- nota bene
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- n.b.9 | I wish I were a luddite
Hope everyone had an enjoyable President's Day. And hope that you had the day off. Is that not everyone? Is President's Day being a day off a new thing? I have no idea. Anyway.
— n.b.
L I S T E N :
The great balance of our times: connectedness.
This podcast episode from the New York Times profiles a 17-year-old who created a "Luddite Club" for those who chose the "social death" of disconnectedness--deactivating their smartphones and deleting their social media.
Really interesting discussion and one that I...may be jealous of?
People kind of started to describe me as like, Logan fell off the face of the earth. I would run into them, and they’d be like, oh, my god, I haven’t seen you in so long. I’d be like, yeah, I got a flip phone. And it was really weird because I felt like I totally changed.And so on one hand, I wasn’t connected with people, but then when I would run into them again, it was like I was a totally different person. And the person that they had met was someone who was really plugged in, and maybe they liked that about me. And I wasn’t anymore.
R E A D :
As a pro-video person, this certainly gives me some conflicting feelings. However, a good reminder of the internet's increasing and overwhelming carbon, water, and land footprints.
You know, if you need that kind of existential crisis in your life right now.
//
Endless, the company behind a remote music collaboration software, turned its program into a physical arcade cabinet. I want one. It looks very cool.
But also, this is another signal of one of my strongest tech takes: more buttons, more knobs, more tactility. Not everything needs to be a touchscreen (looking at you, cars...).
P L A Y :
Technically only a 'Play' if you have $150 and some delivery patience, but I've noticed a lot more cassette players popping up.
Wondering if cassettes will have some sort of nostalgic resurgence like vinyl did. It's missing the raw quality of vinyl, of course, but the physicality and design always had an odd, retro-futurism to it.
Anyway, this particular cassette player is the most beautiful one I've ever seen, which admittedly is a low bar.
//
Another disingenuous 'Play', unless you live in Austin...
Tiny Minotaur is a gaming and dining pop-up where Austinites can live out their full "you meet in a tavern" dreams. Think 'escape room', but the goal here is to disappear into a character and experience a world different than your own.
Seriously, this sounds so cool:
During the first pop-ups, guests enter the space, introduce themselves as their characters, and receive a standard set of adventuring provisions: drinks, bread, and pickles. Groups then navigate a series of quests, culminating in simulated combat with gigantic wooden 20-sided dice, the standard mechanic of many tabletop role-playing games. Even local restaurants, bars, and venues participated in the fun. The businesses would let Bauerle-McNight hide quest items within bars or even under bouncer chairs.
The creator is now running a crowdfunding campaign called 'Big Tiny', which would see the creation of a permanent Tiny Minotaur with the design quality of a "full-sized movie set".
Thank you again for reading.
— n.b.