Tigers Jaw has caught my ear in fits and spurts with catchy emo songs that play off vocalists Briana Collins and Ben Walsh. With a full band in recent years, when Lost On You was released recently, I gave it a spin. I'm glad I did as this is the album that finally hooked me in fully. I always appreciate a good drummer, and Teddy Roberts brings a lot of pack and punch across these tracks. Recommended tracks: “Baptized on a Redwood Drive”, “Light Leaks Through”, “Staring at Empty Faces”, “Lost On You”. My favorite line comes from “Light Leaks Through”: “The version of the person that you miss does not exist.”
A journey of a song from American Football, their first new music since 2019's LP3. A glitchy funky time signature piano loop opens into classic interweaving melodies that American Football have perfected. Lifted by Mike Kinsella's voice, the final part of the song repeats a refrain with a unique spin each time. Oof, floored.
I was hesitant to watch a show about the medical profession with Noah Wyle (after having watched ER back in the day), but started to hear really compelling things about The Pitt. The hype is real. A breathless and addictive show, it builds and builds but is never bombastic or fantastic — the realities of the medical profession in modern day America are on full display. The cast is so diverse and well-written with interpersonal relationships that feel well worn. If anything is fantastic, it's the chemistry here. Everyone fires on all cylinders. Phenomenal.
I started reading the Jack Reacher series during the pandemic. I flew through all the books in the series catching up in real time around book 25 when author and creator Lee Child began co-writing the series with his brother Andrew Child. The plan was for Lee to retire from the series as the movies and show have taken up his time. These later books are less successful, but it’s also a series that has grown with the protagonist over the decades. We are at book 30. Exit Strategy only really got going in the last quarter, after a bit of a lethargic start. I’ll keep reading, mostly to see if Reacher decides to walk off or take a bus into the sunset someday.
The episodes felt lengthy at times, but the show packs a lot into 8 episodes. It's not as snappy as Slow Horses, but Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson make a great pair, and there's just the right amount of unhinged to bring it all together. I think Wayno steals the show. Glad there's a season two coming.
I didn’t know that a pair of legs would be as amazing as they are in this film. More heart and humor than I expected, and I would see more Adventures from the Tree-o.
Third best Predator film in a franchise of 9 (or 7 depending on who you ask).
Pretty solid, great soundtrack. Always enjoyable seeing Coogler and Jordan team up. I still think From Dusk Til Dawn is the seminal “oh shit this has vampires” twist Movie.
I love a few Paramore songs. My introduction was from playing their songs in Rock Band and Guitar Hero. I enjoy playing a few drum covers to their songs. And their sound has evolved and gotten both exploratory and diverse as time has gone on, eschewing the punk-emo of their early days. Singer and frontwoman Hayley Williams is a force, however, and I find myself always interested in what she’s doing. Whether she’s guesting on mega hits like B.O.B.’s “Airplanes”, banking her indie emo cred on American Football’s “Uncomfortably Numb”, working with David Byrne, or appearing onstage with Deftones, her range is evident. In 2020, she released her first solo album, and in 2025, she released 17 singles in succession, eventually packaged as her third full-length, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. The namesake song itself is a tour de force, and the chorus line’s “I’ll be the biggest star, at this racist country singer’s bar” is further pointed with Williams naming said country singer in interviews. “True Believer” tasks organized belief with the same sharpness, “They put up chain-link fences underneath the biggest bridges / They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children / They say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave him a white face / So they don’t have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them”. I don’t know of a current popular artist who is as open, blunt and genuine as Williams is. This album is worth 100x that other well-known Nashville artist. A fascinating example of her songwriting is the contrast in the demo/process version of “Glum”, compared to the final version, which is far more polished, and in the choice of having her vocals be affected. We need more artists standing up for culture, art, and saying something new.
Recommended tracks: “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party”, “Kill Me”, “Love Me Different”, “True Believer”.
Ohms was an album that got me through 2020. I’m not sure it holds up as well five years on, but it has its moments. private music is the album I actually wanted. Released with little to no lead-up aside from an out-of-nowhere Apple Music interview with Zane Lowe and lead single “my mind is a mountain”, it’s all the better off for it. Guitarist Stephen Carpenter is in fine form despite his health struggles with travel and touring only domestically (as well as a moment of flat-earthism?!). The bassist door has been revolving since the death of founding member Chi Cheng. It has always been frontman Chino Moreno and one of my favorite drummers Abe Cunningham, who have anchored and driven this band. They’ve been able to channel the best of their sound over the decades into this album. Of course, I’d be remiss not to mention keyboardist and turntablist Frank Delgado, who has only heightened the band’s sound deftly layering atmospherics throughout, and perhaps is the most underrated member. On this album, his contributions are the most audible they’ve ever been. They’ve transcended nü metal, embraced electronics, and somehow become more popular than ever with a whole new generation.
Recommended tracks: “milk of the madonna”, “infinite source”, “i think about you all the time”, “~metal dream”.
Not bad, but drags. I could see a version of this film at 90 minutes (checks runtime, 93 minutes), oh shit, I guess this should have just been a 1-hour show episode of something.
I discovered Boneflower, a post-hardcore band from Madrid, Spain in 2020 when they released their second album, Armour. It’s still one of the best post-hardcore albums I’ve listened to, and after 5 years and an EP in between, they released their excellent third album, Reveries, building on their loud-quiet sound. For a trio, their mastery of dynamics reminds me of Nirvana — a band who knew how to employ their full strengths for maximum loudness, but also knew when to pull back for the most tender moments. Songs like “Nocturnal” sound heavy, but listen closely, and you realize the growl is from a distorted bass and the matching vocal, while the guitar stays relatively clean. Boneflower does that thing: delicate guitar work interlaced with fat bass and driven by muscular drumming. Songs average three minutes, but each plays like a mini-epic. To do this requires all three firing together and they do.
Recommended tracks: “Sal En Mis Pestañas”, “Pomegranate”, “I Gazed At The Starred Night All Alone And Blood Tasted Like Honey In My Mouth, Lethargic”.
Turnstile anchored their first two albums in hardcore tradition. In 2021, they turned that upside down with their third album, Glow On, adopting crossover appeal with a more diverse sound, and employing producer Mike Elizondo whose songwriting and production credits are widely varied but include 50 Cent’s “in da club”, and Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady.” With Never Enough that streak continues. I’ve read that some people got along with this album more than its predecessor. The evolution in sound with each new album gains them more fans, culminating in their biggest tour yet. I caught them on that tour this past October at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, which is the largest venue I’ve seen a hardcore band play at ever (I last saw Nine Inch Nails there, and Kings of Leon and Bon Iver in the past). The photos in the graphic are ones I took at the show. Never Enough, like Glow On, has plenty of songs to sing along to, and the crowd at Bill Graham was not only singing all the songs, but releasing their energy into a number of mosh-pits. Did I get into the pit? Not quite, but the pit came to my friends and me, and we boogied. I haven’t seen a show so well-produced, let alone for a hardcore band, and it really made you feel together. There were a few camerapeople roaming the crowd and the feed played intermittently on large screens flanking the stage. As you can imagine, two generations of music lovers growing up in a selfie-centric world absolutely lapped it up. As for the tracks: I find this batch of songs stronger than Glow On in total, but like Sleep Token, if you’re invested in the culture of the band, then you know that they are a band of their time. Inclusive, artistically driven, and capturing the genre fluidity of music today.
Recommended tracks: “Never Enough”, “Dreaming”, “Seein’ Stars” (featuring Hayley Williams, providing low-key vocals and some textural harmonies), “Birds”.
My admiration for Skunk Anansie began with their 1995 debut, Paranoid & Sunburnt, occupying the period between grunge and nü metal. Frontwoman Skin, however, has never slotted neatly into a male-dominated genre. Listening to “Selling Jesus” alongside “Charity” or “Weak” from that debut album demonstrated the range of the band. For them to continue in 2025, 30 years later, is an achievement. With two members having undergone cancer treatment in recent years, the band is older, wiser, and measured. In interviews for The Painful Truth, they conveyed that they made the music they wanted to. It’s certainly their most diverse album—in an age where the lines between acoustic and electronic blur and genre labels mean less, they’ve embraced it all.
Recommended tracks: “Shame”, “My Greatest Moment”, “This Is Not Your Life.”
Sleep Token are huge. Four albums in, masked, anonymous (well, if you don’t look too hard), and never giving interviews, they’ve nurtured a devoted fanbase that buys into a lore and a sound that’s genre-bending and fluid. I’ve been hooked on them since their second album as I’ve never heard a “metal” band weave in indie, pop, hip-hop, reggaeton, and more in subversive ways with a singer that can swoon. Did I mention that only said frontperson Vessel is “named”, while the rest are numerals? II, III, and IV. While the band had steadily been growing, it was their third album in 2023, Take Me Back To Eden, and the song “The Summoning” that went viral: it genre-flips at the end into a funk R&B jam in its penultimate act. The songwriting is deft and undeniable even if you don’t quite get it. But it’s very easy to find something to like with Sleep Token. With this year’s Even in Arcadia, they’ve fully leaned into the vast landscape of their songs. Whereas previous songs would loop an electronic or piano-driven moment of pop, the songs here reverse the script and weight the dancehall moments with djent breakdowns equally. I have to mention the absolute mastery of II, the drummer. He is highly technical, and like the band itself employs an acoustic drum kit as much as pads. His appearance on Drumeo demonstrating his craft is as much of an interview fans will get. The album breaks from the lore for the first time (the term cosplay rock has been bandied about) with a few tracks, directly referencing the intense fame and pressure on the band, while also remaining thankful for their audience. Even In Arcadia packs a huge punch, and unlike some artists, I’ve found that the back half and last few songs on their albums are some of the best, despite the more popular ones that line the front half. Just look to the trilogy-like ending trifecta of “Damocles”, “Gethesemane”, and “Infinite Baths” for their mastery. I suppose I’m a fanatic.
Recommended tracks: “Emergence” (another track with a little twist at the end), “Caramel”, “Gethesemane”, “Damocles”.
Some might discount Stranger Things actor Joe Keery for his musical endeavors, but Keery was making music with Post-Animal long before the show made him famous. When Keery released “Roddy” in 2019, a stellar retro-influenced debut solo tune that switches gears in its third act, melting into an electronic jam, it proved that Joe/Djo knows how to write a song. Keery continued on with a debut album, then a follow-up that contained the viral “End of The Beginning”, and his latest release this year, The Crux. He wears his psych-rock and warm-tinted inspirations on his sleeve, but the sound is uniquely his own now. The Crux is driven by viral-ready lead singles “Basic Being Basic” and “Delete Ya”, but the rest of the album is so compelling that you can tell Keery gave a lot of thought to the composition of an actual album. “The Egg” is one of my favorite songs of this year, and the last bit takes it to another level. I’m thankful that Djo exists.
Recommended tracks: “The Egg”, “Basic Being Basic”, “Gap Tooth Smile”, “Crux”.
This could have just been a romantic dramedy set against some Alien/Annihilation/Pirates of the Caribbean shizz (hell, Sigourney Weaver’s in it) with zero action and I would have lapped it up since the first half of the film is rom-cute and they could have just kept going with that premise. Thankfully, the creature stuff is short, bad tech co people eat it quick, but should have been a 90s 90 minutes.
But we all get to look at Anya Taylor-Joy and Miles Teller, so, maybe a win.
I will caveat that I was on a flight*, but dang, Twisters probably has no right to be as good as it is: it’s a load of fun. *I prescribe to the idea and hypothesis that watching Movies on planes make you far more emotional, and that they resonate more
"But to my original remark, I’m backing out of Meta Corporation platforms. Maybe that’s all I mean. It’s the election, of course, and its campaigns. It’s the devolution of news and journalism and the rise of manipulative and untruthful media. It’s all kinds of things. Lies and propaganda leading to reprehensible and awful ends. Again and again, year after year, it’s one thing or another. Just a handful of examples might be Sandy Hook, Pulse, Parkland, Charlottesville, Tree of Life, George Floyd, Kenosha, January 6. All acts and incidents of delusion and hatred, all exacerbated by social media."
"While we appreciate Apple Music and Spotify suggesting new music for us, we miss the good ol’ days when recommendations came from friends. In those days of yore, we had to think about which albums we’d recommend, and what those albums say about us. Each album came with a personal story, or a suggestion on how to approach it. It feels good to make a list of albums, and it’s exciting to read another person’s list."
"It’s becoming more important than ever that people keep making art, in the age of derivative AI slop and an ever-worsening political climate. Deliberately creative pursuits are radical. I gave a talk a while back about building personal websites (and I’ll write that talk up soon) and how that’s a radical act in this day and age of an internet of shit, and I think this is exactly the same. In a world of shit, creativity for creativity’s sake is radical."
"Mundago is a game about enjoying the small things in life. Each day you get a brand new board of activities you can pursue. Your board is yours. Your friends' boards will be different. Tap items to check them off as you complete them."
"No one has enough time in the day! The thing about getting older is that it is a process of accumulation, you accumulate people and stuff and responsibilities and moral obligations, and you can only Marie Kondo yourself out of so much of it. My dentist gets on me about flossing and I want to be like, motherfucker when? I know it’s only a couple of minutes a day but do you know how few minutes we all have?? Did you know the earth is going up in flames??? And you want me to FLOSS???? And host my own read-later service????? Why is this the reality we live in?????? Butlerian jihad when???????"
"A custom typeface for the American electric vehicle manufacturer reflects its spirit of innovation and adventure."
Söhne is the typeface du jour of late (Stripe, OpenAI/ChatGPT, Rivian prior to this, and even this very website), and its nice to see Pentagram evolve it in partnership with Kris Sowersby of Klim Type Foundry on this personalized version.
Rewatched after some time. It starts off real quick but dissolves into a Movie you've seen countless times prior: mash up Daylight, The Poseidon Adventure, The Abyss, Aliens, Deep Blue Sea, and yet, The Meg is far more entertaining, and does it better. A shame because it gets the tone right, but is absolutely nothing new.
"HTML isn’t only for people working in the tech field. It’s for anybody, the way documents are for anybody. HTML is just another type of document. A very special one—the one the web is built on."
— Blake Watson
One of my classes in my Computer Science major in university was to learn HTML. The class was difficult to wrap my head around then (it was my first programming class, later COBOL and C++!). But it was the class that led me to discover the nascent web and eventually led me to having a presence on it, and making an entire career out of it. Blake Watson proposes that anyone should be able to make a website, without the need to be a professional, and I am absolutely here for it.
"Polartec Alpha was designed to be a batting insulation, encapsulated between two shells. Alpha Direct was designed as an inner lining, to be sewn to an outer shell. The cottage industry was smart to build these as stand alone garments because that allowed it to be used as a modular system. Instead of being stuck with the shell that the Alpha Direct was sewn to, you could mix and match depending on the conditions. "
— Dan Timmerman
This is for the outdoor and ultralight gear nerds like myself. Polartec's Alpha (and particularly Direct) has seen a lot of hype in the last year or so, with plenty of hiking, running, and cycling companies adopting Alpha Direct as a standalone layer (see Satisfy Running's Ghostfleece AD). I was curious about how well this stuff actually works, given it's lacey composition. Dan Timmerman (former pro cyclocross racer, now handmade outdoor gear maker) breaks it down in this post and it seems sound.
"I installed a box high up on a pole somewhere in the Mission of San Francisco. Inside is a crappy Android phone, set to Shazam constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It's solar powered, and the mic is pointed down at the street below."
"If you’ve never looked at a digital map of China, I urge you to do it now — initially, if you look at the street view, it looks like any other map you’ve encountered. However, if you overlay the satellite view you can see things are out of whack."
"Hundred Rabbits is a small artist collective. Together, we explore the planned failability of modern technology at the bounds of the hyper-connected world. We research and test low-tech solutions and document our findings with the hope of building a more resilient future."
This is the kind of site/project/life that I find fascinating. Two people who live and operate from a boat, and live what seems like a very intentional life. The website alone is a mix of their efforts and embodies more than I can explain here. Take a good look around.
"This is a solar-powered website, which means it sometimes goes offline."
In the same vein as the aforementioned link (Hundred Rabbits), this online magazine (also available offline) is powered by solar. There's a beauty in committing to sustainable methods of your online footprint and how you deliver it, in sharp contrast to the vast amounts of power that AI currently hoards.
Wolfs tries to toe the line between wanting to be mildly serious and funny but never quite getting the balance or side right. I feel like it wants to be clever funny in the way that Soderbergh brought to film very well in the Oceans series. And it really just made me wish Soderbergh directed this. A bit of a waste of Clooney and Pitt. If this sequel happens, there’s a lot to improve on.
"Petersen believes that the bike industry’s focus on racing—along with ‘competition and a pervasive addiction to technology’—has had a poisonous influence on cycling culture. He dislikes the widespread marketing to recreational riders of spandex kits, squirty energy gels, and workout apps such as Strava. He thinks that low, curved handlebars contort riders into an unnatural position; that bicycles made of carbon fibre and aluminum have safety issues; and that stretchy synthetics have nothing on seersucker and wool. ‘The whole purpose of pro riding now is to create a demand at the retail level for the really expensive bicycles,’ he said. He sees the glorification of speed—personal bests, constant quantification, metrics, leaderboards—as discouraging to entry-level riders who might otherwise enjoy life with a bike."
There's not a singular person in the cycling industry and beyond that has affected my life in so many positive ways than Grant Petersen and the company that makes up Rivendell has.
"If anything, as the well gets poisoned by their own outputs, large language models may well end up eating their own slop and getting their own version of mad cow disease. So this might be as good as they’re ever going to get."
— Jeremy Keith
I use AI. Not particularly for generative work but to work through code or even to find some semblance of an answer because the very same companies have made search unusable. My work also involves AI, and there's a longer post here about ways that AI might help, but the concerns are real, and I struggle with that balance.
"We discussed metaphysics like… how it felt to tap them, with and without shadow. We endlessly fiddled with shadows, geometric and visual sizes, gradients, colors, border radii, and lighting concepts. Our obsession to get them just right went far beyond reason."
An interesting result. I have no skin in this as I don't use Presenter and no longer use Writer, but I enjoyed this breakdown and look at the thought process of how they got there.
"That’s still not quite enough. Because there’s a cultural expectation in America around how much Vietnamese food should cost, especially if it’s not presented as fine dining. Right now, our bowl of pho is $26. We use chicken from Joyce Farms, and our broth takes three days. But if you look at our negative reviews they’ll say it’s $26 for pho, when they can get ‘comparable quality’ for $10, which is just not true. Recently, we had a fried rice dish that was popular that used chinese sausage and red hot dogs made by a local company using nice beef, which were $9 a pound. And I couldn’t charge appropriately for it, because the expectation is that hot dogs are cheap. So we had to change it to shrimp, which is the same price per pound, but people were more willing to pay $27 for the dish."
"I’m a 23-year-old Chinese Singaporean woman. After graduating culinary school in 2016, I started as a commis (also known as 马王, or minion) in a Chinese restaurant kitchen along Orchard road. This is a description of my everyday work, in English, written for friends and family who are curious."
"These Inclusive Design Principles are about putting people first. It's about designing for the needs of people with permanent, temporary, situational, or changing disabilities — all of us really."
"Months of work went into this show, resulting in six fresh arrangements and two new songs, and I was unexpectedly happy with everything captured on the night. This document feels like a fitting conclusion to the first chapter of Site Nonsite."
— Simon Collison
A real treat for the ears, Simon's created a gorgeous soundscape from his work that fits a live and intimate space and the mix brings that lushness to life. I feel like I'm there. Listen with some headphones — you won't be disapppointed.
"But I like to think of it as being more akin to woodworking. You have a plank of wood and you run it through the belt sander to get all the big, coarse stuff smoothed down. Then you pull out the hand sander, sand a spot, run your hand over it, feel for splinters, sand it some more, over and over until you’re satisfied with the result."
"The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world."
"Don’t just take my word for it. Researchers have found that about half of urban noise is attributable to motor vehicles. In some places the share is higher, such as in Toronto, where traffic produces about 60% of the background din. And silencing that cacophony can lead to flourishing street life — in North America as well as in Europe."
The way this is lit and set in a David Fincher-esque tonality, I felt like Se7en’s John Doe was going to pop out and we were going to get gluttony on screen. Impeccable performances, strange economy of set (though once I learnt it was a play, it made a lot of sense), and people who really should have helped Charlie. A story of trauma all over the board and the ties that bind them.
Like some Aronofsky films (see Requiem for a Dream), it’s admirable and I can appreciate it, but will never watch it again.
"Type of Feeling is a type foundry specializing in creating bespoke typefaces for brands. We offer a select retail collection and custom typography services that are inspired by a range of feelings."
"With the slogan ‘Make your health insurance company cry too,’ Karau’s site makes filing appeals faster and easier. A recent study found that Affordable Care Act patients appeal only about 0.1% of rejected claims, and she hopes her platform will encourage more people to fight back."
"An explosion from the side of an old brick building. A crashed bicycle in a city intersection. A cockroach in a box of takeout. It took less than 10 seconds to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool in the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor. They are crisp. They are in full color. They are high-fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no tell-tale sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all extremely fucking fake."
"The most striking point, to me, from Tokumitsu’s book is how easily the myth of ’do what you love’ cracks when you press on it. The underlying message of such a myth, she writes, is that ‘each individual’s specialness will guide him or her to work that he or she enjoys and that also happens to support, at the very least, an upper-middle-class existence. Central to this enjoyment is that the work allows a worker’s specialness to be constantly showcased, and thus recognized, honored, monetized.’"
"Simply put, listening is hard; it’s work. Our minds, much like our bodies are rarely still or at ease — a condition that leads to listening poorly, which is one step away from equally poor thinking and decision making."
"But really, my mom loved to shop and I’ve inherited that skill. I’ll call it a skill because Mom knew quality. She loved things made by hand. By real people. Things that were made well and lasted."
"Meanwhile, I drive a Kia, I like Kia, and I’ll probably default to looking at a Kia the next time I’m in the market for a car, but I don’t know anything at all about the company’s executives and I don’t think about their product line beyond my own personal car. I’m certainly not writing blog posts about how Kia has made some UX decisions in their media controls that I find counterintuitive or that they really need to increase the power in next year’s Sorento."
"So here I am, in Cancun, on an all-inclusive vacation with my family through Costco Travel, and it feels like the world of the wholesale warehouse has somehow been extended down the East Coast to the Yucatán peninsula, all the way to the poor woman in a white polo with the laminated COSTCO TRAVEL sign, who’d been sent to meet us outside of the airport."
"One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make as they start to dip their toes into advising is try to anchor their work to specific deliverables. Doing this is bad for a number of reasons, but the primary one is that when you’re being brought on as an advisor, you’re not being hired to deliver anything, you’re being hired to care about a company. You cannot do this well if you’re constrained to a single lane or output."
Ridiculous and full of teenage melodrama of a Movie of its period (of which I was the target market at the time) It’s fun to watch and the soundtrack is pretty good. Lucas and Warren are the best but both Liv Tyler, Renee Zellweger, and Robin Tunney bring some depth to a mostly skimming-the-surface Movie. But, look, these were things I wasn’t exposed to as a teen in Malaysia, and they were educational. Musical deep cuts with Quicksand’s “Thorn in My Side”, and Suicidal Tendencies’ “I Shot the Devil.” Say no more, mon amour!
"As per the official description, “the glossary covers the major standards and concepts of the Web, beginning with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, accessibility, security, performance, code quality and testing, internationalization, localization, frameworks and editors and tooling. It then includes other disciplines of interest and relevance to the modern developer, like computer science, design, typography, usability and user experience, information and project management and more. It goes beyond web development to feed curiosity, about the Web and the technologies and processes used to build it."
"These sites can only exist because of the work put in by librarians and archivists to collect, curate, and share these images to begin with. It is a shame that so much of their work was erased so that this site can claim to show you an internet of the future, ‘rich, organized libraries that expand our consciousness.’"
"I do the work I do for a living in no small part because I had access to an internet connection as a teenager. That connection helped shape me and open up my world. What art, creativity, skill, and sure, economic potential, is going untapped right now in Rural America because a child does not have access to a solid connection to the wider world?"
