Link Round Up
12 Oct 2025Music
The years when my musical taste really formed were somewhat later than Gang of Four’s prime creative period in the late 70s and early 80s, but their influence was clearly legible in many of my favorite bands. This live TV performance of “He’d Send in the Army” is such a perfect rendering of Andy Gill’s unique approach to the guitar within the driving groove and urgency of the subject matter (sadly still all too relevant over 40 years later).
It happens so rarely that a recommendation algorithm brings me good new music that I take note when it happens. Most recently, The Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio happened across my feed, and I have been hooked. They play a kind of small-combo funk that really lands for me, and while their studio recordings are great, you can also find some excellent videos of their live sets, one of which I’ve included below.
(Non-Musical) Notes
- Ian Leslie’s notes on growing older: For something that happens constantly to every living thing, it’s strange how little we talk or write about aging. If the theory here is that we’re all in a state of collective denial, that can’t be contributing to a healthy society.
- Adam Aleksic’s notes on slop: I’m still chewing on this list, but one major takeaway for me has been to remember that we had slop before we had AI to create it for us. I think the impact of algorithmic feeds and automated content generation are only beginning to be felt, much less reckoned with.
Podcast
I’ve already written two posts inspired by episodes of PJ Vogt and Sruthi Pinnamaneni’s Search Engine podcast, but this recent episode with Ryan Broderick discussing the “Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet” is I think a very illuminating look at the path an idea takes through social media to ubiquity. The number of highly specialized influencers (e.g., hot women eating food on camera) and their reach, combined with the incentives at play (e.g., people can’t taste food through social media, so it has to be visually striking—not necessarily in a good way—to become popular) are elements that drive culture, even for people who don’t participate in them directly.
Search Engine: A Dubai Chocolate theory of the internet
Gym Class Games
This is a site and a YouTube channel I happened across that catalog all kinds of games invented for physical education classes in schools. I have fond memories of playing floor hockey and matball, especially when it was too rainy to use the fields, and I found myself unexpectedly tickled to see such a collection of games invented by gym teachers for their students. Some of these games look pretty good!