I started reading Rob Harvilla’s book 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s and it has already, for me at least, started off on the wrong foot.

Did you ever notice that new music, now, is nowhere near as great as the music you loved as a teenager? And you know what? You’re right. Whether you were a teenager in the ’60s, the ’90s, or the 2010s, you’re right. The music you loved as a teenager is the sweetest music you’ll ever hear; that music will be, in all likelihood, the greatest, wildest, purest love affair of your whole life. That’s how music works; that’s how being a teenager works.

Does it? I guess for normies. I think music now is pretty damn good, though, and I listen mostly to works from the last few years — though I take in an insanely broad range of music. When I was a teenager music helped me cope with my often terrible and traumatic daily life but I don’t think music from that era was the greatest ever made. I’m grateful it existed, though. I am not sure I would’ve made it through without Tori Amos, The Sundays, Mazzy Star (et al.) And while I still listen to those artists and others from that time, there are equally many great artists now doing completely different things that are just as magical in their own way. (For instance, Baby Queen — Arabella Latham — is really, really fucking wonderful.)

The 90s was the last era in most people’s living memory where we thought a global and egalitarian belle époque might be possible and that does matter for the music of the period and all else — that’s not just nostalgia. But music is much more diverse now and more interesting than it was then, and more accessible. That matters a lot.

Growing up in rural North Florida as a complete misfit, my life was pretty miserable in a lot of ways. Music helped me survive it. Now, though, music adds joy and depth to an already-lovely life and I think that’s far better. I wouldn’t go back, for so many reasons, and I’m glad I’m not mired in the past musically. I was thinking the other day that music is the best of humanity realized. So here’s to the music of the now and all the artists still creating it.

The Lord of the Rings is a book* that many people complain is too long but is actually far, far too short. Should have been 10,000 pages. Even though I love it, the works feels strangely truncated and abridged; there was so much world and story left to explore.

*It was always intended to be one book, but the publisher forced Tolkien to split it into three volumes.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

These subtitles are useless!

Thanks, I could not tell from listening that they were speaking Japanese. Great effort there. Really went all out.

I think when you grow up rough like I did, the idea of someone claiming to be a little tiny baby until they were 30 or 35 or whatever seems absolutely insane. Because you have to know who you are early to survive my kind of childhood. Nothing else allows it.

When people are worried about a dinky three year age gap (or even a much larger one, as long as both are adults), it just seems crazy. But I think normals really are perhaps that weak and fragile often, and unformed. It’s hard for me to understand because I just have never been that way and none of my friends, even the much younger ones, have either. I don’t tend to associate with weak people or those who don’t know themselves well. Just not my thang, really. Those wilting flowers and I have little in common.

As social media and smartphones exist now and are likely to exist in a hypercapitalist system, it’d be a huge net overall societal benefit and individual benefit if both were banned or never in fact existed.

They are harmful psychologically and socially and are akin to a supernormal stimulus in animal behavior that causes an organism to respond maladaptively to something it is not evolved to deal with. If neither had ever been created we’d be much better off.

Heh:

Guess I’m in a meme-y mood today.

And this, kids, is why we pirate everything:

Shower thought: the reason management and executives dislike remote work.

This is indeed an extremely large component of the RTO push: it’s both those who relish brandishing visible power and extroverts attempting to poorly fulfill their social needs with fake work friends who’d throw them under the bus in a fucking instant.

And I want no part of any of that.

When I lived in North Florida, I felt like an uninvited and unwelcome guest in my own life. But now with my partner I feel like we’re superstars in each other’s favorite movies.

What a difference. What a freakin’ difference.

Laid off after 10 years and just feeling sad.

This is a company getting rid of its highest-paid staff. This will probably happen to me one day I’m guessing, since I still am in very technical roles while also managing people — so I am sometimes paid more than my own managers (which makes some of them angry, but none of them can do the things I do).

This is merely typical MBA thinking in action.

It’s a real tragedy that the vast majority of men are taught early on that expressing any interest of any kind in a woman is harassment and is hurtful to the woman in question. This creates really fucked-up dynamics later on. I know feminists claim this does not occur, but it very much does; even apart from my pariah status as a kid I was taught that any expressed interest in a woman was harming her. So were all my friends. And I’ve talked to many, many other men who got the very same message.

I’m not here to blame feminism or anything in particular. There are multiple causes. But it is what happens. And it shouldn’t.

However, mobile apps designed for leisurely entertainment translate badly into complex desktop applications built for power user productivity.

All of this is true:

Using software professionally isn’t about having a chic, boutique experience – it’s about getting the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. Sometimes, that means working with irreducible complexity.

…

I could swiftly accomplish basic tasks in programs on the various platforms, including management of the programs themselves, such as determining which window was focused, what was a button and not, how to find advanced features, how to learn keyboard shortcuts, etc. Fundamental functions had fixed homes (Save and Open under File, for example) and the way to access them was sufficiently similar. This was efficient (learn one concept, apply it everywhere), easy to use (observe one system/program, operate all of them) and thus satisfying: my skills are transferable!

The core problem is that computers used to be aimed at those experienced with them, and those unafraid of having to learn something and capable of doing so — and usually those with quite high IQs.

Now, computers are aimed at mouth-breathers with the IQ of a turnip who cannot find dog food in a Purina plant. Also, computers and applications have been contaminated by mobile conventions and the useless and harmful paradigms that the mobile restrictions promote, leading to the insanity of (for instance) having no focus indications on windows any longer because mobile does not have that. There are no words for how absurdly stupid that is, and how harmful to usability.

Every current UI designer and their associated MBA overlords should be flung into the sun. The mouth-breathers too, but I think they’d make the sun too dumb to shine. Just Toro chipper-shredder for them, I guess.

I want real usable computers and programs back again. I think what I (and the author of the linked post) object to the most is something that many are too reticent or too afraid of consequences to say, but I’m not. And it’s this: I am not a dumbass, and should not be forced to do the things that dumbasses have to do.

I’m really fucking angry that nearly everything is moving away from having a 3.5mm headphone jack now. It’s vastly superior to Bluetooth or anything with USB. Bluetooth for audio bites ass so hard and sounds like a Croatian outhouse. USB is also not made for audio and works like total garbage.

You can’t even get a modern fucking docking station with a headphone jack now. Fuck anyone who had anything to do with that. Makes my life minorly but very noticeably worse.

Making everyone at the symphony enraged by calling the flute player the “fluter tooter.”