It's okay to be tired. Just have some bottomless coffee and stare off into the distance. It helps. Here's some entertainment.

• Conner O'Malley - "Slugs" - Over the years, O'Malley has gone more and more subversive with his videos. This is a fantastic piece of work containing plenty of the absurd and true social commentary. The very end made me extremely uncomfortable, which I think is the point? Hopefully it is taken for the satire and commentary that it is.
• Kiwi Nutrition Reform - a campaign to help get Japan eating healthier.. with Kiwi. Of course the commercial is incredible start to finish. There's another one worth watching too.
• Woman & Octopus Are Best Friends - I don't care that this is The Dodo and it's something your aunt would send you on Facebook. It's delightful.
• SNL's Chloe Fineman on Letterman - in 2004, Chloe Fineman appeared on Letterman to show off her own stupid human trick of bird calling. It's legimately impressive and truly stupid at the same time.
• Criterion Closet: Ben Affleck Picks - these are always entertaining but Affleck is much more of a cinephile than I think he gets credit for. Also, his comments on Dazed & Confused and Armageddon are a delight.
• The Making of Charli XCX Joke - really enjoying everything I see from the John Mulaney Netflix show. This stupid joke with behind-the-scenes sendup is just more affirmation that it's a treat! Another good one here.
• Lindy Hop Moments - I personally have no interest in being a competitive dancer but I'd be lying if I said this isn't impressive. It's wild and seems like they're having a blast.
• Dschinghis Khan / Starparade 1979 - In 2025, this isn't particularly outlandish to see anymore but that doesn't make it any less refreshing. A 46-year old musical performance of some heavily themed pop music from Germany that looks like the precursor to the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers should not go unappreciated.

I've been singing the praises of Total Wife for many years now. They recently went on tour with Baby Wave and released a collaborative EP together - still life. This video for "leftovers" is riddled with VHS style kaleidoscope effects and pairs perfectly with the song. Turn it up loud.

As I mentioned previously, yk Records released a new two song single from phiz, a collaborative project between Tristen and Cortney Tidwell. Now there's an official video for the first track, "i lost my fkn mind." There's a lot of themes of romance, love and sex in here - so maybe don't watch it while at Starbucks. Or do! Could be a refreshing zing for yourself and those around you.

I can't stop listening to these two songs and am particularly proud of the Flexi we made for them. If you're not into plastic 7"'s, you can stream the songs or snatch them on Bandcamp or Ampwall.

A smattering of semi-shortish reads for you!

• Stack Overflow is almost dead - this seems.. impossible? The article details the timeline of big events that led to this decline - including GenAI (obviously) and being sold to private investors (less obvious but possibly more impactful, imo). Wild.
• What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT? - a bit of good news for you. The reports of energy usage in this one regard are somewhat overblown it seems.
• Nocturne - remember Spotify's Car Thing? The hardware they made that was clearly doomed from the beginning? Well, they discontinued it and now folks are hacking it back into an open-source, usable, device. Ya love to see it!
• Anime.js - a javascript library for powering animations. The website and the documentation are bonkers. One bullet in a list is doing it a disservice but please click through on this.

When I was a youth, I was a bit of a troublemaker. I don't think that's out of the ordinary. My particular flavor of trouble happened online - specifically on AOL. It was the mid-90s, I was a young teenager and, frankly, the stakes were pretty low. I ran around with a group of folks that considered themselves hackers - which is a laughable label in contrast to an actual black hat engineer but, again, it was the mid-90s and I was a young teenager.

In that same era was a piece of software called AOHell - a kind of sidekick tool that assisted in exploiting bugs in the AOL software, harassing chat rooms and phishing other customers for account credentials. Apparently it's also the first recorded use of the word phishing. The creator - another teenager - claims his motivation behind the software was driven by AOL policies that would shutdown warez chat rooms but would not shutdown pedophilia rooms.

Despite that altruistic motivation, it was a tool that enabled a lot of kids to exploit a lot of users news to the AOL version of the Internet. It also made those kids have power trips of their own, bringing plenty of chaos to a service that, by and large, was for chatting with people with similar interests.

Inspired by AOHell and the power trip it brought, myself and two very close friends - TheMeth and SAiNT - set forth on our own piece of software called AOTurkey. To be released on Thanksgiving day, it would provide ways to ridiculously troll chat rooms with a giant ASCII turkey drawing and, we claimed, do a lot of incredibly powerful exploits to the AOL software. If the name "AOTurkey" didn't give it away, it was really just a big joke. It could do very little. But it could scroll a giant ASCII turkey whenever you wanted. Still an entertaining visual to me, to this day.

There was a second version of the software that had even more jokes but, over time, the project got away from us, we moved on, we got offline, etc. AOTurkey 3.0 was made by other people and it was legitimate malware - a true exploitative virus. Unfortunately, that's all the Internet seems to remember about it. If you search for AOTurkey the only thing that comes back is that it's a virus.. that's a shame.

Added to that, TheMeth, one of the founders of the program recently passed away. I haven't talked to Vic in decades but our time as teens making such a silly joke was unforgettable. He was my same age and, clearly, a similar person in many regards. It's tragic he is gone.

So, in tribute to Vic and in an attempt to unsully the good name of AOTurkey, I've registered the AOTurkey.com domain and provided the history of the software - courtesy of The Full Wiki (another resource lost to Internet Time). There's a button to copy a giant ASCII turkey to your clipboard there too. I don't know when you'd need it but you never know when it might come in handy.

This is the kind of feel good nonsense you can't help but love learning from The Internet. The J. W. Westcott II is a mail delivery boat operating out of Detroit, MI that brings supplies, letters and packages to people residing on boats. In other words, it's a mail delivery boat bringing mail to other boats. It's also the only floating zipcode! 48222 is reserved for destinations on boats - wherever they may be.

Nothing life changing to learn here - unless you have been considering being a mail carrier on a boat and didn't think there was an opportunity to do such a thing. Now you know, there is!

While I don't actually get enough time to play a lot of games, I sure do appreciate checking out new releases and trailers. Case in point, Zwaard, a Zelda-esque action-adventure game with an aesthetic that feels extremely close to Sword & Sorcery and Hyper Light Drifter. So much so that I just assumed it was made by the same studios (tho, both of those games are made by different studios - shows what I know!)

Regardless of who made it, it's an aesthetic that I really love and a game formula that is right up my alley. Stick around in the trailer for the real teaser about 49seconds in.. very enticing!

A few months ago, Tristen reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested in releasing some collaborative recordings she'd done with Cortney Tidwell years and years ago. Obviously, I jumped at the opportunity. Both Tristen and Cortney have stayed in my regular rotation for the last.. decade plus! So learning that they had performed together was a surprise and a delight. Today yk records released two songs from phiz, the aforementioned collaboration. "i lost my fkn mind" and "If I Had Known" are very distinctly different songs but they both equally compelling in their presentation and simplicity. And of course the vocal play between the two is wonderful.

For the unique collab, I thought it might be interesting to make a unique physical manifestation of the songs. So, we put together a package for a Flexi 7". If you're not familiar, the Flexi is much like a traditional vinyl 7" but it's etched into thin plastic. Historically, a Flexi might not sound that great but technology has come a long way since the 1980s and I can honestly say this sounds great.

The photos were shot by Miles Price. The sleeves were printed by Risology Club. I'm always overjoyed to get to collaborate with people I enjoy so much and this was a great example of that.

The songs are on Bandcamp and Ampwall. They're streaming everywhere – Apple Music, Spotify, etc. The Flexi is in the YK Shop. Wherever you like to get your music, it’s there. Please enjoy.

This portrait, created in 1967 by Charles Csuri, has been sitting on my desktop for months. I tend to keep a tidy digital space but something about this image keeps calling me back. The original piece, printed on a plotter, belongs to the Whitney Museum. A blue silkscreen variant was available at Sotheby's.

The current accolades are nice but my interest is, pure and simple, the aesthetic of it. On that front, I don't really care to dissect the specifics of what I like about an art piece as it's subjective and unnecessary to explain why something is personally appealing. I'll just say, I absolutely love it.

There's plenty more to see from Csuri, as he experimented in digital art for his entire life (he lived to 99!). These early works are my favorites of his. Here's another plotter man, also conveniently entitled "Sine Curve Man."

Fiona Apple dropped a new song - Pretrial (Let Her Go Home). The song, as it explains itself in text, is an ode to the thousands of women sent to jail for simply not being able to pay a fine during the pretrial process. Despite being innocent, their lack of payment for bail takes them from their family and community. The statistic are harrowing - "On any given day, 60,000 women and girls are caged in jails.", "Over 66% are mothers to minor children."

It's harrowing and heavy to say the least (tho the song is quite catchy). While I appreciate Fiona using her visibility to spread awareness about a terrible issue, what I really love is that she provides a direct call to action to actually help. Too many times we hear how bad things are and the takeaway is simply "sucks, right?"

Not in this case, Fiona ends the video with a call to action to visit Let Her Go Home, a site that provides a central source of information and ways to donate both to Local Bail Funds and national organizations working to help people in this situation. I immediately sent some funds to Free Hearts, a TN local bail fund. I hope you do similar.

My frequency of posting WOTT Music episodes has really dropped off a cliff.. this year I've only managed to post 3 episodes! Ugh.

For this one, I decided to put together a playlist that contains some of my all-time favorites. I've been curating this show for approximately 18 years, so I have a long list of fantastic songs. This is two hours of a handful of those selections going as far back as 1995 and as recently as 2025. It's a primer to the Nashville indie music scene - not exhaustive but a helluva good listen.

It is available in podcast format - Apple Podcasts, Overcast, etc (tho often banned on Spotify). Or just keep watching it on YouTube!

Hope you enjoy, it's one of my favorites. Continue Reading...

In Catholic belief, Mary Magdalene is considered a saint and was present at the tomb of Jesus, after his crucifixion. I am not, in any way, here to talk about the validity of such "history" but I am here to tell ya that this relic of her supposed skull is metal as hell. It's incredible! A group of angels holding a disembodied gold sculpture containing a red cloth with an aged skull contained with a glass enclosure - just incredible. What an image!

There's plenty of back story to it, doubts of its authenticity or additional pictures where a face cover is placed over the skull. There are Mary Magdalene sculptures worth having a peek at too. Lots to discover on this particular rabbit hole but nothing tops that Golden Skull.

This strange looking tank device is the Interceptor Mega Disk, a device used to clone Sega Master System games on to floppy disks. It's a beast of an item and I just wanted to share its existence. It's also wild to think about the production of such a device that was released in 1987. Of course, it was marketed as a backup system but that seems a bit generous.

There are many more of these kinds of devices but none have the menacing look of the Interceptor Mega Disk.

via Chappel Ellison.

Running a little indie label means having to figure out inventive solutions with small budgets. Case in point, Matt & The Watt Gives released a new single last week and wanted to make a video without spending a lot. Matt has a zero point turn lawn mower, a GoPro and a family happy to play around in the yard. Swirl all that together and you got yourself a music video!

Matt sent the footage over to me and I chopped it into this sun soaked concoction. It's not redefining the genre of music videos but, in my biased opinion, it's engaging and enjoyable enough to stick with it for 3 minutes! My favorite part happens around 1:40 - at least stick around for that.

The track is available on Bandcamp, Ampwall, my YK Shop and streaming.

You are undoubtedly familiar with the anti-piracy campaign, You Wouldn't Steal a Car. It was a public awareness campaign to let folks know that downloading and theft can be synonmous. After all, you wouldn't steal a car, so why would you steal a download? (many reasons)

Anyway, you know the campaign. You know the Meme spinoffs. What you might not know is the following:

• That distinctive font is called FF Confidential and was designed by Just van Rossum, the brother of the creator of the Python language! Just a little fun fact. Source.
• A little sleuthing reveals that the font actually used in the ad is XBand Rough, a pirated knockoff of the original.

That's right, the anti-piracy ad uses pirated software. Couldn't be a more perfect situation.

I've been a fan of Datamoshing from the moment I heard the term but haven't really ever tried it much myself. This tutorial is a very insightful walkthrough of the concepts and an actual step-by-step software walkthrough. It's also got a bit of rambling and pontification mixed in but, hey, it's YouTube! Takes all kinds. Jump to 2:16 for the goods if you're impatient.

A variety of reads for you:

• AI-assisted code tools of the now - nice little writeup from Jamie Wilkinson about what tools he is currently using. As he is co-CEO of Glif, it's insight I trust. I also love his sign off... "Lastly, everything in this post will be out-of-date as soon as I press publish. generative AI is nuts rn".
• Will a CT scan give you cancer? - Turns out, it can! This article is not all doom-and-gloom tho, it's actually a level-headed bit of insight about the risks of ionizing radiation. What I found the most interesting was the lack of standards for the levels of different kinds of scans. I'm a fan of the recent trend of self-advocacy and this kind of intelligent research is good to have at hand should you need it.
• Algorithmic Underground. - James Dennis waxes on about AI, art and a Baudrillard quote worth contemplating. Also, helluva header gif I just had to nab.

Fun fact, this week I was selected for jury duty and considered for this trial of US Govt vs (Allegedy) Corrupt Politician. I did not make the cut. While I will never know exactly why I was not selected, I like to believe that the Prosecution really pulled for me. I'm going to go ahead and let you in a little secret: the defendants are guilty! Maybe that's why I wasn't picked!

Anyway, lets have some distractions, why don't we?

• It's Claritin Time - this has been making the rounds on social media. If you were raised in the 90s it may not raise an eyebrow but looking at it objectively, the whole is madness.
• Switch 2 with Paul Rudd - this is nostalgia bait taken to its extremes but I won't deny that I enjoyed it. Good to see Joe Lo Truglio pop up in there too.
• This Cheetos Rebrand is Crazy - for a moment, you question if it's a spoof.
• AIRBOARDERS trailer - as part of my deep dive into all things Game Changer, I'm partaking in Jacob Wysocki's comedy troupe Bath Boys. This is peak Internet here - originally posted in 2013.
• Yoshinao Satoh: POWER - I have mentioned my enjoyment of Yoshinao Satoh's work in previous posts. This is another example of that goodness.
• The Most Injured Man in America - Director Seth Pomeroy just announced his new documentary and it reminded me that I need to revisit this incredible montage of clips where he played an injured person receiving settlements. Still absolutely brilliant.

I had the great fortune of working with producer Roger Moutenot to release his first solo album back in 2024. He's been producing music for decades but never released anything under his own name until Microcosm. Through working with Roger I got to meet his son Malcolm.. who just so happened to release his own first track here in April of 2025.

"Things" is a helluva first single. It's 9 and a half minutes long but never feels like it is overstaying its welcome. It's breezy and atmospheric but it's also engaging and storybound. It's introspective and cut with a dash of melancholy. It's fantastic, start to finish.

Ahh, you gotta love it when someone invents a very practical thing that instantly becomes nightmare fuel. For instance, in 1894 Oswald Fergus pioneered the "Dental Phantom" - a practical device that enabled dental students to get some real world experience without having to work on a human being. Truth be told, the original version was much less menacing but as the concept evolved over time, it's become an absolute terror.

Artist Brian Kubasco takes that horrific vibe and pushes it even further, making the Dental Phantoms into proper horror oddities. The Agent Gallery Chicago has their own nightmares to share.

Ready for these things to get their own franchise already.