This is me with watermelon.

I still have my library of tracks from the mid 2000s on a drive in my PC. Hell, I still have my iPod Classic.

That said, I spend 99% of my time streaming music.

That said², I never ever engage with playlists. They only serve to poison the well that is my algorithm. I have a tightly curated Youtube video algorithm and, even though Youtube Music’s algorithm is dogshit compared to Spotify, I still protect it at all costs.

You can still be an active listener on streaming services.

I’m currently three quarters of the way through Decapitated’s Organic Hallucinosis record while I clean the house. For the last month straight I’ve been mainlining Steven Wilson’s solo records as well as Porcupine Tree records. Music is not dead for the active listeners in the world. The focus should be on encouraging kids to appreciate a good album every once in a while.

Personally, I’m not feeling that same vibe. I think the solidarity against the US is a very good thing, but the sheer amount of ways Canada is just “America Light” is very depressing. Its to the point that our flag has been so sullied by absolutely shit tier movements in the last 5 years that I can’t stand to see it anymore.

Every time I see a private flag pole, bumper stickers or anything kind of patriotic merch my knee jerk reaction is “I bet this dude’s a fuckwad.” I know that I’m painting with a huge and shitty brush but I just can’t even fight against it anymore. I know it’s wrong. I just don’t care, and that makes me sad.

I live comfortably here, but given even a minutely convenient reason to emigrate I think I’d take it.

Canada is a car infested, anti-human shit hole just like America. To paraphrase Steve Harris of Iron Maiden a bit “We oil the jaws of the war capitalist machine and feed it with our babies immigrants.”

Who is this?

That’s a pretty insane threshold. I say that as a die hard underground metal fan.

Salesforce is so fucking AI-pilled its insane. I hate having to use their shit-tier CRM.

My roommate’s cat got her head through a plastic grocery bag handle then when she tried to back out of it it made a crinkly noise and she panicked. She bolted around the apartment for a solid minute with a grocery bag full of stuff in it causing absolute mayhem. The bag got caught on the leg of one of the kitchen chairs at high speed and she tore the handle right off the bag.

She ended up sitting on the arm of the couch with the handle of this plastic bag still around her neck. She looked like she had a cheapo lion’s mane. 🤣

Black holes don’t just roam around looking for planets to snack on.

Don’t be so sure. There’s plenty of cases of black holes devouring entire star systems. There’s so many black holes just drifting around that you could make a case that they are just roaming around looking for their next snack.

If I saw anyone harm any animal intentionally outside of self-defence, that’s an instant and permanent write off. I’d literally take any opportunity to talk shit about said person beating animals and would take pride in beating their ass if the moment was right.

Anyone hurting animals gets a big ol’ irrevocable “fuck you” from me.

There’s like 8 billion people on this planet you can be friends with. Don’t roll with or enable abusers.

“Un chat” is correct.

Masc. = un chat. Fem. = une chatte.

I find it difficult to pull myself out of long autopilot “drifts” is what I like to call them; where I’m not consciously electing to do anything in particular, I’m just moving through the day at the whim of whatever catches my attention. This is problematic because there are things that I actually want to do during the day; things I’ve been thinking about doing for a while like making music, DIY projects, anything really.

While I’m in these drifts I’m essentially lighting time on fire. It’s almost always completely wasted time which causes a problem. Once I’m able to snap out of the drift, I realize I’ve squandered time that I needed to dedicate to the things I actually wanted to do. This causes me immense stress and existential dread. Feels like I’m actually wasting my life.

If I snap out of it early, I’m stressed to cram in all the things I wanted to do and sometimes the stress is so overwhelming that I can’t think clearly enough to get anything done and I’ll just give up and fall into doomscrolling or some other time wasting thing like that.

This ties into my habits because when I didn’t have day-to-day chores and responsibilities integrated into these drifts it would all get pushed to the next day and I’d procrastinate heavily until it became a problem not only for me but for my wife as well.

I put some deep thought into what’s going on during these weird drift times and I realized a lot of what I’m doing is actually just force of habit, some good habits but mostly bad habits. I figured that since these habits are so strongly ingrained in me to the point that I often don’t even realize that I’m doing any of them in particular until after they’re done, I thought that if I could integrate the chores and other undesirable necessities of being a functioning person in a household into these drift states, I’d likely just end up getting all this shit done without putting too much brain power into tracking and remembering to do them, let alone the effort to commit to the task.

It took me about two months of painful dedication to burning these activities into my brain as new habits. When I’d be tempted to just put them off until later, I’d stop and pep talk myself into just fucking doing the thing, no exceptions or excuses and not allow myself to do anything else until it was done. Sometimes it was stuff as simple as just taking cups from my office down to the dishwasher. Other times it was more detailed and lengthy responsibilities that come with being a husband and a homeowner.

It was incredibly difficult for a while to force myself as a round peg through the square hole so to speak. Sometimes I just wanted to cry when I realized that I couldn’t just procrastinate and that I had committed myself to doing the dishes after every single meal. Sounds silly but when your mind is racing with all these things that you’re hyperfixated on (mostly music for me), the thought of losing time with that, even for 15 minutes to do dishes, can feel catastrophic.

What’s funny is that I didn’t even realize a specific moment when these new habits just clicked. My wife said one day “Man, you’ve done a complete 180 on this stuff. The house is clean, everything is done all the time, I can’t believe it”. In that moment I hadn’t even realized that I had actually achieved my goal. All of these previously loathsome tasks that drove me nuts were just integrated into my day and I wasn’t even thinking about them anymore.

I’d think about what I did previously first thing in the morning; make a pot of coffee. Where previously I’d just stand around scrolling waiting for my coffee, I noticed in hindsight that I had actually brought laundry downstairs on my way to the kitchen, started the pot, went out side and filled bird feeders and baths, finished up a small amount of dishes in the sink from movie night the night before, and cleaned the counter tops because they needed it - all on autopilot.

This isn’t a flawless process either. It requires its own maintenance. I’ll notice every couple of weeks that I’m leaving more cups and dishes on my desk in my office than I should be, or that I put off scooping the cat litter until the morning for no real reason and have to have my own little internal pep talk again to remind myself of my commitment to myself and also to my wife; that I’m an active participant in this household with shared responsibilites with my wife and that I’m not a slave to my mind’s weird thought process. I stop and I think about what I’m doing and why and that gives me the motivation to do the things I need to do.

The best part is that this is much more efficient than just living off the cuff and at the whim of my brain’s weirdness and that despite doing more chores than ever, I have way more free time to do the things I enjoy. I consider it one of the biggest wins of my life up to this point.

I guess I’m the exception.

I’m not medicated. The only control I have over my life is by doing exactly this; making things into habits. I’m a creature of habit and I’m on autopilot most of the time. Integrating daily challenges into that autopilot mode has changed my life.

Yeah that’s what I was thinking too. At a certain age where they’re not just finger painting randomness anymore, why not let a kid run wild with their room. It’s not the end of the world if you need to re-paint the walls if you need to move.

Yeah, they were all stepping in phase with each other. Pretty cool physics going on there.

Two people will be about 3 dB higher, four people would be 6, eight people would increase the level by 9 dB, sixteen would be 12 dB higher and so on.

This is only the case if they’re making identical sounds in phase with each other. The real life scenario of people walking would not scale in this way as there are too many variables. No two footsteps are the same no matter how hard you try.

If you actually view the site, I think it’s pretty clear that its a well intentioned site with a genuine interest in providing travel tips and info to people. There’s no reason that site should have had its traffic obliterated.

Ouroboros, the new standard.

Yeah, open relationships aren’t my thing, but consensual anything really doesn’t bother me one bit.

I’d voluntarily be subjected to endless physical and mental torture before I ever even considered betraying my wife’s trust. I’d literally rather die.

Cheating is unforgivable. It happened to me when I was in my 20s.

In Peru (and some islands in the Pacific as well IIRC), some regions have nine digit numbering plans. This may have been a call from one of those areas. More likely its spam.