It was a massive The Ataris week around here. One of those weeks where I just couldn’t get enough and never got sick of just putting the record back on. Kept thinking, “what do I want to listen to next?” and the answer kept being … more The Ataris.
I’m slowly moving things from my mother’s basement … to my basement. Found this in the latest stack. 2004, during the semester I took off from college, being interviewed by a local paper. The website is about to explode within the next couple of years. Those computer monitors. That T-shirt. The banner!
After all the tears I cried for you
The Ataris - "Car Song"
All the times I tried to let you go
Lay me down under the night
Under the sadness of this life
Darling, take me home
Won’t you take me home?
In love with this song.
Listen: https://chorus.fm/share/alb...
April has come and gone. It was another month where I kept at this whole jogging thing and set a new PR in the mile and 5K. More records were listened to. Mark’s book was great. The cats did cat things.
April 2025
Turnstile, Yellowcard, The Ataris. Top three most anticipated albums for the rest of the year (that I haven’t yet heard).
Fun workout. Decided to just run until Hannah was done with her sprint training today. Felt good and sat in zone 2/3 for most of it.
Another Raycast Tip: Quick Message a Contact
Along with Quicklinks and Fallbacks, another thing I love about Raycast is the great integration with Shortcuts. You can run any Shortcut directly from Raycast (and assign it a trigger keyword and/or keyboard shortcut directly), and if the Shortcut is configured to ask for input, it’ll do that right in Raycast. I use this for all sorts of things, but one of the most used is a very basic Message shortcut I built to text Hannah. By typing ‘m’ in Raycast, I get a simple interface:
Then I hit Tab and type my message. Hit enter. Message gets automatically sent to Hannah. I use this dozens of times throughout the day to quickly send a message without ever needing to open the Messages app.
The Shortcut itself is dead simple:
It just takes the input and sends it using the default Send Message action.
The combination of Shortcuts + Raycast can create an endless stream of simple little tricks like this. Another I use regularly appends text to a Ulysses note called “Liner Notes Ideas.”1 When I have an idea for an upcoming newsletter, I simply type ‘ln,’ followed by my thought, and hit enter. The note is added in the background without needing to open my notes app.
Speaking of which: I ran out of time to finish the newsletter today, I’ll have to try and wrap it up tomorrow.↩
I am enjoying this sunny weather.
Big day of errands around here, but I hope to have some time to write a newsletter this weekend. Fingers crossed.
Pretty perfect purple mail day. Already owned that +44 record (pink variant) but … I just couldn’t say no to this combo. Gorgeous.
Backfill Your Blog
Fun fact: there’s no rule that says you can’t create a new blog today and backfill (and backdate) it with your writing from other platforms or sources, even going back many years.
I’d love to see more people do this!
Listening to The Ataris' new single "Car Song" this morning. (Will be out next week.) And it's getting me a little emotional. The Ataris are one of my favorite bands of all time. The first band I ever saw live (opening for MxPx). The first "advance" CD I was ever given was a burned copy of End is Forever sent to me by Kris's dad. I know Kris has been through a lot over the past few years, but seeing him re-engaged, seemingly in a really good place, and all the stuff he's been sharing on social media lately has me feeling things.
And the song's excellent.
I had an old man moment last night. I was thinking about how working to find bands was fun. Having to scour liner notes. Having to know what websites to look at to see recs. Even with the piracy angle it was fun and still kinda "work" in a sense, and then only a small group on one or two message boards were talking about the band for a couple months. Streaming is awesome, but I do miss that chase and rush. The hunt. The vindication.
“Why I Left the Attention Economy”
At some point, every creator hits a wall – it’s not burnout exactly. It’s misalignment. You find yourself fluent in a language you no longer believe in, you know how to hack the algorithm, when to post, what to say, how to craft the dopamine-hooked headline. You’ve learned to manufacture the kind of work that gets rewarded, but somewhere in the process you forget why you started making it at all.
The economy of attention doesn’t ask what you think; it asks how fast you can say it, how loud, and how often. And if you play long enough, you stop making anything for the people you care about and you start making it for the feed. The result is a race to the bottom with a leaderboard, a machine that needs to be fed even if it’s chewing up your integrity.
Preach.
The other byproduct of having been in that “game,” is you start seeing it everywhere. Numbers will go up, numbers will go down. Authenticity is the only thing that will last.
Monday's back I see. Volume up.
When things get you down
Home Grown - "Let Go"
Should you look back
Don't turn your head around
And take things one day at a time
Don't plan ahead
For mountains you have yet to climb
Listen: https://chorus.fm/share/alb...