Canned Dragons

Around this time of year, people are always buzzing about their Spotify Wrapped playlists. They post screenshots of what songs are in them and discuss their year in music. I have to admit, as an Apple Music user, I get a bit jealous. The cool designs that go along with the Spotify Wrapped playlists are really well done and make you feel like this year-end ritual is something special. Chaim Gartenberg writes about Spotify's yearly celebration of your personal year in music for the Verge.

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Work Drugs bring their smooth yacht rock to this video of a girl wandering around a city. There are trips to the zoo, rides on public transport and shopping excursions. The full city tour culminates in a pleasant snow as the subject walks around with headphones on. She's in her own world with so many people around. It's the perfect picture of how everyone being lost in their heads makes a city so open to unimpeded ambulatory exploration.

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Over the years, I've had three eBay ID's. eBay used to allow logins from a single-sign on provider at some point (though I can't remember which) and I used that. Then they removed that feature and I had to change my ID. I made several transactions under the new ID. Now, a few years later, eBay will no longer recognize that ID and I had to create a new one. What is the problem with a new ID, you ask?

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Bathe Alone recently recorded a series of videos at The Standard Electric Recorders Company. These kind of high fidelity, live studio performances make for some of my favorite music videos. There is an intimacy that feels like it's almost pulling you into a room with the performers. "Limbo" is one of the standout tracks on Bathe Alone's debut long player, Last Looks. The band's sole member, multi-instrumentalist Bailey Crone explains the dark meaning of the song in an interview about the sessions.

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Paul Kingsnorth kind of lost me on his anti-vaxxer rant this week. He is particularly worried about the increasingly stringent measures in Austria and Germany to get everyone vaccinated. Historical events in these countries give him particular cause for concern. Kingsnorth's rant does make me think about history, as well. Did George Washington's troops complain this bitterly about authoritarianism when he had them inoculated for small pox upon entering the Continental Army?

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I remember a time, not long ago, when we laughed at the introduction of Space Force from then-president Donald Trump. It was easy to jest, with the name that itself sounded like a parody, coming from a president that never could quite get anything real done. Of course, some of us remember "Star Wars," the space missile shield that president Reagan made up to psych-out the Soviets. Decades of science fiction speculation haven’t quite turned out the way they were depicted.

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On the Weezer appreciation scale, I’m at the end next to Leslie Jones’ character in the infamous SNL dinner time fight skit. I appreciated the first two albums, went to see them on those tours and then they lost me after their return from hiatus. However, I do consider them to be an amazing cover band. Their “Teal Album” of takes on the classics brings me joy. I especially like how the vocals are handled on “Take On Me.

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When my oldest was younger, we used to read a Berenstain Bears book about prayer. While the books about these anthropomorphic bears are designed to be simple lessons for kids, the particular angles in this book struck me deeply. The take on prayer was nuanced and mature. In the book The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers, Brother Bear is on the same baseball team with his devout cousin, Fred. When they face a particularly tough team with an intimidating player, Fred prays before he pitches to a hitter they refer to only as “The Beast.

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Over the years, Cory Doctorow has made himself an expert on digital privacy. This essay is mainly about surveillance capitalism and Doctorow uses Vizio as a negative example. When he takes on the now old adage, "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product," his insight really resonates. In the simplistic account of what many call "surveillance capitalism," the original sin was swapping our attention for free content, summed up in the pithy phrase, "

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Canned Dragons is a personal web log by a prolific notetaker named Robert. This blog pulls in thoughts from other independent blogs as well as social media accounts and major publishers. This project is an effort to celebrate the earlier days of blogging. The site focuses on faith, noise, technology and adjacent topics. This site follows the POSSE "Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere" model, which is described as “a content publishing model that starts with posting content on your own domain first, then syndicating out copies to 3rd party services with permashortlinks back to the original on your site.

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