22 Comments

The audio book of Beastie Boys Book is absolutely sickkkk. It got me through a tough stretch of the early days of quarantine.

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Apr 23, 2023Liked by Austin Kleon

I agree about Notes. I feel so fractured as I read through them and get stuck in other peoples opinions and ideas without depth or supporting info. I like the comments connecting to the newsletter keeping a conversation coherent. Plus...owl babies! We have nesting cockatoos right outside our windows and they are not nearly so cute. Though they are very humerous birds, if a bit too raucus at dawn!

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Clicking that Walkmen link thinking “Please let it be The Rat, please let it be The Rat.”

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Austin, what camera are you using to video the Owls? Interested in doing similar with our feeders. As always, thanks for the post.

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It’s an ancient iPhone running AlfredCam hooked up to a spotting scope

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I agree, Austin, the latest episode of Ted Lasso was a breath of fresh air!

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How did I miss the news about owl babies?!?!?!?!?!?! Mazel tov!

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Oh! One thing I forgot to mention about Notes that I *love*: There’s a “my subscribers” tab! So I can click it and see what y’all are up to. Really fun.

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Loved all owl pics/vids. After reading you thoughts on AI, decided to give it a try, what the heck! I love being an early adopter and am willing to take some risks. So far, its has saved me countless hours of toiling through data and given me short lists to recheck. I also fed it my query letter for improvements. So far third try best shot am experiementing to see what the actual outcome is. And no, I don't think I am going to cause Armegedon by using this tool. Thank you Austin. Am now working on drawing owls. ps your link to Oleg valuable, appreciate it. Thanks.

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Simply put, Notes is Twitter... now with 100% less Elon Musk* !! 😯oooh 😃ahhh 😂👍

And that alone makes it fantastic.

*) and therefore, 100% less implicitly permitted (encouraged?) misinformation and hate speech.

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Austin-- have you ever thought of cutting a copy of one of your collages in strips and weaving it--warp and woof? Kind of a riff on Burrough's cut-ups? Would be more abstract but could be beautiful.

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a fun idea. I've only done one weaving: https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/kisses

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Have you named the baby owls, yet?

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# 9 in Austin’s article mentions “Mr. Coconut”, which I hadn’t seen previously. I still think Austin posting back in February that he was watching the “Superb Owl” (as opposed to the Super Bowl) was comedic genius 😄

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I don’t think I’m ready for notes. I can feel resistance all the way. No doubt it’s like 80s ra-ra skirts snd I might succumb anyway, but for now - nooo!

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Ted Lasso -- "did you notice" moments. Shandy's exit scene (I am glad she's departed) was an riff on Jerry McGuire. All it was lacking was a goldfish bowl. The Roy Kent learning to ride a bicycle scene is an homage to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid right down to using Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head as a soundtrack.

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The Butch Cassidy reference I got, haven’t seen Jerry McGuire in a few decades

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My wife spotted both references. I would have gotten Butch Cassidy -- eventually. I married well.

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Apr 21, 2023Liked by Austin Kleon

I think you might like John Maeda’s book How To Speak Machine. I was surprised how much I liked it, and took things from it. How to think about computers and art, without thinking about AI-Art. Also the best thing for me with audio books, is being able to draw while reading.

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Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity is one of my favorite books. Thanks for the reminder to read How To Speak Machine; I bought it with a flurry of other book purchases but lost it in my queue. Going to bump it and dig in.

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Good call -- I have the galley of that around here somewhere!

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Yes! I agree! Which is why I’m also not going crazy with the Chat feature, either. I like our conversations in the comments.

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