Ah, cicadas. Nature’s tinnitus.

Love this!

Do you have any kind of journal entries from the time where you were weighing the decision? I bet that would be really cool to look back on.

More and more convinced that weekly song-sharing sessions with friends would be a great way to spend quality time while discovering new ways to experience music.

I wonder, are there lists of software, services, news outlets that have committed to abstaining from AI?

Sweet, sweet yogurt memories are the great unifier

Y(esterday)IL

1. Apparently Derek Sivers does reply to all of his emails!
2. He has a collection of “now” pages nownownow.com/p/jlg7 (yours truly)
3. …and there are a few dozen of us in Japan!

You know you had a good sabbatical when you at last see the local 茶屋のお祖母さん and she says you look “sporty”, healthy, happy 🥹

Shower thought since discovering fllight of the conchords 15 or so years ago:

One reason parody bands can make great music is because they use humor as a mask to disassociate their ego from their work. If it's a joke, they can freely explore their creativity with fewer constraints.

Updates since March: post-sabbatical thoughts, guitar and songwriting courses, software tinkering

mattlemmone.com/now/

Finally got around to Shazam-ing the music that’s always on repeat at my gym.

Is it to balance out the testosterone? Or is it a certifiable boost to shatter personal bests?

The Philosophy of Professional Writing: Brandon Sanderson's Writing Lecture #1 (2025) YouTube video by Brandon Sanderson

His 2025 writing course also seems like it's worth a watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEUh...

I had a recent realization along these lines: it’s the doing that matters. I feel this a lot when trying to write music.

Even if the result isn't great, appreciating the struggle, the imperfection - the shittiness - builds skill and resilience.

That even if what you make sucks, goes unrecognized, unappreciated, you’re putting in the work and building the skills. He said he finds himself more willing to scrap entire projects because he doesn’t see them as a total loss, but rather cumulative experience gained.

I sat with this for a bit.

The Tim Ferriss Show Transcripts: Brandon Sanderson on Building a Fiction Empire, Creating $40M+ Kickstarter Campaigns, Unbreakable Habits, The Art of World-Building, and The Science of Magic Systems ... Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Brandon Sanderson (@BrandSanderson), the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Stormlight Archive series and the Mistborn saga; the middle-grade...

Really this podcast with Brandon Sanderson - which everyone has been raving about - found here tim.blog/2025/02/07/b....

Brandon said something that struck me: “you are the art” .

This reminds me of how I was indoctrinated by propaganda when I was a kid by watching dragon ball movies

My version of this is spending 1 hour vibe coding and 11 hours refactoring and begging Claude to adhere to cursor rules.

Any notable clones as of late?

Find My is truly the ultimate feature. Thanks to this notification, I realized that I left my keys somewhere on the main island in Japan.

Also: They’re in my pocket.

www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/...

Excellent performance from ヤマ with a raw moment of vulnerability. Despite their level of success, they still have difficulty performing live shows and are most comfortable as a bedroom musician. we love u yams

TIL about dickspeed

> “Using a freakishly high tempo in Mario Paint allows for bypassing the five-note restriction as well as having multiple notes play simultaneously at different volumes.” This technique even has a special name. “This is often called ‘dickspeed’ by the Mario Paint community.”

How did you even find this? Tell me there’s a collection of Mario paint songs out there

Closest thing I've had to video game style upgrades in real life has been updating my contact lens prescription

AI-generated google maps reviews are having the opposite effect.

People are leaving 5 star reviews with GPT-authored comments and it’s leading me to doubt authenticity… 🤔

GitHub - mattlemmone/blackhole-search: Create a new Obsidian note to draft your search query, and kick off your query after a short delay, allowing you to think before you search. Create a new Obsidian note to draft your search query, and kick off your query after a short delay, allowing you to think before you search. - mattlemmone/blackhole-search

It pops open Obsidian, creates a templated note prompting for my game plan, and only when I’m done does it execute the query. Code and demo here: github.com/mattlemmone/.... The demo video is a bit slow, so I suggest you 2x it at least.

Fork it, tinker with it, make it better!

Following the blog post I shared a few days ago, I realized I can get sucked into unbounded queries that don’t have a definitive end goal/information I need isn’t available.

So I made a script that forces me to prepare that information before I'm allowed to start digging.

GitHub - mattlemmone/blackhole-search: Create a new Obsidian note to draft your search query, and kick off your query after a short delay, allowing you to think before you search. Create a new Obsidian note to draft your search query, and kick off your query after a short delay, allowing you to think before you search. - mattlemmone/blackhole-search

It pops open Obsidian, forces me to fill out a template with what my game plan is, and only when I’m done does it execute the query. Code and demo here: github.com/mattlemmone/.... The video is a bit slow, so I suggest you 2x it at least.

Fork it, tinker with it, make it better!

Issue 2 of The Illustrated is up. All Japanese illustrators this time.

pencilbooth.com/takes/90d44b0a-0a8c-45bb...

Absolutely love this idea, Luis!

Captured a few thoughts that have been poking at me every time I use Google or AI to quickly solve my problems

mattlemmone.com/notes/before...

thinking about now, but later
mattlemmone.com/notes/nostal...