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I found what I believe is the very first true “me irl” published on the Internet. And it’s a doozy.

Start with the understanding that contracts benefit both parties. Generally people go into a business arrangement with the best of intentions and a lot of assumptions. A contract makes those assumptions explicit by documenting the terms of engagement clearly.

The ‘moral economy’ of Record Store Day.

Instead of years of local/subcultural prep work resulting in a sudden mainstream (or midcult) explosion, we see the sauce simmering, and see all the ingredients that go into it. And as a result, we don’t call it sauce. We just see the ingredients, and don’t think they need to be reclassified. Indie rock changed enough between 1994 and 2014 (waaaaaaaay fewer guitars) that you’d think it’d be called something different, but we still call it “indie rock,” because we didn’t get to see a big, dramatic moment with a big, dramatic break. If everything’s always connected, it becomes much harder to see meaningful divisions.

Most men would never go on a shooting rampage, because they believed that they were owed sex by women. Most men. Sadly, not all men.

So: Do you make room for transient joy? Does it impede your deep thoughts, or does it inspire them, like a spark to wick?

The brogrammer becomes the flat, oppressive ideal, and the fact that "bro" was originally a term of complex, critical affection within a community is lost, replaced by a distorting mirror in which people see themselves reflected as comic Hollywood caricatures, while disavowing their own, very real participation in what remain very real cultural issues.

The president is correct that there is a long history of black leaders addressing "personal responsibility." But as a diagnosis for what has historically gone wrong in black communities, the tradition is erroneous.

I don’t know anything about music theory, not what an E or an A means in terms of sound. But through the crucial context Ross gives, and his descriptions, I don’t need to. My Lai to Manson, this is not going to be a happy work. The E “longs for resolution”, signifying tension. It does what all great music writing should do, make you desperate to hear the music being described.

Bay Area sound critic Marc Weidenbaum—acoustic historian, noise futurist, music instructor, and writer of a brand new book about Aphex Twin—has been blogging about music, electronics, and everyday sounds at his blog Disquiet here at Gizmodo for the last few months.

Why do we listen to our favourite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains.

Thanks to Twitter, the hashtag has become an important linguistic shortcut. But while everyone from Robin Thicke to Beyoncé has used the symbol as part of their art, only a few have truly taken advantage of its culture-jamming possibilities.

Seven high-resolution photos every seven days. Commercial use OK.

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A freshly updated icon font set that you can use with CSS on your next Foundation project.

250+ pictogram vectors.

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100 vector icons that resemble iOS line-drawing icons.

I see characters in a sort of John Waters via furries in a violent, bloody malevolent German fairy tale kind of way.

With Animal Collective's warped, whooping Sung Tongs turning 10 this year, Mike Powell looks back on his early experiences with the album as a 21-year-old college kid coming to grips with the bittersweet realities of adulthood.

50 stock photos of real people for UI design and business presentations. High-res, easy-to-use, royalty-free and rights-cleared! Compared to traditional stock photography, it's a no-brainer.

The ‘not all men’ defense against feminist arguments is infuriating and unhelpful, but it also represents a weird kind of progress.

I think Hegel’s dialectic of sense-certainty can illuminate the concept of “the mainstream.” It unpacks the concept’s paradoxical locality and generality, and it shows how the concept of the mainstream produces its own constituent population.

And for the moment, at least, the accuracy of many health wristbands is not exactly rock solid.

The rise of artist content intended to replace criticism must be a direct failure on the part of critics and editors, and instead of rising to the challenge, the reaction has been to push it instead of our own work. It cheapens the work of critics and writers to just post directly what the artist is putting out there, especially if they are doing the job we are supposed to be doing. The reaction should be to make better work so that people won’t want the artist-curated content; the reaction should be for better stories, more original ideas, and concepts never before attempted. The reaction should be for better access, because access to the direct thoughts of a musician is pretty hard to beat. The Talkhouse, and similar content, provides the ideal access, except without the filter of journalism. It’s a facade, and we have to see through it as substandard.

A triumph of art over commerce or ruthless, selfish exploitation?

We may often play games because they affect us, because they allow us to be someone fantastic and unassailable. But games are also ancient, and ancient things teach us humility. Just as often, we play games because they are there to be played. Because we want to feel what it’s like to play them. Because we are not clever or strong or fast, but because we can move stones on wooden boards or shift cards between virtual spaces on cardboard or tap a capacitive display to flap a tiny bird.

Working towards solutions requires that, as male gamers, we become aware of the ways in which we unconsciously benefit from sexism. We can't work to fix something unless we first see and understand its effects. When women as a group are systematically targeted by discrimination, it means that men are elevated by default.

One evening, some 40 years ago, I got lost in time. I was at a performance of Schubert’s String Quintet in C major.