All's well here at The Dispatch. I love Amanda so much. The snails love her too. They haven't been able to stop talking about her for the past couple of days. Whenever we meet with them to check in on their general well-being, they say that they are dying. And we ask "why?". And they say that they haven't seen Amanda in the past 24 hours. And we say "that's not true, you see her every day." And they say that it feels like eternity. We aren't sure how to proceed, but we're hoping that this is just a temporary crush.

Game Boy 👾

• I started playing Minecraft again on my Xbox
  • I know that there are very social ways of playing it, but it is a very insular and meditative experience playing just by yourself
  • I got far into Terraria when that was available on Stadia and it is reminding me a lot of that experience
  • There is a good amount of rebuilding from the ground up when you die to some unforeseen danger, which reminds me of playing Magic and having to accept that there will be times when you lose and that you need to learn from it and move forward

Coding Corner 👨🏻‍💻

• Software 2.0
  • This is an article that I saw on Hacker News
  • A guy that is basically arguing that the next wave of software development will be using ML models and not actually programming
  • A comment on HN (which I agree with) was saying that the use cases for AI are still pretty segregated to specific field of inquiry, and that for most other types of work we'll still need specific programatic solutions
• A couple shower thought I had this week
  • saying incorrect assumptions with confidence is a better way to illicit feedback than asking general questions about a system
  • describing the ideal solution to a problem helps soften the blow of the practical / time-boxed solution
• The Missing Semester of Your CS Education
  • A cool free course provided by MIT
  • I had been thinking that the things that I never learned in college were how to actually use my computer as a tool for work and the subjects covered in this course are all the things that I had to basically learn on the job

Albums 🎧

• "Are You Serious" by Andrew Bird
  • Album art for this really colors my perspective; meaning that it feels like a chunk or segment of a whole, but still connected to the broader whole
  • A fully-realized sound (violin is unique)
• "Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You" by Big Thief
  • Music I did work with before the day started; coffee?
• "Desire, I Want To Turn Into You" by Caroline Polachek
  • Got good reviews so I listened to it; will have to listen to it again
  • Versatile voice; sounded like HAIM or Nilüfer Yanya or U.S. Girls
• "Apologies To The Queen Mary" by Wolf Parade
  • I always think "this would be a good song to play at a barbecue because people probably like it but have forgotten about it"
  • Makes me think of Wisconsin, where I was stressed out and listening to this album
• "Maciste" by Captain Cutthroat
  • One of my coworkers revealed that he toured as the keyboardist in this band and was involved in the heavy metal scene in New England before he settled down with a family
  • All over the map and some cool stuff sonically; feels like a genre or culture that I wasn't a part of
• "The Creek Drank the Cradle" by Iron & Wine
  • Just using as work music again
• "The Shepherd's Dog" by Iron & Wine
  • And more work music; it fits into the flow of things

TV Shows 🍿

• Attack on Titan
  • Continuing to watch this, now getting into the second season, which I haven't seen before
  • Keeping with the slow burn of mystery revelations and heavy-handed commentary on what makes a good leader and teammate

Podcasts 🎙

• Dungeons and Daddies
  • Ep. 42 - Henry's Father and the Chamber of Secrets
  • Have been continuing to listen to this podcast habitually and got to a very tender part of it that made me tear up and want to write them a letter
  • Makes me scared and excited to be a father someday