End On End

Locked in and published: my favorite 20 albums from 2024. www.crucialtracks.org/my-favori…

New hack to get page views has to be load your site up with so many scripts that the page repeatedly crashes on 50% load, so you have to keep refreshing the page. Every “major” site I visit seems to be this way now. The internet is so broken.

Adam Newbold, the purveyor of Neatnik/OMG.lol/Social.lol and many other sites, just launched The People Pledge:

I pledge to recognize the dignity and worth of all people.

I will not discriminate against or devalue anyone because of their age, race, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, social class, faith, neurotype, or physical appearance.

I commit to treating others fairly and rejecting prejudice in all its forms.

A pretty simple idea and one you’d think would be closer to the default in 2024, but apparently that isn’t the case for a significant portion of the United States, at least.

Everyone deserves the dignity of humanity. To love and be loved. The grace to live their life free of hatred, bigotry, threats, or violence. You may not understand every human, their choices or their defaults, but that is OK… because in most cases it isn’t FOR you. I think we’d do better as a society, if we just realized we don’t have to live everyone else’s life too.

What is consistent across all of humanity, though, is EVERYONE is battling something. Some problem, big or small, and many times, it’s multiple problems at once. A little grace, empathy, and love can go a long way.

I’m not perfect, so this pledge is my commitment to do better every day.

Join us.

I’ve been exploring Craft more, now that I took advantage of their 50% off for life promotion. It’s been fun discovering all the new features since I last used it, as well as how I can integrate apps like Things and GoodLinks, which I have been using more often.

My most recent discovery has been exporting highlights in GoodLinks to a new Craft document. I think I have a pretty good setup, so it’s time to share!

First off, you will need to edit the GoodLinks export template (Settings > Highlight > Edit Export Format). I ended up with this template, but feel free to customize however you like:

{{#tags.0}}
Tags: {{#tags}}{{name}}{{^is_last}}, {{/is_last}}{{/tags}}
{{/tags.0}}

{{#author}}
Author: {{author}}
{{/author}}

---

{{#highlights}}
*{{created_at}}*

{{content_md | blockquote}}
{{#note}}

{{note}}
{{/note}}
{{^is_last}}

---

{{/is_last}}
{{/highlights}}

You will also want to make sure “Include highlights in Markdown” is checked on this setting page as well.

Then you should install my shortcut.

There are two import questions when you install the Shortcut:

• First to choose the space for the new note
• Then an optional Folder selection. I skip that one, as they by default go to Unsorted, which I treat as an Inbox.

The best place to run this workflow is on iOS because the GoodLinks iOS app has a custom action you can create for this shortcut. To set that up, go to Settings > Custom Actions and click the icon in the upper right hand corner to ‘Add Action’.

On that screen, enter a name, choose an icon and a color. For the URL field use:

shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=GoodLink%20Highlights

Then, once you are on an article in GoodLinks and have made some highlights, access the more menu and you should see your custom action up top:

Click that and the end result should be something like this in Craft:

Hope someone finds this useful!

Finished reading: Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman 📚

Cazenovia Lady Chiefs took home the 19u championship tonight at Buffalo RiverWorks, with a 4-0 shutout. Great team victory!

Pulled all of my favorite albums into one Apple Music playlist to facilitate the final listen for inclusion on the Crucial Tracks end-of-year list. Listen along!

Uhhh, looks like the NYT is continuing its streak of stellar coverage. I am sure there are many people and stacks of government subsidies that would like a word with “single-handedly.”

Gonna be a long 4 years.

We are pretty much a kakistoligarcracy now aren’t we? Billionaires get richer, while some of the worst humans alive get to run the federal government. And yeah I probably just made up that word. Fitting.

Episode 2 of my new project on Crucial Tracks, where I listen to records from RollingStones Top 150 albums of all time that I’ve never heard before… this time #131 to 140. Bob Marley, Funkadelic, Adele, and Joni Mitchell…

As a parent of a trans son and two daughters (all teenagers), I’m obviously disappointed and saddened by the results from last night. Mainly because morality, decency, competency, and facts no longer matter. The U.S. is officially a self-centered, narcissistic nation, though it’s most certainly been that way the entire time. This is just one of the most striking, experienced-in-real-time examples of its personality.

The Democrats are certainly at fault for a lot of the pain we feel today; however, the media has the most blood on its hands – how they simultaneously tore down Joe Biden for his age, while normalizing Trump’s insane economic policy proposals, that if enacted will certainly destroy the economy in the near term. They normalized the racism and hatred of immigrants and “enemies within”… and his obvious cognitive decline as he’s nearly the same age as Biden.

Add on top of that, holding Harris to the usual, historical standard of a presidential candidate while giving Trump a pass as he word-salads his way through an “explanation” of his policies. Or a complete pass on any of the dangerous rhetoric. It’s mind-boggling.

I’m also old enough to remember the experience of the media tearing down a decent human and viable presidential candidate in Howard Dean because he “screamed” with excitement at a campaign event. John Edwards because of an expensive haircut…and so many more, now ridiculous examples.

I hope it’s worth it, risking so much for potential short-term gain. Trusting a fraudster, grifter, and felon to deliver you the almighty greenback. You do you, I guess.

For me, at least for now, I’ve decided to take an extended break from corporate-owned, algorithm-driven social media. You can find me:

• here on my blog for family, life, pictures, etc
• Crucial Tracks for all things music
• micro.blog and Mastodon for “social” – both are a breath of fresh air, compared to the other places

I’ll be using RSS and Reeder to follow others on the web.

I’m going to be focused on things that bring joy, while supporting and protecting my family and friends. And friends is a broad term; don’t be shy, and I will do my best to support those in need as well.

Stay strong.

Appropriate time for this shirt.

To keep myself busy with something I like, I’m working on a new project over at Crucial Tracks where I do a focused listen of albums from the RollingStone Top 150 albums of all time list that I’ve never heard completely (or at all…) – today’s post is #141-150. Mainstream music here I come! 😄

New Crucial Tracks site on Ghost is coming along! Added some older posts, like my One Last Wish series and older year-end music reviews. Also, just posted my favorite releases from the first two Fridays of October.

Can’t believe this kid is a senior. In a way, he’s always been an old soul. Smart beyond their years; a truly empathetic, caring person; a great friend to all; and naturally talented at whatever they try. Milo gives me hope for the future, because I know he will be in the mix helping to create it.

Finished reading: How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith 📚

I have been refraining from posting politics, but this new study is just absolutely insane.

🔗 Mass Deportation: Devastating Costs to America, Its Budget and Economy

Any kind of mass deportation, like Trump and Vance are proposing, is beyond reckless…on top of the racism and xenophobia.

This new study shows the economic impacts:

• a quick, one-time deportation (which they recognize would be almost impossible), would cost over $300 billion and require between 220-400k new government workers and ICE agents.
• a longer term deportation strategy of say 1 million deportations per year would cost almost ONE TRILLION dollars over 10 years and require over 30k new government employees and agents.
• mass deportation would reduce the U.S. GDP by 4.2 to 6.8 percent (which is the same decline we saw during the great recession of 2007-2009), reduce federal and states taxes collected by over $75 billion annually, as well as reduce contributions to social security and medicare by $28 billion annually.
• the impact it would have on the construction, agriculture, and hospitality industries would lead to an unemployment rate of 8-12% and increase housing prices (due to reduced new home starts) and food costs (either through reduced supply or increased costs to pick and process food.)

Throw this on top of his tariff plan and you have a recipe for the complete desctruction of the US economy.

In contrast, the cost of this could do any of the following:

• build 40k brand new schools
• fund the Head Start program for 80 years
• pay the tuition and expenses for in-state college for almost 9 million students
• build almost 3 million new homes

A single year of the program is:

• nearly twice the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health.
• nearly four times the budget of NASA.
• nearly three times as much as the federal government spends on child nutrition.
• more than the government gives out in the Child Tax Credit program.
• eighteen times more than the entire world spends each year on cancer research.

And people think this is a good economic plan?

New on Crucial Tracks… a mega upload of my recent favorite albums! crucialtracks.org/2024/09/f…

The Dismemberment Plan Reunite For Their First Show In A Decade: Watch

The Dismemberment Plan were my favorite show I ever put on in college. So fun and in a friend’s basement too.

The new version of Reeder is out and it is glorious.

Reeder is by far the most used app on my phone. It’s been my go to RSS feed reeder since 2011 and I’m pretty sure it was one of the first apps I bought for my iPhone, after switching from Android that year.

Like most app addicts, I’ve tried a LOT of RSS readers and services over the years, but I always came back to Reeder as my app of choice. It’s beautiful, well thought out, and rock solid.

When I saw the developer of Reeder post about a beta version of a new version of Reeder this year, I immediately volunteered for the TestFlight. It turned out it was a completely re-thought out model and approach for the app, which I honestly didn’t understand at first and was hesitant to put it through the paces.

Then a little over a month ago, I decided to give it a go after the developer added an OPML import function, which would allow me to add all of my feeds to the app. Since then, I’ve been using it 100% of the time for reading RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Micro.blog… as well as my YouTube subscriptions and (most recently) my podcasts.

Beyond the app design (still top notch and beautiful) and usability, the new Reeder has some great perks and solves a few issues for me:

1. Unread counts = anxiety inducing and for no good reason. NONE of what I have in there is life ending if I miss it… even though I enjoy following most all of it.
2. With the downfall of Twitter and social media spreading out to places like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Micro.blog there are a lot of apps and feeds to browse. It’s a chore to keep up with them… and all three of those have taken a back seat at one point or another this year. One app, one feed is glorious. The timeline sync keeps me tethered so I don’t re-read things I’ve already seen — it’s all pretty seamless.
3. Turns out, Reeder is pretty good for watching video AND (at least through my testing over the last 24 hours) listening to podcasts. There are dedicated views for Video and Audio, which also tracks what I’ve seen so it’s easy to keep up with what I want to watch and read. I’m hoping this can replace my podcast app too, as I’m starting to realize that app is another inbox that feels unwieldily and a chore to maintain.
4. Low Maintenance - no marking items as read, deleting un-listened podcast episodes from a queue, or anything else really. I REALLY like the low to no maintenance aspect of the app. If I don’t happen to see something in my feed, I can either rely on serendipity of it showing again some time OR I can browse specific feeds or services to do a deep dive if I really need to…

With that said, there are some things I’d like to see added like the ability to reply natively within the app, the ability to set up your own custom feeds (like Audio and Video), and more services (maybe Instagram and Threads?)

I get that this app won’t be for everyone, but if any of this speaks to you, I couldn’t recommend Reeder more.

Finished reading: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler 📚

Birthday Northern Lights! So awesome.

Lots of great new records this past week! See Crucial Tracks for more: crucialtracks.org/2024/04/f…

(Also, the drawing for the record giveaway is complete. Subscribers, check your inbox to see if you won!)

One week to go until the Crucial Tracks record giveaway! Learn more about what records you can win and then enter to win by subscribing to our newsletter here: crucialtracks.org/record-gi…

Over on Crucial Tracks… last two weeks worth of my favorite albums: crucialtracks.org/2024/04/f…