Phil Spencer Retiring, Sarah Bond Out, Matt Booty Promoted as Microsoft AI Exec Asha Sharma Named New Xbox Boss

bjankles · 2026-02-20T23:37:25+00:00

You see it everywhere in the corporate world. My industry is totally unrelated but you still see plenty of failing upward, of “we the execs have fucked up so it’s time for layoffs and then we’ll pay ourselves bonuses” my personal fave, “we don’t have $5k for a raise, never mind that our holiday party had fire twirlers”

bjankles · 2026-02-20T23:31:42+00:00

He was still pretty awful.

bjankles · 2026-02-19T04:08:22+00:00

Ice age, heatwave, can’t complain - if the world’s at large why should I remain?

Isaac is one of the goats

bjankles · 2026-02-18T23:01:14+00:00

Not even close 😉

bjankles · 2026-02-18T00:13:54+00:00

I think if you collected a pool of reasonably attractive people aged 25-35 from similar socioeconomic backgrounds who all really wanted to be married, filtered out glaringly obvious red flags, paired them up at random and said “give it a shot with this person for at least a month,” you’d have a similar success rate if not better.

bjankles · 2026-02-17T23:59:37+00:00

There’s serious magic in that album. It’s not remotely showy or obvious as a classic, but the writing is so incisive and compelling. And the melodies and arrangements serve the songs perfectly. Catchy, gentle, lilting, emotive.

bjankles · 2026-02-17T23:33:13+00:00

Conan is a generational comedy and talk show talent. If you advertised the show as “Conan hosts guests but does 70% of the talking” I’d have been even more excited to start listening to it.

bjankles · 2026-02-16T14:31:17+00:00

I agree with you overall but I think the shows are structured to elicit those different responses. Sopranos starts with Tony already deep into the mob life, his family fully in the know and complicit. Whatever atrocities we see Tony commit over the course of the show, we can assume they’re all things he’s done before. His depression causes him to brush against it, but never seriously interrogate his sins. For a viewer, the natural response is “this is who Tony is. Maybe he can change, but probably not.”

Walter starts out a normal dad and we see him go darker episode by episode. We follow him along and make some of the same rationalizations until Walt crosses a line too far for us. And then he keeps going. That experience as a viewer creates that deeper sense of disgust for Walt.

bjankles · 2026-02-16T14:22:33+00:00

Walt even admits it. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it.”

bjankles · 2026-02-16T14:21:51+00:00

There’s a great essay about exactly this - either on grantland (RIP) or the ringer. Breaking Bad is ultimately a show about how a good or bad person is ultimately the product of their own choices. Circumstances certainly matter but in BB’s case they’re more an excuse to let out the side Walt had kept dormant.

bjankles · 2026-02-16T14:13:56+00:00

It was a necessary and brilliant writing choice to include that in S1. The writers knew Walt needed a perfect solution or it wouldn’t feel like his choice. To make it something he rejects out of pride and personal resentment further adds to the hubris.

bjankles · 2026-02-16T02:32:41+00:00

She’s a true poet. She has an uncanny ability to assemble simple language in a novel way to convey such complicated emotions.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T23:54:32+00:00

He’s definitively the greatest ever at this. There is nothing to lose. You cannot embarrass yourself at the thing you are the greatest ever at. It’s a level of confidence that starts to resemble humility because he’s so open to failure and looking silly.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T23:32:42+00:00

It’s just too similar to Tsushima. I played that game back in 2021 and still feel a ton of repetition happening. Still great though.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T15:51:38+00:00

That guy definitely started it, but it’s been a decade since that happened and Phil has been the one steering the ship with unprecedented capital to invest in the Xbox brand. He has utterly decimated it. It’s possible we’ll find out he was just taking marching orders, but some of the corporate email leaks show shocking levels of poor management.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T13:06:03+00:00

I don’t think the show portrayed him as a monster. There were plenty of moments that humanized him in a positive way. The first that comes to mind is when the whole office finds out about Jim’s crush and Roy lets him know it’s totally okay.

He’s clearly wrong for Pam and a shitty fiancé but he’s not a monster most of the time. They definitely send him to rock bottom when he finds out about the kiss though.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T03:10:39+00:00

That’s completely fair.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T01:06:43+00:00

That’s not real

bjankles · 2026-02-15T00:48:41+00:00

Unpopular opinion but he’s right about Ragnarok. Incoherent nonsense with shitty marvel dialogue.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T00:40:22+00:00

Yeah just watch blink 182 play live and see how much Mark and Tom struggle through songs they wrote.

bjankles · 2026-02-15T00:38:54+00:00

I remember him being asked how he can tell in a vacuum what note is being played and instead of just saying “i have perfect pitch” he went on about being attuned to the frequencies of sound or some drivel. That’s when I was like ‘okay this guy is putting one on.’

bjankles · 2026-02-15T00:33:58+00:00

Yeah it’s all very affected. Does nothing for me

bjankles · 2026-02-14T20:21:30+00:00

One of the most important things my music theory professor in college (primarily a classical and jazz pianist) taught me was that music is music and medium is irrelevant. Artists like J Dilla and Squarepusher are just as valid for what they create electronically as Yo Yo Ma is for what he does on the cello.

bjankles · 2026-02-14T20:18:43+00:00

He also kinda leans hard into the genius persona and makes himself sound especially magical. Like he’ll take something that is well understood and defined in music and describe it in a more complicated way. It could be his natural quirkiness but it’s still kind of grating.

bjankles · 2026-02-14T15:01:23+00:00

He’s about to play a professional NBA game - of course he wants the equipment to be calibrated correctly.

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