Tag: thoughts

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I’ve been on a anti-streaming platform tirade as of late. The latest target has been music. Since discovering the platform SoulSeek I’ve been gathering all the tunes from nostalgia and my current Spotify lists.

With this, I’ve been listening to music locally using Fooyin. I went through a few media players, even terminal based MPD ones. Fooyin just worked with no fuss.

A side effect of local listening is that I’ve been listening to music in terms of “albums” and not assorted songs on a playlist. At first, I didn’t like it.

That was until the other day when I went back and listened to 2000s Ohio band Hawthorne Heights. They were one of those bands I had my favorite songs added to some lists, but never the whole album.

I played some games and threw the album on to discover several songs I just forgot, then found ones I’ve never heard that I enjoyed. Hell, I listened to a whole 2008 album that I never realized existed. I liked it too!

Listening to the entire album from start to finish is an interesting experience that I think a lot of us (at least me) have strayed away from.

It reminded me of the time before instant accessibility when you would buy a CD for one song but listen to the entire album because it’s all you had.

We gave artists the attention to hear their whole vision. Albums had intros to set a theme. They included interludes. Most of the time there is a goofy song thats a little different than the bands usual sound. It was special.

Now, we have condensed artists into their top songs. Most people save a few songs from an artist and move on to the next. Playlists are compilations of a vibe.

If you haven’t in a while, spin up one of your favorite albums and just listen to the whole thing, start to finish.

Here is a few that I’ve been listening to:

Hawthorne Heights – If Only You Were Lonely (2006)
Sugar Ray – 14:59 (1999)
Post Malone – F1-Trillion (2024)
Unleash The Archers – Time Stands Still (2015)

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I loved the first Zootopia movie. I finally got to see the sequel on the last day of showing in theaters. And, just to get it out of the way. I loved it! I could easily talk about all the scenes and jokes I enjoyed, but instead I’d like to talk about some observations I made with the plot. Extreme spoilers ahead.

Like the original Zootopia, it was no stranger to making a political statement. The one here is obviously colonialism. There was another less on the nose one that I think flys under the radar which is whitewashing.

Gary De’ Snake’s grandmother the inventor of the weather wall system represented in my opinion not only female inventors but, African American female inventors.

There was a moment in plot explanation monologue where they were describing how the Reptiles town was literally buried under “snow”. Of course, we are talking about a family of Lynx and obviously they are tundra dwelling predatory animals. But, I didn’t think that reference was on accident.

I felt it was some pretty clever writing. Historically there were inventions that were ignored or not properly credited to African American females like the case of Ellen F. Elgin, inventor of the clothes wringer.

I’m looking forward to watching it again in the future. Maybe with a re-watch I can try picking up on other details.

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Social media has really fucked things up. I remember when Myspace was just a top 5 list of your best friends.

Now all social media is some elusive, manipulative algorithm that we’ve sold our identities to.

I finally understand why over the years so many have strongly urged for people to create their own websites.

Having your own website is like a private digital garden that you get to curate on your own. Create digital gardens not doom-scrollable content for an algorithm.