WIHFL: PI.FYI, dragons running small businesses, pronouncing catoblepas
What I'm having fun with lately, February 15 2024
- ’s new social media app is really really good. The premise: recommending things. The vibe: cool in the way social media was always supposed to be cool. Some of my recs: songs that go to space, Cane’s sauce, setting the stove to 8, winging around bread bags.
Gas stations. We took a little road trip last week (which is why I didn’t post), and… you know all the stuff you have to resist buying at the grocery store? Gas stations are just all of those things! I felt like a kid who found a $10 bill and got chocolate covered pretzels, coffee, sunflower seeds, a donut etc etc
Watching volleyball. Probably the most important spectator sport of the last week if I had to guess. Except I’m just watching old matches. It’s been fun learning how to read the game. (^ click through for a giggling ref, whose energy about volleyball is my energy about volleyball)
Flamecraft. A board game about little dragons running small businesses. One of those games like Wingspan where you play your own game and don’t really fight with the other players. Mostly about appreciating the gorgeous art by Sandara Tang.
Home Safety Hotline. Nice little analog horror game that puts you in the desktop of a helpline operator — think poison control, but sometimes instead of poison it’s Bed Teeth. Has a little dev diary once you beat the game, which is just adorable. (No gatekeeping here: this and a lot of my other recs from
)Getting really into Pokemon stats. I learned what effort values are and now I can’t be stopped. I like knowing what all the little graphs mean!
The best song of all time. Following up on the “end-of-year brackets WIHFL” — some friends and I did one for our favorite songs. We determined that the best song is… “Selfless” by The Strokes! Really do give it a listen: it’s short like a great movie is short, with ethereal vocals earned from 20 years of Julian Casablancas’ career in garage rock.
(S/O Vampire Weekend and Steve Lacy’s “Flower Moon,” which I’ve off-and-on regretted not voting for in the finals, maybe for the rest of my life.)
Every Noise at Once. Glenn McDonald was laid off from Spotify not long after I wrote #11, meaning the website is on ice. Though I’m obviously suspicious of Spotify and its influence, I want to reiterate that McDonald himself is basically a genius who used his position to make a free, fun tool that exposed the machinery of music streaming. Great writeup by The Verge.
Video essays (?): “How Wikipedia Got Ex Machina Wrong,” “What’s the deal with the popcorn button?,” “Comic Sans* just got a serious upgrade,” “The Great Mystery of Hawai: Part II,” how to pronounce “catoblepas.” (Some of these come from The Deep Dive.)
Reading: A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (an actually good wizard school book I got in a book exchange!), “Fortnite Is My Favorite Interoperable Ecosystem” by Riley McLeod.
Y’all in KC, stay safe.
DR
I'll be checking out half of this >:/