End On End

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…

Most Buffalo thing ever: sunny, perfect days over the weekend. 60 degrees plus. Eclipse day? Cloudy and kind of dreary. We’re gonna make the best of it, though! Street blocked off, snacks made, chairs set up.

Whelp that was cool. Clouds opened up just in time!

A neglectful music blog host would like to make it up to you with a March super post of my favorite albums released in March, to date: crucialtracks.org/2024/03/f…

Enjoy!

Just published my favorite albums from the past two weeks, including Mannequin Pussy’s I Got Heaven and The Past is Still Alive by Hurray for the Riff Raff. That and more over at Crucial Tracks! crucialtracks.org/2024/03/f…

Better late than never – my favorite music releases from the last two weeks! Featuring Friko, IDLES, Ducks Ltd, The Chisel, and Heems. crucialtracks.org/2024/02/f…

I am 100% convinced that any childhood memory of time or distance (and usually hardship caused by said amount) is actually half of that in reality. Recent visits to my hometown neighborhood (so small!) AND I just tested my wife on her “riding my bike 7 miles to school” story. Actually, 2.5 miles. 😂

New music for February 2nd! Liquid Mike is the highlight here, but don’t sleep on very solid solo albums from J Mascis (Dinorsaur Jr) and J Robbins (Jawbox). crucialtracks.org/2024/02/f…

Just posted my favorite albums from this week’s new release pile: crucialtracks.org/2024/01/f…

The latest issue of Crucial Tracks should be hitting inboxes now. Here’s a sample, if you want to check it out. It’s a great time to subscribe – we are doing a record giveaway at the end of February and all newsletter subscribers are eligible to win!

My fave new music releases from today: crucialtracks.org/2024/01/f…