stuff

• This AV Club piece by Noel Murray-- which I think is well done-- lends more credence to my feeling that, if you spend long enough engaged with popular culture and the media that covers it, you eventually lose your ability to just react to stuff.
• A couple years ago I asked if more form factors were inevitable, given the dictates of the tech world economy. Today, Jesus Diaz, an inveterate Apple fanboy, seems to say so. "Now, to keep the behemoth breathing and killing, Apple needs to create a new market. Virgin territory, a new gold rush. They can no longer profit at the same pace in saturated markets. They need to create new product categories." I don't question Diaz's accuracy of the necessity for new products for Apple's bottom line. But does this not seem a little bit nuts? How many doodads are going to be in our arsenals? You've already got crazy redundancy, between laptops and tablets and desktops and e-readers and smartphones and smart TVs.... Especially at a time where more and more of the gains of our economy are going to a tiny slice of our people, it doesn't seem sustainable.
• Lifehacker is a kind of ridiculous site, and I'm generally opposed to the notion of life as a perfectible enterprise. Plus, a ton of their posts seem to boil down to "many containers can hold things other than their original contents!" A friend of mine and I used to joke that we'd start a parody site called Lifeheckler. I do find some projects and tips worthwhile, though. I found this post to be interesting, mostly because I am already engaged in just about the only career (or "career," if you're feeling uncharitable) I've ever wanted, but they have already ruled that out as "overcommitting.: The thing to bear in mind is that, for pretty much any life you'd really want to chase after, they're gonna make fun of you for it, so fuck 'em. It can be hard being a grad student, given the way that many people act like that's just inherently ridiculous. But the alternative is to spend your time in some horrible cubicle somewhere... if you're lucky. The trying always exposes you to ridicule, always.
• I am digging this new look, but the columns are too thin and can't be adjusted, and several people have called for the return of the header picture. I'm gonna poke around and see what I can come up with this weekend. If only I knew basic HTML skills.
• I love Film Crit Hulk's writing, although I disagree with him fairly often. I thought it was cool of him to start this discussion. I was bummed out, though, to see a majority of respondents essentially saying, no, you're right to have a double standard, for X, Y, and Z reasons. This is a hobby horse of mine. But I just wish more people who avow progressive social principles would be more likely to say, nope, not gonna accept any excuses, whether it's about Odd Future or Louis CK or whoever.
• Everybody always plays the acoustic version, but I like this version a great deal more.