February 2019

Hello, dear reader!

February is gone, but its links remain.

I owe you a belated “Happy new year!” since I failed to get this newsletter out the door the past two months. If you’re desperate to see the links that never made it to your inbox during those months, you can find December and January (along with every other edition) on my site.

In February, I finally launched Tinnitus Tracker, a live music diary I’ve… See more →

Leah and I discovered, roughly seven years after the fact, that we were at the same Soul Coughing show in Philly in 1998, long before we met. This Mike Doughty show was a fun opportunity to kind of recreate that night as if we had actually spent it together.

Soul Coughing was perhaps the most unique band to find a larger audience during the permissive major-label alt-rock boom of the ’90s, and to my ears,… See more →

I want to be @theledu when I grow up. abookapart.com/blogs/press/me…

The great @vpieters walks us through the design process behind her beautiful new site. veerle.duoh.com/design/how-the…

Now taking suggestions for the perfect song to soundtrack the inspirational montage of moments that led to this day.

This game puts you in the unenviable shoes of an Amazon warehouse worker. abc.net.au/news/2019-02-2…

me: [picture of me]
also me: [same picture of me]

Best internet of the year so far. twitter.com/electrolemon/s…

y’all i love oreos so goddamned much

Dude at Chipotle just gave me an unsolicited briefing on what hip-hop was and how it was ruined. I am now prepared to take your questions.

I think my least favorite Twitter genre is tweets with screenshots of other tweets.

I wrote a bit about how I’m trying to focus on making music this year. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2019/02/m…

Earlier this month I launched Tinnitus Tracker, my last big personal creative project left over from 2018. That frees me up to get down to business on my main creative goal for 2019: making music.

I’m a lifelong music fanatic and always wanted to be able to call myself a musician, but I didn’t get around to really making an effort until about ten years ago, when I started taking guitar lessons. I had to… See more →

Crackpot emails are an inbox fixture in journalism, but a subject line with “a syllogism in four parts” is just begging for deletion.

Hello, here is a Stevie Wonder drum solo for your Thursday: youtube.com/watch?v=iBA4vW…

As infuriating as Apple’s can’t-charge-while-in-use mouse is, at least it reminds us which apps care about intuitive keyboard navigation.

“The trap of exceptionalism is to place distance between us and them.” A thoughtful, generous essay from @otraletra. propublica.org/article/the-lu…

This also marks my first use of @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce), which results in a static image of the animation’s final frame. twitter.com/robweychert/st…

Had some fun animating gambling addiction, supporting the great reporting of @jasongrotto @sandhya__k @dmihalopoulos features.propublica.org/the-bad-bet/vi…

Pretty excited about the first post-launch update to Tinnitus Tracker: tinnitus.robweychert.com/2019/05/28/bjo…

👋🏻 I am now in my fourth week of bronchitis.

Reading aloud from my music theory homework. Every time a grand staff is mentioned, @ChamberMonster declares, “You shall not pass!”

Behind the scenes of recreating the first ever web browser (CERN’s WorldWideWeb from 1990). So cool! adactio.com/journal/14821

Hello Design Twitter, please tell me your favorite resources for finding freelance illustrators from underrepresented groups.

Everyone please continue making colorful geometric confections and I will continue admiring them. thisiscolossal.com/2019/02/new-pi…

“Something changed in me that year. It made me just not want to make music.” Imagine how many women can say this. 😞 nytimes.com/2019/02/13/art…

If you dig that cassettes site, here’s an old love letter from me to mixtapes, complete with downloadable mixtape: v6.robweychert.com/blog/2008/01/r…

😍😍😍 twitter.com/brucel/status/…

Behind the scenes of my latest project, a personal live music database/diary. v6.robweychert.com/blog/2019/02/i…

I did it. I made the most Rob Weychert thing. tinnitus.robweychert.com

In the spring of 2015, Last.fm, a social site that tracks users’ music listening habits, gave subscribers a sneak peek at its upcoming redesign. The first thing I noticed was that the Events section, which I had been using for a decade to catalog the shows I went to, was gone. It was reinstated when the redesign was publicly unveiled a few months later, but the temporary evaporation of my data was a good reminder:… See more →

RIP Albert Finney. We’re exactly as big as he let us be, and no bigger, and don’t forget it, ever.

“In a tight, compressed space, music can get asphyxiated.” nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opi…

Is there a site yet that lets you know where you are in the line of succession for the Virginia governorship?

Life update: I seem to be keeping the Strawberry Krispies people in business these days.

Fuck yeah.

In my dream, there were whole capitalist and socialist movements based on competing interpretations of the design of the Brady Bunch house.

Made the mistake of signing into @Medium to comment on a post, and now they’re emailing to let me know how many people read my comment. 🙄