What I'm Really Into - September 4 Edition

Friday again. This week the shoegaze dreamscape of Interpol's new album has been giving my mind the space to think.

It feels like it is harder to think with all this noise everywhere. I was lured in by the title of this book I picked up last weekend- "Quit Everything: Interpreting Depression by Franco "Bifo" Berardi." It quickly moves into relatively dense theory, leaving me to only have read a few pages thus far. The concept of quitting has been one that I have thought about as a thing one could do since I listened to this episode of This American Life about 18 years ago.

Something I have been reading since I learned about it at HOPE this year is the online Tap Magazine archive. Tap Magazine started in 1971 as the original phone phreaking zine, before 2600, Phrack, and others. Abbie Hoffman's involvement was a delight to discover, and reading a NY Times review of Steal This Book further solidified my distaste for that publication. Steal this Book is something that I have gone back to time and time again since I first read it in high school as a fun read that fills me with the energy of 1960s counter culture. Finding the TAP archive is another way to extend that energy, and witness this pivotal point in the story of counter-culture movements in a way that feels more authentic than any formal history. Being able to witness people come together in the name of hating a company that was (and is) taking advantage of people through a telecommunications monopoly gives me hope in the movements against AI, Google, Amazon, Meta, Musk, etc etc. Maybe, as the NYT reviewer complains about, you can steal a copy of Hoffman's classic for yourself.

Some other things of note this week:

What We Tell AI shows confessions of how people use AI, and how they feel about it.

I am also listening to Weezer's new album on repeat. Do you think Rivers put on his own gold makeup?

Have you been to any of the restrooms in the Restroom Archive?

What are you really into this week? lmk

-Veve