Over the weekend, I had an interesting conversation with a relative. The conversation was not interesting so much as my reaction was interesting.

This relative asked what school I had gone to and I replied with the addition that I had majored in political science. Without hesitation, he responded, “let’s talk about politics.” My reply, “let’s not,” went in one ear and out the other.

To backtrack, I had become extremely passionate about politics during my senior year of high school. Over the course of my college career, I shied away from pursuing my innate passion to debate ethics, policy, and humanitarian issues. However, after many twists-and-turns, majors and minors, I found myself holding a BA in political science.

Back to the conversation.

Naturally, it veered into Hillary Clinton’s announcement for the 2016 presidential bid. My relative’s qualm against her was that electing her as president “would put Bill back in the White House,” but “Bill was a good president.” My confusion began here.

Then my blood began to boil. I hadn’t felt this way in a long time. But I wouldn’t let it get the better of me. I was wiser than I was in high school and college. I had learned not to speak up when I didn’t know 110% of what I was talking about.

But I snapped.

After a few unproven assumptions about how things would pan out if she were president, I interrupted:

“If Hillary is elected, there are going to be folks that never let go of the email scandal. If Ted Cruz is elected, there are going to be folks that never let go of the fact that he was born in Canada. Just like the folks that wasted four years plus another four years questioning Obama’s birth certificate.

“Too much time is wasted. This shit doesn’t matter.”

It was quick, tame, and uneducated in the context of all things political. But even without all the answers and a well crafted strategy (of which I only ever had in school), I fought back; something I hadn’t done in years.

To be clear, I do believe that Hillary’s email scandal is a big deal. But under the context of my argument, it helped… maybe. I’m rusty. Cut me some slack.

In any case, the campaign season is upon us. Every four years, many “sports ball” tech nerds like myself get fired up during this time. It is a spectator sport we get interested in. And unlike fantasy sports, selecting your candidates and propositions actually affect real-life.

In the next week or so, my passion around campaign season will likely cool down. Like the baseball season, I’ll stay focused during opening week, putter out during mid-season, and ramp back up during the final third. But for once in quite some time, I feel fired up. And I like it.

Seth Godin on The Moment with Brian Koppelman:

If you think that you were born to paint in oils, or you were born to speak the truth about income inequality, or you were born— it’s just not true. If Vincent Van Gogh were born today, he would not work in oils. If Steve Jobs had been born 500 years ago, he would have done something else.

So what is the authentic version of Vincent Van Gogh? There isn’t one. What there is is someone who sought out a series of emotions that he could create for himself and gifts he could give other people through his work. And what I’m getting at is yes, we need to be consistent in honoring the truth of what we came to say.

But I also know that if I’d been born one block away from where I was born to different parents, or if I had been born in Yugoslavia, the fact that I’m here talking to you about these things would not have occurred. This is not the authentic expression of my DNA.

Excellent reminder.

American jazz and hip-hop vocalist José James during a ‘Meet the Musician’ event at the Apple Store, Kurfürstendamm:

I couldn’t believe one artist had made 50 albums. I pull one out and I look at the back and it has four tracks on it and each track is 18-minutes long. I’m thinking, “I can’t listen to this. I want value.” I was looking for the one with twelve tracks on it.

So incredibly peculiar how we subscribe value. I too ran into the same quandary when experiencing Miles Davis for the first time. Then I thought back to listening to ”The Decline” on repeat. And ”2113” after that. And ”Goodbye Sky Harbor” after that. And ”Cicatriz E.S.P.” after that. And ”Drop” after that. And ”Chimera Obscurant” after that. And ”Dauðalagið” after that.

Cumulative time does not equate to value. I’ll be damned if I couldn’t listen to ”So What” on loop for the rest of my life.

Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff on Aisha Tyler’s Girl On Guy podcast:

Writing dialogue. I love it. That’s the fun part for me. The hard part for me is writing the descriptions. There’s just something great about writing ‘INT. RESTAURANT. DAY/NIGHT’. A production designer’s going to figure that shit out. I don’t have to worry about it. I’m just going to write what the characters are saying.

I still love writing novels. Writing fiction to me… I still think of it as the highest form of writing, but it’s so fucking hard and it’s torture for me. I don’t have fun doing it. I have fun writing screenplays.

An extremely honest and reassuring quote. What aspiring writer doesn’t want to hear a quote like this from one of the co-creators of the most ambitious show on television?

Sam Byford of The Verge on Nintendo’s trickle-release strategy for Virtual Console:

Here are some movies you can watch right now on Netflix without causing the value of film as a medium to implode: Raging Bull. Fargo. Manhattan. Pulp Fiction. Chinatown. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Amélie. Trainspotting. Apocalypse Now. Rocky. These are movies that a lot of people probably pay several dollars each for on iTunes (or, well, DVD) à la carte, yet their availability on Netflix doesn’t hurt their classic status. Nintendo has by far the most valuable back catalog and intellectual property in gaming; even if it only made its own titles available and ignored third parties completely, it’d have a vast library that a lot of people would be willing to pay monthly for.

Sure, some will pay the cost of a month of Netflix for Super Mario 64 this month. But what about next month? I can’t imagine Donkey Kong 64 or Paper Mario drawing similar revenue, but they’re exactly the kind of title people would dip into out of curiosity under a subscription model. In a world where EA is offering access to all but its newest current console games for just $30 a year, this doesn’t seem like the hardest of calls.

When Nintendo began trickling out retro titles for the Wii Virtual Console, I shared Byford’s strong aversion to the slow, methodical rollout of games that had been available on past consoles (and ROMs) for years. At the mention of Super Mario 64 coming to Wii U, and Wii titles before that, the aversion never surfaced.

That the comparison of video games to film is an “apples vs. oranges” debate. Consumption of classic movies takes markedly less time than consumption of classic video games. With little time to focus on a single game, let alone the plethora or titles released every week/month, it’s nice to put the brake on “the binge” with an unhurried drip. A subscription service would not only bombard players with a catalog as stress inducing as Netflix’s, it would also surely waste away subscribers dollars spent vs. content consumed.

Regarding price, for titles I love and want to re-experience, Donkey Kong 64 and Paper Mario being two of them, I am more than happy to shell out $9.99 ($2.00 if I’ve already purchased on Wii) to relive the experience. On the other hand, I see what Byford is getting at regarding titles I had never played. Many of these legacy DS games are going to be a hard sell for me, especially when pit up against some of my fondest memories.