End On End - All Content

2026-06-30T00:00:00Z

🎶 Crucial Track for today: "Place Position" by Fugazi

What's a favorite opening line from any song?

A masterful Fugazi song on xenophobia and "illegal" immigration.

Some of their best guitar work... and this opening verse:

All origins are Accidental You've got no papers and no roads lead home Anymore

Appropriate for today, considering we were allowed to keep the 14th Amendment. 🙄

View entry on Crucial Tracks

2026-06-22T00:00:00Z

Farmer’s market breakfast, sushi for dinner, then Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. Good day with the fam!

Widow's Bay EVERY Detail That You MISSED - Episode 1-9 - YouTube

2026-06-20T00:00:00Z

One of my favorite shows and this video runs down a bunch of connections and easter eggs from the first 9 episodes. So glad there will be a season 2!

2026-06-18T00:00:00Z

Last high school award ceremony in the books! Z received three awards and finished 3rd in her class for total “points” earned through varsity athletics: ice hockey, field hockey, and lacrosse. Next year, D3 in the last two at Keuka College. Proud!

The Strange World Of… Fugazi | The Quietus

2026-06-17T00:00:00Z

Everything has grown worse in Fugazi’s absence.

So true. And a nice look back at Fugazi’s legacy.

Fazed on a Pony - Flashes

2026-06-17T00:00:00Z

Found this band in Rosy Overdrive's "Best of 2026 (so far) part 1" post and thankfully clicked on the song preview... so good.

AI Economics for Dummies - McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

2026-06-16T00:00:00Z

As AI companies get ready to go public and we get a deeper look at their inner workings, it’s only natural to have questions about their finances, like “Do they make money?” and “How?” Here are a few examples to help the average layperson understand the business side of AI.

Kind of brilliant, absurd examples of the insanity that is the AI bubble.

Craft Quick Capture

2026-04-17T00:00:00Z

Recently I've stumbled upon a few quick capture systems for other note taking apps, like Obsidian... as a Craft user I got pretty jealous, so I used Claude to create a simple page to quickly add information to today's Daily Note in Craft. Complete with keyboard shortcuts that makes the whole process FAST.

Quickly add:

Notes (w/ optional heading) - on page load, your current Daily Note page headings are loaded allowing you to append text to a specific section (or) type to create a new section heading and note at the bottom of the page. Leaving 'Append To' blank adds your note text to the bottom of the page.
Tasks - bulk add tasks to Today, one per line
Links (w/ optional title and note) - add links to check out later with a brief note or for things like creating a JIRA ticket work log in your Daily Note. Appends to the bottom of the page. Lots of potential use cases for this!

The API details and credentials are stored in your browser's Local Storage, so it easy to use this page anywhere – local or hosted on the web.

I've got it published here: https://capture.endonend.org

Feel free to use it as a demo (or however long) or save that page as HTML and use it locally/on your own server.

Questions, feedback, ideas? Let me know!

→ See the Project page for more.

De La Soul - Tiny Desk

2026-03-03T00:00:00Z

Thank you Dave. 🕊️

Foundational Texts: Goonies Never Say Die

2026-02-28T00:00:00Z

A great read from Dan Sinker:

You can trace a very clear line from that summer of being scared and sad and loney and watching The Goonies over and over to punk. The underground that I discovered a few years later—probably four or five in actual years but it feels like far more separation than that—was exactly that: a place where you could exist separate from the conformity of the mainstream, where you could chart your own existence, where you could build possibilities that felt impossible and possible simultaneously, and where you could do it alongside others who had found themselves—their true selves—in the liner notes of 7"s and smudgy printing of zines and sticky floors of a Sunday afternoon show in a rock club that smelled of old beer and sweat. Down there, it was our time.

Underground and decentralized, always.

Buck Meek - Gasoline

2026-02-27T00:00:00Z

Lead track on his new album, The Mirror. So good.

Clear

2026-01-24T00:00:00Z

This was written a few weeks ago and has been sitting in my drafts. Fuck it.

It's clear to me that a portion of this country is driven entirely by cruelty, revenge, and hatred. (Or easily duped into supporting such behavior, as long as it's not against them.)

It's clear that Trump/MAGA supporters are willing to excuse anything he or any Republican does... the racism, the sexual assault, the pedophile behavior and protection, the fraud, the murder, the kidnapping, the white nationalism, the fascism and nazi shit. (Again, as long as it's not against me and I have the very real potential of paying less in taxes... and I can still hang on to the new American Dream of someday becoming a billionaire, I'm good.)

It's also clear that the people in power lack joy, happiness, love, and empathy in their lives. (You know, the shit that makes being a human worthwhile.)

Thinking more about this, in the wake of recent tragedy (which seems to be daily), my thought on the current state of the US is that the "left" are consistently portrayed as the only political actors in our society that ever have agency. If something happens, it's the "left". If something doesn't happen, it's the "left". If some group has to change, to compromise, it's always expected to be the "left" doing all the work.

Instead of say, starting from an idea that say the general public finds favorable, like immigration, the default position for Republicans is "my idea" and you come to me (or with the current administration, it's we'll just do our idea, even if it isn't popular or legal)... versus starting with the majority view and working back to compromise more folks into agreement. That's how nothing substantial ever happens and the Overton Window shifts.

Beyond the terms of the debate being flawed, the elected Democrats are too into the idea of civility when governing, so that means we are now learning that our democracy is some apparent "handshake deal" between the people in charge for the last 250 years. That the powers derived from the constitution are basically worthless when the Supreme Court is corrupt (and bought) and the other branch is not interested in maintaining those handshake guardrails. What if democracy was really the friends we made along the way?

Republicans have been working toward destabilizing and "proving" that liberalism and democracy don't work, that the federal government doesn't work, for over 50 years by purposefully breaking things – the exact things that would (usually) make their constituents lives better. The largest, most recent example of this is the chaos of DOGE and Project 2025, but also examples like Mitch McConnell taking his ball and going home during the Obama years. Republicans have no interest in governing via a federal government that is for everyone. To them, the purpose of the federal government is to solidify their power and nothing else and the end result is it becomes a tool of grievance.

And what better head of a movement that exploits that victimhood, than the current president himself. A FUCKING BILLIONAIRE, who whines and cries about unfair treatment (think about that) more than any other human being on the face of the earth. He plays the part of grievance better than anyone... and at his old age, his racist senile brain is only focused on anything that wins him adoring fans and money (the only thing he cares about actually – he's made his entire fortune building a shitty brand) – even if it's literal nazis and white supremacists (spoiler, you are never on the right side of history, if they are on your side)... he'll latch on to any shit that is a means to this end.

And he's tricked millions into thinking that he cares about their lives, all while living an entire long life of fraud, exploiting contractors and working people, and doing everything in his power to enrich himself over all. Not a shred of concern or focus on anything other than himself and his riches, ever. HE RAN FUCKING FRAUD CHARITIES FOR GOODNESS SAKES! But yeah, sure, now as he nears 80 years old, he will for the first time in his life care about something other than himself. It's all bullshit and he knows it, especially as you see the truthful part of his brain poking through when he says shit like he doesn't think he's going to heaven.

To expand on this: when you consider all of this through the lens of the "male loneliness epidemic" and the "extremely online", which seems to be creating mass murderers (and ICE agents) regularly, you can see these white men, who have many hundreds of years living with women subservient, the "other" subservient, and experiencing life with all of the expectations and privilege that come along with that lack of competition and equity... this idea that "jobs don't want me" and that "women don't want me" aligns with the same approach I mentioned above: these negotiations start with ME and must come to ME. With this approach, there's no agency, no expectations that the white CIS male should ever grow to fit a world where people, OTHER FUCKING HUMAN BEINGS, should obviously have equity, let alone equality.

It's grievance, all the way down... which of course pundits, politicians, media, and grifters exploit for power and money.

My dudes, just go to therapy. It works wonders.

That's my rant for today (and every day lately...)

Also... fuck ICE.

It's all a scam

2025-11-25T00:00:00Z

I stumbled across an eye opening article on how the poverty rate has hidden the true state of the economy for the vast majority of Americans.

How a Broken Benchmark Quietly Broke America by Michael W. Green, Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager for Simplify Asset Management. Here's the set up to the whole article, which is very much worth your time:

But there was one number I had somehow never interrogated. One number that I simply accepted, the way a child accepts gravity.

The poverty line.

I don’t know why. It seemed apolitical, an actuarial fact calculated by serious people in government offices. A line someone else drew decades ago that we use to define who is “poor,” who is “middle class,” and who deserves help. It was infrastructure—invisible, unquestioned, foundational.

This week, while trying to understand why the American middle class feels poorer each year despite healthy GDP growth and low unemployment, I came across a sentence buried in a research paper:

“The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”

I read it again. Three times the minimum food budget.

I felt sick.

Green took a deep look at all of the data and costs associated with moving up from the poverty line and came to a shocking conclusion. On average: The real poverty line—the threshold where a family can afford housing, healthcare, childcare, and transportation without relying on means-tested benefits—isn’t $31,200.

It’s ~$140,000.

and

And the system is designed to prevent them from escaping. Every dollar you earn climbing from $40,000 to $100,000 triggers benefit losses that exceed your income gains. You are literally poorer for working harder.

Anecdotally, I can relate to these numbers. We have 3 kids. My wife and I are working professionals. We definitely weighed the cost of childcare and my wife returning to work (I made more) and the net income from that decision at the time wasn't a lot... but it was the only way to not live paycheck to paycheck during those years.

And even then, money wasn't easy... our combined income was below the figure Green stated for the "actual" poverty line for many of the years when the kids were little. It felt maddening to just get by with an income that always seemed like enough. It's only been the last few years, as the kids have gotten older and we moved past Green's line, that life has felt a little easier. I can't even imagine the hardships faced by the true working poor.

This explains everything we are feeling today. The constant unease, while we're told the economy is doing great and the millionaires/billionaires get richer and richer. And why we're constantly called on to hate immigrants, LGBTQIA+, and the poor (which turns out is pretty much all of us)... all of those groups have so much more in common than with the groups holding the power.

2025-10-07T00:00:00Z

It's been over 20 years since I last saw Stereolab (Seattle, 2004, with Tortoise)... so wasn't sure what to expect with Stereolab in Buffalo of all places. I was blown away, though, both by the band and the crowd. Buffalo LOVES Stereolab, apparently. Sold out crowd and good vibes that almost took Lætitia Sadier to tears. I absolutely love when bands experience the Buffalo that I love and see the city as a place worthy of attention.

YouTube: Hank Green on Sora

2025-10-07T00:00:00Z

There are a lot of quotable parts of this video, but this one sums it all up:

The extent to which these very powerful people feel no sense of responsibility to anything makes me feel like maybe they shouldn't have this much power. They shouldn't be in charge of the kind of thing that could literally, by their own admission, destroy humanity.