The Independent Variable
The Independent Variable
Kevin Humdrum
Welcome to The Independent Variable, the official linkblog of the interwebs covering culture, politics, sports, and tech since 2012.
Latest Posts
BandcampH/t to Crucial Tracks for this incredible find. So much fun listening through the demos that led to the creation of the best album of the year.
I'm not really supposed to do self-promotion here... but I was featured on What's in my NOW? if you care to give it a gander.
Sticky comicsIn fashion language, white suggests luxury, like, you donāt have to work, because if you worked, youād wear a more practical color that wonāt get stained within 5 minutes. Staying clean is a privilege ā the aristocracy keeps...
Crucial TracksI donāt think itās ethical to use Apple Music, but I DO think itās unethical to use Spotify. I donāt think the āHow to quit Spotifyā article made any point other than finding a more ethical alternative to Spotify, which...
WSJOver the next six months, Van der Velden toiled with her 15-person team to nail down the look of her leading lady, creating 2,000 iterations of an actress unbound by the limits of physical ability, age or talent.In recent weeks, she...
New YorkerIn the months since Geese released its third studio album, āGetting Killed,ā the band has been rhapsodically heralded as the redeemer of a certain kind of noisy, lawless rock and roll.Spoiler alert: Getting Killed is making my...
BirchtreeSo Iāll ask again, would you rather have had your music listened to by more people and you earned more money, or would you like to have had fewer people listen and make less money?Iām sorry, but this is nonsense. The whole point...
YouTubeSami is a favorite to win the Turner Award for 2025, featuring the best in new developments in contemporary art in Britain. Getting to see Sami in his element, talking about his art, was wondrous. There is power and reckoning in...
pkethWhen that happens, companies (especially the VC-backed kind) now need to contrive new and increasingly stick-like reasons for customers to pay again. From made-for-marketing āfeaturesā that suck to use IRL, to breaking compatibility...
Winter is ComingAnyone can start a literary journal, but it takes dedication and care for one to prosper and grow into something with potential. Foofaraw Press is an independent zine of surreal storytelling and worldly observations....
The EconomistMany of the new lawyers installed in senior posts over recent months ādonāt care what the right answer isā, bemoans the former senior JAG. āThey spend all their time trying to figure out what the administration wants and...
Mac AppSo this is a genius app/extension to Apple Notes that works on top of Apple Notes to give you better formatting tools, markdown, slash commands, backlinks, and templates. It has me rethinking where I keep my notesācurrently in iA...
.new - Google RegistryBrowse the full list of .new shortcuts available today from Adobe, Spotify, and many more.Whats.NewI have long been a frequent user of "docs.new" to quickly create new Google Docs. TIL that there are far more '.new'...
LithubTons of awesome looking and sounding books here. Support small presses this holiday season! The dream is for a Foofaraw book to one day be featured on a list like this.
SF ChronicleAlthough Michelin has positioned its inspectorsā anonymity as a key component of its process in evaluating restaurants and hotels, the wine inspectorsā visits will not be anonymous.I find the Michelin Guide to be absolutely...