WGCI & WBMX tape collection from 1988 features over 60 radio show recordings of the early days of Detroit house music. Fantastic stuff. In the neighborhood of 50 hours of music.
  • The Subway is not Scary - “Fear of the subway is a mark of low moral character.” Truth. The NYC subway is way more fascinating than it is scary. This gives me similar feelings to what Upski’s Bomb the Suburbs did 25 years ago.
  • The Restroom Archive - 3D LiDAR scans of public bathrooms in gas stations, bars, and restaurants. Possibly the greatest site on the internet.
  • I studied why vegans have higher rates of depression and discovered a hidden psychological pattern that’s destroying careers and relationships for everyone - Needlessly long title aside, a really good piece on why those who identify strongly with ethical belief systems have higher rates of anxiety and depression.
  • It Matters. I Care. - Molly White on point again. “When we throw up our hands and say none of it matters, we’re doing the fascists’ work for them. They don’t need to hide their corruption if they can convince us it’s pointless to look. They don’t need to silence truth-tellers if we’ve already decided truth is meaningless.”
  • Some Bad Things Are Happening - Captures the tension between everyday life (as a parent, specifically, but also more generally) and the enormity of the greater shitstorm that surrounds us.
  • The First Juneteenth in Houston - W. Caleb McDaniel writes about the first celebration of Juneteenth a year after General Order No. 3 was issued in in Galveston, Texas. I love articles like this that tell the story, but also the research that went into finding the story.

Life Notes

  • My digital garden page is a little more visually attractive and easier to maintain.
  • I found my old Sony Walkman (model WM-F2085) in my basement a few weeks ago. The belt had melted/partially disintegrated, so it wasn’t working. But one tiny replacement belt from Slovakia, some toothpicks and Q-Tips, and a few dabs of 91% isopropyl alcohol later, it’s working again. I used the heck out of this thing over the years and it’s kind of nice to have it functioning again. Mega Bass! (I had this with me when I travelled to Vietnam in 1998. There, it stopped working and I took it to a shop for repair. The repair cost me 50 cents.) I’ll probably write a short post about the process.
  • I launched the Archive the Unimportant initiative.
  • I finished three books: Dear Data: A Friendship in 52 Weeks of Postcards by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec (a joy for for dataviz nerds), Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer (another soothing, thoughtful book from Iyer, this time covering his many visits to a Benedictine hermitage to envelop himself in silence), and the second volume of the On the Calculation of Volume series by Solvej Balle (an interesting take on the time loop subgenre of sci-fi). I started John Green’s Everything is Tuberculosis.
  • An album I really enjoyed: Eje Thelin’s Live ‘76. Challenging but not overwhelming, 70s Swedish synthy jazz. For fans of Miles’ On the Corner.
  • Our daughter graduated high school. Lots of family came in town and it was so nice to have everyone together in one place like that. It’s been a while.
  • I worked as a rover in the primary on Tuesday. There were no major incidents to speak of. Our county does an amazing job.