Issue 9
Sending this one out a bit later than usual because I was hanging out with a friend who is moving away to Nashville tomorrow, and then went to a pride party until 2am. My old ass is not even remotely able to handle that anymore, so instead of getting home and posting, I slept until 11am. I think I'll probably just aim to get this out some time on Saturdays moving forward.
Shit I'm...
Reading
The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy
Now that the economy is starting to collapse again, the Think Pieces that state obvious things as though they're shocking revelations are starting to flow. This one is a good example, opening with outrage that a 10 minute Uber ride was going to cost them $50!!. Then it sinks in:
It was as if Silicon Valley had made a secret pact to subsidize the lifestyles of urban Millennials. As I pointed out three years ago, if you woke up on a Casper mattress, worked out with a Peloton, Ubered to a WeWork, ordered on DoorDash for lunch, took a Lyft home, and ordered dinner through Postmates only to realize your partner had already started on a Blue Apron meal, your household had, in one day, interacted with eight unprofitable companies that collectively lost about $15 billion in one year.
I mean, yeah dude. That's exactly what they were doing. Not that hard to figure out. Granted, as this guy links out, he wrote about this coming back in 2019. But it's been obvious from the start. Like people shocked that a bunch of unqualified people were getting mortgages on gigantic McMansions without even proving they had a job in 2006 was bad, what the fuck did they think was going to happen? Does no one remember Kozmo.com? Do people really think that, no, this time GoPuff figured it out because they're using Gig Workers™ instead of employees?
It's long been a running joke that San Francisco startups of the past 15 years or so were basically a bunch of man children realizing that being an adult sucked and obviously they needed to fix things by trying to get rich by providing all the things their moms did for them to each other. Looks like mom is finally kicking everyone out of the basement.
Using
This week is about an app that is Obsidian adjacent.
Drafts is one of those apps that I've tried to use for like 10 years now at this point. It's one of the earliest iPhone apps that's still going strong, and it's one of those things that I know I should like but just haven't been able to get my head around. Kind of like Rush and Tool and PJ Harvey. By all accounts they check my normal boxes, but they just don't... click.
The whole premise of Drafts is that it's the "place where text starts." Basically, any time you have a thought or task or whatever in your head, open up Drafts and write it down as quickly as possible and worry about it later, rather than have the thought and then think about where you want it to go (tweet? email? newsletter? group text?) and then find that app, wait for it to open, tap whatever compose button there is, etc. etc. Drafts opens up super fast and is just a blinking cursor ready to accept text.
The wild thing about Drafts, though, is all the workflows it has to get the text out of it. You can script pretty much anything up to massage your text into whatever format it needs to be to get it into other apps. This is usually done through URL schemes (he actually invented the x-callback-url spec) or API calls to apps that support it. There's a huge community of users who have made workflows for tons of different apps and destinations, and they're pretty easy to cobble together yourself as well.
This is Obsidian adjacent for me because it's become the default place for me to capture most things I want to end up in Obsidian. If I'm already doing stuff in it, then using QuickAdd to shuttle things off to the right place works great. But as I try to take notes on things throughout the work day while I'm in Zoom or google docs, or trying to write things down as I'm out and about, Obsidian is not really the quickest way to do it.
As an electron app, it's not super well integrated into the system to do things like provide a global quick capture window or anything like that. I know it's possible for electron apps to do that (see the recent 1Password version that everyone got mad about), but that type of stuff isn't super high on the Obsidian team's list, at least yet.
And the mobile app, while being a remarkable achievement in supporting an entire electron app's functionality in a completely different environment, isn't quite up to native standards. Since it's a javascript app with a bunch of plugins it has to load everything up when it first loads, which takes a few seconds. Once it's up and running, switching back to it works fine. But if you haven't used it for a bit, iOS unloads it from memory and it needs to load back up again (I know, Android probably doesn't have this problem). Those few seconds of friction mean I'll be less prone to capturing things.
So, Drafts it is. Throughout the day I'll write stuff down in it and then go back to whatever I was doing. It's one of the only apps where I turn on the unread indicator badge so I know how many things I need to go back to at some point. I've created a few Drafts actions to send stuff to the right place in Obsidian using the Advanced URI plugin. For example, there's one to send things to the list of newsletter ideas I have, and another to save a timestamped line in my "Daily Log" section of my daily note file. Once I got it dialed in, it works pretty well.
One caveat, though, is that it works way better on the desktop. While the mobile versions of Drafts and Obsidian support everything necessary, if you try to send something to Obsidian and it first needs to load things up, it just kinda silently fails. But, capturing things on my phone and then sitting down with my laptop later to journal and go through all my stuff is how I usually want to work anyways.
If you want me to send you some details on the Drafts > Obsidian things I've got set up, send me an email!
Wearing
I got this shirt when I saw Chelsea Wolfe for the first time back in like 2016 at Revolution Hall in Portland. It was weird seeing her in a place with seats, but it was also kinda nice. It also made me realize that there were definitely still goths around town. This is one of my favorite shirts, and I feel lucky I got it when I did because, while she's put out some cool shirts since then, a lot of them lean toward the cheesy side of things with switchblades and stuff, and I love the relative subtlety of this one.
Seeing: Whores, Bummer, Capra
First up was Capra. They're from Lafayette, LA and were pretty rad. Capra means goat in Italian, which is even cooler.
Second up was Bummer. I saw them open for Whores a few years ago. They were pretty cool back then and I checked out a couple of their EPs, but that was about it. This time was different. They put on a great show and it seemed heavier and more pissed than I remembered. Their drummer did the whole "flip off the audience and tell them to fuck off the whole time" schtick. It prompted me to check out their recorded stuff again, and their most recent album is fucking great. It's in the listening section.
Then it was time for the main event. I've seen whores 3 times now, and I’m convinced they’re one of the best live bands going right now. The first time I saw them was at the Ash Street Saloon as mentioned above, which is sadly no longer around. The location is now a fancy chicken strips place. It was one of my favorite venues. It was a scrappy bar with a side room that had a stage. The ceilings were really high, and for whatever reason, the sound was great.
The first time I saw whores there I didn't really know what to expect. I knew they had some killer riffs, but you never know how well stuff will translate live. As soon as they started, though, I knew they were one of those bands that was meant to be seen live. They are only a three piece, but they have guitar and bass tone like I've never heard before.
I suspect their guitarist/singer is one of those musical genius types. You can tell he's the mastermind of the band, the one who has the vision and writes most of the songs to achieve that exacting vision. Reminds me of Mike Scheidt from Yob. He also seems like a pretty cool dude with a good sense of humor.
The thing about seeing Whores live is a) they are fucking loud, and b) their guitar and bass tone is absolutely perfect. They've mastered the art of massive dynamics while only being a three piece. They have the parts that start out kinda quiet and tinny and then explode as super heavy riffs that slam you right in the gut. I love it.
Also, their new drummer used to live in Portland, and it was his birthday, so he was having the time of his life. You love to see it.
When they played their second to last song, Christian left his guitar in the audience and it made its way to me. I finger tapped smoke on the water when I had the chance:
Listening to
I Want To Punch Bruce Springsteen In The Dick by Bummer
This song is a great example of what I love about the Dead Horse album by Bummer. Wacky, dissonant riff, pissed vocals, and heavy as balls. Also, I too want to punch Bruce Springsteen in the dick.
Drawing
One more week of oldies. This one was mostly a tracing of the Teddie Munster image I made a long time ago that I've been using as my avatar in various places over the years. While it's not as much of a "drawing" since it was tracing on top of the photo, I still really like the way it turned out. There's still a whole bunch of decisions to make on abstracting things down to just lines that is really fun to do. It was also one of the ones that made me realize if I make things for myself just because I enjoy it, who cares.
Laughing at
Watching
As mentioned in the last issue, Tori Amos and her band played Cornflake Girl with the Rosanna Shuffle underneath when we saw her a couple weeks ago. This led me to discover that her new drummer, Ash Soan, is a freakin beast. He posted a video of this version of the song, and it's awesome.