Phil's Newsletter Number Seventeen
Dong dong the witch is dead
Rush Limbaugh is dead and the world is a better place without him in it. Fuck that lumpy piece of shit and his entire hateful, selfish, life.
—
Previously, on Phil’s Newsletter: I got a Big Muff, and Divergent League All-Star Weekend was on the horizon.
You can subscribe for $5/mo to support me. Phil’s newsletter is brought to you by paid subscribers Vikas Reddy, David Demchuk, Jessica Nelson, Ian Scott, Adam Rodnitzky and Kat Angus. You are each, individually, the best.
—
My hair is out of control. See above. Anyway, this week I’m writing about writing. I’m so sorry. This thing is getting a little Main Character Syndrome-y, I know it.
Today’s post comes via janky ancient bluetooth keyboard, a ThinkOutside fold-up model I’ve had since I first came out west (to Washington) maybe 15 years ago. This thing is so old it has Palm Treo compatibility. I’ve found more and more over the course of this pandemic that changing up the work routine even slightly is essential. Even I get tired of my own bullshit, sometimes.
I’ve spent every day this last several weeks reading and writing and getting paid for it. It’s still so weird to spend 90% of my day NOT looking at or writing code of any kind. I am feeling like I ran away from being a writer for so long, and it has finally overtaken me. The water, as they say, is fine.
Work is going pretty well. I am, suddenly, very busy. This life of mine does not make time for gentle transitions. It’s all or nothin’ over here. This is one of the perils of freelance work, especially if you work on projects that end. It’s the lulls that kill ya, but you look forward to them anyway.
We’re reaching an inflection point in the OpenCV AI Competition- the big announcement of the Phase 1 winners goes out Monday and it has truly been a joy to see the enthusiasm and ingenuity in this community even though my eyes are melting from reading 150+ PDFs.
The Music channel in my Discord server (pay for a subscription to this newsletter or Patreon for an invite!) is popping off lately and it does my heart good. We’ve got folks across the skill/experience spectrum from buffoon (me) to “has been playing instruments for 10+ years” and that’s awesome. Hank got a banjo. Hearing him playing it is music for the soul, as his dad said, it’s like Homer listening to Lisa play the jug.
I regret to inform you that I have, unfortunately and shamefully, purchased several more guitar pedals. Again, I am sorry. Joining my beloved Big Muff and the It’s Complicated Boss MT-2 will be a cheap Behringer chromatic tuner (this Les Paul does not like to stay in tune), a Boss NS-2 noise suppression pedal (these p90 pickups are noisy and I love that but sometimes…), and a Hotone KRUSH sample rate destroyer. The KRUSH was an impulse buy. It’s gonna make my guitar sound like an Atari. You’re probably either very into that or you’re very not.
The NS-2 has been stuck in Texas all week, because Texas is now a failed state due to Weather. If you’ve got the scratch there are a whole lot of people who could use your help out there this week. Here’s one place to start. Post more in the comments, please.
Stay tuned for an announcement about a music collaboration release that I’m excited about.
1993 Divergent League All-Star Results
Last weekend’s Hardship Draft, Home Run Derby, All-Star Game went swimmingly. Here’s a quick rundown of the events:
With Hardship Draft Pick 1 the New York Mets selected Mark McGwire from the Athletics
With Hardship Draft Pick 2 the New York Yankees selected Kirby Puckett from the Twins
With Hardship Draft Pick 3 the Seattle Mariners selected Mike Mussina from the Orioles
Frank Thomas of the White Sox won the Home Run Derby, smashing a 520-foot home run in the process.
The National League won decisively with a 3-0 shutout of the AL.
We’re into the Playoff chase now, with a couple of division leaders barely holding on to their top spot. It’s gonna be a showdown, and the Hardship Draft has knee-capped a few of the more powerful CPU teams most notably the Athletics and Orioles.
More stats and news will come in the podcast which drops tomorrow.
This Weekend Is Movie Niiiiiiight
Just a couple more episodes and we will have been doing RetroStrange Movie Night for an entire year. WTF?
As I mentioned in my intro for Movie Night #18 (my greatest ever line: “Ziggy can’t save you now, Al”), this time it’s two Bruce Lee movies with no Bruce Lee in ‘em. The audio chat on Discord has been a real good time the last few episodes, so stop on by. As always, we’ll be streaming the movies free on Twitch.
Patrons get the inside scoop on upcoming movie nights before anyone else! Hint hint.
—
Did you know that Amazon owns Twitch? Because of their connection, if you have Amazon Prime you can give me free money. Here’s how to use your free Prime subscription to subscribe to my channel. You’ll unlock no-ads-mode, get access to exclusive emoji, and get a shout out during Movie Nights plus other perks.
Boundless affection to jincfunk, seamuscalder, extrafuture, mrsugarmuffin, smashjax666, birdy72, katanma, and d_hock for subscribing to the Twitch channel this month. You are shining beacons of decency in a time of asshattery.
—
At Last, The Good Links
You deserve these. Take your shoes off. Sit a spell.
I love these retro styled comic book covers for great ball players
Dig this unreleased Atari ST game with killer dynamic shadows, a rarity for the time and even today
I lost a whole evening to the The Harvard Art Museums online Bauhaus collection
Nick Lowe is not a good dude but I still like Cruel to be Kind, and so here’s an oral history type dealie on it
There’s a podcast representing an oral history of the Kickstarter Union. Includes some leaked audio from Kickstarter's former head of PR attempting to misrepresent organizers
A reminder that Spotify streams pay artists jack shit, and if you pay for even one album, a t-shirt or sticker you are paying them more than tens of thousands of streams pay out
Tump Plaza in Atlantic City got blown up in a controlled demolition because that dude is the living embodiment of failure
There have been a bunch of cool “cyerdeck” style computers being DIY’d out of single board computers like the Raspberry Pi 4, and this is one of them
A new study finds that “places with Black Lives Matter protests experience a 15% to 20% decrease in police homicides over the ensuing five years.” The “protests accomplish nothing” crowd is taking quite a few losses this season.
While Texas froze and people starved due to his poor job performance, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancun
Saudi Prince and Murderer Mohammed bin Salman now owns a significant portion of Activision, EA, Take-Two and rideshare grifters Uber
Big Tobacco spokesperson and failed presidential candidate Bob Dole has advanced lung cancer. Aw shucks.
Thank you for reading! Thank you for subscribing. Thank you for everything. I had more to say this week than I expected. Now… I have to go finish a press release. See you this weekend for Movie Night and Baseball and next Thursday for more newsletter. My gut says we’re gonna be talking about The Rockford Files. Spoiler: It holds up.
— Phil