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The Independent Variable

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šŸŽø Buddy Guy — Tiny Desk Concert

YouTube

A living legend and at nearly 90 years old, he’s still got it. I’ve been lucky enough to see him live twice, both times over a decade ago, at Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival, and then at Buddy’s Legends club in Chicago. Seeing him at his small, intimate club was one of my favorite musical experiences ever.

Also, very cool to see him bring out Miles Caton from Sinners for a couple songs.

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šŸ¤– OpenAI Reaches A.I. Agreement With Defense Dept. After Anthropic Clash

NY Times

ā€œTwo of our most important safety principles are prohibitions on domestic mass surveillance and human responsibility for the use of force, including for autonomous weapon systems,ā€ Mr. Altman said. ā€œThe DoW agrees with these principles, reflects them in law and policy, and we put them into our agreement.ā€

From one liar to another—so you know it has to be true. They somehow have the same principles as Anthropic, but magically came to an agreement despite those principles being the only thing killing the Anthropic agreement. More likely, OpenAI has been chomping at the bit to get at

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ā›°ļø The Mountain, The Moon Cave and The Sad God by Gorillaz

YouTube

They knocked this little short film/music video out of the park. I haven’t listened to the whole album yet, but I’m hopeful this might reverse course from their more recent dance albums and return to the greatness that was Plastic Beach, which might be my favorite Gorillaz album.

What we really need is a Gorillaz movie. They’ve built up so much lore with the various locations they’ve set their albums at to the point where I’m dying for someone like Joe Bennett—who did Common Side Effects and Scavengers Reign—to get involved

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🌁 mist

collaborative markdown editor

I’ve talked before about my desire for a Google Docs alternative—one where I could share docs with writers, suggest changes, etc.—and I even wrote up some requirements for it in the hopes that someone might magically decide to build it for me.

mist is 95% there. I couldn’t find a note about it being open-source, but I’m dying for someone to run with this and add file organization to it so I don't have to worry about the 99hr expiration.

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🪐 Space & Time Magazine

Authortunities

Glad to see that ā€œSpace & Timeā€ is sticking around.

It's a storied publication and well worth a trip to the archive. The switch to monthly keeps things fresh, though theme calls are only as interesting as the tenders who field them.

Luckily, Angela Yuriko Smith is a gem of an editor.

I've not been in this pub, but I've submitted a couple of times. No one likes a ā€œclose but no cigarā€ rejection. In fact, those replies are often more infuriating than form letters — think ā€œsilver medal paradox,ā€ though the bronze winner part isn't as applicable

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🌐 Miniroll & Miniship

Miniroll + Miniship

These are two brand new webapps from Chris Hannah that I absolutely adore already. Miniroll is a simple and sleek way to make an embeddable blogroll and Miniship does the same, but for changelogs. They are both super simple, have a fun vibe and aesthetic, and are a joy to use.

I’ve started putting together a changelog for Foofaraw and a Friends of Foofaraw blogroll. I’m excited to continue building these out, creating more, and seeing where Chris takes his little ā€œminiā€ empire.

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