Sean McDevitt

Nov 14, 2022 ∞

Action Brings Clarity

Clarity comes through action and experience. Thus, you should focus on getting started and taking action more than you focus on the perfect end result. Optimize for the starting line instead of the finish line.
Instead of committing to a giant, year-long undertaking. Commit to something small and simple so you can get started and get some experience. Then, when you have more clarity about what you are doing and working on, you can continue to mature and build upon that idea, or you can pivot.

This is some excellent advice heading into the new year.

Nov 12, 2022 ∞

John Lewis & Partners | Christmas Ad 2022

British department store John Lewis, known for its wonderfully creative annual Christmas advertisements, shared their heartwarming video for Christmas 2022. It shows a man clumsily but unashamedly learning how to skateboard with the encouragement of his wife, and for a very good reason.

Puddles Pity Party and Postmodern Jukebox provided the soundtrack with a melancholy rendition of the Blink-182 song “All the Small Things."

A tiny bit of wonderfulness is a good thing.

Nov 11, 2022 ∞

Kevin Conroy, RIP

Kevin Conroy, known for his iconic performance as the Caped Crusader over a range of media starting with Batman: The Animated Series, has passed away at the age of 66.

I love this…

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Nov 10, 2022 ∞

Inside the Twitter Meltdown

Casey Newton and Zoë Schiffer, writing on Platformer:

Musk’s whim-based approach to product development, his rapidly depleting executive ranks, and the very real likelihood of hundreds or even thousands of additional departures at the company in coming weeks threaten to leave Twitter a shadow of its former self. And much of the reason for that is Musk himself: the way he treated his employees and the product they built; the sage advice he ignored; the business fundamentals that he misunderstood.
Musk’s takeover of the company had been so brutish and poorly planned that, we’re told, there was not even a proper handover of the company’s social accounts. As a result, having spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter, for his first week-plus of owning the company, Musk and his team were unable even to tweet from the @twitter account.

Cue fire emoji.

Nov 10, 2022 ∞

Ranking the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductees

Bill Wyman (not the one from The Rolling Stones) has ranked all 240 artists in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for Vulture.

He’s wrong, of course.

First, far too many of the artists included aren’t even rock and roll musicians. Eliminating the country, blues, and hip-hop artists would greatly lessen the load. For example, James Brown is listed as the fifth-best inductee. I would say James Brown never played a lick of rock and roll in his entire career and is flat-out a funk artist. However, Prince is most definitely a funk artist, too. He just played a lot of rock, too.

I could go on, but it isn’t worth it. These kinds of lists are designed to illicit debate and arguments.

Sigh.

Nov 9, 2022 ∞

Normal Candidates

Writing for New York Magazine Intelligencer, Jonathan Chiat has a few thoughts on the midterm elections.

Republicans have been trying to create an environment that would allow them to enjoy all the benefits of Trump’s hallucinatory grievance narrative without any of the costs. But the midterms may instead suggest they must choose between mobilizing every last one of his cult followers and maintaining sane, or sane-ish, ancestral Republican voters.

Voters liked that Trump talked like them even though he wasn’t like them in the least. He spoke plainly in a way that resonated with a lot of people. Clinton tried to paint Trump as a serial adulterer and someone not worthy of the presidency. It backfired because the Clintons attended Trump’s wedding and Bill Clinton’s affairs. She could not embody the person who negates Trump’s strengths. People liked Trump and disliked Clinton. And she still destroyed him in the popular vote, and he had to basically land an inside straight to win the Electoral College. Trump is still overwhelmingly an unlikeable character, and the plain way he spoke gave way to his unfitness for office. Voters saw through that and nominated the guy who can negate Trump’s strengths: Joe Biden.

Biden is far from perfect. As a side note, the closest perfect future presidential candidate would be Barack Obama, who I am pretty sure does not want to run again. He would, however, wipe the floor with whomever the Republicans nominate.

As for the 2022 midterms, we still don’t know the ultimate outcome. The House might narrowly flip to Republicans or maybe not. The Senate looks like it will stay with the Democrats. The red wave was really a trickle and really the best midterm for an incumbent president in fifty years. Without the dust completely settled, I’d still say what voters wanted was a return to normalcy.

Nov 3, 2022 ∞

Quantity and Quality

Nicholas Bate has a thought about writing that I love:

Write, write, write.
Then edit, edit, edit.

Out of quantity you can produce quality.

Nov 2, 2022 ∞

Jony Ive on Life After Apple

I have always found Jony Ive among the more exciting creatives working today. It is his vision that catapulted Apple to the level it enjoys. This Wall Street Journal profile by Elisa Lipsky-Karasz is wonderful, but I was struck by this bit about his most current company, LoveFrom.

One of the first employees hired by Ive was a full-time writer. (There are now more than 30 employees, many of whom worked with him at Apple.) Ive says LoveFrom is the only creative practice he knows of to have an on-staff scribe whose job is, in part, to help conjure into words the ideas that his team of graphic designers, architects, sound engineers and industrial designers come up with for its collaborations with Airbnb, Ferrari and others.

I’ve never heard of this practice. More companies should do this.

Nov 1, 2022 ∞

Tweet, Tweet

I can tell already that Elon Musk owning Twitter and trying to use it to make money is going to be a real thing that people will talk about online for weeks and weeks. Who is leaving? Who might get unbanned? Which companies will keep ads on the platform, and which ones are done? What new iteration of the platform can be monetized? When will Musk sell Twitter and take a loss?

I’d say that most users on the platform will continue to use it the same way they have been forever. I have curated my follow list, stopped retweets from appearing in my timeline, and continued using Tweetdeck instead of going to the official Twitter page to interact with it for more than a couple of years. I probably spend too much time on it, and there’s that feeling of not even needing to be here anymore, but I doubt I change my habit.

As for the alternatives… they are all crap. I mean all of them except Micro.blog (I rather enjoyed Maton Reece’s appeal for Micro.blog usage) and, you know, personal blogging. Mastodon and the rest I can’t be bothered to look up will not make a dent during this. They are a waste of time.

I fully expect within six months to a year, Twitter will be ruined. It will be a hellscape of impersonations and the worst aspects of the far-right with a dash of fascism, bigotry, and political fetishism. It will be an afterthought like Tumblr, which used to be mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Unless Musk sells it to a company that knows how to handle it, like Automattic, for instance.

I pretty much have TweetDeck running in a tab every day. Not having it up is going to be really, really difficult for me. It’s kind of funny, as I recognize that I’m constantly online through Twitter and also that it probably isn’t very good for me.

It will be interesting to see how long I stay on if all the people I follow quit.

Oct 27, 2022 ∞

Musky Twitter

The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, who previously criticized Twitter for restricting free speech, outlined his motivations for buying the company in a message addressed to advertisers and posted to the social platform. Stupidly, Musk dropped in on Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, carrying a white basin and later tweeting, “Entering Twitter HQ—let that sink in!” He fired a bunch of executives and then changed his Twitter profile description to “Chief Twit.”

Sigh.

Just to be clear, I doubt I’ll be leaving Twitter anytime soon. However, if Musk starts making terrible decisions about free speech and whatnot, I might simply delete all my posts, keep my account, and never log on again—kind of like what I do with Facebook and other social media sites I no longer pay much attention to.

I should seriously consider taking Twitter off my phone. Everyone says it will immediately improve my outlook on life, the universe, and everything. Maybe.

I do know for a fact if he sunsets Tweetdeck, I’m totally gone.

Oct 26, 2022 ∞

The New DC Studios

Borys Kit and Aaron Couch, writing for The Hollywood Reporter, has the scoop on the new DC Studios.

Gunn will focus on the creative side of things, while Safran will focus on the business and production side. Both are expected to continue to direct and produce projects, respectively. They will report directly to Zaslav and work closely with Warners film bosses De Luca and Pamela Abdy. Sources say the deal runs four years and Gunn will be exclusive to DC. The goal is for them not just to be producers, but to truly function as executives even as Gunn will occasionally hone a movie.

This seems smart. I like Gunn way better than Geoff Johns (who should stick to writing comics).

Oct 25, 2022 ∞

Stillness Before the Storm

I apologize to Rod Stewart, but it’s late October, and I should be back in school. And when I say “back in school,” I totally mean back writing on this site and finishing up my long-awaited (HA!) collection of short stories and essays, Captured Ghosts.

To be fair, I think I’m as close as I have ever come to finishing this book. I’d really like to have something to show for the effort at Thanksgiving and then to sell to people by Christmas. I’m about 60/40 that it won’t happen. I’d like to flip that and get it over the hump, but I’m just not quite there yet. Ugh.

I can’t seem to lose any more weight, which makes me depressed. I guess I need to eat a lot less carbs and sugar. It is depressing. Of course, these next few weeks and the last two months are nothing but carbs and sugar. I’m getting more and more depressed.

I don’t have much willpower. I just finished eating a grab-and-go can of Pringles, and I have another one at the ready for a bit later. However, I am drinking a Hint Crisp apple, and it has no carbs or sugars. It tastes kind of like someone ate an apple and then burped it into a plastic bottle of water. It’s not very good, but it’s healthy! Oh, boy. Sigh.

I should finish watching both House of Dragon and Rings of Power. Still, I also want to watch the rest of Community (I’m only on season 2) and a bunch of other things like Ted Lasso, Star Trek Discovery, His Dark Materials, Stranger Things, and Doctor Who. I’m still watching and enjoying Star Trek Lower Decks and have caught up with Andor and now waiting for the last three-episode story arc to drop so I can binge it back-to-back-to-back.

I’m also watching Clerks 3, about twenty minutes or so in. So far, I like it, but the dialogue is too cutesy by a factor of five. I wish he’d dial back some of his tropes and just write people like normal people.

I keep thinking I will see Black Adam in the theater, and then I’m like, nahh. I’ll just wait until sometime in December when it will appear on HBO Max.

The World Series is about to start, and I don’t care about it. I guess I’ll have to root for the Phillies, but it feels weird. Most of the time, I enjoy watching MLB when I don’t have a rooting interest. Maybe I’ll just wish everyone had fun playing the games.

I can’t wait for the political ads to stop playing during every commercial break. At least I’m in Illinois, not some state where crazy people are running, like Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Sometimes, I wish I could be a-political and not worry about which party is in charge, but I’m afraid if I do that, then something terrible is going to happen to my family and my country. Maybe not. Maybe I’m insulated enough by my economic status, the color of my skin, and lack of religious beliefs. I don’t know, and I guess that’s the fear. Tuning it out can only go so far.

Illinois football is on a tear, and that’s something of a surprise. It makes things more interesting in this neck of the woods. Also, Illinois basketball is looking to be extremely competitive, and having both sports playing at a high level blows my face off a tiny bit.

I need to get back to reading more. I have several novels ready, both in paper and glue form and as audiobooks. Of course, my huge list of podcasts to listen to has not diminished, and it’s really hard to get into an audiobook.

My ankles and knees hurt, but part of that happens when you hit your fifties. How did this happen? I guess I just kept getting older. It certainly beats the alternative. I have to increase my exercise and try to strengthen those painful areas. Speaking of exercise, I think I want to start a rowing machine regiment. Of course, I need a rowing machine, but I’m pretty sure I’m getting one of those this Christmas. I think it will help. I think…

It’s about to get super busy here with Illinois athletics, Thanksgiving/Christmas, colder weather, and everything else. First-world problems galore. I guess now is as good a time as any to simply enjoy the crisp air, watch the leaves fall, and breathe in the stillness before the storm.

Oct 23, 2022 ∞

The Disgust Is The Product

A paragraph in David Roth’s Defector piece encapsulates this moment in time and describes what is happening right now in crystal clear imagery.

In its current state, Trumpism is entirely about feeling and fantasy. Instead of any plan to deal with crime, for instance, there is only the lascivious going-over of the problem; there is no program, or really any policies to advocate for, that is more expedient for the party than just continuing to fixate on it. There is a constituency—they are confused and vengeful and fucking livid, they are daily taking in and making up strange new stories to keep themselves that way, they are less mis- or disinformed than they are living inside the bilious and vengeful lore that sustains and explains their movement—and there is what that constituency feels, but there is nothing else. It is again worth noting that this constituency chooses to feel this way, every day; the most comfortable Americans have opted to wander this wilderness of prurience and threat and weird ugly lies instead of living in a reality they would have to share with anyone else. Where there might otherwise be ideology—where there might, actually, have been anything else—there is only politics. Of course it is ugly, small, even more fantastically dark than the truth of the moment. Being ugly, in precisely that way, is the reason that it exists. What began as a cynical set of best practices for keeping distracted people attached to their televisions has become the sacrament itself; they have built a church and then just fucking filled it with cable news.

When does this change? Will it ever?

Oct 22, 2022 ∞

KISS Performs Secret Philip Morris Concert In Austin, Texas

According to Robert Moseley, who was in attendance, on October 22, 2022, KISS played a secret show for Philip Morris International, the largest tobacco company in the world. This private concert was not open to the public and took place at Vulcan Gas Company, a small club at 418 E 6th St in downtown Austin. No more than 100 people attended the concert.

Seeing KISS at a club is pretty cool. I just wish the guy filming would stop talking and singing.

Oct 14, 2022 ∞

Puddles Pity Party - WAR PIGS

Puddles Pity Party sings “WAR PIGS.”

What an incredible rendition.

Oct 12, 2022 ∞

Josh Whitman's Tour of Ubben Basketball Complex

Illinois athletics director Josh Whitman gives the media a tour of the almost-complete renovation of the Ubben Basketball Complex.

Oct 9, 2022 ∞

1-15

Writing for The Athletic, Katie Woo explains how the Cardinals were eliminated.

Their best two position players and two top National League MVP candidates in Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt combined to go 1-for-15 with six strikeouts, and the rest of the offense was just as lifeless. Their All-Star closer Ryan Helsley was asked to notch a five-out save in the same week he jammed a finger on his pitching hand and was subsequently tagged for four runs, despite giving up nine total runs all season. Their usually impermeable infield defense crumpled when three separate Gold Glovers, Arenado, Edman and Goldschmidt — were unable to make a play on three consecutive groundballs. Minus a booming two-run, pinch hit home run from Juan Yepez in the seventh inning of Game 1, the Cardinals struggled to string together any kind of offense, even when Marmol opted to sacrifice outfield defense in search of more offense in Game 2, sitting Dylan Carlson and placing Yepez and Dickerson in left and right field.

The Cardinals had their chances — plenty of them — but they rarely cashed in. Now they’ll spend the rest of October as spectators.

When your bats go silent, it isn’t hard to figure out. You simply can’t win when the two top National League MVP candidates, Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, combined go 1-for-15 with six strikeouts.

On to the offseason, where the team should look at expanding its payroll, nail down a free agent pitcher, trade some dead weight, and sign Wilson Contreas to be the new catcher.

Oct 2, 2022 ∞