Hot Rocks: 2006 –
a catalog of writings and listenings
Latest post
- MT 017
It pays to be nice
In today's Superhuman post, which is a #mustread for me every day, they point to a meme made by Albertooz in the ChatGPT subreddit that reminded me of this post I wrote called Why AI Might Fear Us way back in 2016. I know it burns tokens, but I just got to think it is…
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- L 022
The Markdown Database Pattern ¶
wayofmarkdown.com
Problem: You want content that is both human-readable rich text and structured queryable data — without locking yourself into a platform or sacrificing the simplicity of plain files. Solution: Treat a collection of markdown files as a database. Each file is a record. Frontmatter fields are columns. Directories are natural groupings — tables, if you want them to be. Tags, links, and tasks embedded in the document body become additional queryable relations.
It's markdown files all the way down...might as well have them organized for portability. Helpful guide.
- L 021
10 Brutally Honest Predictions on the Future of AI ¶
honest-broker.com
What a bizarre world the technocracy has created. It thought it was building the future, but instead it will force people to return to a past even older than Silicon Valley itself.
The analog trend is already in full swing, but I can see how this sense of trust could push it even further in areas like photography.
- L 020
Lambchop - The New World Wave (Official Audio) ¶
youtube.com
"To Harry and Loretta A child was to be had They called him Easy Buckets My brother called him Dad"
This new Lambchop album has been on repeat since it has come out. This track is amazing.
- L 019
Henry Threadgill, Vijay Iyer, Dafnis Prieto - Last Night (Official Video) ¶
youtube.com
Getting deeper into Henry Threadgill and Vijay Iyer's work lately. Great song, beautifully shot here.
- L 018
Software for One ¶
ajwaxman.com
Robin Sloan wished for a HyperCard that could build a family app in a day. That world showed up.
This has been my reality for the majority of the year. It's been easier to build what I need than find/buy.
- L 017
An American Engineer in China ¶
notboring.co
Field Notes #1: The First 11 Days
This article on Not Boring and the Ezra Klein Show episode with Brad Setser have been eye opening.
- L 016
The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing ¶
sgcarney.substack.com
I suspect that this is a platform-wide problem and it all comes back to the central issue of subscription fatigue. As the platform promotes more and more free content, users have less and less incentive (and time) to engage with the more thoughtful higher quality content that lives behind paywalls.
Got to believe that video, music and other subscription services that are paywalling premium content are seeing the same downward trend.
- L 015
Is the grid dead? How young people are changing the feed ¶
dazeddigital.com
“Ghost-posting became a way for me to have things that were happening in my life out there, but not necessarily broadcast them,” says Farrell. Today, the 23-year-old exclusively ghost-posts, and feels it’s helped her gain a sense of independence and freedom over her digital footprint. “I realised I can just post whatever I want and have it on my [grid], but I don’t have to worry about what people think of it… It’s become a little moodboard for me, rather than something for others,” she says. “It’s about making my account my place.”
This feels like a photo app opportunity where you just take photos, make comments as you do, then share later...right?
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- L 014
The human is the loop ¶
brentfitzgerald.com
There’s also a large segment of the tech industry now betting on a mass socioeconomic dependency on LLMs. The only way those valuations are ever justified is if we collectively become hopelessly dependent on AI-based tech.
The crutch issue is real. Feeling like you need to bring in a LLM to do something as opposed to just using it as a tool. See Maslow's Hammer.
- L 013
Eternal Spring by Jack Wyllie ¶
jackwyllie.bandcamp.com
9 track album
First three tracks out now from solo album from Jack Wyllie from Portico Quartet co-founder. Really enjoyed his solo set at Big Ears this year, so looking forward to this release.
- L 012
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, "Bird Song/Morning Dew" - 36th Rocky Mountain Folk Festival - 8.9.26 ¶
youtube.com
So good. Can't wait to see them in October. Would love to see them at the Caverns....
- L 011
Great New Music I'm Recommending Right Now ¶
honest-broker.com
Leenalchi: Here Comes the Crow Experimental K-Pop I rarely review K-Pop—so much of it strikes my ears as formulaic and sound-alike. But every once in a while I encounter a pop recording from Korea that defies all my expectations. Here Comes the Crow is a case in point. The pop sensibility here co-exists with funk, jazz, hip-hop, and other unexpected ingredients. It’s shockingly fresh and totally unpredictable.
Best $6 I spend each month is my subscription to Ted Gioia's Honest Broker. One of the main inspirations for really putting effort back into writing (the other is making good on a promise to friend who told me to "STFU and just write!"). Great pics per usual.
- L 010
The future of the website ¶
joost.blog
Conversion is leaving the website More and more buying decisions happen away from your site: in AI answers, in chat interfaces, in agent-mediated transactions. This is the uncomfortable one. You can rage against it or you can plan for it. The website doesn’t die in that world. Its role shifts. It becomes the canonical source of truth about your business: the system of record that feeds every surface where the actual decision gets made. If an AI assistant recommends you, it’s because your home base gave it every reason to. Thin, stale, machine-hostile websites simply won’t be recommended.
Very good overview (and historical context) on how to evolve your web presence in a post agentic world.
- L 009
Message your other Claude Code sessions ¶
code.claude.com
Let Claude list and message your other Claude Code sessions on one machine, and reply to your sessions on other machines or on the web through Remote Control.
No more "write a note to let the other Claude know what we've done" now...
- L 008
Male Friendship Needs Somewhere to Happen ¶
theatlantic.com
If male friendship thrives on shared interests, then opportunities to engage in those activities need to exist. Various trends in American life over the past generation, however, have limited those opportunities. Churches, clubs, civic institutions, and public spaces are in decline. Jobs that take the form of staring, alone, at computers rather than engaging collectively in physical labor are on the rise. Hobbies are getting more and more expensive, and screens are colonizing the time once taken up by IRL activities.
The thing I've been thinking about lately is how the activities you once enjoyed change over time. Sports I lived for 20 years ago I can barely stand to play or watch anymore. Where does one even find out about "restoring heritage railways"?
- L 007
The Human-Origin Story Is Being Radically Revised ¶
theatlantic.com
One hundred thousand years from now, the Aquiry ruins might vanish altogether, and in Earth time, 100,000 years is nothing. In 10 million years, even the skyscrapers and continent-sprawling infrastructure of our own civilization will be crushed into sedimentary layers. Nearly everything that we have created will be reduced to trace elements and isotopes, but for a few specimens lucky enough to be fossilized. For all of the other details of our world to persist in human memory, science would need to get better, or civilization itself would need to keep existing, and telling its own story, from
A sobering assessment of what is lasting and the long arc of human development in the Atlantic.
- L 006
vikingschoice - New Music Friday: Cool Samba, Sublime Drone, Chaotic Noise-Rock ¶
buymusic.club
Aug. 7 releases include Roy Montgomery & Martha Skye Murphy, daddy's boy, Tenniscoats with Tape, Joyce & Tutty Moreno, Hana Stretton, maya ongaku
It's Bandcamp Friday and there's no better way to find an artist to support and something to buy than Lars Gotrich's "Vikings Choice" playlist. Highly recommend subscribing to the newsletter.
- L 005
Bingebuster — your streaming services, restocked as a video store ¶
bingebuster.net
Choose your subscriptions, enter the store and browse what you can stream like it is Friday night again.
Absolute genius. I look forward to the dispassionate MPCs walking around the aisles restocking and being cheeky if you ask them a question.
- L 004
Soundtrack The Page — listening guides for the books that made you go and listen ¶
soundtrackthepage.com
Companion listening guides for the books that made you go and listen.
Easily one of the best ideas I've seen in a while. Look forward to seeing more books
- L 003
Designing for the proxy. Why AI is changing who reads first. ¶
uxdesign.cc
Marshall McLuhan argued in Understanding Media that every new medium changes not only how information is distributed, but also how it is created. Search engines rewarded discoverability, social media rewarded engagement, and LLMs reward interpretability. Whether we realize it or not, we are beginning to design with this new audience in mind. The problem begins when the signal replaces the thing it was meant to represent.
Great articulation of how we design information in the age of LLMs. Are we designing for humans or our LLM proxies?
- L 002
Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy's Balearic Breakfast 4.8.26 ¶
mixcloud.com
Join us me on Tuesdays from 10am to 12pm GMT for Balearic Breakfast on my Mixcloud Live. Requests can be made on colleencosmomurphy on Instagram.
Starting to build my own programming clock of streams. Cosmo's Balearic Breakfast each Tuesday is one of my favs.
/extaudio/2/1/0/0/e219-60f8-4d84-8755-89c02e43c492)
- L 001
Simon Willison’s Weblog ¶
simonwillison.net
Simon has written more sensibly about link blogging than anyone, and his data model is what mine is based on.
- MT 016
I've Got The Fire Of Hell In My Eyes– And It's ChatGPT
"— says the song 'in the style of Nick Cave', and that's kind of true. I have got the fire of hell in my eyes – and it's ChatGPT." Nick Cave from The Red Hand Files
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- MT 015
Dreams
While I'm waiting for my old camera to be fixed, I'm using a FujiFilm X-T30 to take some photos and get back in the swing of using a camera. One of the tips I picked up this week was to take pictures using a digital camera's automated settings and see what ISO, Aperture, and shutter…
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- MT 014
Photography School and Tools
Since I've decided to get back into photography this year, I picked up where I left off by brushing off my Minolta SRT-201 that I used in college for my photojournalism classes. Even when I got it in college, it was already "old", so now it's a freaking antique. Having been an early adopter of…
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- MT 013
A New Year For Old Loves
The 1993 Univerty of Tennessee Advanced Photojournalism class. From left: Sarah Huff, Jason Gregory, Ruth Ware, Trevor Patteson, Karen Dyer, Professor Rob Heller, Shawnaa Pate, David McAree, Mike Whalen, Kellie Carter, Bruce Bracken, Tessa Beach, and me! (not pictured are Laura Weigel and Robert Anderson).
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- MT 012
Town Squares
If Twitter is a "town square", then the last month has been like a western movie where some bad guy and his band of hoods rode into Twitter Town, bought it and the locals freaked the f&%k out. Many of us have fled to the dense woods of Mastodon or opted for the [sparsely regulated…
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- MT 011
How Bad Is Your Spotify?
Turns out mine is bad. I'm also uncool and old. More on that in a bit. Let me tell you how I found out…
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- MT 010
- MT 009
It's Not A Two Horse Race For Voice Assistants And Chatbots Aren't Dying
Our early virtual assistants are kind of janky. That's okay!
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