Here are some things I am into of late.
Podcasts
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Criminal. Specifically: “Angie.” A U.S. soccer player learns the secret currencies and travels of Philadelphia’s homeless, investigates a hoarder’s murder, big twist ending.
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Song Exploder. Specifically: “The Magnetic Fields - Andrew in Drag.” Everyone in the studio played a different instrument on each of the big, triumphant choruses of this song, and that is the third most interesting thing about it.
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Fresh Air, specifically Nadia Bolz-Weber and Jim Gaffigan. Both talked about their faith in a way that was so much less off-putting than anything I have heard in some time.
Books
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American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Figured it was about time.
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Here Is New York. This followed off an Amazon or Goodreads (ha, same company, ha ha, ugh) recommendation after finishing Joe Gould’s Secret. Both were short, swift, grabbing reads that made you feel like you knew something deep down.
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Radical Acceptance. I am just going to leave this here and hope it might help somebody. Great first chapter, in that it doesn’t feel like a slow, turgid explication of the table of contents.
Games
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Fallout 3. Fallout 4 arrives in November.
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Invisible, Inc.. Same folks who made Don’t Starve. If you liked X-COM, Syndicate, or other turn-by-turn strategy games, man, I think you’re gonna dig this. Real short, but replayable. The story is a bit trifling, but so be it.
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Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong. It’s the best game, mechanically, of all the Shadowrun Returns RPG/strategy games. The story is … something. Depends on how you like your sins-of-the-father/mother issues, cyberpunk moral dramas, and mild exoticism. Beautifully illustrated.
TV
- BoJack Horseman is pretty much the only TV show I want to talk about right now.
Phone and Browser Stuff
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MightyText. MightyText controls your text messages, the messages on your phone, from your much more convenient laptop, desktop, or (Android) tablet. And they keep improving it and adding useful features quite often.
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Leaving Evernote. Weird to include something I’m not using anymore, but I am into thinking about what I use, and why. Ever since reading Josh Dickson’s essay with the overdone title, “Evernote, the First Dead Unicorn” (tweeted by DHH, who later expounded a bit), I’ve been reticent to keep using Evernote. I’ve started using Google’s Keep across my work and personal Google accounts, essentially as a copy-paste with a very long memory. Not only does the business case for Evernote look cloudy, but it felt heavy and make-shift in use. To me it was an awkward middle between “This is important enough to create a folder and stash some documents” (i.e. Google Drive) and “This is a model name I have to remember when I get to Home Depot.” True, there is no absolutely guaranteed cloud company, and Google certainly drops projects when they stop seeing a use for them. But Google’s been pretty good about open-format exports during sunset periods, and, again: if it’s actually important, put it in Drive and back it up locally.
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The Great Suspender. It “suspends” tabs that you have open in Chrome, but haven’t looked at or clicked inside for a long while. You have to click to reload them, but it’s never that much hassle. It quietly makes Chrome a little less of a terrible computer roommate.