Welcome to the thirty-first ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

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CONTENTS

1. Berlin arrival reflections
2. Strolling format
3. Events
4. Asides
5. Music

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ARRIVING HERE

Since arriving here three weeks ago, I’ve been enjoying my time with the Moos collective, meeting lots of cool people with interesting projects and ideas, and hearing tons of funky music around which I hope to share. For the first time in a while, I have a feeling of being not so online and spending time around mostly ‘not internet people’—learning lots, stretching myself, understanding collective living, finding my own rhythm within this context to be creative and productive. I’ve always wanted to be in Berlin and am super grateful for this opportunity; hope to stay a while longer.

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STROLLING

I changed the podcast format to publish shorter bits and more spontaneously, as there’s not enough time to have a two-week editing ceremony for each interview. Although I miss the music, I’m happy with the result so far and think it’s more digestible. What do you think?

• 0004: Bilal Ghalib — why Arabic is awesome
• 0005: Bilal Ghalib — cryptocurrency via proof of inner work
• 0006: Bilal Ghalib — death awareness / merging spiritual and secular / Islamic economy
• 0007: Bembo Davies — musical we versus me
• 0008: Bembo Davies — not needing to change one’s mind
• 0009: Bembo Davies — everyone growing together
• 0010: Bembo Davies — plan your crisis
• 0011: Bembo Davies — clown school / Unmonastery / liberation through improvising

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EVENTS

• March/April, 2022: Probably still in Berlin
• April 5-7, 2022: Probably in Leipzig
• April 18-25, 2022: Maybe in Amsterdam

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ASIDES

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[It’s hard to see how funny-shaped the box is from inside]
— Jack Rusher

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Polyphony Project. Preserving musical folklore from Ukrainian villages with high-definition audio and video recordings. Scroll down for a multitrack player where you can isolate voices to hear each part or combine them in different ways. (via Jacob)

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[The value of therapy is not only what the other person says, but an opportunity to find the words and perhaps hear yourself say them.]

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Short

Jacob Collier: Don’t Stop 'Til You Get Enough (2018 single). Overlays himself with a grand piano that can loop, re-creating the vibe of Michael Jackson’s original using purely acoustic sound. Wild funky solo and lush harmonies as always. During the halfway point he goes into a time signature that I can’t figure out; anyone know? (via Ahsen)

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Michel Camilo, Anthony Jackson, Horacio (El Negro) Hernandez: Calle 54 (2000). An excerpt from the documentary about Latin jazz featuring some ways of playing the piano I haven’t seen before. The beginning more resembles something you might hear elsewhere, but I’m starting at the mid-section which has some very intense improvising with Latin rhythms. Impossible to sit still as they have too much fun creating this from nothing. (via Lars)

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More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

(I also have a more sporadic private mailing list if you’d like to hear only when new projects are released.)

Welcome to the thirtieth ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

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CONTENTS

1. Strolling pace
2. Berlin
3. Transcendence of twerking
4. Music

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STROLLING PACE

I ended up getting slightly burned out from trying to keep a certain pace with episodes of Strolling—grossly underestimated how much editing and production is involved. I’m pretty happy with the finished products, but I need to go slower to avoid making the project a source of stress. Might also help to do more spontaneous or short single-take “record and publish” episodes.

It’s hard for me to overstate how restorative it is for me to explore music composition in the episodes: there’s still something there after all these years of neglect and I’m excited to reconnect with that part of myself.

Looking forward to doing fifty more, just need to go a bit slower.

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BERLIN

Hoping to arrive in Berlin later today to do a month-long artist residency with moos.garden. Can’t wait to meet this collective of funky people who are generally exploring alternative ways to do things. I will also likely travel in Germany and maybe Europe after, so say hello if you’re around 👋🏼.

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TRANSCENDENCE OF TWERKING

In the third episode of Strolling, I spoke with Elena Stoodley, who shared about her profound relationship with twerking; in the extended version, she goes deeper to talk about its connection to ancestral traditions.

I also love the story of a speech she gave to her mother as a child.

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❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Short

DUCKWRTH: I’M DEAD from I’M UUGLY (2016). Time feel for instant body shaking, decorated and supported with seventh chords, bass patterns that repeat with variation, and effects to create contrast between sections. Lyrics slot into the drumming like Lego. (via Elena Stoodley)

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Zventa Sventana: Мужа дома нету from Мужа дома нету (2019). Combines electronic sounds with folk singing. Lots of cool percussion and odd production details throughout to keep things dynamic (several only occurring once in the whole song). Touches elements of techno music without being too formulaic, might be the combination with various vocal timbres that keeps it feeling alive. (via Alexei)

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Hundred Waters: Particle from Currency (2017). Starts with delicate acoustic piano tones and chords. I usually find it interesting when to use blocky (predictable) patterns from techno music without the music feeling too repetitive; the constant contrast here makes it always dynamic and alive. Lots of triplets and dotted rhythms throughout, twice used in the melody to create this feeling of continuously moving, dropping (for example, around 57s). The lyrics and melody help evoke a sense of flying, soaring, falling.

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Bites

Vulfpeck: Back Pocket from Live at Madison Square Garden (2019). Inspiring to hear a thousand-strong audience sing a complex line in three part harmony. Lots of beatboxing, music via voice and the body. Guitar shredding partially mirrored on voice. Surprising to clarinets at the end in this context. Good vibes, happy times, saudades for live music. (via Russel Ramos)

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Pongo: Bruxos at COLORSxSTUDIOS (2021). Massive sound in this body-shaker, both in the powerful voice and in the beat. The synthy flute about halfway in is a timbre I don’t hear often. (via April)

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Nostalgia

Carpenters: Top of the World from A Song for You (1972). Caught me by surprise to hear this while looking for something in a local Asian supermarket—my mom used to sing it as a kind of showpiece and even recorded it once in a studio. Listening more closely, I hear for the first time that there’s electric piano everywhere, orchestral strings, and these cool IV-I cadences before the verses start.

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More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

(I also have a more sporadic private mailing list if you’d like to hear only when new projects are released.)

Welcome to the twenty-ninth ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

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CONTENTS

1. Hyperspeed
2. Musical note-taking
3. Technology as parent
4. Asides
5. Apps disappearing soon

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HYPERSPEED

For a few weeks now, I’ve been dedicated to recording and editing the podcast like a fire-breathing dragon (as well as making music for it), which has given me a sense of “using everything I’ve got”. This is a very special moment for me, as it feels I’m coming into a new version of myself previously thought impossible. It’s been amazing to reconnect with music and actually enjoy playing the piano again—I had a glimmer of this with Tiny concert for a friend, but various ruptures since that time have forced me to find other ways into this space.

Everything seems focused and fast at the moment. I’m seeking silence to concentrate, and so haven’t listened to much music for the last while. Also suddenly visiting Berlin in March and planning for that… It leaves me overloaded sometimes, but with the best possible things on my plate. Looking forward to so much this year and I wish it to be profound for anyone in need of the boost ⭐ 🌊.

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MUSICAL NOTE-TAKING

I’ve finally started applying note-taking reflexes to making music:

Since acquiring my first iPhone 3G in 2009, with the ability to record voice memos that can be synced to the computer, I hoped my system would naturally extend to music at some point—it didn’t, until 2022. [continued…]

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TECHNOLOGY AS PARENT

During our conversation in Strolling 0002, my guest Vivek talked about the idea of technology as a place of refuge when life circumstances are difficult:

Technology in many ways has parented me. It gave me a soft place to land when nothing else did.

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ASIDES

You remove the clothes of your soul when traveling.
— Vivek

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Have You Ever Had A Dream. Charles Cornell created complex jazz piano arrangements for a whole compilation of various memes with people speaking—this one is my favourite. If i listen to the original audio, I can’t help but hear this music…

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The roads to funding your community network projects…. I spent a whole day pondering my motivations after watching this because of my immense respect for this person, and although my ultimate conclusion was to maintain my approach, I think there’s a wealth of great information here for anyone who wants to ‘make a difference’ in their local community. Although the ‘goal-oriented’ approach probably makes sense in various contexts, I think it’s in conflict with the ‘risk-taking’ that’s involved in entrepreneurship or artistic endeavours. Nice to see these kinds of projects knocking it out of the park though.

[Make goals that are quantifiable, and achievable: big enough to matter and small enough to win. You want to overshoot your goal every single time. Set it up so that you win every single time.]

[In pre-advertising: announce what you’re going to do and how people can get involved.]

[Delivering on the goal means not failing: if you’re short, cover out of pocket.]

[Making people feel they’re participation made the difference isn’t just for humility, it’s to help them feel their impact.]

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APPS DISAPPEARING SOON

All my iOS apps are currently free and will disappear from the App Store around February 21st, 2022; I described my reasoning in Why I’m leaving iOS development to go fully web after 12 years. Download before they’re gone to avoid eternal regret.

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❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

(I also have a more sporadic private mailing list if you’d like to hear only when new projects are released.)

Welcome to the twenty-eighth ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

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CONTENTS

1. Strolling
2. Apps disappearing soon
3. Asides
4. Music

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STROLLING

Finally launched my podcast last week after describing with a short trailer.

The first episode features Judy Perly, who has been running a Jewish restaurant and folk music venue in Toronto for over 40 years—we had a wide-ranging conversation that touched on recipes and expertise, giving people characters, creative funerals, and much more. I ended up making some music in the process too.

Feedback so far has been generally positive and curious for more, which I take to be a good sign.

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APPS DISAPPEARING SOON

My iOS apps are currently free and will disappear from the App Store in February 2022; read Going fully web to understand why. Download before they’re gone to avoid eternal regret.

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ASIDES

[I love seeing someone living their extraness.]
— Elena

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Hear - Advanced Listening. An app that listens to your environment, adds filters, plays it back to you via headphones in real time. Filters include ‘relax’ (drone in the background higher frequencies turn into water dripping), ‘happy’ (as if raining and everything is echoed with long decay), ‘sleep’ (combination of waterfall or white noise and echoes the environment); each filter has various levels that can be customized. Fun to play with, regardless of whether it actually helps you chill out or doze off—I’m curious to try them with more intention. (via Beat)

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Notes from a mystic:

[Bliss is just a word: you can desire it but not know what it is. Only one who has tasted it can give it to you, and without doing anything: from their presence alone the unknown flows toward you.]

[A master is an availability, not a teacher. A teacher may not know, having perhaps learned from other teachers. A master gives you a taste.]

[A great teaching doesn’t give you instructions for doing, as it is concerned with your being.]

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❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

I had the privilege of attending a Musical Potluck for Interintellect members, and would like to share some of my favourites:

• Clogs: Kapsburger from Lantern (2006). Pure instrumental bliss in this journey that lasts just two minutes. Simple harmonies on guitar that surprise by shifting with subtle voice-leading (often changing one note of the chord at a time). There might be hints of Bach in here, or maybe I’m just projecting what I want to hear. (via Kasra)
• Amit Trivedi: Shubhaarambh from Kai Po Che ! (2013). Soundtrack for a Bollywood film, with lyrics in Gujarati. The introduction has a strong time feel without any rhythmic accompaniment. There’s bagpipes (!), and I know how odd it might be to feature that in Indian music, but the duduk-like instrument called ‘shehnai’ went right to my heart. (via Vivek)
• Lisa Hannigan: What’ll I Do from Passenger (2011). Starting hook got my attention right away. Bright, sunny vibes created with vocals, strings, bass, percussion, and clapping; some of it would normally feel cliché to me, but I enjoyed this. The constant offbeats create a deep swing effect: your body will move. (via Daniel)
• Murali Coryell: Softly Let Me Kiss Your Lips from Eyes Wide Open (2000). Prepare yourself for nine minutes of ‘stank-face inducing’ blues vocals, guitar solos, lush organ chords, straight on the triplet drums, scatting… Imagine starting your day with this. (via Norm)

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More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

(I also have a more sporadic private mailing list if you’d like to hear only when new projects are released.)

Welcome to the twenty-seventh ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Mark Segger for becoming a backer this week ❤️.

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CONTENTS

1. What we want
2. Podcast coming soon
3. Asides
4. Music

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WHAT WE WANT

When it isn’t possible to both make money and do something meaningful, I’ve always opted for the latter. In What we want, I attempt to understand the reason for this:

Why is it that when confronted with the choice between ‘popular and profitable’ or ‘esoteric but meaningful’, I always take the hippie route and just do what makes me happy(, man)? Why is my primary motivation generally creative expression or being original, despite coming at the cost of my financial comfort? Is it just my millennial urge to be a unique snowflake? [continued…]

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❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

PODCAST COMING SOON

Almost finished editing the first episode. I’m usually excited when releasing new projects, but my measurement meters are overloading on this one. Can’t wait to see how and where this goes: https://strolling.rosano.ca

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ASIDES

The Truth Behind ‘Birds Aren’t Real’. I was really hoping this would last forever, but it’s good that the guy can move on with his life and get closer to his family. This ‘hit job documentary’ is a fascinating look behind the scenes at the movement’s origins—feels kinda deep to be honest. Going to miss this important example of what’s possible when people come together.

[Embodying lunacy can be a way to express the absurdity of reality.]

[People participate without even realizing.]

[Everyone acts and plays their role, but there’s no rehearsal.]

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I had a day of bingeing funny videos last week and went through some of Chris Fleming’s little skits. Had some good laughs with uncle or famous?, Halloween Candy Countdown, and Teens Who Drink Coffee.

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Punctuation in novels. Visualizing texts by frequency of their punctuation marks. I’ve always been a fan of data visualization, especially condensing an entire work into a single graphic to facilitate comparisons. I did this once when studying Hindustani music by transcribing an improvisation and mapping out which notes of the raga were used and how they were approached (laborious but interesting to look at). Curious to try this on my own writing some day to know what it ‘looks’ like. (via Alexei)

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Notes from a mystic:

Your seeking creates a smoke around the flame. You go on running around and around, you stir much dust, and you create much smoke, and it is your own effort that stirs the dust and creates the smoke, and the flame becomes hidden. Rest a little, let the dust settle back to the earth. And if you are not running very fast, not in a hurry, you will not create smoke. By and by, things settle and the inner light is revealed.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Short

Bobbie Gentry: Reunion from The Delta Sweete (1968). Complex interleaving of multiple parts with folksy Southern USA accents. Listen to the percussive clapping, bass drum, and guitar on the left channel, with voice and trumpets in the right channel. Reminds me of Moondog. (via Debora Ipekel)

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Israel Fernández: Fiesta (Bulería) at COLORSxSTUDIOS (2021). The simplicity of a powerful voice accompanied by delicate clapping and feet hitting the floor, heard in stereo. Even without understanding the lyrics, one can appreciate how the fierce singing cuts through your prefrontal lobe. An example of making music with the body and whatever’s around (the desk might have been my primary instrument for years). As an aside: there’s too much good music on this show, and I would appreciate recommendations. (via Brian Ginsburg)

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Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Rare Things Grow from EARS (2016). Mishmash of many exquisite textures: water glugging, saxophone flutters with delay and reverb, possessed drone voices, quartal harmonies, celestial singing, some shakers in just the right places. Hinting at indigenous musics through instrumentation and motifs, but unapologetically electronic, jazz, and modern. The cover art might be a good metaphor for how this strange and beautiful thing makes you want to keep staring, or listening. (via Gordon Brander)

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Two oldies gems (via Pat Power)

The Dixie Cups: Chapel of Love from Chapel of Love (1964). Super soulful vibe created from vocals, bass, horns, glockenspiel, drums, and clapping—fewer ingredients than ice cream.

The Everly Brothers: All I Have to Do Is Dream (1958 single). One of the first things I played in public on the piano when growing up; the harmony fits perfectly in one hand and can be pretty satisfying to repeat for hours—great way to learn about thirds and sixths.

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Bites

Ornette Hawkins: Raw Sun Live Sessions (2018). Live jazz-infused drum and bass from an artist with a killer name.

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More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

(I also have a more sporadic private mailing list if you’d like to hear when new projects are released.)

Welcome to the twenty-sixth ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Boris Mann for becoming a backer this week ❤️.

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CONTENTS

1. Secular churches
2. 2021 recap
3. Apps disappearing soon
4. Asides
5. Music

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SECULAR CHURCHES

I’ve thought for a while that the modern world needs a secular church, and a recent Interintellect writing challenge (which I ended up winning…) prompted me to document my thoughts:

I tend to describe modern life as ‘fragmented’. Lacking a ‘canonical place’ to create continuity from shared experiences, people rarely collide on a regular basis and end up separated from one another, despite wishing otherwise.

Although there is an abundance of spaces, events, and communities, they tend to lack continuity unless you are a part of groups specific to work, school, clubs, activities [continued…]

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2021 RECAP

I went back and forth on this, but ultimately decided to write an end-of-year recap.

This year gave me a bazillion things to be thankful for, but I can’t express enough how grateful I am to have found writing as my current medium of choice for making sense of the world. I ended up writing over 12,000 words between all the longer-form texts (enough to fill a small book)!

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❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

APPS DISAPPEARING SOON

My iOS apps are currently free and will disappear from the App Store in February 2022; read Going fully web to understand why. Download them now to avoid eternal regret.

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ASIDES

[Listen as if people are telling you a bedtime story.]
— Elena Stoodley

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Miraculous cake. Talks about the ingredients in cake to give a sense of how the entirety of humanity is part of everything we do. I appreciate being able to look through a profound lens like this every now and then—it fills me with gratitude for seemingly mundane things. If the same process is active at this moment, what would be the future equivalent of ‘cake’?

You certainly can’t make a cake by collecting a few eggs in Asia and walking across an entire continent to where the wheat is, all while picking up milk and sugar somewhere along the way.

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I became a member of Resonate and it only took me a minute. They’re building a fair stream-to-own platform that compensates artists more while charging listeners less (with no monthly fees or b*chain) 🤯. If you know anyone who can support them, please share their call.

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If I have the space and freedom to give attention to others spontaneously, the same applies to self-care: there is no bad time to attend to myself, be welcome.

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Jazz Pianist Reacts to SKATE by Anderson .Paak and Bruno Mars. I was once fascinated by the feeling of being moved nearly to tears by a series of chords, yet not able to explain what that means to people without lots of experience making music… Charles Cornell gets at some of this, albeit still talking to musicians, but with more heart-warming enthusiasm than I might display publicly (for something that can seem so technical): it’s clear that he has a strong personal and emotional connection to what he’s hearing, and that this is enriched by a deeper understanding of the materials. As he mentions, there are different ways to interpret musical harmony, but this might be a good way to get a glimpse at how music nerds (like me) hear songs. You might also learn a thing or two about theory, and share his excitement at how this song brings complex techniques into mainstream music. (via April)

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The Phrase “No Evidence” Is A Red Flag For Bad Science Communication. Prompts us to examine the language we use to communicate certainty, as the same mistake can be made by professionals and amateurs, with helpful or malicious intent. Perhaps ‘via negativa’ is more understandable: instead of “no evidence” to support a claim, focus on ‘yes evidence’ that a claim is false. We can be more aware of our own limitations to understand what is knowable.

[“No evidence” is ambiguous because it can simultaneously mean that 1) there were no studies; 2) there were studies proving the claim is false; 3) we assume it foolish to test.]

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MUSIC

This week, I’m going to share music from my yearly recap: the five most listened to albums of the year from my personal library of purchases.

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

• Paulo César Pinheiro: Capoeira de Besouro (2010)
• João Donato: Quem É Quem (1973)
• Cristina Buarque e Samba de Fato: O Samba Informal de Mauro Duarte - Volume 1 (2008)
• Joyce: Revendo Amigos (1994) (featured in #005)
• Pedro Martins: VOX (2019) (featured in #001)

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More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

(I also have a more sporadic private mailing list if you’d like to hear when new projects are released.)

Thanks for being here. Wishing you good vibes for the year ahead 🌊 💫.

Welcome to the twenty-fifth ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

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CONTENTS

1. Icons with words
2. Capoeira
3. Asides
4. Music

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ICONS WITH WORDS

Adding visible text to https://rosano.ca after years of being purely iconic and visually wordless was kind of dramatic for me, but I’m happy with the result and think it will be more helpful for other people. Felt like a significant enough change that I (of course) wrote about it:

Imagining what it’s like for someone arriving there, I feel it would be overwhelming to click on anything: a giant list of icons, each one descending into a rabbit hole of who knows what, not one seeming to offer a sense of the landscape or horizon—how does one decide where to start?

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CAPOEIRA

I started taking capoeira classes this week. My body is aching from never having moved so much in my life, but the movements feel great and make the apparatus of this meat more visible. I’ve enjoyed the music for a while now so I’m looking forward to seeing what sounds I discover from going deeper into this practice (stay tuned for some relevant albums). If any of you have had experience with it, I’d love to hear about it.

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❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

ASIDES

Let’s talk about disaster relief being transformative…. Beau of The Fifth Column unpacks a peculiar sentiment of ‘hoping that a hurricane happens while friends are visiting him in Florida’ so that they’d have the opportunity to do disaster relief. This transformative experience exposes you to foes who normally don’t work together but set aside differences to achieve a common mission; ceaseless moving from one thing to another for days on end; an environment without most of what we take for granted (like internet, electricity, fuel, water, etc…) despite being in the ‘developed world’; learning to become more resourceful or see (notice) what’s around you. I never thought I’d be curious to try this some day, but it does seem highly formative. The more open we are, the more we can learn from anyone (even people we don’t like). We could all benefit from being more prepared to help one another and resourceful in times of scarcity.

[Nothing phases you after doing disaster relief because you helped others and made the world better under the worst possible conditions.]

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Overheard at a gathering of travelling people:

God drugs those who drug themselves.

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Noguchi filing system. Frequently used documents automatically end up together so that one can safely archive what hasn’t come up after a long period, similar to that ‘touching moves it to the top of the list’ paradigm common in messaging and note-taking apps. I love learning about simple systems that are built with the right incentives to encourage what’s natural, without impeding flow. Organization can bring peace of mind and increase cognitive bandwidth, so it’s powerful to achieve this automatically. (via Gordon Brander)

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Alvin Lucier

Grateful to have heard some work from this modern experimental music composer who passed away in 2021.

Alvin Lucier: The Duke of York from Bird and Person Dyning (1972–1973). I skipped the Latin recitation in the beginning, but feel free to hear from the start—either way, try to stick with it for the whole experience. Simple processes and simple inputs over time transform your perception; instead of proposing ‘what’ to listen, the composer guides us ‘how’ to listen. The use of stereo is for guiding your attention (if you allow it). As it develops, it feels like being inside of someone else’s trip: notice how provocations create a chain of effects in sound, how it still feels ‘organic’ despite being heavily electronic; observe the unfolding of a process, someone playing with their own perception and yours, often leading to surprise without shock. (via Meara O’Reilly)

Alvin Lucier: I Am Sitting In A Room (1981). Speaking seamlessly morphs into ‘room’, sounding ethereal like a vortex has opened, alive and shimmering. Simple production technique on a simple text to create something profound. It takes a magician to create something out of nothing, or maybe just perception… We can always listen more.

I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice, and I am going to play it back into the room again and again, until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves, so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room, articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.

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Long

Asmaa Hamzaoui, Bnat Timbouktou: Oulad Lghaba (2019). I love Gnawa music. Powerful sound from this all female group (the backup singers translate to “Timbuktu girls”). A smattering of polyrhythms everywhere makes it feel like there are usually multiple meters happening simultaneously. Listen to the intricate yet free-flowing ornamentation in the lead singer’s voice and to the bluesy notes of the guembri (like a bass). Hope I will have the privilege to hear them live some day; if you want to get some idea for how the music is performed, see this live concert from Poland.

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Short

Ondatrópica: 3 Reyes de la Terapia from Ondatrópica (2012). Intense combination of beatboxing and breathing (or perhaps hyperventilating) with a repetitive pattern that seems like it’s performed live and not a copy/paste of the same audio. This backdrop makes a strange fusion with the Cumbia-style improvising accordion. Dark and interesting like chocolate 80% noir. (via Laura Sinisterra)

---

More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the twenty-fourth ceremony of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Sasquatch in Orange Shoes for becoming a backer this week ❤️.

---

CONTENTS

1. This is a ceremony
2. Platform puzzle pieces
3. A way of fatherhood
4. Automatic associations interface
5. Asides
6. Music

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THIS IS A CEREMONY

Ephemerata has always felt like an event to me (some kind of gathering or party), but David Luecke recently put that ‘c’ word in my head, and I find it most fitting—thanks David 🙏🏽. It shall hereby be referred to as such ✨.

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PLATFORM PUZZLE PIECES

Currently thinking about how to integrate multiple systems while building community and sustainable income.

It’s possible for me to ‘build my own system’ but that would take time from doing what it’s designed to support, especially as a single-person operation; this might be a case where it’s better to use existing parts and close gaps by creating plugins or automating with tools like Zapier or n8n. Let’s review the existing systems…

---

❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

A WAY OF FATHERHOOD

I’m very attached to my kid, but I don’t expect him to be attached to me. I don’t want him to feel more tied to some people than others. I hope he ventures out into the world, makes new bonds, and feels no obligation to me. He doesn’t owe me anything. His life is his own. He didn’t ask to be born, and has no debts.
— Derek Sivers

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AUTOMATIC ASSOCIATIONS INTERFACE

I often find myself glazing over conceptual interfaces for computing because I usually just want to use the thing to see how it feels, but the nice demos on this one stopped me.

The promise of digital systems for me has always had something to do with ‘surfacing the right amount of meaningful things at the right time’. I have approximated this in my apps by requiring explicit actions to surface things because it’s beyond my capacity to imagine how to do this more automatically, and also generally distrust machines to automate this well. So how nice it is to see a vision for creating structures and associations with little friction, more or less by directing your attention. Computers should be good at this while allowing us to tweak things, to avoid relying completely on a black box:

The system can handle most of the heavy lifting by simply paying attention to how we move through our items within different contexts, but we can further manage the associations manually as we like.

Bringing things to view in the way presented here is so much more compelling than clicking around through filesystems or apps. The closest that I’ve seen and used is Quicksilver’s way of ‘knowing’ by key combinations and their frequency, but this requires explicit association. Successfully capturing intent passively instead of explicitly makes it so that being a programmer is not necessary.

It’s important to have higher-level primitives baked into lower levels, rather than reconstructing them in each app–this can mean schemas, file formats, or an operating system itself. Your trail or history is valuable and shouldn’t be siloed in or built bespoke for certain apps. How can this be constructed without a universal app for all the things? (or is that just another operating system?) How can this be done in a way where the data is not siloed within this system (even though it seems to afford great flexibility across app boundaries)?

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ASIDES

My book is in my body.
— Elena

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Pay What You Want and the Four Currencies. Breaks down the ‘cost’ of something into “money-dollars”, “time-dollars”, “pain-in-the-butt-dollars”, and “integrity-dollars”, which is a useful framework for thinking about why people might choose to pay versus pirate something. The whole series considers the perspective of a buyer, but this part focuses on why donation-based software doesn’t work. Worth paying attention if you sell apps…

[Optional contributions in software don’t work because they’re more of a pain in the ass than the free experience. If you forced a minimum price of even a cent, people would likely be more generous than the minimum because they’re already in the payment process.]

---

Notes from a mystic:

[Knowledge, like a drug, gives you a hallucination of knowing.]

[Logic has never led anyone to truth.]

[Nothingness exists without support or creator.]

---

The roads to understanding misinformation…. Tons of tips on how to recognize signs of misinformation, but more about understanding sources than shaming people. Heightens your attention to certain ways of communicating without too much explanation. I thought I had a good grasp of this kind of thing but learned lots here. Maybe worth sharing this even with people who have experience?

[If a headline provokes an emotional reaction, be on guard: it should pique your curiosity more than convince you to form an opinion—inform over inflame.]

[The context of a poll, how it was collected, is as important as the findings.]

[The words ‘seems’, ‘appears’, ‘apparently’ is an indication of opinion about intent.]

---

Advice on hosting a group discussion:

[Challenge people to contrast with what others have said. Encourage them to talk to each other.]

[Togetherness needs a plurality of relationships. Demonstrate a personal connection with you during intros. Show them they can participate in different levels.]

[Prompt in the event description to collect and come with thoughts about questions.]

[People love to be invited, and feel egotistical about barging in on a conversation (‘everyone seems smart, why should I talk?’).]
— Casey Sokol

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

---

Long

Ayyuka: Maslak Halayı (2020). Unapologetic and seamless weaving of Turkish scales and melodies, psychedelic rock, prepared electronic ambience and live instruments. Pay attention to the effects, the intensity without ‘loudness’, the microtonal inflections played on seemingly ordinary electric guitar. Tight drumming and a badass vibe throughout the album. My favourites: Maslak Halayı fills me with power; Yukadans is alive, helps body move, cool harmonizing between the two leads near the end; Komalı’s got that pitch bending that I love from some kinds of Arab music; Ah Be Baba is an adventure filled with sudden turns and odd meters. (via @kevin@merveilles.town)

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Short

Lyra Pramuk: Tendril from Fountain (2020). The celestial feeling evoked without words shows what is possible with the simplest of materials: only voice, no other instruments, minimal effects (mostly reverb and echo); the layering of parts to create rich harmonies; a variety of vocal textures, syllables, sounds. There is a kind of static rhythm throughout the whole work, but contrast in the form keeps it interesting. A sublime creation. (via RVNG Intl.)

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Tkay Maidza: 24k from Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 2 (2020). Velvet smooth electronic dance grove, lyrics and breathing slotted into the beat perfectly. Nothing to do here except ride along. (via April)

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Bites

Fareed Ayaz, Abu Muhammad Qawwal, Party Ghar ki Mehfil: Chaap Tilak Sab Chheeni (2014). Great example of music as communal experience: the lead singers invite people in the ‘audience’ (using words, or music and movement itself) to participate—at times it feels like a salon discussion even though it’s mostly musical throughout. I’m not familiar with this style of music, but it’s wonderful to observe singing with devotion intense ornamentation. Fun to see others enjoying music not just in the mind but with hands and much of the upper body. I linked to a part that skips the introduction with many individuals in the room ‘taking the spotlight’ to sing, which is beautiful to watch (start from the beginning if you want to check that out). As asides: 1) bonus points that this occurred in Montreal; and 2) refreshing and nostalgic to hear this pre-pandemic performance with people coughing loudly without masks or stigma. (via Pedro Silva)

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The Halluci Nation: Electric Pow Wow Drum from A Tribe Called Red (2013). There’s already so much power in traditional indigenous chanting, to add blasting electronic synths and amplification gives it just a little more oomph. Possible to tastefully connect such far away aesthetics. Super simple form, but interesting timbres from metal shakers and leather-skinned drums. (via RVNG Intl.)

---

More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the twenty-third edition of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I'm doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Charles E. Lerner and Deta for becoming a backer this week ❤️.

---

CONTENTS

1. The feeling of being magical
2. Evolution one
3. Fleeting Arrivals
4. Events
5. Asides
6. Music

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THE FEELING OF BEING MAGICAL

I may not generally present myself with fancy clothes, or visually obvious ornamentation, but I am that multi-coloured dragon who has a certain thing that cannot be found elsewhere, and it's a privilege to feel when this inspires and brings joy to others.

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EVOLUTION ONE

Using a blog system has opened up a new channel of expression for me, curious to see how far this goes.

Since the first edition of Ephemerata, my intention was to share things that give a sense of my world and spur discussion, grouping them in a single digest to avoid overloading people with real-time messages. I still think […]

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FLEETING ARRIVALS

I'm starting a Tumblr to practice articulating why I'm sharing something, and to 'distribute the workload' of writing Ephemerata by publishing as I go. This makes it possible to explore or even subscribe to music, articles, or podcasts via tag.

---

❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

EVENTS

• December 8th to 11th: Visiting Montreal 👋🏼
• December 9th, 2021: Attending Fission MTL DWeb Social

---

ASIDES

Let's talk about society, laws, and two phrases..... Frames pathways for change in a way that feels approachable: we can start where we are. Interesting to consider representatives without their own voice as mere channels for their constituents. If you want to change society, change the way people think; law is a lagging indicator of what people want.

[Political representatives shouldn't make any decisions, but rather simply vote the way a majority of their constituents want.]

[By the time a law passes, most people have already changed their thinking: it's not a leading indicator but an enforcement mechanism.]

[Societal change happens in your skull.]

---

Lessons from a Feline Gaze. My former professor started writing in public recently and managed to describe transcendence in what we, here on the Internet, refer to as a "cat picture". I'm fond of lenses that help us see the sublime in ordinary experiences. There is so much we can learn from animals and nature, such as paying attention to our natural reactions and inhibitions. Feels also like a kind of oblique strategy.

Here is Stella, instructing us on how to look at something we’ve never seen before. As our resident cat-comedian with a gift for irony, she is wondering whether this item — a conductor’s baton — can be worked in as “A” material for her next vaudeville show. The baton is also about to become a tooth sharpener, but we’ll explore that in a moment. Here, Stella is elevating attention itself into an art form, and teaching us to do the same. If that idea doesn’t resonate with you, please find your inner still-point and a moment to drink in her lucent, emerald gaze.

---

lectronice made a cardboard computer, with all the features a young child needs.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Long

Kidi Band: Gimme Gimme (2016). Another release from Kidi Band (featured in #022). I initially didn't make the connection that this was the same group, so they truly managed to captivate me twice—it became distracting to do anything else and I just wanted to listen. I tend to avoid 'loud' music, but this reminds me that it's possible for me to enjoy it. Thoughtful, complex, and emotional. My favourite moments: How Long with busy, intricate, active drumming in the midst of graceful, expansive, widening sung phrases, plus a polyphonic polyrhythmic sundae in the middle; the rhythmic singing in Mountain, feeling like a collective rhythm machine with sudden metric changes; Fever Driver's dense, rich texture, heavily lilting from side to side (or maybe in circles) might get you high.

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Short

Frédéric Chopin: Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op. 23 (1835). A live performance (with hands as the focal point) of a friend and pianist from Italy playing this masterpiece, followed by an analysis explaining what makes certain parts of this piece stand out from other repertoire. I enjoy this fluidity of being able to talk about music that one performs, to help other people hear what's going on and find their way in.

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Caetano Veloso: O Leãozinho from Caetano Veloso (1986). I'm overwhelmed by the simplicity of this little tune: just voice and simple guitar patterns can vividly paint an entire scene, with this bright, lilting mood. The singing and accompaniment are rhythmically fused in a way that makes it natural to embody. It was written for Caetano's sister Maria Bethânia, whose hair may resemble a lion's mane. The percussive clicking might be unique to this version of the song. See the lyrics for a translation. (via Dani)

---

More

Check out Fleeting Arrivals for more music.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That's all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the twenty-second edition of Ephemerata: reflections, observations, and life at the edge.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

---

CONTENTS

1. Dating apps
2. Brian Lovin’s portfolio
3. Events
4. Asides
5. Music

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DATING APPS

Writing about my first experience using apps to meet people:

For most of my life, I have not been so open to the idea of using technology to find romantic relationships. Coming from a culturally conservative background, dating itself could only happen under…

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BRIAN LOVIN’S PORTFOLIO

His personal portfolio has some affordances to make it interactive like a web app, and participatory like a social network: people can ask anything, comment on writing or bookmarks, say which apps they use. There are also some ‘evergreen’ resources like this digital security checklist and app dissection blog.

Demonstrates that we can construct spaces for community within a context that’s often highly individual, and without asking people to create accounts (sign in with Twitter, data stored on Firebase); like a purpose-built room with specific and relevant activities.

Hosting one’s own ‘Ask me Anything’ reminds me of Pat Metheny’s Question and Answer.

Would be nice to have RSS feeds for each ‘type’ as opposed to for writing only. The list presentation is unfortunately Designed to disappear.

See the source code for how it’s made.

(via @julianlehr)

---

❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

EVENTS

• November 24, 2021: Co-hosting Zero Data Swap #4: Hello World with Noel De Martin. (Looking for a volunteer to code a small demo with remoteStorage or Fission. Let me know!)
• November 28, 2021: Co-hosting Improvisation, Spontaneity, and Oneness with Vivek
• November 30, 2021: Hosting remoteStorage monthly hangout

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ASIDES

I usually don’t find good musical metaphors for people coming together to do things, but I love this one: (via Friendships, Scenes, and Growth salon)

a good scene provides the rhythm within which people can improvise and find their own melody
— Bird of Play

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Notes from a mystic:

[Seek and you will not find, because seeking strengthens the ego.]

[When you’re hollow like bamboo and the divine lips are on you, you become a flute and the song starts.]

[A child who holds their father’s hand neither trusts not doubts: they are undivided, not missing anything.]

---

Listening to Justin Jackson’s Indie Bites interview on Bootstrapping Transistor.fm made me realize the importance of balancing your resources with the trajectory you pursue. It changed a perspective I’ve maintained for a while of “avoiding things that are overly commercial because there’s something superficial about that”; I’m still not so motivated by money, but feel more inclined to follow a path that isn’t purely about ‘the idea’. I found it provocative to think that “[it should be easy to become financially successful as an indie hacker]” and make sustainability a priority. Also important to take into account the mental health cost of taking risks over a longer period: better to pick opportunities that can have some kind of return within a year or two—any longer and you’ll need more material resources and likely a strong support network to keep your mind in balance.

[It’s uncommon for successful entrepreneurs to ‘start from zero’: they likely have experience, connections, skills, or a financial runway that provides the conditions to take risks.]

[If it takes longer to get to a sustainable income than you have runway, the market fundamentals might not keep you afloat.]

[A mental health balance is an important part of your runway when taking on something as stressful as indie hacking.]

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

So Good

Kidi Band: So Good (2021). Has lots of cool things that I like in jazz and indigenous music, but as if an indie rock band did it. There are stereo effects, hocket-like devices, odd meters, and highly rhythmic singing throughout. So many tracks with an individual charm: the polyphonic ending of Mary (Merry) with crunchy harmonies; Burn It Up‘s intricate interlocking rhythms in multiple voices with wild vocal bending, all in a five-meter polyrhythmic time feel; Man of Endless Motion‘s heavy head-banger groove, again in five-meter, with cascading interlocking vocal interjections; the incessant intense rhythmic vocals in Free Will; Ingomar is like a complex Rube Goldberg machine that sings in seven; Go On has a wicked African three-against-two time feel; Across the Sea lilting triplet feel, pleasant yet precise. (via @natehn@merveilles.town)

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Long

Pat Metheny Group: Secret Story (2007). Eclectic sonic materials throughout that resemble the album cover’s collage, yet it all seems to belong together. There’s always emotion and sentiment despite compositional complexity. Generally enjoyed the cinematic moments, mood of the 1970s, and the mixing of orchestra with electronic sounds. My favourite moments: an interesting vocal texture to start the album in Above the Treetops; the sound of a sitar played like a guitar in Facing West; the raw earthy vocal scatting and hard sever-meter groove in Finding and Believing; the high-energy vortex soloing environment, abundance of lush harmonies (typical of Metheny’s music) in See the World. (via Sushma)

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Short

Little Simz feat. Obongjayar: Point And Kill from Sometimes I Might Be Introvert (2021). Makes body move, and if your eyes are open, the visuals are sublime. Words and rhythm fit like a glove. Feeling an unapologetic artistry through fashion and music. Concludes with a sudden change to African instruments but with the same time feel. (via Elena)

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El Masreyeen (المصريين): Bahebek La (بحبك لا) from بحبك لا
(1977). The warmth in this funky disco gem from Egypt goes straight to your shoulders. A simple composition with slight contrast between sections, yet it stays interesting throughout. “I love you, no; I need you, yes.” (via Debora Ipekel)

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Bites

Sam Gendel: Cold Duck Time from Satin Doll (2020). space hyper jazz bebop swing squeal sax glitch loop vibe. The rest of the album is comprised of quirky interpretations of jazz standards.

---

(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

THAT’S ALL FOLKS!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the twenty-first edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of ideas, learnings, links, and sounds.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Feathers Cloud for becoming a backer this week ❤️.

---

CONTENTS

1. Going fully web
2. Events
3. Asides
4. Music

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GOING FULLY WEB

The gist: My iOS apps are currently free and will disappear from the App Store in a few months. Read more to understand why.

---

I have been working on iOS apps since 2009, starting by a collaboration with Wil on AudioScrub (née iLift), and eventually going solo in 2014. After twelve years on the App Store, I’ve decided it’s time to go all in on the web, and would like to share what that means and outline the tradeoffs involved.

The spur for this change occurred years ago after the launch of my seventh app sonogrid. Although the project had iterations over several years, it mostly came together in the summer of 2018: I overworked myself for months, with incessant attention to detail, and was eager to present this to people I would meet during my upcoming trip to Colombia (they really love music there, and this app was for music lovers). The app launched to a good reception online within various iOS music app communities, but to my dismay, most of the Colombians I met in person were not able to access it because Apple devices are prohibitively expensive there. I would offer to demo the app on my phone and let the other person play with it after: repeatedly, they would enjoy the interface and become immersed in a fun creative process, only to become disappointed on learning that it’s not on Android. It was hard to resolve the contradiction between producing something I was super proud to share—a kind of magnificent zenith in my iOS trajectory—and realizing that only half the world can use it. This was a bit deflating, and I wasn’t motivated to do double the work just because of platform duopolies. Added to this was the more subtle but long-standing aversion to the ‘review process’ that native apps go through before appearing on the App Store: I was hesitant to invest further in an environment with little control and leverage over my own future, with a constant fear of ‘reviewer rejection’ and the rug slipping out from under me at any time. So I took a step back and haven’t updated many of my iOS apps since then.

In place, I worked on various web components and put them together to create about a dozen web-based projects. Contrasting the experience between the web and native (i.e. iOS) worlds, I feel more enthusiastic about how the web is evolving. It can still be ‘limited’ in comparison to native apps, but that gap is gradually closing and most of my ideas already fit within what’s currently possible.

Just to review, in case it’s not obvious, there are some more commonly understood reasons for choosing the web over native:

• Basically all current and future devices (mobile, tablet, desktop) and operating systems (iOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Linux) are supported.
• Projects are simpler and more cost-effective to build and deploy, with tools and skills that are easier to acquire.
• A thriving universe with bazillions of communities spanning the entire Internet provides lots of answers to questions, and most knowledge is based on open standards and therefore highly transferable.
• Backwards compatibility is a priority, which means your project is likely to continue working despite technology evolving over time.
• You can make changes whenever you like and have them online within seconds or minutes, as opposed to requiring third-party approval for everything, which could take days or weeks.
• The environment makes it more and more empowering for single-person or small team operations to produce things, without requiring the resources of a large company.

The challenges of the web for developers like myself is to help people ‘cross the chasm’ that exists due to a lack of common patterns for interacting with apps:

• There is no obvious ‘App Store’, so people are left to search the wider web (amongst articles, videos, cat pictures, and everything else), but maybe there could be one that celebrates the ‘instant’ nature of this platform, or a subscription bundle like SetApp to help with discovery.
• There is no universal ‘buy’ button—every project does this their own way, but the Ghost Portal is becoming more and more common, and I’m trying something similar with my Fund Button.
• The idea of an ‘install’ button isn’t ubiquitous, and some web apps may not be mobile-friendly or local-first, but for the rest there are libraries like a2hs.js that help guide people to make accessing web apps a more familiar experience: simply click on an app icon to launch.
• The lack of an integrated payment system means that every project needs to re-build trust and help others be comfortable enough in the environment to support them financially, but Stripe Checkout, PayPal Checkout, and Web Monetization are contributing various solutions that reduce friction from this process. (I would also love to see fiscal hosting become more prevalent so that having a legal entity is not necessary to receive money.)
• Performance has often held back the types of applications that can be built on the web platform, but WebAssembly will eliminate this issue for a whole class of ideas.

There are plenty of people working to create open solutions to these ‘missing features’; it seems like a solvable problem with time.

(Feel free to skip this section if you’d rather not hear me complain about Apple.) I’m sharing some negative aspects of my experience making native apps with hesitation, not to be a downer but because there might be people that aren’t really familiar with the developer side:

• The paternal review process can be soul-crushing at times: reviewers don’t enforce rules consistently; bad app(le)s get approved and grift people out of money or personal information; it’s an anxiety-ridden process that can feel unpredictable. You may have a good impression of Apple if you’ve bought their products: calling them for support usually means speaking to a friendly person who takes responsibility for your issue and tries to resolve it. App Review on the other hand might as well be an outsourced company, incredibly bureaucratic, and often feels like talking to a rock; any sensuality around the Apple brand quickly vanishes under these bright white office lights as you find yourself filling out TPS reports in the developer cubicle all of a sudden.
• Large companies dominate the App Store listings and generally get better treatment. The lucky independent developers are ones who have the ear of someone who works at Apple to support them if there’s a dispute and either push their app through App Review or get it featured.
• It’s quite a task for an individual or small team to produce an app, create screenshots and videos, localize everything in multiple languages, respond to reviews, and keep on top of technology that changes every year. The prototypical success looks more like a large organization than two guys in a garage.
• It feels like feeding into a device ecosystem of planned obsolescence and overconsumption, where developers and consumers need to keep upgrading—an insatiable appetite for more.
• The certificates and signing from the build process is complex and can bring development to a halt if you don’t have the right combination of XCode and macOS (hint: keep buying new Macs).
• The expanding variety of screen sizes forces you to learn responsiveness primitives which are platform-specific and create a complex array of image and video assets at different sizes for distribution.
• The constantly changing environment will break your app and force you to either hurry and accommodate the changes or receive messages from customers asking why it doesn’t work anymore.
• You can’t simply share your app with a friend or even install it on your own device without paying rent or getting permission through App Review.

There’s obviously lots of positives to native platforms as well, but these kind of things weigh down smaller operations like mine, favouring large companies with resources and time to deal with this ever-growing complexity.

Despite the web’s challenges, there’s much that excites me about its future and and some of these characteristics are intrinsic to the platform:

• The concept of instant games promotes highly shareable apps via a simple link that require no install process: show up and start.
• Having multiple payment providers, potentially with the addition of cryptocurrencies means if you wanted to also just invent your own value system, maybe some kind of post-money coupon thing, it’s possible to integrate with existing systems…
• User-controlled personal data stores are already being used on the web and will eventually make their way to native apps.
• Edge apps that work completely in the browser are easy to mirror or fork, and virtually free to distribute: imagine having your site/app available everywhere via IPFS
• The culture of perpetual improvement, with less focus on versioning, is normal: people do not need to ‘install updates’ for each app they use on every change.
• It’s just more fun and with a lower barrier to entry, which results in more diverse and dynamic communities who form part of a larger public commons: more sparks, more life, more weird.

My iOS apps have been quietly free for a while and I’m officially announcing that now. Early next year, they will disappear forever; I’m not completely sure how this works—I understand you can continue to use them, perhaps even re-download them, but only if you already have it. I would like to eventually re-make them for the web (be welcome to join me or keep me alive). In the meantime, enjoy these apps while they last. I’m jumping head first into a world bubbling with new possibilities, and excited to develop for the largest open pool of people on the planet.

---

❤️

Help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

EVENTS

• November 14: Attending A Field Guide to Internet Emotion > 3.0 Atomize, or Bit-Sized Emotions
• November 14: Attending Friendships, Scenes, and Growth
• November 24: Co-hosting Zero Data Swap #4: Hello World with Noel De Martin
• November 28: Co-hosting Improvisation, Spontaneity, and Oneness with Vivek
• November 30: Hosting remoteStorage monthly hangout

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ASIDES

Try these two smart techniques to help you master your emotions. Relates the size of one’s emotional vocabulary to their well-being, which makes augmenting one’s capacity as simple as learning new words to name feelings or internal states. (via Pamela Pavliscak)

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The Technium: Scenius, or Communal Genius. I love the idea that genius is not found only in contexts blessed by institutional validation, and can be occurring without someone noticing it, in ‘ordinary’ places. We can learn to recognize genius when this happens and fan the flames by cultivating and participating. If you look around, you might find it nearby.

Mutual appreciation — Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.
…
Rapid exchange of tools and techniques — As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
…
Network effects of success — When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
…
Local tolerance for the novelties — The local “outside” does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.

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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. (via @expede)

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The global streaming boom is creating a severe translator shortage. Makes visible the industry that produces different translations for streaming content. Despite the fact that machines are used to aid in the process, it ultimately relies on people. If there wasn’t enough incentive already to learn languages, maybe this provides a financial motivation.

[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.]

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

BASU

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.

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Long

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.

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Groovy Kaiju: Destroy All Monsters (2021). Groovy, tasteful mixing with warm upbeat vibes. Reminds me of J Dilla’s Donuts with more modern music.

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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’. (via Shawn)

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Short

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. (via Eva B)

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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.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

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That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the twentieth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of ideas, learnings, links, and sounds.

I'm doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

WETWARE OF WRITING AND DOING

This is a presentation I gave at Tools For Thought Rocks on how I use my apps to make things happen. The video and slides are available and there is also an expanded text version for anyone who wants to read. Here is an excerpt:

I talk often about my apps and their features, but rarely about how I use them day-to-day—partially to leave space for people to imagine their own workflows, but also because I didn't think it wouldn't be of interest to share mine. This changed after a conversation with pvh, who remarked that after reading the website for Launchlet and trying to play with the compose interface, it wasn't clear how all the parts came together until watching my tutorial videos—I found that interesting coming from someone who has plenty of experience with computer programming and its paradigms. It made me realize 1) that interfaces clearly communicating 'features' doesn't mean people appropriate them, 2) the importance of good affordances to help people go beyond merely 'using the app' to extending themselves in the process. The larger question to address here is: how can the environment better transmit what is possible so that those within it can take fuller advantage? It will likely take some time for me to find my own answers and implement them in projects, so for now, I feel motivated to do what is knowable and share more about how I use my apps to illuminate the wetware. What I find myself 'doing' most of the time involves […]

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INTERVIEW WISDOM FROM THE WISE (via Tali)

[Every conversation has an arc.]

[Focus on how their brain is working.]

[You can't listen in anticipation of what you're expecting.]

[People tend to be close-minded about what they truly believe.]

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❤️

If you would like to help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

THOUGHTS FROM THERAPY

[To feel unrestricted by what comes from outside without being isolated from what comes from outside.]

[Bitterness has its own life and doesn't let us be lightweight.]

[Indifference is love transformed, anger too. Self-love transforms into shame. Reactive emotions come from wounded love.]

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EVENTS

• November 1—7, 2021: ✈️ Visiting Vancouver (reach out if you're around 👋🏼)
• November 10, 2021: Hosting remoteStorage monthly hangout
• November 20, 2021: Co-hosting Improvisation, spontaneity, and oneness with Vivek Thyagarajan
• November 24, 2021: Co-hosting Zero Data Swap #4: Hello World with Noel De Martin (looking for someone to make an easy example of remoteStorage or Fission's webnative)

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ASIDES

Cory Doctorow's The Memex Method gave me much food for thought about writing, capturing, publishing. In relation to sharing (like what I'm doing right here) I notice my tendency to describe 'what it is' as opposed to 'the importance to me'—will try to work on that more.

[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.]

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Jacob Collier improvises versions of 'Danny Boy' on the piano to never before seen index cards with names of emotions that become increasingly complex, while transitioning as smoothly as possible between one card to the next. I felt initially that this would be kind of a gimmick, but hearing his analysis after each set gives you a sense of how intertwined his improvisational process is with compositional thinking. I appreciate his 'handedness' with tonalities, modulations between keys, decorative devices. I'm always a fan of "giving people who aren't familiar with free improvisation a way into the concept".

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This Global Clock uses letters of the alphabet to 'spell' time the same way across zones; I imagine that once you get used to the letters, you would not need to convert as much. Here's the best meeting time between Vancouver, New York, and Paris. (via @cinnamon@merveilles.town)

The idea is to have a unified time zone that works for all locations on earth by using the same time system we all know (24 hours, 60 minutes, 60 seconds) and adding on top of it a rotating UTC layer as the global time. This layer is presented in alphabet. The reason for that is to distinguish the local time in numbers from the global one in letters.

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John O'Nolan from Ghost speaks on the Indie Hackers podcast about building Internet businesses with non-capitalist organizational structures.

[Blogging used to be writing about your experiences.]

[Use a paywall to give yourself space.]

[Enable an ecosystem of businesses to thrive around what you build.]

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That's all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

Consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the nineteenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I'm doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

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(Lots of writing in this one, sorry if it's overloading, I missed sending last week… Will try to balance more in the future.)

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COMMUNITY ESSENCE

Reflecting on why events are work, I realize that the exhaustion comes from doing too much on my own. And in thinking about how to be more collaborative in what I do, I'm starting to notice an issue in my way of thinking: I start from the perspective of "X, Y, and Z are all important to the project's success, and since there doesn't seem to be anyone volunteering, I guess I'll just do it." It might be the case that I'm taking initiative or being proactive, but it seems as if my vision of involving others is to start by completing the work of six people, and then wait until individuals appear to fill particular roles (like promoting, note-taking, audiovisual editing, logistics coordinating, etc…). This is perhaps a bit backwards in this context, creating a failure mode where people would contribute in my way as opposed to theirs, thus not seeing themselves in the collaboration, thus likely not even getting involved to begin with. Rather than having pre-defined slots that someone can conform to, a more vibrant community approach would enable people to create their own possibilities for contribution.

In thriving communities like Precious Plastic or Interintellect, it seems like the leaders activate others to become leaders as opposed to doing everything solo. Compare "doing narrowly-scoped tasks in someone's project" with "starting a recycling centre" or "self-organizing an event for group conversation". What does it take to afford someone maximally radiating their individual expression within a shared purpose? One way I'm exploring this is to have a constant reminder near my to-do lists which encourages me to [somewhat extremely] "avoid doing anything unless it involves another person." I don't recommend that framing for everyone, it certainly has its issues, but I'm ready to try something really different after being in a solo phase for such a long time.

My long-standing unawareness of these dynamics may have something to do with being a digital native or 'very online', as I might be more susceptible to the ways in which technology can mislead. Only now do I understand that the 'forum' or 'chat' is not 'where the community is'. This might be obvious to many readers, but it's tempting for people like me to interpret platform metrics as an indicator of community-ness: a place may seem to have few posts or little public activity, but things might be happening in private channels or offline, and a place with a flurry of interaction risks being superficial or spammy. Content is not community in the same way that the map is not the territory.

To understand where the essence of community is, I found it useful to imagine a more low-tech approach to organizing events, perhaps for an offline in-person gathering. "Let's get together and go into that thing that gets us going." You might reach out to people you know via phone calls, or while running into them somewhere along your way, and ask them to also invite others in the same manner. No announcements, no notifications, no social media posts, no recording, no summary, no place to leave a comment: just whatever happens together. In this scenario, the community exists in interactions with one another, with no digital representations that can imply otherwise. Despite being a very online community, Interintellect exemplifies this well as, the 'substance' of it doesn't really have a digital representation: you need to attend a salon and experience the interactions with other members to understand the essence of it.

Let's contrast this with a high-tech approach like the GitHub platform, where an enormous amount of software is being built collaboratively. Although many projects successfully advance with collective effort, much of the long tail suffers from lack of contributions, or burnout from too many contributions and interface anti-patterns; collaboration begins via "Issues" (reporting a problem) or "Pull Requests" (suggesting changes you made), as opposed to making a personal connection. When everything is a digital representation and it's rare to have moments together, the essence is in the back-and-forth of discussion threads and editing files, which is a bit more abstract than 'getting to know one another' or 'inviting the people who would make it more meaningful'. It has been a struggle for me to model the methods of collaboration incentivized by this platform in my own projects, until I realized that it's better to just ignore all of them and start somewhere more interpersonal, perhaps fill the togetherness void with my own solution. What are good affordances for community in a platform like this? And what is the software encouraging? If the basis of community is relating to one another, I think it happens on GitHub in spite of the software, not because of it. For me, considering more analog approaches helps me interact more meaningfully in this kind of pure digital space.

I don't have a clear conclusion to all this at the moment, but these reflections are giving me a new perspective on community essence. Letting people come as they are and share what they have to offer allows for them to be better represented in the process. I would avoid paying too much attention to what software wants you to do, think, or feel, and start with personal connection, perhaps considering how it would come about without the Internet. Community is a verb and it exists in doing with others, more-so than in its representations.

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P. S. If you wonder about how we are affected by patterns that come from technology platforms, come join Vidhika Bansal and I on October 23rd for a group discussion called Are Apps Making Us Better Or Worse?.

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❤️

If you would like to help me continue creating projects that are public, accessible for free, and open-source, consider becoming one of my financial backers.

---

THIRTY-THREE

I started an annual birthday reflection last week.

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GOING DOORLESS

I fleshed out some ideas about apps as public spaces, with a more detailed vision for how they can become as shareable as most Internet content.

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EVENTS

I'll be travelling a bit in the next few weeks, please hit me up if you're around 🙂.

• October 19—24, 2021: 🚘 Visiting Montreal 👋🏼
• October 20, 2021: Hosting remoteStorage monthly hangout
• October 23, 2021: Co-hosting Are Apps Making Us Better Or Worse? with Vidhika Bansal
• October 27, 2021: Co-hosting Zero Data Swap #3: Maker Meet with cblgh
• November 1—7, 2021: ✈️ Visiting Vancouver 👋🏼

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ASIDES

Edward Loveall made something wonderful called Scribe, which lets you read articles on Medium with much less suffering by simply changing the link, slightly. Here's an example using one of my favourite posts by Anthony Bourdain: https://medium.com/parts-unknown/guns-and-green-chile-3a019b1f5bc1

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I've been slowly working through Tim Urban's series on how society has become so polarized. So far I'm at the third chapter which has an interesting framing of stories as viruses: (via Omar Shehata)

[Viable story viruses need to be teachable and understandable for simplicity, hard to disprove and specific as absolute truth for conviction, and applicable to a wide range of people for spreadability.]

[To drive behaviour of its host, story viruses needs promises of pleasure or pain to create incentives, claims that your behaviour will be known to facilitate accountability, coverage of the spectrum that humans believe for comprehensiveness.]

[Story evolution favours the hosts who survive.]

[Having a supreme leader and identifying yourself with the story ('I am a [story]ist') creates the tribal mindset that enables larger groups of humans to act in concert.]

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Kat Vellos' Alternatives to "How are you?" provides some other options for a question I've had difficulty with for a while. I prefer asking more specifically about someone's life, but I don't judge it anymore as I understand it's not really about the words but the movement between people to connect. If you have other suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Here are some of my favourites: (via Cassandra Zawilski)

What’s top of mind for you right now?
…
What did you do today?
…
It’s good to hear your voice.
…
How’s your heart today?

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Jacob Collier shares an anecdote about making a song for each of the multiplication tables when he was younger. No further comment.

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That's all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the eighteenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Reef for contributing to my Open Collective last week.

EVENTS ARE WORK

This year has marked the beginning of a shift in my approach: from doing virtually everything solo towards more collectivity and collaboration; the transition has barely begun and is still quite slow as I rewire myself to avoid what has become natural and automatic after over a decade’s practice. I have been thinking and learning about community for longer, but started taking concrete steps around May 9th with the creation of a forum and this newsletter, places with potential to become larger than me.

An important part of this shift has been to bring people together in the form of events, so I looked around me to see where I could contribute. remoteStorage is one of the primary technologies I use in my apps, so I began hosting monthly hangouts. Zero Data seems to be flying away from my nest and turning into a community project, so I started to facilitate some swap meets. I also enjoy getting to know Interintellect, which is a community of people that come together in self-organized group conversations (salons) about eclectic topics, and so I have strived to regularly host my own salons.

Although I have some prior experience with running events, I somehow didn’t anticipate how overwhelmed and fatigued I would eventually feel by doing so many of these. I remember thinking to myself: “it’s just conversations about stuff I’m immersed in, all I have to do is show up and do my thing, no big deal.” To give a sense of the work, from before to after: pre-event involves coordination with others, documenting and framing with text that others can understand, letting interested people know, making announcements at specific times before the event, calming any mental anguish about zero people possibly attending; the event itself involves mentally preparing and blocking out time in the day, being present and ideally taking notes on the conversation, remembering to hit the record button if that’s a thing, hopefully add something insightful to the discussion; post-event involves thanking and outreach, summarizing the notes, editing the recording, publishing in multiple relevant places and sharing that. What I thought of as one hour of spontaneous conversation implies about two days of preparation and two days of recapitulation, and as this happens about three times a month, it feels like three out of four weeks in each month are write-offs, with time and energy only for random unrelated things that need to get done and not much for making apps or advancing on projects.

In reflecting on how to remedy this imbalance, I think it makes sense (for now) to just keep doing the events. One form of stress comes from always feeling like I’m ‘supposed’ to be doing my ‘real work’ on projects, which went from receiving ‘All Available Daylight Hours’ to ‘Not Even One Iota’ for consecutive weeks—as someone used to having freedom over how I spend my time, this was hard to grapple with. But I thought recently: maybe it’s fine for my ‘primary commitment’ of app-making to be supplanted by something else for a while. Maybe this makes getting other people involved an imperative to progress. After years of working so hard on the same thing, perhaps it would be good to do something different for a while.

A friend rightly reminded me how new this is: a couple of months ago I wanted to be more social and collective, and now I’m putting it into action; it’s worth taking time to acknowledge this progress, maybe even celebrate. I’ve certainly been enjoying meeting new people and creating spaces where new things can be said. The skills and experience are both useful, but I’d still prefer to delegate so much more, so please reach out if you’d like to get involved in any of this: I could use a hand.

P.S. Mad respect to @boris for trying to do this kind of thing weekly with Fission Tech Talks.

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A DAY OF ENVY

I spent most of my free time yesterday watching ContraPoints’ two-hour oeuvre on envy. This would have been plenty of food for thought for one day, but it was actually preparation for Maybe Gray’s Envy and Evil salon. Here are some of my favourite ideas:

[Humans often transform envy into contempt, making it seem flattering or socially acceptable.]

[Envy can signal what you want.]

[Social media makes us focus on the end result: ‘I want what they have’. It’s a fictitious possibility, but you can at least approach the other to understand what it takes.]

[Envy implies a lack of understanding of the self or the other.]

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

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SIX DEGREES OF WIKIPEDIA

This fun little utility finds the shortest paths between any two articles, for example: between Hey and Cheese.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Metheny, Music Master

It was comforting and enlightening to hear this interview between Pat Metheny and Rick Beato, discussing the career and discography of one of the world’s greatest jazz guitarists, with frequent plunges into music theory concepts demonstrated live. I was surprised to find out that he used to take ten pages of notes after every concert.

[You can go to college for four years to study harmony, or rhythm, but not melody.]

[Improvise using the structure of Happy Birthday as a way to approach thematic development.]

[I never play any two notes at the same volume.]

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Bites

Over the last two weeks, I’ve repeatedly listened to Novelo from Joyce Moreno’s Hard Bossa (1999) (featured in #012). The modern jazz waltz feel stands out to me now, and I’m absorbing the harmonies and intricate voice-leading.

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I had two favourites from Amon Tobin’s How Do You Live (2021): the titular track, noisy with a fat bass, badass drumming, and kaleidoscopic timbres; and This Living Hand, with a sort of scribbling or tickling turned into a rhythm. (via Brian Ginsburg)

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Dorothy Ashby’s Afro-Harping (1968) reminds me of Alice Coltrane’s music, but maybe more chill. (via we fucking love music)

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More music in the previous edition.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

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That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

If you enjoy this, please consider passing it on via Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

SALON TAKEAWAYS

The #BuildingSocialBridges salon yesterday was effervescent. I feel happy with how deep we were able to go, and grateful that the participants were so generous in sharing ideas. I encourage anyone who couldn’t make it to read the notes, as each person brought some special wisdom to the conversation. Here are some of my favourite ideas:

“[Creating connections is the core of being human—it’s so natural for children.]” — Alessandro

“[Prefer shared language over common ground.]” — Jeeva

“[Divided people may share smaller beliefs. People with similar conclusions may have surprisingly different values. A world where everyone agrees has no room for evolution. Unpack the belief into values and decisions to find common ground.]” — Jessica

“[Secular people do have faith (in the conversation, in the day getting better, in the world doing well, in human potential), so it’s not a big step to jump to spiritual.]” — Tristan

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MOWGLI’S MONEY

Brett Scott compares economic self-sufficiency with interdependency using Tarzan and Mowgli as metaphors (via @delta_chat@twitter.com):

[The Tarzan suite analyses from the fully-formed individual onward: the nodes make up the network. The Mowgli suite starts from interdependence and a child that needs to be cared for: the network makes the node.]

[The idea of passing a random stranger on the street did not exist in the past, as survival implied being part of tightly-knit groups.]

[Nation states are only about 5000 years old and have dissolved the boundaries between smaller collectives to create ‘the public’, which we are vaguely connected to, but do not know.]

[The image of ‘prehistoric wilderness man’ we consider today is a caricature. Primitive life was not ‘solo men creating shelter and hunting’ but intensely group-oriented collaboration, as can be seen in photos of indigenous tribes.]

[The myth of self-sufficiency assumes that interacting with others and trading is optional, as opposed to a mandatory means of survival.]

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MAKING COMPUTERS FLEXIBLE

Alexander Obenauer’s Why is our thinking on computers so restrained? describes the inflexible aspects of apps, interfaces, files, and digital taxonomy. These are thoughts about how human-computer interaction could be more natural, and how to personalize the experience, from someone who is apparently building their own operating system.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

THE PURPOSE OF FRIENDSHIP

The School of Life produced a video framing friendship according to four different purposes: networking, reassurance, fun, and thinking. I find it useful as a way to notice when relationships don’t enrich us or fit into these purposes, to prompt finding more clarity about the connection. (via Vidhika)

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‘BOY’ IS TROUBLE

Beau of the Fifth column talks about why the seemingly innocuous word ‘boy’ is avoided in the southern United States, and posts a breathtaking followup for someone asking advice on how to handle it.

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THE SWEETER THE BERRY, THE OLDER THE HAND

I learned of a French expression ‘sucrer les fraises’, literally “sugar or sweeten the strawberries”, which refers to the tremor of an elderly person’s hands. Why? Because in order to enjoy strawberries, one needs to take a bowl of sugar and shake it gently from side to side, coating evenly to perfection before eating. (via Elisa)

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

BIENAVENTURANZA

Chancha Via Circuito’s Bienaventuranza (2018) is an old favourite reverberating inside me the over last few days. I have never forgotten my first impression from hearing this years ago: the feeling of a wide-open space gradually expanding, physical heaviness (as if this were a solid object) created from sparse texture. This digital cumbia from Argentina has a certain rawness from traditional instruments and especially the voice, combined with natural ambience, and electronic sounds. (via Roberta)

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Bites

Sam Gendel’s When I Am Laid In Earf from Fresh Bread (2021) pairs baroque harmony and voice-leading with a computer-generated voice on autotune. Hella eerie.

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Nate Wood’s It’s Enough (2021 single) from the fOUR project is one person playing drums, bass, and synth in 5 meter, while singing, plus “recorded live in 1 pass with no overdubs, click track or pre-recorded backing tracks”. What else??

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Maede Shafiie leads this group of five Iranian women playing tombak with hypnotic hand coordination.

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More music in last week’s edition.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

Welcome to the sixteenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

BULIDING SOCIAL BRIDGES

On Saturday, September 18th, I’m hosting my second Interintellect salon, Building Social Bridges and Healing a Divided World, which will be a group discussion about cultivating connection across divides. I think it’s useful to discuss this at the moment and would like to learn from other people’s experiences. If you can’t make it and have tips, learning materials, good examples, please share. Let’s learn together :).

By coincidence, I recently heard Buster Benson talking about his book, The Art of Productive Disagreement:

[Being civil or skirting around hard topics isn’t enough.]

[Disagreement is usually more about values than facts.]

[Make predictions and see what happens. Now there’s nothing to argue about, everyone learns something, and it creates a ritual to reconnect.]

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THOUGHTS WHILE DANCING DURING TURMOIL

Converse with the music.

All music teaches.

Even without controlling externalities, you can be absorbed in your experience of being alive, you can take care of yourself, you can connect with your body. In that world, we are free.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

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STARTING NEW APPS

I recently recorded Scaffold an app from scratch: a live coding video where an existing app is used as the basis for a new one. You can see the steps I go through each time I have a new project and get an idea of the different aspects involved. This is hopefully the last ‘long video’ and followed by small live coding videos on specific topics.

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REMOTESTORAGE HANGOUT

If you’re curious about the remoteStorage technology used in all of my apps, come to the monthly hangout this Tuesday. Basti will share an upcoming ‘read later’ feature in his bookmarking app Webmarks.

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SEPTEMBER MEANS BACK TO… THE OFFICE?

Enjoy this cute and funny role reversal between kids and parents during ‘back to work’ season. (via Jessica)

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Ethereal space jazz

Sam Gendel and Sam Wilkes’ Music for Saxofone and Bass Guitar (2018) is full of strange and wonderfully creative sounds, beatboxing, and melody-less improvising, all of which were recorded live with something like loop pedals. I really dug the mouth percussion and head-banging stank face grooves on THEEM AND VARIATIONS; as well as the beat from dental fricatives on GREETINGS TO IDRIS. The inconspicuously-named TRACK ONE has this remarkable throat falsetto riff and manages to build a movement-inducing rhythm that simultaneously feels sparse and full-bodied, drizzled with a solo of quartal explorations on thirteenth chords.

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Albums

Jorge Ben’s Força Bruta (1970) mixes complex harmonies with Brazilian dance rhythms, orchestra with folk instruments, and is generally a good time. (via we fucking love music)

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This compilation of music sung by Mildred Bailey (1930s) features some lovely stride jazz piano. My first time hearing this singer. (via Brian Ginsburg)

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Tracks

Hania Rani recorded a live set of music which makes me want to play the piano again. At various points she plays while touching the strings to create percussive sounds. The set merges electronic and acoustic, and she also sings on some tracks. It’s always special to see people pushing the boundaries of live music-making. (via @ghostlevel@merveilles.town)

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More

Check out last week’s edition for more music.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the fifteenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

HOME AGAIN

I’m back in Canada after a long moment in Brazil. The journey here was pretty chaotic (see How my one-way flight home with United cost an extra $4200) but now I’m at home, in quarantine, catching up with music and friends. This is a good week to reach out as I would appreciate company.

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ZERO DATA ON THE RUNTIME PODCAST

Last week, I had a great chat with Rafael Kennedy about Zero Data apps, the different protocols, what it’s like to build for this platform, and trade-offs compared to traditional designs.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Blood and Dust

Blood and Dust’s Rites of Blood and Dust (2020) is so far away from what I normally listen to that I needed to look up the genre in Bandcamp (it says ‘ambient ritual ambient atmospheric horror dark ambient drone horror drone melodic dark ambient queer Montreal’). I often struggle when listening to music that calls itself ambient because I tend to find it sort of ‘empty’, but this was very clearly not the case here. Many tracks have this tasteful way of shifting the meter from a ‘three’ to ‘four’ feel, or gradually building intensity, or contrasting between arhythmic and groove, textural and instrumental. In the Hollow of a Hill somehow works in a flute and maybe a cello… This is not passive listening but a sound experience that’s well put-together: I recommend hearing from start to finish.

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Albums

Fikret Kızılok’s Zaman Zaman (1993) chills me out, quiets me down—music to sway. This Turkish rock singer creates an old sentimental sound using acoustic instruments. My favourite is Oysa Ben with looping chord progressions, sounds of the shore, vinyl scratching, seagulls. Nice also to hear the warm piano on İki Parça Can. (via Clara)

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This album by Kasai Allstars, with the spectacular title In The 7th Moon, The Chief Turned Into A Swimming Fish And Ate The Head Of His Enemy By Magic (2008), features traditional sounds and singing by Congo-based musicians mixed with modern production techniques. If you dig this, check out the Nihiloxica from #014. Lots of groovy, funky bits where I found myself practicing Rich Brown’s modal improvisation tips from #012.

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Steve Lacy’s Raps (1977) is beautiful chaos from one of the free jazz greats: plenty of clashing notes, disjunct rhythms—everything’s broken as it should be.

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Tracks

Pino Palladino and Blake Mills’ Chris Dave from Notes With Attachments (2021) is grooooooovy, jazzy, funky, with intricate clicking and clacking, and water glasses played with a violin bow. (via @dokoissho)

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the fourteenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

thoughts on nature while traveling with a friend

[Animals spend all day meditating.]

[Leaves don’t fight with the wind.]

[All life teaches.]

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Rethinking analytics

A while ago, after years of being “analytics-free”, I decided to try Plausible Analytics and I want to share what led me to start thinking differently.

The original provocation was learning that Photopea, despite financial success as a one-person operation, earns most of its revenue from advertising and only four percent of its revenue from subscriptions or memberships. Considering that I am trying to finance my own sustainability directly via the people using the app, I thought it curious that this income equalled a sort of ‘minimum wage’ despite being a well-known, high-traffic project. I don’t intend or know how to make something as complex and deep as a Photoshop clone, and so I wondered if I would have fewer opportunities than this—perhaps I need to be open to selling ads at some point in the future, if that’s what it takes to keep content freely accessible on the web. (On the other hand, I believe it’s better to avoid comparing yourself to others and complexity is not synonymous with income, but I’m not sure how to think about all this at the moment).

Another reason is that I had a hard time turning garbage numbers like ‘requests’ (which include bots and counts multiple files for each pageload) into something that gives me an idea of ‘how many people are actually looking at this?’. I believe in talking to the people who use what you make, but I think many (or most?) people don’t have time to write in their impressions, and so this will always be smaller by a magnitude you cannot know; there is value in passive feedback and I think most people would prefer this if it’s done with purpose.

So far it feels good. I aggregate visitors to various projects into a single picture. It’s nice to have more meaningful numbers and to find out about interesting places that link to you, like this Brazilian guy’s tech blog. One of my 100 steps to success, still in-progress, is to track your growth over time, and this is another way to do that.

I hesitated all these years because Google Analytics has become a form of surveillance capitalism, and this taints most other approaches to analytics (or at least our perceptions of it). How can this be remedied? Does it help to use open-source technology? Or if the company hosting the technology aligns with your values? Collecting data generally requires trust because one cannot verify beyond the ‘privacy policy’—what about being transparent and just showing what one collects?

Similar to Buttondown, which I use to send mailing lists, I dig the spirit behind the project and its team and would like to lend my support. All this feels holistic so far, but I’m open to having my mind changed again. What do you think?

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

Bombs vs. Bugs

Edward Snowden answers questions comparing the two:

[Banning code exploits itself can hurt efforts to counter DRM for autonomy.]

[Software exploits can be more dangerous than bombs because they are more likely to be used.]

[When exploits are used, we don’t find out immediately; sometimes only years later, whereas bombs will be reported on the evening news.]

[Like viruses, exploits can be spread: using it is a risk of losing it.]

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Nihiloxica’s Kaloli (2020) is a shiny little gem mixing traditional Ugandan drumming with elements of electronic music and techno. Supuki’s dark beats and groove drumming, combines the electronic with an earthy sound—intense; Tewali Sukali’s body-shaking rhythms are accompanied by grungy noise; Gunjula has fast-driving multi-layered polyrhythms; Busoga’s the lead synths are dripping light all over the percussion; Kaloli surprised me with its thrashing metal. (via @ritualdust@merveilles.town)

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Going through a reflective moment in the last few weeks, I found myself listening back to one of my favourite modern jazz albums: Chris Potter’s live-recorded Follow The Red Line (2007). After dozens of listens, I continue to be inspired by the improvisational capacity of these musicians. It’s inspiring, comforting, centering.

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Astral Flowers’ Força da Cura from New Paradigm (2018) is a salutation to healing forces, introduced by the sound of breath, life, and spirit. (via Ronald)

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More music in the previous edition.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

LANGUAGE

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a beautiful Tumblr documenting made-up words describing difficult feelings. My favourite “Pâro: The Feeling That Everything You Do Is Somehow Wrong”. (via Tani):

agnosthesia
n. the state of not knowing how you really feel about something, which forces you to sift through clues hidden in your behavior, as if you were some other person—noticing a twist of acid in your voice, an obscene amount of effort put into something trifling, or an inexplicable weight on your shoulders that makes it difficult to get out of bed.

midding
v. intr. feeling the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it—hovering on the perimeter of a campfire, chatting outside a party while others dance inside, resting your head in the backseat of a car listening to your friends chatting up front—feeling blissfully invisible yet still fully included, safe in the knowledge that everyone is together and everyone is okay, with all the thrill of being there without the burden of having to be.

Altschmerz
n. weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.

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HUMANITY

I am pleased to see the Birds Aren’t Real movement gaining momentum—there is a documentary in production featuring their Springfield rally.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

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TECHNOLOGY

Our first Zero Data Swap was a wonderful exchange about schemas, interoperability, and Cambria. To hear about the next gathering, watch the forum or subscribe to the new Zero Data mailing list.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Music and Emotion Sharing Circle

Yesterday’s salon was fun as we listened to a range of different styles; a great dose of healthy serendipity to my music intake. Two songs stuck with me.

Lingua Ignota’s PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE from SINNER GET READY (2021) is filled with dark piano textures, and a strong, pure vocal tone that manages to create this deep and expansive intensity with just a few parts. Reminds me of how powerful the acoustic piano can be. You can hear the pedals of the piano triggering overtones… (via Zsolt)

Lil Jon and LMFAO’s Drink from The World’s End soundtrack (2013) is a body-shaker, head-banger, wall-breaker—100% energy using cues from techno song forms. I have some nostalgia for Lil Jon’s general screaming and expletives. Moving! (via Jeeva)

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Azymuth

Light As A Feather (2012) is a complex yet danceable mix of jazz, fusion, and disco. Makes me feel like digging into Azymuth’s entire collection. Partido Alto has a funky offbeat rhythm that’s actually in 4; Avenida Das Mangueiras stomps along—driving pulse with funk sixteenth note solos; the second section of Light As A Feather mixes jazz and bossa nova brazil with an uber-tight drum foundation; Fly Over The Horizon reminds me of Weather Report; Jazz Carnival goes full on disco; Young Embrace is a bouncy, swaying electronic biological thing, obviously from Brazil.

The drummer from their band joined with Madlib to form “Jackson Conti” and release Sujinho (2008): jazz/hip-hop instrumentals mixed with pandeiro and all sorts of Brazilian instruments and rhythms, Coltrane-era sax solos, synth riffs, flute melodies—I’ve never heard anything like this.

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Albums

Joyce Moreno & Toninho Horta’s Sem Você (2007) features two of my favourite artists in Brazil (or perhaps the world) on the same disc. Two masters playing samba, bossa nova, jazz, sublime guitar.

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Check out last week’s edition for more music.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello. Have a great week 🙂

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the twelfth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

HUMANITY

Linus Lee’s cellular theory of communities uses biological metaphors to describe optimal community growth:

[Communities grow less like linear software products and more like multi-cellular organisms. The conditions are as important as your contribution, and if they aren’t conducive, the entire structure can collapse.]

[It’s easier for cells to stay alive when they are smaller. Multi-cellular organisms grow not by getting bigger, but by producing more cells.]

[Might be more strategic to build a large community by connecting many smaller, more intimate micro-communities. Enlarging small groups destroys the qualities that make it potent.]

To scale a community, build lots of special, one-of-a-kind places for a few people at a time, and then work with the most active members to build fast interconnects between them.

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Joe Smith shares what helped Toastmasters become a thriving global community over the course of its hundred-year history:

[Newer people are helped by more seasoned people to create mentor relationships.]

[Making it fun is more important than the educational aspect.]

[Nobody gets paid, but they gain experience that creates real dividends in other aspects of their life.]

[People shy about lacking experience are prime candidates for growth by practicing leadership.]

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Susan Collier shares about taking time to sit with ourselves.

[Why is it easy to reach for our phones for ten minutes but not stay silent for ten minutes?]

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At the Sparks Between Us salon, the participant identities were secret, so I present the following ideas without credit:

[The word ‘love’ has societal connotations that may push us to conform to patterns that don’t reflect our true sentiments toward other people. What if we used the word ‘adore’ to break these pressures and define our relationships without external influence? ‘I love you’ comes with baggage that we need to clarify and justify. ‘I adore you’ is a blank canvas for us to express more purely.]

[I love everyone by default.]

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TECHNOLOGY

A recording is now available for my discussion with Fission on Zero Data apps, entrepreneurship, funding, building software together—timestamps are available for the different sections.

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Geoffrey Litt’s conversation on Metamuse goes into technological flexibility and implications of separating apps from their data:

[Despite having invented an infinitely flexible medium, we’ve all settled on small groups of people making something and throwing it over a wall for others to use.]

[The secondary market of module providers is often more important than end-user programming possibilities itself.]

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While Dave Hakkens spoke at length about his sustainability projects, he pointed out something that I rarely hear in the discourse around ‘the sum of all human knowledge’:

[People with knowledge about certain domains are not in front of computers most of the day, so what is available online does not reflect what we know.]

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

More Moreno (via Joyce aficionado @dokoissho)

I try to avoid saying here whether I think something is ‘good’ as it’s not a useful comment, but I can’t help stating that Hard Bossa (1999) by Joyce Moreno (featured in #005) is excellent. I was fooled by ‘the b word’, thinking that it would be easy-going music made by Brazilians catering to an international audience, and I was very wrong: traditional elements are unapologetically slathered throughout.

I’ll share my impressions of some songs, but the whole album is worth a listen:

• Zoeira starts the album with complex interlocking rhythms between instruments, yet it flows like air.
• Nome De Guerra’s rapid pandeiro beat and [that universal folk rhythm clapping pattern whose name escapes me] underpins a moment sung by Paulo Cesar Pinheiro, and it flows like air.
• London Samba sounds to me more like bossa nova than samba, but it feels like you’re dancing and someone is twirling you around. There is a trombone solo and it flows like air.
• Todos Os Santos features duet harmonies in a seven meter, and it flows like air.
• Hard Bossa’s scurrying onomatopoeic melody doubled rhythmically by flute flies right by, and it flows like air.

This falls under the #Under45Minutes classification that I disclosed last week.

I also thought it was neat that a legendary artist from the 1970s has a Bandcamp.

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Albums

Mákina Kandela’s CUMBIAKISTÁN (2014) is sometimes cumbia digital, sometimes afrobeat, sometimes reggae/dub. They use quite a few sudden metric changes throughout the album, which I find unusual for genres that are often more ‘steady’. There is also a peculiar sensation at around forty minutes where the groove always seems slower than you expect.

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Junior Braguinha has a set of live quintet recordings that could probably go together as an album, but seems impossible to assemble together without creating a YouTube account or relying on autoplay, so here’s just two tracks: Goonies (2017) mixes a high-octane bass solo with ambient noise (emphasis on noise) from the keyboardist—reminds me of Robert Glasper’s Black Radio. Brisa (2018) is hard-driving and odd-metered with harmonies that shift like mechanical gears. (via Shedid)

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Tracks

I was waiting to set aside a year of my life to listen to Jacob Collier’s Djesse suite, but happened upon Time Alone With You, with a harmonic complexity that results from someone starting with Moon River as their baseline. It sounds like being possessed by the opposite of the devil. I found it impossible to sit still while listening. Notice as well the fluid physicalizing of music in the video.

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Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have been recording a series since 2020 called Jazz is Dead with some renowned musicians. I have queued up all seven albums and am pretty sure at least one will end up here. One track called Distant Mode with saxophonist Gary Bartz caught my attention for its intricate drumming punctuated with sections of hyperspace warp speed that reminds me of Flying Lotus. They also collaborated with Method Man on Bulletproof Love from the LUKE CAGE soundtrack—the drum beat and rap lyrics feel like part of the same expression.

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I posted to my SoundCloud for the first time in a while: a guitar improvisation from Tiny concert for a friend.

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Bites

Rich Brown (bassist extraordinaire) explains music theory of improvising on a fundamental chord progression and goes quickly from banal to outer space while describing both using the same framework. I have known the names of the Greek modes and their notes for a while, but only intellectually—I have hardly thought of them consciously while improvising. Here they are presented as composable parts and it seems approachable (using a ‘cheesy bossa nova’ backing track)—feels like I went from having one thing to do on each chord to 12 x 7 (= eighty-four…) possibilities.

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Harry Mack slows down his freestyle process so that us mere mortals can understand how far in advance he plans.

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@dokoissho documents his journey into multiple generations of Brazilian music. Wonderful to see this old school and beautifully human way of relating to music, a culture that may eventually be replaced by the current tendency toward algorithmic discovery.

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(I heart music)

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the eleventh edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to Andy for contributing to my Open Collective this week.

INNER FEEDBACK LOOPS

In preparing to give a tiny concert for a friend this week, I audio recorded myself playing guitar while singing and listened back to it immediately after. I tried to do this at least once per day and ended up with four or five sessions repeating this process with the same set of songs. I wrote about the transformational experience that resulted.

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MUSIC SALON JULY 31ST

I will be hosting my Music and Emotion Sharing Circle on July 31st as part of the Interintellect community; if you don’t know them, it’s a friendly network of strangers that like to have deep conversations on all kinds of topics. Music lovers welcome.

Participants are encouraged to bring music to share during the event. We will listen collectively to your music, and then discuss what it provokes in us. The objective is to encourage understanding of how music makes others feel, not really whether someone ‘likes’ it.

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VISUAL CALCULATORS

I spend a while playing with the toys at Math Easel, which proposes ‘new ways to calculate’ and asks ‘What if numbers were more like art?’.

The site features a bunch of interactive visual calculators that are fun to tinker with and make the space malleable, very much in the spirit of Explorable Explanations and some of Bret Victor’s work. If I only worked on data visualization projects, I would do this kind of thing.

The calculators for inflation, tips, and compound interest demonstrate how variables can be set and manipulated in multiple ways—this allows you to think about it from different points of view simultaneously, in contrast to ‘simple elegant apps’ where the way of thinking about the calculations has been designed into the interface.

I appreciate the consistent visual language between calculators. They also have a cool new weather app which I believe is available only in the United States at the moment.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

LANGUAGE

Family language exchange

I used to help my father learn French via informal conversations. We would talk and pick words or phrases that might be useful to learn, then make flashcards in Kommit to review over time (one side French, the other in English). He learned a lot just by repeating phrases through regular meetings with me and reviewing cards with the app.

This week we took it to a new level to make it less one-sided and also to reconnect with our cultural heritage. If you aren’t aware, it’s common that people from India speak English at home, even amongst each other, despite having other mother tongues. This happens for various reasons, but the result is that parents don’t pass it on to their children, tending to favour more ‘useful’ languages like English, and the younger generation (like me) grows up without speaking it. As a way to push against this we changed from French-English cards to French-Hindi cards: this way we can both learn from each other while keeping alive an important link to our past.

For our first session, I invited my whole family and recorded the video call for anyone who couldn’t make it. The result was a pretty fruitful experience, with a sense that all participants (including myself) are equally students—this feels potent, powerful, and productive. It’s also just fun, like playing a game together, and works even during a pandemic.

I would encourage other people to try this. I was overwhelmed sometimes figuring out how to organize everything, but maybe as the process becomes more clear, and if those present approve, I might share a video in the future to help show how this all works.

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Linus Lee shares a visual reflection on multi-meaning language:

The Korean phrase “지켜줄게” is one such untranslatable phrase. It means something in between “I’ll protect you” and “I got your back” and “I’ll be here for you”, but not quite any one of those.

It promises trust and companionship and love and commitment.

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HUMANITY

Some wisdom from @visakanv in pay it forward and being smart vs being kind

[The coolest thing to say when receiving gratitude is not “you’re welcome” but “pass it on”.]

[Nourishment leads to more growth than coddling.]

[Like babies, challenge ideas not when they are fragile but when they have grown legs.]

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A conversation about my experience with dating apps, resulted in a contemplation on the difference between two approaches: (via @flying_fisher)

[The difference between thinking ‘How does this person fit my ideal?’ versus ‘Here is a unique person. How can perceive them as they are?’]

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Sometimes we need to help ourselves when our desires are realized:

[We might find ourselves in shock to get what we want. This can impede us from enjoying the experience. We can recognize this and adjust ourselves to gradually bring ourselves out of shock and more into balance.]

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One of those things, supremely human and beyond description, that teachers can do for/with their students to start the day with radiance. So much to learn from Brazil—ensina pra gente, Brasil. (via Judy)

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TECHNOLOGY

Linus Lee writes about the implications of ownership without necessarily focusing on the technical aspects:

Future ownership – ownership over something’s destiny – means that we don’t have to prepare against the possibility of losing access to what we own. When we own the future of something, we can make deep, long-term investments into it with the expectation that we’ll continue to own them and reap the benefits of our investments. In owning something’s destiny, we are absolved from searching for alternatives, and granted the freedom to think and plan for long time horizons.

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Beeper is an app with a waitlist, because it combines 15 chat networks in one place (spanning WhatsApp, Twitter direct messages, Slack, Skype, Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage, amongst other mainstream options). Not sure how this is possible, but I can’t wait to unify all these message sources into one list. I’m in the queue. (via @boris)

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Gordon Brander’s Search reveals useful dimensions in latent idea space has a lovely metaphor for search with paper, needle, and string:

Imagine your notes as a stack of papers. Next to that stack of papers, you have a long red string, with a needle at one end. To perform a search, you leaf through each of the pages. Whenever you find a match for your query, you poke the needle through, right where the match exists on the page, and you thread the page onto the string. You’re methodical, so you order the pages on the string by relevance, taking into account how close the match is, and where it appears on the page. Now, stretch out the red string. You’ve arranged your ideas along one dimension of latent idea space. Imagine doing this for all possible dimensions at once.

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Interesting anecdote about American poet and internet activist John Perry Barlow who may have been single-handedly responsible for bringing the Orkut social network to Brazil: (via @liaizon@social.wake.st)

Barlow was among the first users of the invitation-only social network Orkut at its inception. He decided to send all of his 100 invitations to friends in Brazil; two years later, some 11 million internet users in that country (out of 14 million total) were on the social network.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Albums

Guinga’s Canção da Impermanência (2017) is part of a genre of Brazilian music that I would describe as ‘beyond genre’. Dripping guitar tones and mostly language-less, this sonic voyage uses traditional voice-leading to create unnameable harmonies. Why are most of my deepest connections with albums under 45 minutes?

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The compilation Cartagena! Curro Fuentes & The Big Band Cumbia and Descarga Sound Of Colombia 1962 - 72 (2011) from Soundway Records has cowbell, very Latin American brass and reed doubled melodies, shuk-shuk-a-shuk, cumbia, salsa, and maybe some other genres that I don’t know the name of. I should have noted the names of the songs, but instead just decided to let it wash all over me. When I visited in 2018, Colombians told me their country was the land of over a thousand musical styles.

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Michel Freidenson’s Notas no Ar (2011) gave me a strong signal from the first few notes of the album. It features traditional Brazilian rhythms and instruments mixed with a fresher modern jazz sound. Roda mixes samba and speedy bossa nova with a rare combination of piano melody doubled by trombone; the forro inspired Cosmic For All I can describe as energetic and alive; Je Suis Desolé is a swingy and slightly disjunct blues featuring some stride piano in the intro.

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Tracks

When I heard Jacob Collier call Aeolians of Oakwood University the “best choir on earth” last week, I went through some of their recordings. This Sabbath Hymn from Aeolianology Acappella, Vol. 2 (2015) is a good example of a sound that fills your insides with light, maybe raising your shoulders too. The church chorale and organ textures with jazz voice-leadings on an a cappella album is a testament to the power of the human voice. They also did a variation on Take 6’s classic arrangement of Get Away Jordan.

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African music rabbit hole

(This first recommendation set me off rummaging through a bunch of stuff, and I don’t regret it)

Chiwoniso’s 2015 single Zvichapera features a kind of polyrhythmic mbira with powerful vocal doubling in the melody—the lead singer floats on top of the sound as if it were a solid cloud. (via Clara)

The compilation album Music from Africa Vol. 2 Shangaan Traditional / Sotho Chant (2015) is filled with South African music from the 1980s, mostly disco, except for these first two tracks: Crestina and Alexandra’s triadic pentatonic harmonies and vocal percussion combines moves you from side to side.

Kiki Gyan’s Disco Dancer from the Soundway Records compilation 24 Hours in A Disco 1978 – 82 (2018) is a body-shaker that sounds like the 70s.

Mulatu Astatke’s Mulatu from Black Jesus Experience (2020) is Ethiopian jazz with quartal harmonies and a screechy guitar solo.

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I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the tenth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

thoughts on mastery while travelling

does turning everything into an expression indicate mastery? when you enjoy working because it’s a puzzle and you want to toss and turn everything for fun, improvement comes from enjoyment over time and the practice is learning how to find your playful place as smoothly as possible.

master musicians sink their heads as deeply as possible in what evokes and provokes. you probably know what these things are already. go deeper, submerge in the tears of your own ecstasy.

mastery is how imaginatively one relates to the moment, and the art is in deciding what aspects of normal should be brought to question, from aspects of the music to aspects of existence.

people won’t know how to describe it in precise terms, they simply say that it’s cool and want you to do more of it.

find a price that makes most people go “no f***in’ way”.

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TECHNOLOGY

A provocative idea on the power of names: (via @reef)

[Terms like ‘digital garden’ and ‘zero data’ imply a dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs.]

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I heard lots of platform thinking and other delicious bites from @visakanv: (via the Home on the Internet salon)

[Twitter enables direct exchange between thoughts, independent of the people.]

[When me and the person I know are conversing on Twitter, the third person that doesn’t know us is watching. Replies are a performance for our shared mutuals.]

[Every child is like a traveller arriving from somewhere else. We instinctively want to help welcome and integrate them. In the same way, many people will want to be helpful if you approach them as a newcomer.]

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Vincent Tunru recently launched a tool to generate RSS feeds from arbitrary websites using CSS. I wasn’t able to get it working yet, but I think many other people have, and so I would recommend giving it a try if you have GitHub: fork the repository and follow the two remaining steps.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

LANGUAGE

Brian Wiles (featured in #006) explains his “walking technique” to help learn languages more quickly:

[Walk around while hearing a podcast or any kind of listening material in the target language, and try to whisper back things you hear. You may not understand any of it initially, but over time things repeat and you can learn what they mean with something like Google Translate (which apparently has gotten better in the last few years).]

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@f2k1de@cuties.social shares a very popular meme with examples of how German capitalization can completely change the meaning of a phrase: (via @douginamug@mastodon.xyz)

Die Spinnen (The spiders)
Die spinnen. (They are crazy.)

Der Gefangene floh. (The prisoner fled.)
Der gefangene Floh (The caught flea)

Wäre er doch nur Dichter. (If only he were a poet.)
Wäre er doch nur dichter. (If only he were more drunk.)

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I recently learned that the French expression “rire jaune” (laugh yellow) means to force a laugh even when you don’t think something is funny. (via Juliette)

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HUMANITY

Thought from therapy: “Give a big yes to your body.”

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Brené Brown shares her conclusion on what ultra-compassionate people have in common: “they define and respect clear boundaries.” (via Jessica Alonso)

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LAUGH

A father tries to follow exact instructions from his kids on how to make a peanut butter sandwich, and it’s almost impossible to make.

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In 2008 to 2010, Blake Fall-Conroy built Minimum Wage Machine: (via @LittleAlex@chaos.social)

The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. For as long as they turn the crank, the user is paid in pennies as time passes. For example, if minimum wage is $7.25/hour (the current US Federal rate), then the worker is paid one penny every 4.97 seconds. If they stop turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine’s mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box. The MWM is reprogrammed as minimum wage changes, or for wages in different locations.

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Mr. Goxx is a hamster trading cryptocurrency and currently down 3.37%—maybe send him to business school? (via @xuv@merveilles.town)

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Tape Face makes you laugh without saying a word. Masterful timing, dexterity, surprise, turning nothing into something. Try to start watching and then stop as soon as possible once you understand what is going on, then let me know how long it took you. (via Dani)

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Moon River

Jacob Collier’s a capella Moon River from 2019 is a sublime celestial splendor sung by the chorus of a thousand stars. Not sure how I missed it but I think one cannot die before hearing this. I am still working my way through his in-depth hour-and-a-half music nerdery around the creation of this masterpiece.

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Josué Costa

Imagine walking into a park and seeing a professional Brazilian guitarist sitting alone in a gazebo practicing his own complex jazz and classical compositions, in a pandemic, in a city where people don’t normally sit alone in parks and practice guitar. Thanks to Josué Costa for sharing his music (and letting me listen with social distancing).

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Albums

Ilessi’s Dama de Espadas (2020) sounds complex, vital, emotional, and very not-weak-sauce: Dama de Espadas is a bold, rough and sassy blues in Portuguese; Oração pro Gil has onomatopoeic cantations over an African groove; the sort of hard rock vibe in Vivo ou Morto took me by surprise. (via Jú)

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Shaolin Afronauts’s Flight Of The Ancient (2011) features afrojazz, wild honky saxophone solos, dorian modes, to which you can dance for 45 minutes straight.

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BaianaSystem’s O Futuro não Demora (2019) features various pop/dance rhythms from Brazil.

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Tracks

BNegão & Os Seletores de Frequência’s (Funk) Até O Caroço from Enxugando Gelo (2004) is a hip-hop and funk headbanger with a bad-ass guitar riff.

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Fredy V & The Foundation’s Your Own Way from One Step (2021) has an intro bassline that’s so dark! A perfect groove to accompany the body paint and photography. (via Nantali)

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A lot of punch in this beat in HANDZOFF from SZNZ (2021) by Mother Nature and BoatHouse, the self-professed ‘most dynamic hip-hop duo of all time’. I feel like the verses fill so much space that the breathing is dramatic. Massive sound, blast. (via Bandcamp Weekly)

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Bites

I was imitating something last week.

How about some real oud this time? Observe how the playing in Hamza el Din’s Helalisa from Eclipse (1978) sounds like the voice with similar inflections. (via Brian Ginsburg)

Or some real Rich Brown? His Nguyên, live from a solo bass concert in 2012, has a celestial atmosphere with melodic vocal inflections. I dream of having this kind of expression when I play guitar. (via @flying_fisher)

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I like listening to drum’n’bass every now and there, and there’s apparently an online radio station from Germany blasting it twenty-four hours a day. You might find yourself doing house chores twice as fast. (via @lectronice)

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I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the ninth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

MENTAL CAGES

I found some clarity around what happened to me last week. There were various reasons for my emotional state, but one of the main ones was my perceived financial insecurity: I was impatient with myself and the process that I’m involved in to construct my own path to a sustainable life. Somehow though, I managed to re-orient in the last few days, and now I feel great.

Since around March 2020, I had lost a significant portion of my income due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and although I received some temporary government aid, I knew the income wasn’t coming back. I thought I needed to ‘resolve’ this before being able to live the life I want to live. I was comfortable living small off of declining savings, because I believe in what I’m doing, but every now and then I felt kind of ‘irresponsible’ for just letting the wind carry me.

I realize now that I’ve been living like a bird that doesn’t notice it’s out of the cage: trying to move freely for a second, but abruptly stopping where the shadows of the edge used to be. The reality is that I do have enough freedom to pursue virtually all of my near objectives, probably as much as always, and somehow this never occurred to me because of the way I saw my situation.

It’s true that 1) I have long-term goals of financial stability that are not yet achieved; 2) my savings probably won’t last beyond the next twelve months; and 3) I don’t seem to have something material to show for my effort since last year; but it doesn’t have to weigh on me. The anxiety is partially self-inflicted and partially because society trains you to see this as problematic—all of which can be remedied. I would extend Gurdieff’s “to be free, you have to first recognize you are in a prison” to add “and then recognize when you are not”. I am not. Nothing in my situation changed except for perspective, and this has had a tangible impact on my well-being.

The financial return matters in the long-term (because in the current system it enables one to continue doing meaningful work) but interpreting the progress at this stage is premature, and perhaps irrelevant or dysfunctional in my case—it takes a while to construct new worlds. I was influenced by short-term thinking taught by business people or startup mindset, that certain periods of time should correlate to certain outcomes. Better to focus on building the world you want to live in and strive to protect your ability to do that. With a fire mindset, everything feeds you somehow.

I am legit excited for how much there is to try and feel like I have nothing to lose. There is so much light possible that it’s blinding. So much can be done collectively and we haven’t tapped into it yet.

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JULY 8TH LIVE EVENT

I’m chatting with Fission again this week, this time about “earning a living from apps without holding other people’s data”. There will hopefully be a recording for anyone who isn’t there, but be welcome to join us live—it’ll be fun.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

TECHNOLOGY

Lennart Ziburski’s Rethinking how technology uses our personal data is a stunning visual essay exploring patterns for regaining control when sharing data with third parties:

[Use artificial intelligence based on local data only. AI profiles should be transparent and tweakable.]

[If data is the new oil, where are our cars?]

[Treat data like money: sharing it is like a payment that requires our approval. Use ‘data permits’ to allow access.]

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@mcclure111 wrote a flaming thread about what it means to post content to algorithmic timelines:

Continuing to post on this site if the timeline is algorithmic, not chronological, is unpaid labor. It would mean rather than communicating with people, I’d be providing “content” which Twitter posts as they believe they can monetize.

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I replaced maps.me with an identical app called Organic Maps that is open-source—after exporting and importing, it seems to work fine. This is an indispensable traveler’s map: saving regions offline and making your own points anywhere helps you orient quickly to new places. I’ve been using it for years, and I’m happy that now it’s harder to screw up via small-minded business practices.

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LANGUAGE

I stumbled upon this Discord Language Learning Servers Masterlist (via Refold)

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HUMANITY

Precious Plastic features @mandukumckay’s gorgeous weaved baskets and fences made from recycled plastic. It strikes me how unwasteful this is. Why don’t so-called ‘developed’ countries do this?

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WOW?

These herds of sheep photographed via drone over the course of a few months do not look like sheep to me.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Joana Queiroz (via Amanda Pedrosa)

In Brazilian, I would say I’m completely ‘apaxionado’ for her music. So happy to have randomly stumbled upon this in my explorations.

Diários de Vento (diaries of wind) (2016) seamlessly integrates nature and song and humanity: it’s the sound of someone enjoying instrument timbres and ambience. Around clarinet melodies there’s a duet with a fly, a child warbling their tongue, clanging pots and pans, squeaking of a rocking chair, lots of tasty sounds. Ai qué delicia!

Performance sonora is a live improvised “sound performance” from 2021. There’s something pure and unfiltered about a human being making music with an acoustic instrument while walking through nature. Accompanying is the sound of birds, dogs, air, footsteps, singing, a self-playing accordion, a fireplace, frogs…

Memórias is a live performance from 2019 where she builds sound structures with loop pedals and various clarinets, accompanied at times by graceful dancing. Sublime colouring in the photography and clothing.

I would recommend listening to any of these with your eyes closed or open.

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Long

Ron Everett’s Glitter of the City (1977) mixes traditional jazz and swing sounds with weird stuff, and I dug several tracks: Royal Walk with warbly instrumentals, loops, screeching, spoken word; Tipsy Lady’s blues/hip-hop and old school drums; Pretty Little Girl’s singing off-key Latin vibe; the 8-bit bossa nova of Untitled No. 4. (via Bandcamp Daily)

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Don Cherry’s group play’s Lito by Carlos Ward on Live At The Bracknell Jazz Festival (1986). Featuring flinging tongues, African grooves, and drummer Ed Blackwell. (via @cicredopoco@mastodon.social)

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Short

Amy Winehouse’s Cupid from The Ska EP (2008) might be the song that gets me into ska—I would describe it as ‘uplifting’. (via Brian Ginsburg)

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Lil Nas X’s single MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) (2021) it outside my milieu, genre-wise, but it’s a bodyshaker that deserves to be blasted on good speakers. The artist explores their sexuality with visual metaphors and vibrant colours. (via Marcos)

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Dopplebanger’s Pussylicker mashes up three different songs with electronic grooves and well-placed cowbell. (via @grey@merveilles.town)

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Sometimes I try to play Arabic/Indian-ish scales and I enjoy it. I’m getting more comfortable playing in front of other people.

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I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the eighth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to an anonymous donor and Miguel for contributing to my Open Collective this week.

RECALIBRATE

I’m not sure what happened to me in the last week but my brain seems to be disconnected and I have been feeling unable able to move forward on much. Hoping it’s just fatigue and that I need to pause and recover.

Potentially related is a questioning of whether I’m on the right path or fitting myself into a mold that needs to be shed. I want to better understand how others perceive what I’m doing, and so I invite you to send me any feedback about what I do (it could be about this project or anything else). How does it make you feel? Do you find that there’s too much or too little of anything?

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ADULT FRIENDSHIPS

Kai Cheng Thom shares some advice for cultivating close friends as an adult. After repeatedly moving to new homes over the course of my life, I struggle with this. Sometimes I envy people who have their squads. Nice to know that there are some advantages to starting later in life (via Danica).

When we are younger, we are often thrown together for long periods of time in high-intensity settings. It’s a recipe for fast emotional bonding. However, it’s also a recipe for co-dependence and relational instability—just think how many high school and college friendships turn sour and fall apart or explode over drama and toxicity. In this way, friendships formed in adulthood often have an advantage, because we tend to come into them more fully formed, knowing our boundaries and our values.

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SURROUNDED BY MAGICIANS

How to categorize such a beautiful piece of writing? This quote jumped out at me in this moment, but it’s not really the subject of the text, nor is it the best part:

You can’t keep your gaze tightly fixed on the outcome you want because it will lock your mind onto the strategies you currently have for meeting them, which by definition probably don’t work (otherwise you would have succeeded already and you wouldn’t need to use the strategy).

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VULNERABILITY

I generally don’t look to mainstream celebrities as a measure of culture or humanity, but it was moving to witness Stephen Colbert and comedian John Mulaney share a deep moment about anxiety. (via Catherine Woodiwiss)

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ANOTHER JOYCE

Astronauta (Canções de Elis) (1998) by Joyce (featured in #005) is filled with jazz tributes to Brazilian singer Elis Regina. Solos by Joe Lovano, Mulgrew Miller, and Renne Rosnes.

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

Welcome to the seventh edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting, and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Thanks to ‘Lawrie’ (AKA my dad) for contributing to my Open Collective this week 🙂.

PAYING FOR APPS

The latest episode of Metamuse is a comprehensive overview of issues around software pricing. They discuss sustainable business models, data ownership, trade-offs of using app stores, the importance of letting people try the app first. Might be a worthwhile listen for anyone wondering why many apps are moving to subscriptions.

Some useful concepts for me:

• The term “modern living app” expresses how apps need regular maintenance and are never ‘finished’. To ‘sell it and forget it’ is unrealistic and so is charging for it once.
• The concept of “alumni mode” is about making sure people have access to their data even if they cancel their subscription. I demoed this in my funding button earlier this year, and I’m glad to have a short name for the idea.

[Consider the psychological goods as well as the commercial ones (community, social signaling, ambience).]

[One does not simply change the price: they need to rethink the product, marketing, analytics, testing, support, etc… It might be useful to have a dedicated pricing person, in the same way as designer or engineer.]

For even more discussion, check out their episode with the creator of Agenda, which goes into the dynamics of producing apps as an independant developer, and engaging with your community.

My upcoming event with Fission on July 8th, 2021 around “earning a living from apps without holding other people’s data” will also get into these topics, so please join us if you’re interested.

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ETHICAL MARKETING

I’ve been rediscovering Plausible Analytics this week. They wrote about all the marketing practices they don’t use:

Don’t confuse marketing with advertising, spamming and shoutingWe don’t do any paid advertisingWe don’t use spy pixels from Facebook and Google to retarget youWe don’t track your every click using session recordingsWe don’t do any exit popups and other intrusive calls-to-actionWe don’t have affiliates and don’t pay anyone to recommend usWe don’t do A/B testing and other experimentsWe don’t try to get you on a sales call to test our productWe don’t have a fancy email sequence to “nurture” you into payingWe don’t try to engage you after you sign up for our productWe don’t use a chatbot or an AI-tool to engage and convert youWe don’t ask you to join yet another webinar to learn some secretsWe don’t participate in any link buying to game search enginesWe don’t have a podcast and a video channelWe don’t know who you are, what you like or where you’re fromWe ignore all other unethical proposals we see in our inbox

Respect for making a more conscientious option profitable.

They also describe some noble properties of open-source software:

Open source is software that you can trustSoftware that is ethicalSoftware with more earnest goals, motives and principles other than profit making and shareholder valueSoftware that tells you what it does upfront, direct and honest.Software that is open and transparentSoftware that you are a user of rather than a product ofSoftware that is created by real people rather than faceless organizationsSoftware that can be verified that it does what the creators say that it does

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

HUMANITY

Some fundamental thoughts from Jessica Alonso around psychological defenses (via the Female Rivalry salon):

[Every baby has cried and been scared of being abandoned.]

[We’re hard-wired to avoid rejection and abandonment because it’s directly linked to our survival.]

[Be loving and accepting, and undo any false sense of scarcity that has been created.]

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David Chapman describes a theory of how subcultures arise and fall in Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution. (via @neauoire@merveilles.town)

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TECHNOLOGY

Guess who said this:

I’d like to do my part in encouraging a return to longer forms of thinking and writing, which provide more room for nuance and more opportunity for establishing consensus or, at the very least, respecting a diversity of perspective and, you know, science.

I want to revive the original spirit of the older, pre-commercial internet, with its bulletin boards, newsgroups, and blogs — if not in form, then in function.

Hint: rhymes with ‘feds were snowed in’

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Hashvatar generates trippy geometric images from text—try changing ‘Hello’ to your name. (via @expede)

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LANGUAGE

Love in English versus Persian:

In English we suddenly ‘fall in love,’ but in Persian love comes in stages: First the ‘havā’ (infatuation) of youth, then the ‘dūstī’ (affectionate love) of a couple, followed by the ‘eshq’ (passionate love) of newlyweds, and finally the ‘mohabat,’ (caring love) of an old couple.

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LAUGH

Been getting into Ze Frank’s inimitable videos again and found his Guide To Candy Trading after Halloween. His series on obscure biological creatures (such as killer surfing snails) can be fun in moderation.

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Flowbee is a “Revolutionary Haircutting System” from the twentieth-century that attaches to your vacuum cleaner. (via @boris)

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Muchos Plus’ Nassau’s Discos from Nassau’s Discos (1979) is fast and funky with cowbells and other African percussion. (via Bandcamp Daily)

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Thumpasaurus’ I’m Pissed from I’m Pissed (2021) is a dramatic rock dance production, complete with timestamps for each section (of a four-minute video), and a… sort of website.

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Exuma, The Obeah Man from Exuma, The Obeah Man (1970) wild stompin’ folk groove with whistles, frogs, yelping. (via @flying_fisher)

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fran’s coração tambor from raiz (2020) documents the artist’s search for his ancestry in Angola, featuring some indigenous music and percussion. (via Sushma)

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Gospel vibes from Wilson Pickett’s Steal Away from Right On (1970) makes you snap your fingers, with both hands, on two and four. (via @cicredopoco@mastodon.social)

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More music in last weeks’s edition.

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the sixth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

Special thanks to Brian and Elisa for being the first contributors to my Open Collective last week 🙂.

ABO SAHAR (أبو سهر) (via Amr Yakan)

This musician and producer from Egypt has a vibe that I would describe as ‘badass mofo’. His music touches various genres including disco, trance, hip-hop, while referencing elements of traditional Arab music.

In a feature video by El Fasla he describes growing up in a rural area where there were no instruments and figuring out how to make sound out of anything, like blades of grass. Some choice quotes from the clip:

I play at weddings and no one leaves until I unplug the cable.

I have a better night than the groom.

This is called the White House, for when tourists or foreigners are here.

Check the music playlist at the end for various tracks of his that I enjoyed.

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TECHNOLOGY

A popular browser extension maker documents various proposals to sell user data in secret. There are probably others… How many accept? (via @boris)

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I learned that Music for Robots from last week was designed for and performed on actual robots. For anyone curious there are more explanations and a paper on robotic drumming. (via @nonmateria@merveilles.town)

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

---

LANGUAGE

Brian Wiles is an actor from New York City who speaks excellent Egyptian Arabic and made videos explaining American culture to the Arab world and comparing Arabic with Mandarin.

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Observe the beauty and poetry in these Persian forms of address

When a Persian speaker turns their back they say “I’m sorry my back faces you.”
The other person replies: “A flower has no front or back.”
Then the first person might say: “A songbird sits behind a flower.”

Reminds me of how Arabic speakers say ‘good morning’ by wishing you a “Morning of light”, to which the other person can reply by wishing “Morning of flowers”.

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Apple has featured a collection of apps for learning various indigenous languages.

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LAUGH

This animated series about a four-eyed musical spider is one of the cutest, most entertaining things I’ve ever seen. Short minute-long episodes that humans of any age would love. Impossible to stop watching, but the playlist is finite. (via Dani)

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Eric Floberg’s minute-long Every Youtuber in 2021 has a beautifully meticulous build up to the punchline.

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A thread of Sir Patrick Stewart as vacuum cleaners.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Three tracks by Abo Sahar (أبو سهر):

• Trobby Asly from 2020 (2020) featuring so-called ‘trobby music’, not sure if this is a reference to trap music, but it’s gritty, noisy, hypnotic—may give you stank face.
• Mizmar Abosahar with the piercing ornamented tones of a traditional music instrument that appears in some Greek music (similar to a duduk), although I think it’s synthesized here.
• Moulid Kholkhal (مولد خلخال) with Arabic microtonal melodies, electronic effects, shaabi rhythms.

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Ana Vidović plays an hour-long concert of classical guitar with works by Bach, Brouwer, Scarlatti, Albeniz.

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meu amigo tigre’s treta (2020) is self-described ‘drama rock’ in Portuguese. Feels inspired by Frank Zappa sometimes. I like the diversity of complex textures on this album. There’s also birds!

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Jacob Collier delves into music nerdery, showing how it’s possible to harmonize any note with every chord or how a diminished chord lets you modulate to anywhere.

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Tolgahan Çoğulu modified a classical guitar to play microtones and demonstrates with an excerpt of a Turkish melody.

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I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the fifth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

SIGNAL FOR… WITH… EMAIL? (via Gordon)

I saw Delta Chat a while ago. The site describes exactly what it does, and somehow it flew over my head. Maybe it did the same to you if you looked at it.

After a recent exchange with Gordon Brander I decided to give it a try and it kind of blows my mind. Let me try to explain what I find interesting about it:

1. There are no accounts. Your email address is your identity.
2. It’s a messaging app (like WhatsApp or Signal), but you send messages to an email address. It actually sends emails, but somehow you don’t see them.
3. If you send a message to someone that doesn’t have the app, they receive a regular email. If they do have the app, they receive a message in the app conversation.
4. Messages can be encrypted if the sender and receiver are using the app, so even if you both use Gmail, it stays private and Google can’t read your messages. (Please correct me if I missed anything there.)

This makes it possible to ‘move away from big bad tech companies’ without even moving. No inventing something new for people to learn or adopt—it simply works on the back of email, which has been around (and will be around) for a while. And at the same time we get to keep our contacts and social graph forever. It also abides by many of the Zero Data principles: your data is truly under your control.

I decided to start a small yearly donation for them on their Open Collective, but they also receive funds on Liberapay. If you are able to support them financially, please consider contributing to this important open-source project even if you don’t use it.

I’m super excited to try this app with friends. Let’s see how far this goes.

---

HUMANITY

Jeff Atwood describes incentives created by putting a number next to someone’s name in the context of social media, and also mentions the ‘Ars Banana experiment’:

[Ars Technica ran an experiment in posting that ‘Guns at home more likely to be used stupidly than in self-defense’, but wrote at the bottom of the article, ‘If you have read this far, please mention Bananas in your comment below.’]

[The first person to mention it was on page 3 of the discussion, comment number 93.]

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Scott Alexander calculates Moral Costs Of Chicken Vs. Beef in terms of climate impact, carbon offsets, and animal suffering:

In conclusion, eating beef causes more climate change than eating chicken, but eating chicken causes more animal suffering than eating beef. Offsetting the climate change effects of beef would only cost $22 per year, which seems really good. Offsetting the animal suffering effects of chicken might only cost $360 per year, but this is a very tentative estimate and maybe shouldn’t be taken seriously.

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In our conversation about how the modern world needs a secular church, Helder mentioned the Sunday Assembly, which is a weekly gathering of people who listen to talks and sing popular music together. (via Helder)

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Beau of the Fifth Column debunks statistics about which animals are more dangerous:

[If comparisons are made without defining the criteria, it’s probably propaganda.]

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❤️

If you’re enjoying this, consider contributing to my Open Collective. Virtually everything I create is public, accessible for free, and open-source. Your support helps me keep adding to the commons and making it available for everyone.

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TECHNOLOGY

I was reflecting on the relationship between timelines and coming together in the real world:

Does hyperconnectivity give us just enough information about each other to make collective moments less ‘worthwhile’? Is the easy sharing of everything overloading our timelines to the point that we are coerced into trusting algorithms to determine when we interact with one another? If there was more friction, and no cheap substitute for collective awareness via feeds, would we have more collective moments?

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Baldur Bjarnason describes the power dynamics of large companies funding open-source to control its direction:

[Google Reader and Feedburner were not victims but weapons used to ensure that only Google was extracting value from the industry.]

[Blogspot was an attempt to populate the search indexes because there was not much content. As advertisers started to push back, it became less worthwhile of an investment.]

[Open-source projects without revenue are either burnout waiting to happen, or a formerly well-paid developer coasting on savings, or a group that took venture capital.]

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BUSINESS

Ali Abdaal (featured in #001) discusses selling your own online course with Andrew Barry, and Marie Poulin on the two-hundredth episode of the Indie Hackers podcast:

[It’s easier to sell one thing for $100 than a hundred things for $1.]

[What would you teach to yourself three years ago?]

[Set input goals instead of outcome goals.]

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Steph Smith shares some reflections on hitting $100k in sales of her e-book:

[Being on an exponential curve is weird because when you look back, it’s flat, and when you look forward, it’s vertical.]

[Measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.]

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LAUGH

The minute and a half escalation to the moment this dog wakes up makes it worth the wait.

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A math professor fixes a stain in his projector screen by summoning himself in a Google Search. (via Dani)

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Two cats and a mouse sit around and do nothing together on this kitchen floor.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

Albums

I stumbled upon Joyce Moreno’s Passarinho Urbano (1976), chock-full of sambas in stereo. This led me to Revendo Amigos (1994), with the kind of jazz harmonies and wordless melodies that I enjoy.

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In Francis Bebey’s Akwaaba: Music For Sanza (1985), mbira and raw vocals are set to funky pentatonic bass grooves accompanied by other African percussion. You will sway from side to side.

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The glitchy, hip-hop jazz in Kiefer’s Between Days (2021) had my head boppin’ for twenty-five minutes.

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Music For Robots (2014) by Squarepusher x Z-MACHINES is a trippy mix of atonal harmonies, jazz solos over drum-n-bass, glitchy video-game music. Sounds like something going wrong, with great precision. (via @nonmateria@merveilles.town)

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Tracks

Pixel Grip’s ALPHAPUSSY from ARENA (2021) is a beatboxer’s dream and head banger. (via Bandcamp Daily)

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Pinduca’s Carimbó Do Macaco from O Rei Do Carimbó (1983) is a formidable tongue-twister from a Brazillian traditional dance form. I learned that this is the same genre as No Meio do Pitiú from #002.

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Le Soir, by Fabrice Koffy, Marika Galea, and Michael Go from Montréal Sound Resistance: Chapitre I (2021) builds from French spoken word to trio music, to an improvised duo with a lovely African triplet feel. The bilingual album of poetry and spoken word is made in Montreal and dedicated to the memory of George Floyd.

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I have so much nostagia for Egypt. The ornamentation in their music has a warmth that I haven’t heard anywhere else.

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Bites

Dan Weiss posted a short video with the abnormal name ‘some drumming’. I just get octopus vibes watching his hands move around so fluidly.

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Immigrants from India and indigenous people discover they share some dance steps in common (via @herbcaudill@twitter.com).

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If you liked Xenpaper from last week, check out this quick demo of diatonic tunings written by Brian Ginsburg.

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~

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have, or just say hello.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email, or contributing to my Open Collective.

Welcome to the fourth edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

FIXING FASHION

The Precious Plastic team has started another recycling revolution, this time to reduce clothing waste. The call to action in their launch video is to wear repaired cloths and help turning patches and repairs into a statement—proud to be DIY.

They have started a series of well-produced videos showing how to avoid unnecessarily purchasing new clothes. In 15 minutes they cover removing stains with natural ingredients, sorting clothes properly, creating your own detergent, washing, drying, and storage.

I find the idea of upgrading your old clothes most compelling: make them smaller or larger; re-make new clothes by combining old ones; recolouring using natural ingredients (like avocado and cabbage); and decorating adding interesting patterns, pockets, buckles.

For those more comfortable with needles or Singers, there is a video on how to fix common problems yourself with a machine or by hand.

Also, (a quick detour back to their original Precious Plastic project), they use their globally popular open-source machines to make flowerpots, mountain climbing clip, a lamp shade, a hand blade for surfing from disposable masks!. They claim that 30 billion masks are thrown away per month, each containing similar materials to plastic bottles that take 500 years to degrade.

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WARDLEY MAPS (via @boris)

For nerds of business, tech, data visualization, and map-making.

This dense presentation explaining the creation and use of visual maps to surface adoption strategies features lots of information and graphics to outline a framework for future planning.

It’s a multi-layered cake that you likely don’t want to eat in one sitting. If you survive the barrage and would like to learn more, Simon Wardley has written nineteen chapters on Medium about this method, and a related community for mapping offers workshops to learn collectively.

The visual slides are the best part, but as I avoid images here I will only share some quotes:

[Things that evolve and become more efficient enable higher-order systems to appear.]

[New ages don’t start with their first prototypes, they start at the industrialization and commodification of systems.]

[By sharing maps we discover that we are building similar things elsewhere.]

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HUMANITY

Therapy contemplation of the week:

[The purpose of a conversation is to help the river flow again.]

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An isolated community in Kenya with no fiat money created their own system of trading that doesn’t rely on cash. This video documents the creation of their secondary currency, the institutional resistance, and some principles of how to make it work.

[Allowing popular retailers to become banks creates a profit motive for debt, which reduces trading because people are not able to pay expensive loans. Introducing a secondary currency enables people to trade which deteriorates debt as a profit strategy.]

[The community knows what’s best for them. They can back their own money.]

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Beau of the Fifth Column puts his fifth-columnness to the test by talking about a war without talking about it. He supremely demonstrates how to approach a divisive topic without succumbing to slogans and talking points.

[The truth cannot be told, it has to be realized.]

[Whataboutism is proof that people believe something is true across all systems.]

[Those who are in power benefit from slogans, not from context.]

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For anyone with the stomach to read it, I published an English translation of my recent encounter with the Brazilian police.

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TECHNOLOGY

Damien Clarke’s Xenpaper calls itself a ‘text-based microtonal sequencer’: using numbers and symbols you can produce a simple scale or complex melodies with sophisticated timing. A rare ‘text-to-music’ system where the demos work and are fun—you can just click the play buttons and observe how the sound corresponds to the text. (via Web Audio Weekly)

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You wanted a list of privacy-respecting alternatives to most apps and social networks? Awesome Privacy has it broken down by category, and it’s open-source so you can contribute too. (via @boris)

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Boring Avatars’ fun little image playground allows you to generate and explore different avatar designs based on text, colours, and patterns. (via @douginamug@mastodon.xyz)

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LANGUAGE

I can’t wait to learn German one day so that I can understand and perhaps use the words from this thread (via James):

[Kummerspeck: excess fat from emotional overeating, translates literally to ‘grief bacon’ or ‘sorrow fat’, and similar to ‘muffin tops’ in English]

[Weltschmerz: feeling so tired of worldly evils that it’s painful to exist]

[Verschlimmbessern: trying to improve something but eventually making it worse]

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FOOD

Adam Ragusea explains what mushrooms exactly are (they’re not plants or animals…). Feature some wild footage of something growing in a basement. (via @kevin@merveilles.town)

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist via Joybox without accounts or sign up—just open and play.

This ‘spiky’ avant-garde jazz from Berlin, released earlier this year by PUNKT.VRT.PLASTIK, features vague meters and uneven clocks. I also grooved hard to the slightly steadier Nuremberg Amok from an older album. (via James Ball)

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This lovely little bossa nova for kids (apparently going viral on TikTok, which I don’t use), comes from The Backyardigans, which is a show where every episode features a different music genre! Wish I grew up watching that… Adam Neely does a deep dive into the music theory devices employed in the song. (via matheus23)

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Two things from musical master Jacob Collier, but not really about the music: 1) dance animations created from the spinning of a vinyl disc, and 2) he spells out words by playing the piano. The latter is something that normal humans accomplish via a lengthy editing process on the computer—he performs it live.

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Swaya’s remix of Where They At by Acemo is our body-shaker of the week. The original comes alive with African percussion, echoed synths, and a stronger rhythmic drive.

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I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

More music in last weeks’s edition.

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the third edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

HUMANITY

Short pithy contemplation of the week:

Fools don’t trust mirrors.

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A short anecdote about why this Cohen was supposed to be a Katz, related to why one father from Gaza recently traded his children.

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Trevor Noah mixes funny with serious talking about Israel-Palestine:

[Religion has never calmed down a situation when there’s a clash]

[Israel has a giant Mutombo in the sky knocking down rockets]

[What responsibility comes with power?]

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India’s Golden Temple community kitchen has been feeding 100,000 people per day since the 1500s. The video describes quantities, costs, routines, division of labour involved in preparing massive batches of rice, potatoes, lentils, bread, tea and desert. (via @grey)

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Beau of the Fifth Column talks about burning out from helping those in need.

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Christopher Butler’s Think About the Future’s Past reflects on our relationship with time—on how we connect our current self to a potential self:

Our selves inhabit a world like that not as a contained body moving through space, but more like a worm whose dimensions are defined by time. Our posterior, the past; our middle, the present; our head, the future. His turn of phrase, “the long self,” is, as it turns out, quite literal.

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LANGUAGE

At some Istanbul/Greek weddings, guests receive a dish known as “f***-off pilav” when the hosts want them to leave. Reminds me of the Brazilian practice/superstition of leaving a broom behind the door to tell guests you don’t want them around now.

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Folha de S.Paulo showcases various Portuguese accents from Brazil and beyond.

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Zé Felici made a Brazilian Portuguese IPA chart based on the popular English version. (via Dani)

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In the search for the previous chart, I stumbled upon a fascinating infographic visualizing variations of slang interjections with religious origin. The way the words morph might be particular to Brazilian, but I wonder if similar transformations exist in Québec French. Est-ce qu’il y a un.e québecois.e sur la liste avec un indice?

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An Egyptian sign language course given in Masri. (via @Stoori@polyglot.city)

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TECHNOLOGY

Stephen Diehl details how cryptocurrency scales ransomware to new heights.

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Means TV describes itself as “the world’s first worker-owned, post-capitalist streaming service.”.

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How people used to connect to the Internet: using a rotary dial phone and shoving the handset into a modem.

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LAUGH

Comedian Drew Morgan shares his hilarious theory about how slavery in the United States led to the southern accent.

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Mondo Mascots documents prolific creativity in Japanese mascots.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist.

Tariq Harb plays Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 on guitar—a challenge translating this piece from organ keyboard to six strings. Classical music on this instrument is one of the most sublime things.

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This funk carioca body-shaker blasting at home signalled my friend’s long-awaited scheduling of a COVID vaccine. I dig the music, and it has gotten over a billion views, but the video hurts your eyes. Featuring samples of Bach’s Flute Partita in A minor.

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I’ve never seen such fiery dance choreography by someone in a wheelchair. (via Romain)

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Three tracks in a row from Bandcamp Weekly #450 stopped me. Jaubi’s mix of jazz, raga, and rock, Yellow Spoon’s minute-long drum amen break escapade, and Athletic Progression’s high-energy vortex non-stop fire drumming.

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If you liked the pygmy hockets from last week, check out Meara O’Reilly’s Hockets for Two Voices. In these exquisite duets with herself, she manages to create a diversity of moods using only the sound of her own voice.

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Lovely Latin jazz with congas and cowbells from Cal Tjader’s Complete Concert By The Sea.

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I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the second edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

TECHNOLOGY

Scott Alexander explains the dynamics of apps that require a medical prescription to use:

I feel angry about prescription-gated apps that cost $899. CBT-i is so good, and so important, and we were so close to being able to make it accessible to everyone. Then we snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Getting your CBT-i will remain as financially and logistically inaccessible as everything else in medicine

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@boris knows the people working on this ‘no loss lottery’: deposit crypto, everyone’s money earns interest, one lucky person wins all the interest each month, no one loses. I would love to know if there exists something similar for fiat money.

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Alfredo Lopez talks about how the May First Movement Technology co-op offers and safeguards private/secure infrastructure for organizations working on social change.

[The Internet is not the technology—it’s the 4.5 billion people that are connected. The power lies in bringing them together to create change.]

[Black and pro-Palestinian movements get attacked more by the right wing than other causes.]

[We don’t comply with police data requests because the data doesn’t belong to us, it belongs to our members.]

[Stop and reflect periodically that you are taking part in one of the largest interactions in human history.]

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Ben Grosser’s Go Rando confuses Facebook’s emotional surveillance by choosing a random reaction when clicking the Like button.

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The Blockchain Socialist explains NFTs (they are ‘not crypto art’) and considers leftist applications around 29 minutes in.

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HUMANITY

I was reflecting on societal conflicts where there are ‘two sides’:

What’s the difference between preaching to the choir ‘on your side’ versus preaching your point of view to ‘the other side’? What changes in each case? Are there better ways to have an impact?

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Beau makes an odd argument for minimum wages by relating fertility rates to the bottom lines of large companies:

[Consumerism needs consumers. The United States population is shrinking because mothers are having fewer children. Statistically, they report wanting to have more, but they don’t because of financial concerns. Therefore, pay a living wage or suffer squeezed profits.]

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LANGUAGE

I got my ears cleaned. Last time I did this I looked for an ‘ear doctor’, but in Brazil it’s called otorrinolaringologista (owe-toe-he-know-la-ring-all-owe-djzees-ta), which is an ear, nose and throat specialist, or in English: otorhinolaryngologist.

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LAUGH

• COVID moments: a baby baptized with a water gun.
• Germany’s culture of restaurant tipping compared to the United States.
• A parody of the Schoolhouse Rock cartoon for kids, contrasting pirates and emperors.
• Double-standards towards homosexuals applied to straight people.

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MUSIC

All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist.

• Harry Mack’s famous improvised freestyle for a man’s late fiancé has a backstory that for me underlines the importance of sharing outwards and encouraging vulnerability.
• Kevin Seddiki creates a short Cuban guitar groove by treating the frets as a percussion instrument.
• Tigran Hamasyan’s Revisiting the Film features kaleidoscopic colour shifting, intricate rhythms and interplay between subdivisions and the meter, and yet a consistent flow (if you can hang on through the chaos)—a meticulous freak out. @flying_fisher thinks the voice sounds like mine. The melodic style reminds me of Pedro Martins’ album from last week.
• Hours and hours of J Dilla hip-hop instrumentals are ours. If you’re not familiar with Dilla beats, introduce yourself to the supreme sonic masterpiece that is Donuts. (thanks to @lectronice for the reminder)
• I’ve been learning to sing and play some songs on guitar from Caetano Veloso’s Ofertorio live album. Many feature a deceptive simplicity and create a diversity of feelings by re-using smaller parts. I feel somewhat ashamed that it took until my second trip to Brazil to know about this artist.
• Dona Onete’s No Meio do Pitiú is a body-shaker that is, as I understand, named after smelly fish.
• Eu Não Quero Saber (I don’t want to know) is a song about moving on. The melody revisits me from time to time, and lately I find myself enjoying the lyrics. The first disc of the album has a bunch of other great tracks, worth a listen. (via Jú)
• A jazz and prog rock arrangement of Carly-Rae Jepsen’s Come away with me. (via @aadil)
• Lots of polyphonic hockets in this Aka Pygmy Music. We are privileged as a species to have an opportunity to hear this—sound that comes from the earth by people who have a relationship with the land they live on.

I always love receiving music. Send me recommendations anytime, anywhere!

---

That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.

Welcome to the first edition of Ephemerata, a weekly-ish digest of links, ideas, learnings, and sounds that I think are worth sharing.

The name is a joke about my historic avoidance of chronologically organized platforms for major output (see Discussion is ephemeral)—I’m embracing the transient nature of newsletters and playing to their strengths.

I’m doing this to stimulate discussion around what I find interesting and also to share things before they disappear into the void of my journal.

It will likely center around music | design | technology, but probably include whatever attracts my curiosity. You can subscribe at https://rosano.ca/ephemerata—I’m using a wonderful privacy-focused alternative to Mailchimp.

So let’s get to it!

ALI ABDAAL

I’m super happy to have discovered the Youtuber Ali Abdaal. I deeply resonated with one of his videos about putting yourself out there online in which there’s some useful advice and perspective that can dislodge common fears and hesitations.

There’s another video about confidence which changed my mind about several things:

[People can’t distinguish between fake and real confidence.]

[Most people have the spotlight on their own lives and are not judging other people constantly, so stop doing that and you might relax more.]

[Every one is friendly but you have to make the first move. Most people are afraid to go first.]

Pro tip: try to look past his clickbaity titles, they were written for someone else, not you.

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HUMANITY

Beau of the Fifth Column with some great advice as always, here around how to keep the fire alive when your collective is ‘out of season’:

[Infighting develops during lull periods because comrades have nothing to do. Train, get involved in other causes, do something fun.]

[Break up cliques by playing team sports mixed with people from each side to instill camaraderie.]

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Scott Alexander wrote about combatting irrationality:

[If a conspiracy theorist is no different from a scientist because ‘everything is political’, then words have no meaning. What isn’t rational then?]

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Alex Danco makes an interesting distinction between purchases for convenience versus signalling:

[Opt-in commerce is challenge-oriented whereas opt-out commerce is convenience-oriented.]

[If people identify with the challenge you’ve set for them, the transaction becomes a moment worth sharing.]

[People want meaning, to become something, to express themselves. How does what you sell help them succeed?]

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I’m still reading Get Together by Bailey Richardson. The last few chapters had some tips about the messaging used in communities:

[Tell an origin story that describes your personal journey (self), the collective journey (us), and what people can do to get involved (now) plus ‘why now?’.]

[Nudge members into inviting others by communicating how their involvement is important to the community’s success. Make it easy for them by giving them the shareable assets. How can we make it easier for them to do it on their own terms?]

[The leader of Downtown Girls Basketball takes a cool team photo at half-time, including even the new people and those who need to leave early, and offers to send it to anyone interested. Nearly everyone wanted it and many posted it to their social media.]

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Finally, https://www.microsolidarity.cc has some good vocabulary for talking about community building at different scales, recognizing the inability of English to make the distinction between groups of different sizes.

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TECHNOLOGY

Huginn is an open-source alternative to IFTTT.

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I can’t get enough of Snapdrop—sooo useful to transfer files and links between different devices. Why is this still hard in 2021? It’s also a 0data app that works without an account.

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The next time someone says, “I’ve got an idea for an iPhone app”, I will forward them https://shouldyoubuildamobile.app. It presents the pros and cons of a ‘native’ vs ‘web’ app as a neat checklist. (Thanks @boris via Fission’s Discord).

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LANGUAGE

A provocative idea about language learning: learning can be conscious but acquisition can only be subconscious.

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MUSIC

(All the following items can be accessed as a one-click playlist).

Billy Hart’s Enchance, if you’re into free jazz. (via Dan Weiss).

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I’ve been getting into Pedro Martins lately. He’s actually from Brasilia. A genius guitarist and it seems like he definitely spent time with Toninho Horta’s work. His latest album VOX is a celestial dream.

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Also from Brazil: Heavy Baile, incredible funk beats (not the jazz kind but the Brazilian genre). Check out Carne de Pescoço as well as this mixtape with some dope dancing in a basketball court.

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That’s all folks!

Feel free to reply and share any reflections you might have.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing on Twitter or WhatsApp or Email.