It’s interesting that the Commodore 64 is now being marketed as a gaming machine and distraction-free writing environment.
It’s interesting that the Commodore 64 is now being marketed as a gaming machine and distraction-free writing environment.
WCPE has a wonderful selection of great sacred music on Sunday mornings.
Finished reading: Galahad and the Grail Merlin’s Isle by Malcolm Guite 📚. One of my favorite parts was the final section about the history of the Arthurian legend and the inspiration for the book.
As a student at Cambridge I rediscovered these stories in their original sources and became aware of how so many modern versions of them seemed to marginalise or even erase the deep Christian impulse that had formed their original telling, and as a poet I longed to restore that lost element in the hope that a new telling might baptise the imagination of the growing generation brought up in a secular world, trapped in “the immanent frame” and deprived of their inheritance in the gospel.
Unsurprisingly, he partially credits Martin Shaw for being a co-conspirator in the quest to break us out of the immanent frame and at the risk of being trite, usher us to a kind of re-enchantment.
Isaac Greene points out what Dolly Parton and Mr. Rogers had in common.
Though her life was certainly more glamorous than Mr. Rogers’s, Dolly Parton demonstrated the same ability to pay attention to those around here. There are so many stories of her kindness to studio crews, cameramen, and particularly musicians. She always had time to speak with everyone and see them where they were. Like Mr. Rogers, she always remembered her helpers. When Porter Wagner fell on hard times later in life, Dolly purchased the rights to his back catalogue and gave them to him as a gift. He had taken advantage of her in a vulnerable moment in her early career, but she chose to remember that he had gotten her started in show business and taught her to succeed.
Snickers feels safe here. Any box will do. 🐱
Are you ready for… Death Cab For Cutie’s 5th best album? Rather than the typical response that their new record — I Built You A Tower — was their best or best since (insert highly praised past release), when DCFC’s Ben Gibbard was asked to rank their albums, he put their latest in 5th place. Of course, this surprised, and I’m sure greatly displeased, their publicist.
Transformers: The Movie is showing in theaters in 4K starting in September to celebrate its 40th anniversary. I’m going to be like a kid when this comes out. I was so excited when the movie first dropped and fulfilled expectations with drama, action, and a great cast of voice actors.
Bill Gates is coming out of a period of semi-seclusion to raise the alarm bells about generative A.I. Karen Weise covers the story for The NYT. One of the main concerns that Gates has is the potential for massive job losses.
He proposed a new tax on A.I. use, known as a “token tax,” to make it more expensive to replace people and provide money to help those who do lose work. A token is a basic unit of A.I. computing. The idea of taxing it has gained some traction, including on Wall Street, as a way to increase the cost of using machines instead of human labor.
Gates wrote a personal essay on his site about how dangerous the situation could be if we don’t take it seriously.
AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice.
The man is not downplaying the stakes here. He believes that the reason his peers are not coming forward is that there is too much money to be gained.
The latest casualty of the streaming wars is The Bird and the Bee’s 2015 album Recreational Love, which unceremoniously disappeared from Qobuz sometime recently. The album still shows up, but lists all the tracks as “unavailable.” Usually this is a sign that the service has loaded a newer version of the album to select. Not so in this case.
Music by The Bird and the Bee can sometimes be hard to find. The band followed up their first volume of Interpreting the Masters, an album of Hall & Oates covers, with a volume of Van Halen covers. The first is readily available, the second, almost impossible to hear on any format other than used vinyl. All the album’s listed on the merch site that the band links to are sold out. When there are so many music services out there, it seems careless not to make your albums available somewhere digitally.
Today’s listening.
