How far OSes and browsers have regressed truly makes me sad.

Windows and Firefox are nearly-completely unusable simpleton-aimed messes of garbage design now, and it takes me hours sometimes to achieve things (particularly in Firefox) that used to take me minutes or seconds.

Mac and Linux are better, but getting worse all the time.

I lived through the “freedom” era of computing and the internet, so it’s very painful to have it all taken away, and then to be told it’s “better.”

Firefox makes me the angriest, but all of it frustrates and enrages me to no end.

Fuck Mozilla and fuck the Firefox developers.

Something very, very important that this article doesn’t mention is that humans often crash into large, immobile objects where they aren’t supposed to be all the time. It is extremely, extremely common. This is not (just) a computer issue. In fact, I suspect autonomous vehicles will eventually be better at avoiding these sorts of accidents than humans.

One I remember is that a tractor trailer jackknifed on a highway. It was clear weather. Nevertheless, 20 cars smashed right into the trailer without braking. They simply did not see it because their minds were not expecting it to be there.

Most people have probably heard of the invisible gorilla experiment. The tractor-trailer crash and resulting pile-up is an example of that sort of inattentional blindness. Like the autonomous vehicles, the humans were on the lookout for other moving vehicles. The saw what they expected to see, and were looking for, and all else was not visible.

In this instance, we — as we should — are holding our robots to higher standards than we hold ourselves.

The judge in the Larry Nassar case is beyond awesome.

Aly Raisman (one of Nassar’s victims) is one of my favorite athletes because she can do this:

And because she seems like a cool human being in general. Those are all double layouts, and among the most difficult moves in gymnastics. She makes them look so easy.

Incredibly sad to hear her testimony, to hear her recount the monstrous evil that Nassar got away with for so long. Fuck that guy. I wish he were dead. I’d kill him myself and not feel the least remorse nor would I ever think about it again.

I don’t think I’ve ever hated any group of people outside of politics as much as I despise the Mozilla leadership and developers. The below is why — everything I use many times a day is completely broken and always will be. This is only through the F’s of my extension — which is the grade fucking Mozilla gets on any understanding of why people actually used their browser. I am using Waterfox, which is why anything I need actually still works.

Fuck everyone who had anything to do with this, and wasting so much of my goddamn time. Fuck you all.

Unlike most of these lists, this one isn’t bad. Whoever wrote this actually knows quite a bit about music. Not all of those on the above list are truly story songs, but unsurprisingly I have quite a few more that are:

1) Midwestern Biography – Idgy Vaughn

2) C’etait l’hiver – Isabelle Boulay (Yes, I know this is a cover.)

3) The Downeaster Alexa – Billy Joel

4) Strawberry Wine – Deana Carter

5) Oh, What a Night – Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons

6) Blacksmith – Loreena McKennitt

7) Dead Man’s Curve – Jan & Dean

8) Vicent – Deb Talan

9) Annabelle Lee – Sarah Jarosz

10) Sarah – Kate Miller-Heidke (this is by far the best story song ever written in my opinion)

11) Crazy Mary – Pearl Jam (originally by Victoria Williams, but Pearl Jam’s version is better)

12) Southern Cross – Crosby, Stills & Nash

13) Planets – Kate Rusby (It took me a long time to realize this was a story song, but it very much is.)

14) Prairie Wedding – Mark Knopfler

15) Here – Alessia Cara

16) 99 Red Balloons – Nena

17) Coat of Many Colors – Dolly Parton

18) Hands of Time – Margo Price

19) Turn the Page – Bob Seger

20) Angel from Montgomery – Susan Tedeschi (yes, I know, originally by John Prine, but Tedeschi just kills it)

21) Gallows Pole – Led Zeppelin

22) Our Town – Iris DeMent

23) Was It 26 – Chris Stapleton (And yep, I know this was originally by the Charlie Daniels Band. I used to listen to it on record.)

24) The River – Bruce Spingsteen

25) The Best Day – Taylor Swift

26) He – Hattie Marsh

27) Beauty Way – Eliza Gilkyson

28) Guinevere – Lucy Kaplansky

29) Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town – Pearl Jam

30) Minneapolis – that dog.

31) John the Fisherman – Primus

32) Gold Rush Brides – 10,000 Maniacs

33) Me and a Gun – Tori Amos

34) Leaving on a Jet Plane – Chantal Kreviazuk (Yes, I know, originally by John Denver. This version is better.)

35) The Boxer – Simon & Garfunkel

36) I Wish – Stevie Wonder

37) Don’t Stand So Close to Me – The Police

38) The Jug of Punch – Altan

39) White Houses – Vanessa Carlton

40) Jane Says – Jane’s Addiction

41) City Garden – Jess Klein

42) Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin

43) Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns – Mother Love Bone

44) Red Dirt Girl – Emmylou Harris

45) The White Cockade – Kate Rusby

46) Funky Ceili – Black 47

47) My Blue Ridge Mountain Boy – Dolly Parton

48) Shonalee – Jess Klein

49) Four Spare Seats – Kate Miller-Heidke

50) Blackjack – Swati

51) She’s In Love With the Boy – Trisha Yearwood

There are many more, but those are just ones I could think of fairly quickly that were not on the other list (and that I like). I deliberately tried to include some uncommon ones — and all were from my own head.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Lot of covers today it appears.

Remember when the NYT eliminated their copy desk and insisted it wouldn’t affect the quality? As everyone knew, wrong. I increasingly see grammatical and orthographic mistakes on their site, as in this article.

Mistakes like this just shouldn’t appear with any sort of regularity in a newspaper (this article was also in the print edition) of a media organization with the NYT‘s vast resources.

Funny what happens when you eliminate your copy desk.

I’m not defending Aziz Ansari here. I think he was a jerk to “Grace” and though not a rapist, certainly an entitled asshole.

However, many women will outright reject you as pusillanimous and unmanly if you are not sexually forward or aggressive. I tend not to be attracted to these type of women, but I have certainly dated a few. I don’t mean pressuring a woman into sex — I mean unless you really take the initiative, these women see you as a complete loser and weak. They are attracted to the narrative of the aggressive, implacable male. Ansari I am sure has experienced more of these women than people in most other walks of life. I am certain that these experiences altered his behavior towards women.

As I said, these women are not for me. But in my experience, they are roughly half the dating market. Direct quote from a woman who was essentially berating me for not being sexually aggressive enough (before we’d ever had sex): “You have to make me yours! Stop asking so many questions!”

Not sure where that falls into the “enthusiastic consent” narrative. Essentially, she wanted none of that at all. Feminists will tell you these women don’t exist. Feminists are wrong. Of course, according to feminists, socialization also doesn’t exist and is all-encompassing, whether they are talking about men being socialized or women.

I wish ambiguity were excisable from human interaction — most of the time at least. But the simple fact is that it’s persistent and indissoluble. Certainly, culture can be changed. Human nature, however, cannot be.