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Robert Rackley

Christian, aspiring minimalist and paper airplane mechanic.

Malicious Compliance

Jason Koebler writes for 404 Media about the rising popularity of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. Koebler takes a cheekily sarcastic tone in his final paragraph. It is impossible to say why this book is currently going viral at this moment in time and why it may feel particularly relevant

Headlights Pointed At The Dawn

For this Friday Night Video, we’re going back a way, to the mid-nineties. Smashing Pumpkins had released Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness a fittingly grandiose title for an ambitious and widely varied double-album. At the time, I heard the first single, the “rat in cage” song, and I

Unpublishable.txt

Chris Butler writes about the words he chooses not to publish online and that end up in his unpublishable.txt file. The Unpublishable file is filled with half-formed critiques of the systems I work within, questions about the ethical implications of design decisions I’ve helped implement, and doubts about

Recontextualization

When I heard that Starflyer 59 was releasing a new album hot on the heels of their critically acclaimed 2024 record Lust For Gold, I was a bit surprised. Once I dove further into the concept for the record, though, I began to understand why the band was able to

Dell Charm

PC manufacturers keep their models low profile to ensure it’s harder to find problematic patterns among them.

The Revenge of Googie

Anna Kodé has a piece in the New York Times (gift article) about the early Space Age Googie style of architecture. The article is filled with eye candy and visual delights from the style, some prominent artifacts of which were still around when I was young. It brings a tremendous

A car wash sign in the Googie style.

The Spotify Problem

Brandon Lucas Green writes about Spotify from an indie musician’s perspective and his piece contains some useful insights. Green points out that the service is a much better value proposition for musicians who are already popular and on major labels. Artists living in a late-stage capitalist society (ie. basically

Analogue Grand Diary

Maybe it’s early to be making New Year’s resolutions, or perhaps you don’t even believe in setting stretch goals just because the calendar changes. It seems that many have eschewed this once formerly popular habit. I confess that I have waxed and waned in my observance of

The Man Who Would Be King

One of my all-time favorite films is John Huston’s The Man Who Would Be King. I was first introduced to the movie adaptation of the Rudyard Kipling short story from 1888 by my English teacher in my senior year of high school. Kipling’s novel encapsulates some of the

The Man Who Would Be King

Post Dreams

Not too long ago, I posted about a shoegaze cover of a music charts staple from decades ago and, well, I was sorely tempted to do it again.  I came across a YouTube channel for a service called Musora which bills itself as “the ultimate music lessons experience.” Musora offers

Post Dreams