Je trouve utile de lire les médias étrangers, pour savoir comment on réagit à notre folie.

The NPR radio adaptation of Star Wars would be a lot worse if the movie’s sound design and music weren’t so dang good.

I recently finished an audiobook of Jacques Ellul’s The Technological Society and have been finding other things to listen to now that I don’t have mid-twentieth century French philosophical reflections on technique to think through anymore. Last night, I began (re)listening to the National Public Radio Star Wars radio drama—adapted by Brian Daley—while cleaning up the kitchen, and I continued listening on the way in to work today. The radio drama is interesting in so many ways! For one, it expands a two hour movie into a nearly six-hour radio serial, and so it crams in a lot of material that isn’t present in the movie (or even—as far as I can tell—the original script).

A while ago, the RSS feeds for my local newspaper stopped working (at least with my feed reader), which caused me some consternation as I tried to decide whether to build a workaround or just give up on the Herald-Leader. I believe in supporting local news, so I’ve wanted to find a technical solution to this, but a lot of the decision making is out of my hands, and I don’t really have time on my hands to build myself the kind of webscraper that would be fun to try out. So, this issue has just kind of lingered for a while.

Love to see Eurovision coverage from US news outlets.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to listen to more internet radio, getting back into the great NPR quiz show Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and generally thinking about how underrated radio is as a medium. This morning, a chance comment from a familiy member had me checking the website for Public Service Broadcasting, a strange and wonderful “found audio” band that I count among my favorites. Thanks to checking that website, I learned that PSB has a new album out based on their appearance last month at the BBC Proms celebrating BBC Radio’s 100th anniversary.

I feel like I say this whenever I post a link to a Twitter story, but I honestly can’t believe how dumb this stuff gets sometimes. Also, is Musk going to give someone else control of @ldschurch?

This is another dumb move by Musk. Masnick is excellent at calling him out on hypocrisy.

Listening to the NPR audio adaptation of Star Wars emphasizes just how important John Williams and Ben Burtt are to making that universe work.

The NPR radio adaptation of Star Wars is just as great—and just as terrible—as you would think. Totally worth a listen.