Through Lines 243

Music has probably been one constant this past week in keeping me from going off the rails with all the chaos being sewn across the US and other little unsettling things brewing elsewhere in my orbit, so stumbling on this debut live performance of Annihilation from Wilco’s most recent EP Hot Sun Cool Shroud at Solid Sound last year felt serendipitous — and strangely right.

• “By removing barriers to communication, social media has enabled us to let loose our worst instincts and transmit to a huge audience whatever thoughtlet comes to mind.” Superbloom and The Siren's Call are both going on my reading list for the year. From the NY Times Book Reviews.
• Ben Thompson lays out what’s been going on this week with the shot very much fired across the bow of American Ai companies by China’s DeekSeek and what it might mean (and perhaps how much to believe).
• Gandhi's list of the Seven Social Sins. I can think of a particular group of people who are, at least by this definition, living especially bad lives and who do little more than extract value from society.
• On the other hand, while I’m sure imperfect in many ways, we could sure do with more honorable people like the late Jimmy Carter right now even if we might not deserve it.
• Tré Seals new exhibit, Characters: Type in Action, designed in partnership with Civilization at MODA is well-timed and looks gorgeous. I hope they’re considering bringing it to other cities…
• I like a good scotch and so this Glenmorangie (Glen-moran-jee) campaign and the accompanying films starring Harrison Ford are 100% up my alley. They’re funny and endearing and feel really unforced as well as beautifully shot. I really need to do a Scottish distillery tour some day.
• “Let’s make AI poisoning the norm. If we all do it, they won’t have anything to crawl.” AI haters build tarpits to trap and trick AI scrapers that ignore robots.txt. Until there’s a model that equitably provides compensation to those who opt-in to allow their data to be used in building out LLMs, we should do everything possible to prevent misuse of unlicensed access.
• The great Blog Questions Challenge continues to make the rounds this week with contributions from Brian (welcome back buddy), Ethan, Brian, Anthony, Rachel, and Matthew.
• Patiently waiting for my copy of Neko Case’s memoir, The Harder I Fight The More I Love You to arrive any time now. I’m expecting a very emotional journey.
• 'Everything I Say Leaks,' Zuckerberg Says in Leaked Meeting Audio. Big LOLs but also deserved.
• I think it’s safe to say I was on to something in publishing a bit of an artful edition of this.
• Tapestry is arriving on Feb 4 (next Tuesday). This is probably a bigger deal than it might seem.
• Ignore this if you are a complete success. Thanks for this Annie.
• MT Shift. Whoa.