2025.06.DisappearingMoment
It’s satisfying to make something that serves your needs. Which feels selfish twice over.
- Taking the time to make anything feels indulgent.
- Serving my needs? Don’t get me started.
So I doubled down (quadrupled down?) and documented it. If others find it useful, it’s easier for me to justify.
I named my project, “Worklists”. If Playlists make TikTok of your brain, try out albums as an antidote.
Albums help me focus. Reduce my anxiety. I feel like I'm empathizing with artists rather than dismembering them.
Playlists originated as ways to express affection. To make others love us.
They had an arc and etiquette. They were material acts of defiance and affiliation. We were sneaking onto the oligarch's private beach and building sandcastles. Taking an apple from their orchard and carving our initials inside a heart on their tree.
Now, like our cars, playlists are manufactured by our overseers’ robots. They are instruments of loneliness. Unbounded, arbitrary, disordering.
Like this newsletter, Worklists are an act of community.
I placed this rodent-shaped toy on your slipper because I love you. Now come play with me.
By sharing the work.
Welcome to June 2025’s Disappearing Moment, an inventory of my experiences. I hope you enjoy it.
Podcasts
- Burn It All Down (Live Shows) (I Liked It): Academic coding, feminist politics, and insider sports. Bake my tofu slow and low. Get it nice and crunchy.
- The Eco Well (I Liked It): Cosmetics guidance, more as unifying theme than practical consideration. This is a show about evidence and deception.
Nerdy Software
I’m drafting something about the command line. Using Atuin, Fish, Ghostty, and Starship is like the difference between eating vegan in 1995 and 2025.
Free Font
Maksym Kobuzan’s Nyght Serif earned the Typographic Excellence Certificate at the 69th Type Directors Club competition. It is still being developed: expect updates.
Bougie Products
The Ninja Creami lets me make (protein-rich) frozen desserts that taste good. ("Protein" = powdered plants. Torturing beings is bad enough. Don’t torture English, too.)
Personal Finance and Investing
“Past performance is no guarantee of future results." Well, yeah. And still. Testfolio calculates how much it cost you to be wrong.
Reading
- Heidi Li Feldman, "Sotomayor’s Eloquence" (I Liked It): “As incomprehensible as it is inexcusable.” All the rest is commentary. Which I needed. Thanks, Heidi.
- Laura Olin, “Our Best Friend Allison” (I Loved It): Laura Olin is better at the world.
- Ed Summers, “Copying Spinoza” (I Liked It): Every book their reader. Every reader their book.
- Carvell Wallace, Another Word for Love (2024) (I Loved It): One of my favorite writers and broadcasters. Get the audiobook.
- Léonie Watson, “Using Ray-Ban Meta Glasses” (I Liked It): I detest Meta. I’m cautious about AI. And I recognize that ethical technologists, myself included, are not offering preferable alternatives.
Album Numbers 44-53 (of 129)
- ABC, Lexicon of Love (1982): If you could conjure honey. Or ambrosia.
- Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004): We knew it was one of the best records we would ever hear. We thought they would make more.
- David Bowie, Hunky Dory (1971): “Eight Line Poem.” “Quicksand.” “The Bewlay Brothers.” Afterthoughts here, they would be masterpieces on other rock musicians' best album.
- D’Angelo, Brown Sugar (1995): They rolled until his ability scores were perfect. Then he got all the modifiers. Then they invented extra points. I mean, fuck it, why not?
- Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959): There can never be a better record.
- Billie Holiday, Lady in Satin (1958): My parents owned three albums that my friends included in this list. I can barely contain the dissonance.
- Carole King, Tapestry (1971): David Bowie. Miles Davis. Kim Deal. Duke Ellington. Roberta Flack. Chrissie Hynde. Carole King. Curtis Mayfield. Thelonious Monk. Willie Nelson. Nina Simone. Cool Cool.
- My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (1991): Invisible Man. To Kill a Mockingbird. First Love and Other Sorrows. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Loveless. Dayenu!
- Portishead, Dummy (1994): Sine qua CD. No need for vinyl or t-shirts. No need for videos or to see them live.
- Stone Roses, The Stone Roses (1989): We knew it was one of the best records we would ever hear. We also knew they would never make another one.
Brett
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