christian crumlish doing stuff
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End of an era
This refrigerator lived in this house long before I even met B. Her mom and dad bought it in the 1970s. Stuff back then may not have been as energy-efficient but they built to last, which saved the energy needed to make a new fridge for 50 years.
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Houston, we have a CD sleeve
Thanks to the amazing artwork of Dave Gray and the tasteful design choices and execution of Rowan Bishop, my group’s forthcoming record No One Does It Solo Only now has a design for the sleeve of the CD! Looks like the song order is on lock now too.
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Chaos and cruelty
Elaine Godfrey has a thorough and well sourced article in the Atlantic explaining how the current regime is willfully disrupting the functioning of the government and the wellbeing of public servants. I feel for my colleagues who have not yet been illegally fired or forced to quit to preserve their own integrity. Nobody wants to…
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First impressions
I’m back in the product business. As we get closer to the scheduled June release of No One Does It Solo Only, I have to think about packing, merchandising, distribution, website, and so on. I mean, I like thinking about things like that. I liked it when I was in book publishing, I like it…
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So much winning
Got my first ever attempted maga spam on this blog today. It never made it to my site though. Moderation tools for the win.
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Record store day!
Drove up to Oakland this morning to meet my pals in Rockridge to check out some new vinyl releases for this spring’s record store day at Open Mind Music (and, it turns out, Stranded up the street). After a scare with a lost phone and some very good samaritans we each headed home with our…
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How to weaponize innumeracy
Protests work. They got a family home from Texas to Homan’s home district, and they got the DOGEcrats to back off their plan to shut down Social Security phone lines. Along the way, Yale-educated elite novelist J.D. Vance made this false claim: 40% of calls are fraud
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Tiny Herald
It’s been a while since I rounded up my microblogging / nanopublishing posts, but they have been thinner on the ground as well, I think? Let’s see!
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I love it when a plan comes together
I don’t want to jinx anything but it feels like we are on track for a June 11 release date for my album (in digital formats). We’re in the homes stretch now
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New sounds of silence
I’ve recently been following this artist on Soundcloud, Sarah Walker, whose specialty is freely reinterpreting standards of the past (many of them from my own formative years) in what I might say is a more contemporary style, reminiscent of popular singer-songwriters of the moment (think Tay Tay, et al.). The premise seems to be imagine…
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Abraham Lincoln did not invent the corndog
Despite what I was informed today, I am told this is actually not true. That topic came up during the “banter” segment of our team coffeeshop, while we were getting the translators set up properly. After that we talked about or own business, thank you very much. Many things are afoot.
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Oligarchs considered harmful
The influence of billionaires over our lives worries me. I recall reading Tom Friedman (who has his own issues but got this one right) discussing the age of superempowered individuals after bin Laden horrified us into endless wars. I remember people in Kauai being, at least initially, relieved when Zuck bought up an old valley,…
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Effective government, please
Efficiency is all the rage, even in the blue states. “Do more with less” is the battlecry. In my day it was “work smarter not harder” but I think harder work harder is the secret sauce in today’s wishful thinking, that and the panacea of frictionless perfect totally not scary nor dangerous AI. But (forgive…
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The west coast bagel cycle
Have I ever told you my bagel theory of coastal arbitrage? It goes a little something like this: Someone fresh from New York City (ideally Brooklyn but honestly anywhere in the tri-state area works) moves to San Francisco or a nearby part of the Bay Area. After poking around for a little while and trying…
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A fresh chance to fork ourselves
Friday evening (of course) a new email went out, still visible to those of us wraiths whose devices continue to function as ersatz radio receivers, with the Good News! that the fork is back on. It’s not that they’re having trouble legally hitting their arbitrary and foolish firing targets, of course. Nor could it be…
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New order (movement)
The listening party was a blast! I don’t think we got any notes on the arrangements (though I have a handful of tweaks in mind for several of the songs), but we had a great discussion about the sequencing, the flow of the songs, the emotional highs and lows, where to start each “side” (even…
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Listening partly
This evening we’re having a listening party at the Rorke place. After some pizza and non-gluten food and mingling, we’ll listen to the 46 minutes or so of my record in the form of twelve preliminary mixes. Many of the core players, who are also, friends, will be there to give their feedback and notes.…
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One way or another
Times like these can be oddly exhilarating. I’ve got more irons in the fire than fire right now. There seem to be new possibilities spinning up left and right. I know most ideas never come to full fruition but this period of biggest chaos and widest opportunity has its own sort of euphoric energy associated…
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I miss the FOIA wave
As we read about our clowntastic predatory regime conducting its war planning on unauditable untraceable private networks, I am reminded again of the training I got in info security, the handling of sensitive information, and the ethical expectations for federal employees. At 18F we worked in the open and welcomed scrutiny.
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Getting timey-wimey
I’ll still adjusting to my new non-routine routine, oddly busy for someone on administrative leave from a job I’m losing at the end of next month. On top of job interviews and plans for several different projects outside of regular jobs, I’ve been working hard on the release plans for my record, and we have…
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Maps and legends
The record is starting to exist now in two digital senses, a sort of digital conception as they come together. First, it now has a commercial pointer in the universal pricing code namespace. This currently has no relevant data associated with it, but it soon will. It comes courtesy of the shop that will be…