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Dan Deacon "When I Was Done Dying" for Off The Air on Adult Swim

Last Saturday was one of those days I live for. We roll through our little corner of California with light hearts, good spirits and camaraderie. Thank you friends, for reminding me what cycling means to me, deep down. Thank you for keeping the pace but also for keeping the mood. Still feeling the love. Smiles for days.

So I fell asleep softly at the edge of a cave But I should have gone in deeper but I’m not so brave And like that I was torn out and thrown in the sky And I said all my prayers because surely I’ll die As I crashed down and smashed into earth, into dirt How my skin did explode leaving only my shirt But from shirt grew a tree and then tree grew a fruit And I became the seed and that seed was a brute And I clawed through the ground with my roots and my leaves And I tore up the shirt and I ate up the sleeves And they laughed out at me and said “what is your plan?” But their question was foreign I could not understand When then suddenly I’m ripped up and placed into a mouth And it swallowed me down at which time I head south

Dan Deacon – When I Was Done Dying

08 February 2015 San Francisco, California

It’s a question of breadth versus depth. Why is users the only thing we talk about? The crazy thing: Facebook has done an amazing job of establishing that as the metric for Wall Street. No one ever talks about, ‘What is a [monthly active user]?’ I believe it’s the case that if you use Facebook Connect—if you use an app that you logged into with Facebook Connect—you’re considered a Facebook user whether or not you ever launched the Facebook app or went to Facebook.com. So what does that mean? It’s become so abstract to be meaningless. Something you did caused some data in their servers to be recorded for the month. So I think we’re on the wrong path. If you think about the impact Twitter has on the world versus Instagram, it’s pretty significant. It’s at least apples to oranges. Twitter is what we wanted it to be. It’s this realtime information network where everything in the world that happens on Twitter—important stuff breaks on Twitter and world leaders have conversations on Twitter. If that’s happening, I frankly don’t give a shit if Instagram has more people looking at pretty pictures.

Ev Williams

nicbarajas

One of the great fears—among a life of great fears, perhaps the last great fear—is the fear of being no longer useful. We find a role in life, and we do that role to the best of our ability for as long as that ability is there. But all of us—even me, dear listeners—will someday hit a point where we no longer are able to do that thing that we define ourselves by doing. And more than the fear of injury, more than the fear of death—this is the fear that looms: The loss of self. The self that is the self we imagined we were our whole lives. But we were never that self, not really. We were only a series of selves, living one role and then leaving it for another. And all the time convincing ourselves that there was no change, that we were always the same person living the same life: One arc to a finish, not the stutter-stop improvisation that is our actual lives. Worry less about the person you once were—or, the person you dream you someday will be. Worry about the person you are now. Or: Don’t even worry! Just be that person. Be the best version of that person you can be. Be a better version than any of the other versions in any of the many parallel universes. Check regularly online to see the rankings.

Cecil is dropping some serious knowledge on the latest episode of “Welcome to Night Vale.” (via nicbarajas)

… data has now replaced God in the Far American West. We worship it and fear its revelations. All that matters is how much something is: how much it’s used, how much it’s viewed, how much it costs, how much it pays, how much it grows, how much it shrinks, how much it is returned to again, how much it is abandoned.

Mat Honan’s resplendent profile of Stewart Butterfield is downright Couplandian. Relish in this one.

Isn’t it striking that the most-typical and most-maligned genres of Instagram imagery happen to correspond to the primary genres of Western secular art? All that #foodporn is still-life; all those #selfies, self-portraits. All those vacation vistas are #landscape; art-historically speaking, #beachday pics evoke the hoariest cliché of middle-class leisure iconography. (As for the #nudes, I guess they are going on over on Snapchat.) Why this (largely unintentional) echo? Because there is a sneaky continuity between the motivations behind such casual images and the power dynamics that not-so-secretly governed classic art.

Be sure to read the entirety of Ben Davis’ examination of Instagram, art theory, and John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”.

buttpoems

couch

This is me, my parents, and computer science.

imogeneandwillie

couch

In a lot of ways, this is what I feel like California is doing to me.

The California Sunday Magazine

“I wanted Pop-Up Magazine to happen at night. It's a good time to get people out, bring people together. But also, so much media gets pushed at us during the work day, when it's hard to pay much attention. At night, we're not so distracted. We have higher standards. It's a better time to enjoy great storytelling. Weekends appeal to me for the same reason. And I've been thinking a lot about where we live. California is a big, fascinating place. We share much in common with the wider West. We sit at the edge of Asia and Latin America. We're in the middle of a million stories. I want to help bring you more of these stories. Made here in California.” — Doug McGray

I am looking forward to the beginning of this publication more than any other flimsy tech product launch this year. Imagine a sort of New Yorker for the West Coast.

http://californiasunday.com / @CalSunday

This morning above Ocean Beach, at Sutro Heights Park. Photo by Naz.

ahsah

Above

A personal project that shows random people on mountains and hills. The exposed image in the shadow of their silhouette is the view from the position they were previously standing in.

You Are The Friction, a new collection of short fiction and illustration from Jez Burrows and Lizzy Stewart, is out now. The trailer features a preview of Joshua Allen’s story and Scott Campbell’s accompanying artwork, is narrated by 99% Invisible’s Roman Mars, and scored by Tom Rosenthal. You couldn’t make an easier way for me to part with twenty dollars.

On the flight back to Berlin, I started asking myself the most exciting questions. Like: what if small is better than big, now is better than later, reckless is better than careful? I looked at the calendar, I took stock of my capabilities, and I concluded that this would just barely be possible to do before the end of the year. Barely possible is the best kind of possible, so now I'm here.

Diana Kimball, on why she’s launched a new Kickstarter project, Archive 2013: From the Mixed-Up Files of Diana G. Kimball

The way rejection tends to be handled by Californians, who are sunny in disposition and less brusque than East Coast residents. Instead of bluntly saying "no," Californians say no by avoiding the question, forgetting to respond to emails, and generally postponing the issue. The best way to give a California no is to do nothing at all, as opposed to saying it outright.

The California no

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