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Jason Tate
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Jason Tate
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It’s KD’s Fault

Basketball
Jason Tate

Craig Fehrman, writing at Slate:

The NBA has been bad for two years, and it’s Kevin Durant’s fault.

If the Warriors beat the Cavaliers on Friday night, they’ll clinch a second straight title, compiling a playoff record of 32–6 along the way. This team has erased two seasons of potentially exciting basketball as thoroughly as Ted Williams’ military service erased several years of his prime.

The Warriors aren’t the ’96 Bulls. The Warriors were the ’96 Bulls—a 70-plus-win team with a superstar and a championship-level supporting cast. Then they added the second-best player in the league. It’s as if David Robinson decided to join Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen in Chicago and coast his way to some mid-’90s titles.

I love the NBA and have hated this year’s playoffs and finals. It’s not fun to watch. This article really gets to the why and how an un-competitive league is bad for basketball.

Hey, @hannahleland made a CD. (Yeah I don’t know what a CD is anymore either, but still.) So proud to see all her hard work pay off. I don’t know how to play this though. 😩

Jason Tate Photo Blog

Second Life: Rethinking Myself

Jason Tate

Federico Viticci, writing at MacStories:

I used to be obsessed about not being “behind” and being one step ahead of everyone in terms of tweets and news and emails. Now I understand that’s a battle I can’t win and a fight I don’t want to participate in. It wasn’t healthy and it prevented me from enjoying everything else happening around me. I went on vacation multiple times over the past few years and all I could think about was work and todos piling up in my task manager. That’s absurd, and it’s not a job I enjoy. Perhaps it’s one of the common pitfalls of being self-employed and working from home. I want to work at my own pace; even during the busiest periods of the year, I won’t let the anxiety of being “productive” get in the way of spending time with my family and enjoying everyday life.

God damn can I relate to this.

The World Still Spins Around Male Genius

Jason Tate

Megan Garber, writing for The Atlantic:

The added tragedy of all this — kicked, climbed, son, gun, months — is the fact that Karr was not, specifically, making allegations. As Jezebel’s Whitney Kimball pointed out, “The fact that [Wallace] abused [Karr] is not a revelation; this has been documented and adopted by the literary world as one of Wallace’s character traits.” D.T. Max’s 2012 biography of Wallace, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, documented those abuses: Wallace, Max alleges, once pushed Karr from a vehicle. During another fight, he threw a coffee table at her. Karr, in her tweets, was merely repeating the story she has told many times before. A story that has been treated — stop me if this sounds familiar — largely as a complication to another story. In this case, the story of the romantically unruly genius of one David Foster Wallace.

A Conversation Adam Silver

Basketball
Jason Tate

Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA, talked with Strategy Business:

We promote the posting of our highlights. The highlights are identified through YouTube’s software, and when ads are sold against them, we share in the revenue. We analogize our strategy to snacks versus meals. If we provide those snacks to our fans on a free basis, they’re still going to want to eat meals — which are our games. There is no substitute for the live game experience. We believe that greater fan engagement through social media helps drive television ratings.

This is a really good interview that dives into how the NBA is using data and the internet to grow their product. Very forward thinking.

In the Spotlight Playlist (2018)

Playlist
Jason Tate

Earlier this week we unveiled our “In the Spotlight” feature with a bunch of artists we think are worthy of your time. In the feature we’ve got blurbs and “recommended if you like” hints to try and convince you to listen to the bands, but sometimes just having all the recommended tracks in a playlist to churn through is the way to go.

The playlist is available on Apple Music and Spotify.

Read More “In the Spotlight Playlist (2018)”

Getting Out of a Creative Funk

Jason Tate

This question was originally answered in the Q&A Thread in the forums.

David Parke asked:

Jason how do you get out of a creative funk? I’m working on a project I can’t motivate myself to finish. Always looking for new ways to cope.

Most of the time when I find myself in a creative funk it boils down to me not feeling inspired. There are times where there’s just something I don’t really feel like doing, and so I end up procrastinating.

Read More “Getting Out of a Creative Funk”

How Do You Use Drafts?

Drafts
Jason Tate

This question was originally answered in the Q&A Thread in the forums.

Deanna asked:

[D]o you have any sort of organizational system in Drafts? My issue seems to be putting something in there and never remembering to go back to it/act on it. Also, do you have it open a new draft every time you open the app? I can’t decide if I like that or if I want it to just go to the last used/opened one.

And what type of stuff do you usually put in there? I’m hoping to mainly use it for when I get recs from someone, article ideas, and things like that.

So by and large what Drafts is for me is the starting place for everything, and not the end. Where things end up and how I store most of my text files/notes is a much longer post (combo of flat text files and Ulysses). But what I use Drafts for is a way to quickly get things down and then do something with it. I’ll dive into that process a little more.

Read More “How Do You Use Drafts?”

In the Spotlight: 50 Bands You Need to Hear in 2018 (Part One)

In the Spotlight (Part 1)
Jason Tate

Last year we brought back, and re-branded, one of my favorite features from the AbsolutePunk days: the “Absolute 100.” And as we enter May and the weather finally starts to turn around a little bit, it’s the perfect time to once again team up with our contributors to bring you a whole bunch of new music to check out.

Just like years past we’ve compiled a list of 50 artists we think are worth your time. Some of the artists recently released their debut albums and some have been around for a while now but have flown under the radar. However, the one thing they all have in common is that we think they should be in the spotlight and are worthy of your ears. You’ll find the first group of 25, along with blurbs, recommended songs, and sounds like comparisons, below.

Read More “In the Spotlight: 50 Bands You Need to Hear in 2018 (Part One)”

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