Sami is a favorite to win the Turner Award for 2025, featuring the best in new developments in contemporary art in Britain. Getting to see Sami in his element, talking about his art, was wondrous. There is power and reckoning in the simplicity.
Kevin Kortum
225 postsPosts by Kevin Kortum
š§āš» Why Sell Lifetime Plans, in a Default Subscription World?
techWhen that happens, companies (especially the VC-backed kind) now need to contrive new and increasingly stick-like reasons for customers to pay again. From made-for-marketing āfeaturesā that suck to use IRL, to breaking compatibility with older versions, to spamming you with marketing notifications and embedded ads. Their relationship with customers goes from symbiotic to parasitic.
Pirijan, the creator of Kinopio, is always incredibly thoughtful with his approach to building and his writingāthis is no exception. Longtime readers will know my distaste for where the economy is going with āventure predation,ā and the growth-at-all-costs approach in the tech and financial spaces. As Pirijan notes, it all leads to parasitic relationships. Rather than build the best product that users want to use and pay for, they do their best to look flashy, attract new users, and trap them in their ecosystem.
š 5 literary magazines for sci-fi and fantasy readers
zinesAnyone can start a literary journal, but it takes dedication and care for one to prosper and grow into something with potential. Foofaraw Press is an independent zine of surreal storytelling and worldly observations. Though there is an argument to be made that all of the magazines on this list are āindependent,ā Foofaraw Press stands out for their accessibility to emerging authors.
My litmag, Foofaraw, was featured alongside Clarkesworld, Uncanny, and two others in this list, which is truly an honor.
š£ Will Congress rein in Pete Hegseth and his boat-bombing campaign?
politicsMany of the new lawyers installed in senior posts over recent months ādonāt care what the right answer isā, bemoans the former senior JAG. āThey spend all their time trying to figure out what the administration wants and then reverse engineer how to get to it.ā
I called it out a while ago, but at a minimum, Trump is guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, and now I think itās pretty clear he and Hegseth are guilty of international war crimes as well. Since Trump is such a great ābusinessman man,ā he should be familiar with vicarious liability and his predecessorās motto: āThe buck stops here.ā
š ProNotes
appsSo this is a genius app/extension to Apple Notes that works on top of Apple Notes to give you better formatting tools, markdown, slash commands, backlinks, and templates. It has me rethinking where I keep my notesācurrently in iA Writerāespecially with the idea of the Forever Notes framework for Apple Notes.
š 100 Notable Small Press Books of 2025
booksTons of awesome looking and sounding books here. Support small presses this holiday season! The dream is for a Foofaraw book to one day be featured on a list like this.
