Regular Communication 024

From Jason Rodriguez

The best thing I read since my last newsletter was probably this post from Annie Mueller. Like most of you, I've been struggling with everything that's going on in the world, especially in the US. It's all so overwhelming and negative, and that negativity does nothing but steal energy. There's a good case to be made for that being the whole point of Trump and Musk's current strategy—overwhelm and distract so no one has the energy to fight the literal coup that's taking place. It sucks.

But Annie does a good job reminding me that there's something that can help:

Making things is quiet. It feeds the soul. It returns energy. It grounds us. It carves out a tiny space we can inhabit. It lets us process. It clears the mind. It shifts our viewpoint. It shows us what is possible. It helps us to show others. It is good. Make things. Fill the world around you with what you choose to make. Fill the moments in front of you. Shift the balance with me.

Keep paying attention to what's going on, keep engaging with elected officials, and keep fighting where you can, but reserve energy for making things for yourself (and others, if you choose). Making will help fill the tanks back up and give you what you need to keep living life and moving forward.

My making these days consists of sending this newsletter, writing the occasional blog post, and writing and playing music. What does your making look like? Email me back and let me know.

Interesting Things

If you want a good overview of what's happening in Elon Musk's coup of the US government—and how we got here to begin with—then Heather Cox Richardson has a good overview from February 4th (apologies for another Substack link...). The main takeaway for me was the end quote from Senator Chris Murphy: "The real story—the billionaires seizing government to steal from regular people." It's so fucking depressing that it all boils down to pure, unadulterated greed on the part of the shittiest people humanity could possibly create.

This is excellent advice from Mike Monteiro (via Jason Kottke) on how to survive the next four years, and being online in general: "The first four years of Donald Trump was a continuous panic attack. I’m not going through that again. You don’t have to either. They’re on stage, but you don’t have to be their audience."

Tracy Durnell has an excellent set of guiding principles for their website. I’m on board with most of them for my own website (and this newsletter), sans the webmentions and comments. Happy to reply to emails, though, so reach out if you want!

I wish more tech companies would heed Max Böck’s advice here. We need faster horses, despite any misattributed quotes to Henry Ford.

I'm a little torn on Jonathan Snook's advice, though. While my early career benefitted from the method he outlines—getting your name out there via writing, speaking, video, etc.—I just don't know if the same tactics will work today. He does address this a bit towards the end, but even with a potential pendulum swing towards blogging and decentralized social media, I don't think the reach is what it once was. I could very well be wrong, though, as I've largely pulled back from getting my name out there over the last few years. Maybe I'm too removed from it all. What do you think?

Heydon Pickering makes some awesome videos, including his latest: Why is everything binary?

Simon Willison seems like one of the few people acting as a voice of reason around AI. He's very enthusiastic about AI's applications, but also very practical and quick to call out their limitations and impact on the world. I still have a very visceral reaction against AI most of the time, but have been playing around a bit with Copilot and Claude to see if/how they can help me out in various ways. This interview on the Real Python podcast with Simon was really interesting and helpful in framing AI more practically for me. Thought you might like it, too.

On the flip side, Jenny Lawson sums up a lot of my feelings with AI being everywhere when she quips, "It’s like my whole computer is a toddler screaming “LET ME DO IT!” every time I try to create something."

Barry Hess made a list of what he calls FOMO machines... My list is similar, but I've been thinking about them more as anxiety machines. Which has lead me to reduce my dependence on them greatly lately, largely replacing them with reading and playing music. It's been a good move so far.

OK, enough despair... Here's a bit of a fun, nerdy palette cleanser: Which HTML element are you? Turns out I'm an image tag with my nested element being a canvas tag. Who knew?

On Repeat

I'm a big fan of Haley Heynderickx. I'll maintain that her debut, I Need to Start a Garden, should go down in history as one of the best debuts ever released. But her second album, Seed of a Seed, is just as good. My favorite track is "Mouth of a Flower"—the guitar work, the lyrics, the melody, the repetition—it's fantastic. Here's Haley doing it live.

Listen to all my newsletter music recommendations on Apple Music or Spotify.

Go make something,
Jason

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