Some various reads for you to kick off April 2025. These are no joke! Just some insightful text to spend your time with:

• No elephants: Breakthroughs in image generation - I've really enjoyed everything I've read from Ethan Mollick over the past few months. This latest post about the increasingly impressive multi-modal image generation from OpenAI and Google is just more to enjoy! I also suggest you read Speaking Things Into Existence.
• Mini-satellite paves the way for quantum messaging anywhere on Earth - I don't expect you to have a nature.com subscription but maybe you can have a peek over the wall to learn about this fridge-sized satellite that is sending pulses of light that exist in quantum states. I'll be honest, this is beyond my comprehension but I sure do like reading about its existence.
• First Venus bounce with the Dwingeloo telescope - did you know that you can bounce radio signals off the surface of Venus? This Earth-Venus-Earth (EVE) bounce was done frequently in the 60's and 70's but only done by a amateur in 2009. They've done it again and documented it extensively. Again, do I comprehend this? Not exactly. But I love to see it.
• HAM Weekly - keeping on theme, do I know anything about HAM radio? No, not a thing. Do I highly enjoy this weekly blast of Amateur HAM Radio insights? Enthusiastically, yes!

Looks like Friendster is coming back? Is the answer to social networks a full circle return to the first social network? I will admit I'm intrigued but, mostly, can't imagine needing this in my life. Nostalgia is a helluva drug but is it this powerful?

The Austin Kleon newsletter always provides a litany of delightful treats (every week!). One recent bit of manna is Erik Winkowski's Zinemail - "An email zine filled with collages, photos, animated gifs, paintings, and a soundtrack."

Go look at the first issue and then subscribe. No brainer.

Really fascinating looking film here - Secret Mall Apartment captures the story of a group of artists and friends that get displaced from their home because a giant mall complex is going to be built and then decide to build themselves a new home.. inside the walls of the mall. Not streaming anywhere yet but I'm keeping an eye on the official site for when it drops.

Side note: this is executive produced by Jesse Eisenberg, who also EP'ed on The World Before Your Feet that I previously mentioned. I suppose I should make it a goal to see all the things he's involved with.

As I understand it, Superwhisper is an AI model hosted on your Mac that powers speech to text combined with processing prompts to personalize the process. The demo is straightforward and I certainly think this is what plenty of people envision when they think about AI assistants.

My old self is not super prone to speaking commands aloud or transcribing. I barely even use the speech to text option on my phone and never do so on my laptop. I acknowledge this is the behavior of an ancient individual but it's gonna take a special something to get this kind of behavior worked into my routine.

If you ever find yourself needing a quick pick-me-up, just cruise on over to Giphy and look at the skeleton tag - delights abound.

Let's get to it:

• The Severance Theme sounds SICK on Classical Guitar ... - can't deny it, it does sound sick.
• Gou Miyagi - Heroin's Video Nasty - even if you do not consider yourself a fan of skate videos, please watch this. There is so much delightful absurdity woven in here that it's impossible not to appreciate.
• Pioneer LaserDisc logos in Space - been spending some time with the Audio Visual Identity Database and running across gems like this one.
• The Fibrovisor - turning a dollar store fiber optic wand into an actual lo-res display. The end result is quite neat but the process to get there is unfathomable. The patience required! Remarkable little project.
• George Harrison 1992 "Taxman" - some rehearsal footage for an MTV performance at Shepperton Studios. I don't claim to know much of the history of this clip but I love the alternate lyrics and seeing members of The Heartbreakers playing with him.
• ULTIMATE SOUR MILK SEA MASH-UP (2025) - speaking of Harrison, "Sour Milk Sea" was a Esher demo from him, properly recorded by Jackie Lomax (with multiple Beatles backing him up) and now subject to a lot of Beatles fans using AI tools to create new versions. It's a fascinating mashup and a very fun rabbit hole to explore.
• Daffy in Wackyland - I swore I posted this previously but maybe not! I don't consider myself much of a Daffy Duck cartoon watcher but the style and manic energy of this is undeniable. It's like Claymation Beetlejuice, Ren-and-Stimpy, Sifl and Olly Show, Gumby and Memphis Group design vibes got thrown in a blender and put back together in the best possible way.

Loving this drawing project from Wendy Murray entitled Every Building On The Gallatin Pike. It's inspired by the 1966 piece Every Building on the Sunset Strip by Edward Ruscha and Waylon Jennings White Lightnin' album cover - tho it certainly has it's own unique style with the pen and gouache execution.

You may likely appreciate the pieces more if you live in Nashville and recognize these spots but even as an outsider, I think you can appreciate the style of the art and the diversity of the weirdo buildings in our town.

What if someone told you they wanted to walk every single street in New York City - including the parks and piers? It would be, roughly, 10,000 miles. You may say that task would be insurmountable! Somehow, for Matt Green, it was a calling that could not be denied.

Back in 2018, The World Before Your Feet was released. The documentary follows the aforementioned Matt Green as he walks through every street in every borough. It is an incredibly long journey but Green does not have a 9-5 job, so he can devote a lot of time to the undertaking. Along with the walking, he also documents the progress on his site, I'm Just Walkin'.

This has been covered in the NY Times and other high profile publications but it was entirely new to me. I was blown away by his patience and his incredible insight on the world around him. I don't know that the task is enviable per se but his calm drive to achieve it certainly is. The film finds a great balance around pointing out how insane all this is, not shying away from Green's flaws and appreciating the absolute beauty of what he's doing. Definitely give this one a watch.

California automaker Telo recently unveiled their lineup for Urban Adventure Vehicles, aka trucks. They are about the size of a Mini Cooper and are certainly.. unique! They even released a promo video of the prototypes in action.

I'm posting this not because I'm a fan but because I want their to be some documentation of this trend we're starting to see emerge. The Cybertruck did not start it but definitely popularized it. Designs like this Telo are extremely futuristic and slightly offputting because of their atypical form factor.

Long story short: the future of car shapes is gonna be wild.

I've been watching SNL fairly regularly since the mid-90s. Not religiously by any means but undeniably regularly. I also listen to the The Lonely Island and Seth Meyers Podcast, have seen the James Franco Saturday Night doc and generally devour all of the behind the scenes insights I can get. I don't know why - it's just a fascinating place.

With the show turning 50 there is all sorts of new content to indulge in. The music doc - Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music - from Questlove and Oz Rodriguez has been receiving, deserved, praise. But you may have missed out on the similar-yet-different docuseries from Peacock SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night.

It's four distinct films from different directors covering four distinct topics - the audition process, the in-depth history of the Cowbell sketch, the Writer's room and "The Weird Year" (1985). Each is well done, quite fascinating for a person like myself and never too long.. each running about an hour. Worth a watch!

Today I learned that LaserDisc's initially started out being called DiscoVision, a format demonstrated as far back as 1972 and released commercially in 1978 with Jaws. It did not take off and MCA sold the rights in 1981, at which time it slowly became LaserDisc and still didn't catch on. The VCR / Betamax beat them too badly because they could record, not just playback.

Anyway, the point here is that DiscoVision is a fairly terrible name for a product that may be referred to as a noun. "Can I borrow your DiscoVision of Jaws?" just doesn't roll of the tongue. Sure, "Can I borrow your V-H-S of Jaws?" is pretty weird too but at least VHS only means one thing. Disco is pretty specific!

But it's not all bad - the early logo animation (1977) and the refined version (1981) are pretty sweet. Not as good as the LaserDisc Turtle but what is?

I recently found myself listening to Horizon, Volume 1; a compilation of ambient works from the 1980s by Japanese composer Masahiro Sugaya. The music is compelling and inviting.. have a listen: ... But what really struck me was the artwork. There's a delightful balance between vibes - the extremely rigid and isometric vs the playful and handdrawn. Seeing it animated is even more riveting. The illustration work is courtesy of Shoji Umemura.

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Browsing Umemura's instagram is a delightful romp of styles and mediums. Lots of illustrations but plenty of paintings and other mixed mediums. All of it has a similar playfulness and combination of vibes but none seem to strike the exact same balance as the Sugaya album cover; more evidence of how special it is.

All of it is fun and worth staring into. There's even more over at Panpro Factory and its blog (this is a collaborative effort with Chiharu Watanabe).

I've talked about the Toynbee Tile many times on this site. I even did a Dizzy Spell podcast episode all about it! During that recording I was reminded that one of the earliest events in the Toynbee history occurs in 1980, when a caller goes on the air with Larry King and talks about how 2001 relates to resurrection and mentions his group "The Minority Association" that is seeking to spread the word about these ideas.

Now, there's no evidence of this call. Only anecdotal evidence. However, George Washington University keeps a collection of Larry King recordings from 1970-1990, courtesy of the Mutual Broadcasting System archives. I reached out to them last July in search of a Feb 1980 recording; supposedly when the caller made their appearance.

They responded* and, unfortunately, the results are a bit of a dead end. Their response, as noted in the image above, states:

Thank you for your patience. We have just recently reopened and had a chance to look into your request. I've looked through the box that contains recordings from 1980. I'm sorry to report that there are no cassettes dated February 1980. The bulk of the 1980 cassettes are from July and September - November of 1980. It appears that there are significant gaps in the recordings that we have for 1980.

Did the call-in happen during the Fall of 1980, not the Winter? Did the call-in happen at all? Mysteries we may never solve but I'm happy to have checked one little box off my list of possible puzzle pieces to unearth.

* They actually replied in Sept of 2024 but I'm only posting about it now, in March of 2025. I've no excuse for why I took so long.

Really been enjoying the short, informative, entertaining transmissions from Chris Spargo recently. This piece on Bookland is a deep dive into UPC codes, book publishing and standardization as technology goes international - an unbelievably boring topic on the face of it but made quite engaging with Spargo's delivery. It's not ostentatious in the slightest, it's brilliantly British - subdued, calm and subtly goofy (watch him pull book after book from his jacket).

There's actually not a ton of content on his channel. Only in the past month has he started posted more regularly. I highly recommend Why do UK supermarkets have clock towers?, What if The Office (UK) was made in 2025?, Why did UK crisp packets swap colours? and Stormzy's illegally tinted windows. I'll personally vouch for each and every one of them.

I've been going down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras season for several years but it hasn't been until the last two that I started going down for the end of the season - Fat Tuesday specifically. When you explain the experience to someone that's never been, the assumption is that it's simply an excuse to get inebriated and embrace debauchery. While there's certainly a bit of that, it's only a minor element of it all.

The majority of the experience is the creative outpourings from a massive number of participants. Look at this gallery from Cryptique, the "Krewe of Cemetary Shamblers." These creations are astounding, full stop. Each and every one is a massive labor of love and the results are spellbinding (to me). This level of dedication and detail is everywhere you look, for days.

I'll never be able to capture or summarize the experience properly but I think going here or here are great places to start.

Two quick noteworthy items from the Ampwall team. First, this compilation entitled Cranked To 11: An Ampwall Community Mixtape is an enjoyable introduction to a diverse and growing group of musicians. There may be some misconceptions that the platform is primarily metal and metal-esque music but this comp showcases plenty outside of those genres.

Secondly, they launched a persistent music player. Traversing between pages without music playback being interrupted is a huge feature add. That's just one of several new features launched in the last month. I'm really loving the transparency and the speed of the ampwall platform.

If you aren't signed up to Ampwall's mailing list or following on Bluesky, you really should.

This Marcin Wichary essay on the pervasive-yet-hidden font throughout NYC - nay, throughout history - is quite a fascinating read. It's lengthy but the writing style is perfectly compelling start to finish.

I won't spoil the contents specifically but the title, The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan, is sure to give you some clues. This level of fandom, commitment to research and massive pooling of delightful examples is right up my alley!

An article of this length and this level of enjoyment is a rare treat these days. Never forget that the open web is still a wonderful treasure trove.

I was gonna use this Veep GIF for the cover but it was just too real. You're here for relief, not reminders. So, let's get to the enjoyable distractions!

• Lifeforce trailer - have we talked about this 1985 Tobe Hooper movie about Space Vampires? It recently got the whole restoration treatment and I think it's time I finally saw it.
• C64 Demo: Phonics Is Dead - YouTube has realized that I need to be aware of all things Commodore 64. This demo is fantastic but considering it was made on a computer from 1982 is unbelievable.
• David Lynch on Living & Dying - the only upside to Lynch's passing is that clips like this bubble up. This is not your typical Friday Videos fodder but, damn, it's 3 minutes of delight.
• TV Wheel: The X Box - did you know Joel Hodgson (or MST3K) had a 1995 pilot called TV Wheel, funded by HBO? It's sketch comedy show with a single camera mounted inside of a giant rotating mechanism. It's 37 minutes! I can't really decide if it's funny, which isn't a great sign, but there are lots of familiar faces in there (I spy David Cross).
• Backflips - I continue to highly enjoy Montessori Boy and continue to wish they posted more on YouTube, as I can't quite seem to get TikTok into my regular rotation.
• Fofão - have I mentioned Fofao here yet? The Brazilian children's show mascot that is pure terror? I don't think I have. I'm sorry to bring this to your attention if you weren't already aware but if I have to know it exists, so do you.

This video - entitled Two AI agents on a phone call realize they’re both AI and switch to a superior audio signal ggwave - is a proof of concept, not a thing that has happened yet. When the two agents acknowledge that they are both robots they switch to GibberLink Mode, a way for the two bots to converse using a library called ggwave that is designed for "data over sound." The high level summary is:

This library is used only to generate and analyze the RAW waveforms that are played and captured from your audio devices (speakers, microphones, etc.). You are free to use any audio backend (e.g. PulseAudio, ALSA, etc.) as long as you provide callbacks for queuing and dequeuing audio samples.

That doesn't sound like much but it's doing all the heavy lifting to encode the audio with the data and decode it on the other side. There's plenty of demo videos and demo apps you really should play with.

There are certainly some practical considerations to keep in mind with an audio based communication tool - namely, this isn't going to work in a crowded space - but it sounds fantastic. I love a scenario where sci-fi informs reality and all of this feels lifted directly from a Star Trek script. I'm not saying we're ever going to hear it out in the wild but I sure do love seeing it as a fully working demo.

Some various tools I've encountered of late:

• DeskPad - a virtual monitor for screen sharing. DeskPad creates a virtual display that is mirrored within its application window so that you can create a dedicated, easily shareable workspace.
  
  I screen share quite frequently at work and have yet to find a Google Meet, Zoom, et al experience that is pleasant.. especially from a larger monitor to a group. Maybe this is the key to all my problems!
• Cursor: AI Code Editor - the moment I post this, it will be outdated. In fact, as I write this, I know that Cline (a VS Code AI agent) can combine with Claude Code - which may even be superior!
  
  The point here is, these code assistant agents are getting very good. Maybe not Build Your Own Bandcamp good but if you need to build a marketing website, they can do a great deal of the work for you now. Pretty wild.
• pISSStream - ... a menu bar app that shows how full the International Space Station's urine tank is in real time.. Need I say more?