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tyler :3
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_posts/2023-07-28-webrevival.md
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_posts/2023-07-28-webrevival.md
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title: "Infrastructure updates and web revival, or: \"why the internet fucking sucks and will possibly forever\""
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date: "2023-07-28T15:04:31.661Z"
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permalink: "webrevival"
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description: "a brief microarticle on my gripes with the modern web development scene as well as what social media has developed into"
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layout: post
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---
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today i migrated this domain from render.com to google cloud run. render.com does like my 2 least favourite things, charges for usage hours which is stupid because they don't reset monthly, and have an insanely slow cold start. i think it rebuilds ALL of my npm packages on each cold start.
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for those of you who dont know what on earth npm is, it basically is a big bloated mess that is in love with getting rid of all of your computer storage and taking years upon years to install.
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Webrevival is fucking cool and i'd like u guys to give it a go. go on neocities and just make shit, join a webring and support other people's shit.
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i've personally found a bunch of cool stuff just looking around the internet. [postbox.garden](https://postbox.garden) is an imageboard that you can only post to by actually mailing a postcard to their garden in boston.
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[rgbteahouse](https://rgbteahouse.neocities.org/home) is one of the first sites i ever visited while looking through webrings and neocities. The owner is very friendly and they are very talented at art.
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[low tech magazine](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about) run a website powered entirely on solar panels. They have a lot of really cool sustainability related content and i always love reading it.\ni hope you consider making your own content on the internet because every day it is becoming more corporatized and used as a marketing tool
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thank you for reading!!! :hugs:
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_posts/2023-08-08-swartz.md
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_posts/2023-08-08-swartz.md
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title: "The death of Aaron Swartz, or: \"fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human being\""
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date: "2023-08-08T18:22:30.706Z"
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permalink: "swartz"
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description: "Tyler covers the life and death of Aaron Swartz, a software pioneer and savant who stuck to their principles to the end."
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layout: post
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---
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Aaron Swartz was born on November 08, 1986, and died at age 26 on January 26 2013 after 2 years of court proceedings. At age 13, he created RSS. At age 15, he created what would become reddit, and as people often forget, he also invented the markdown language which any user of VCS systems has used in the past.
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Aaron was caught sharing paywalled scientific journals freely accessible to MIT alumni amongst the internet. For this, he was sentenced to a maximum fine in excess of £1,000,000 and fifty years in prison. His difficulty paying his attorneys, as well as MIT's unwillingness to help with his criminal proceedings, lead to his suicide by hanging.
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Carmen Ortiz, the presiding judge over his case, faced multiple inquiries after the case, but was not removed from office and to this day continues to deny that Aaron was overcharged.
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"Our beloved brother, son, friend, and partner Aaron Swartz hanged himself on Friday in his Brooklyn apartment. We are in shock, and have not yet come to terms with his passing. [Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.](https://web.archive.org/web/20130112233941/https://rememberaaronsw.tumblr.com/post/40372208044/official-statement-from-the-family-and-partner-of-aaron\)"
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One of Aaron's favourite books was infinite jest, by David Foster Wallace, who also tragically passed 5 years prior to Aaron of hanging. "[Fiction's about what it is to be a fucking human](https://web.archive.org/web/20150520115701/https://isismagazine.org.uk/2015/03/the-isis-short-essay-competition-fictions-about-what-it-is-to-be-a-fucking-human-being-david-foster-wallace-is-it)" is a quote of his. I spent a long time looking for a fitting title and it just seemed to click for me. Maybe this is tenuous, but i have never thought that art, software and fiction were that far from each other. Aaron's work enabled the creation and sharing of all three through the often overlooked power of RSS.
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Looking through old archives of Aaron's, one of the most memorable things I've found is a collection of notes from his memorial service, at which Tim Berners Lee delivered Aaron's eulogy in the Internet Archive headquarters. Each is it's own short story, which paints its own picture of how individuals deal with grief. [This is a link to the entire archived collection of notes left for him](https://archive.org/details/AaronSwartzSFMemorialHandouts/), below are the pages that resonated the most with me, but i implore you to read through the booklet yourself to find the ones which you like most.
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Quotes from top to bottom, "he had written the code that had written that code". "bits are NOT a BUG". "When the host approaches zero, the guests are limitless.", "TO BE taken seriously". "When the writer owns his/her words, the WRITER CAN GIVE". "to make salt for the people". "he felt responsible for the carcinogens he didn't stop". "when we built the internet there was no subscribe button". "Why haven't you read the books of your condition". "LICENSED | THE PUBLISHER OF THE PEOPLE". "I still think he's wrong about the Chinese room argument.". "The night before he died we shared a grilled cheese sandwich". "you can tell because i'm wearing my radical tie". "When the citizenry is well informed". "the bad thing may be in the news tomorrow do you want to hear from me?". "the first time he spoke, the audience didn't get it". "the thrill of meeting ACTUAL grown-up copy[write] activists". "i'm not sure you're right but maybe we can get out of this theorem". "**THERE IS NO NEXT Aaron... ONLY YOU**". "The 5 whys of TM cannot solve... why we call toyota, TM, -our management". "It's sort of like having a national park with moats and guns and turrets". "the revolution will be A/B tested" - Aaron. "What we choose to fight is so tiny / this is how he grows, by being beat constantly by greater beings.". "stop discouraging bulk downloads". "the government had copyrighted the copy-right database". "HEARING THE TRIAL Aaron DIDN'T WAIT for". "Let computers read". "I ansewered [sic] a couple questions about it at the end". "Yes, actually typography". @DAVIDSMOOKE
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I can only ruminate about the meanings behind the scrawlings on this note. So many conversations, experiences and in-jokes condensed into one A4 sheet of paper.
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"Suicide is the tragic outcome of a treatable disease that attacks the part of the victim which otherwise would save them; the sense of hope that things will get better"
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"Every time a rational altruist dies, the rest of us recieve a piece of his soul." - [Holden Karnofsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holden_Karnofsky), [givewell.org](givewell.org)
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This is a difficult to transcribe poem, the contrast is a little garish for my eyes but i will try to the best of my ability.
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The fans that keep the internet cool
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sing behind the congregation
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angel wings spinning
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maybe angels have to hide
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in reformation churches
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turned church of internet
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the wings of angels keep
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the internet cool; wings sing on
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over the voices of mourners
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mourning in the evening
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for suicide heroes and lost youth
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aaron never made it to the promised land
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so who will be our moses?
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infuriating and wrong and brilliant all at the same time
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making promises to ghosts
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keeping promises to the living
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there's nothing to do for the future
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once you are in the past
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once you have passed
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free speech is free books is free knowledge
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is free information
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**he killed himself for the sorrows of knowledge**
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incarcerated by dollars
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knowledge denied to those without dollars
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access to knowledge is a human right
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suicide is a human regret :heart:
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R.I.P. E.K.Keith
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I wish i had talked to him just once. you are so lucky if you did.
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Thanks, Aaron.
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Ideas never really die.
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Thank you for showing us how to care about something more than our paychecks. I just wish it hadn't come at such a great cost. You are, always will be, my inspiration. - Vivek
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Thank you for reading
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_posts/2023-09-15-switzerland.md
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_posts/2023-09-15-switzerland.md
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title: "Switzerland 2023"
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date: "2023-09-15T21:02:34.199Z"
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permalink: "switzerland"
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description: "photos of my trip to switzerland, lots of cows and trees to be seen here"
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layout: post
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---
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I'm going to share some of my favourite photos from my trip to switzerland this year. Suffering from severe writers block and I just really want some content on my blog:)
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during my time in switzerland, i went on a gauntlet of a hike, about 8 hours up a mountain, cooking at a stove, and right back down to the bottom again. this photo was taken after about an hour and a half of descending down twisting mountain paths where one slip could end up in you tumbling off of a cliff face. The house belongs to a farmer. they grew pine trees for christmas, as well as produced honey, which is what the small apiary to the left is there for.
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Small clusters of village dot the landscape as the alps loom on the horizon. you can only see the alps on the clearest of days from this region of switzerland. the twisting aare river, flanked by trees, meanders around. There are grain silos and churches and all kinds of beautiful houses.
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These are mountain cows met on my travels uphill. some have bells attached to them that jingle as they walk. if you were to take the cable car up instead of hiking, you could see hundreds of jingling cows. the brown cow has a really cute haircut, almost like a highland cow. the black and white cow has flies buzzing around his mouth but doesnt smell too bad. they were relaxing in the beautiful mountainside sun.
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A clearing on the mountainside. the gravel crunches under your feet, and clumps in places hoping maybe to make you lose your footing. the dense forest made for good protection from the sun, but clearings like this were beautiful and warm and made me long to be away from the city for longer.
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a big clump of houses, seen from the top of the mountain. it was a nice sight. on the other side, you could see the alps in all their glory. the top of the mountain was full of the elderly. one thing you'll notice in switzerland is how much happier and healthier everyone seems to be.
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a few little mushrooms on a tree stump. it lived deep in the forest
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as always, don't hesitate to email. <3
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_posts/2023-11-01-suicide.md
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_posts/2023-11-01-suicide.md
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---
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title: "suicide in art and philosophy"
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date: "2023-11-01T23:18:44.600Z"
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permalink: "suicide"
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description: "a delve into the theme of suicide, looking at the works of painters and philosophers through history."
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layout: post
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---
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.jpg)
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<sub>Edouard Manet - Le Suicidé</sub>
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le suicidé has a pretty simple composition. a bed, a table, and a man collapsed backwards, still clutching the revolver that he used to take his life. his white shirt stands out amongst the browns and reds of his bedsheets and floor as though it was a blank canvas, painted with vivid red blood. it was possibly the only ever major depiction of suicide within the impressionist movement, definitely the only one not based on a historical account of suicide by a major figure.
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<sub>Jacques-Louis David - The Death of Seneca</sub>
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seneca the younger was ordered by nero to kill himself in the aftermath of a conspiracy to kill and replace him. seneca's arm is outstretched limply, and his hand beckons towards his wife, phaedra. the painting depicts his final moments, his wrists slit, as he slowly bleeds out. his wife, pained by this, chose to die with him, and too slit her wrists. in stark contrast to manet's painting, the composition is rich. praetorian guard flank all edges of the painting, watching on from a balcony, holding seneca as he collapses against his chair. light washes over phaedra, being led away so neither of them have to endure watching each other die.
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<img width="400" src="/article/suicide/Emile_Durkheim.jpeg" alt="Photo of sociologist Emile Durkheim">
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emile durkheim was a french sociologist. they postulated that there were 4 types of suicide.
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egoistic suicide:
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you find yourself isolated from social groups, you lack support or any social groups. egoism within philosophy is the concept that we are motivated by self interest. egoism in this sense is not the typical egoism within philosophy wherein people are motivated by self-interest and selfishness. durkheim, however, used this phrase purely to refer to the self, the 'ego'. in this context, durkheim is probably talking about how this type of suicide is self motivated due to the individual's environment.
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altruistic suicide:
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altruistic suicide could be considered to be the opposite of egoistic suicide, when someone is too far integrated within their social group, when society puts collective interests at the forefront and the individual places this group's interests above even their own lives. this is most common historically with martyrdom.
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anomic suicide:
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anomic means to be disoriented, or to otherwise feel alienated. this often happens when social or economic conditions change swiftly, leaving people bankrupt, making people feel small. any marked major changes in routine could be said to cause this.
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fatalistic suicide:
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in scenarios where you feel a lack of control, surrounded by hurt and out of options, fatalistic suicide describes a situation in which suicide is the only or best option to regain control and power over your own life. this is seen in prisoners in solitary confinement, deprived of social interaction and cramped into a small cell.
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<sub>Grave of a Suicide - wilhelm kotarbiński</sub>
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a solitary white flower grows between the cracks of an unmarked grave. light shines onto the flower, as a trickle of blood flows from its stem. wilting plants surround the tomb, suggesting themes of loneliness, one flower surrounded by 100 wilted ones.
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_posts/2024-01-20-joy.md
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---
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title: "the great react rewrite of '24"
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date: "2024-01-20T03:19:10.337Z"
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description: "i mope about how doing things 'the right way' is a pain in the ass."
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permalink: "joy"
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layout: post
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---
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Welcome back to my experiment, now continuing for the wonderous year of 2024.
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the entire website has been rewritten in react.js in order to keep everything as bad and as soulless as possible. still trying to fix the weird CLS shit on first load but i think that it's faster. i think i just wanted something to do !!
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i hope you're all well. shit is a kick in the balls sometimes. i haven't fixed minesweeper yet and university is a fucking pain but it is what it is
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all of my posts are written in MD now which means i can add pretty little :heart: hearts inline whenever i want and also do *this*. hooray ! it is also incredibly bloated and i have to polyfill everything. still working on better chunking my react code.
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today i had an 18 inch pizza and yet somehow i do nothing but lose weight. i'm sure in a decade i'll be a fat shit or a very pretty cadaver
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hope you've all been well! more compelling writing is coming soon. maybe ;)
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_posts/2024-01-27-physical.md
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_posts/2024-01-27-physical.md
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---
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title: "physical media: it ain't so bad!"
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date: "2024-01-27T18:10:34.524Z"
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permalink: "physical"
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description: "tyler moans about how much they like their damn cds!"
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layout: post
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---
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# Physical media: it ain't so bad!
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## Introduction
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as the internet has grown and grown and grown, and we have access to every single piece of media we want digitally, it's easy to forget the value of media that you can hold in your hands.
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this isn't just some misguided notion because i'm trying to be contrarian and rebel against the web. this shit makes life damn easy. not returning to jungle or some bullshit. ted kaczynski pretty much blew fingers off for nothing. i'm happy to be able to watch shit online and i can do this while disliking a lot of the bullshit that comes with it. (see: [dead internet theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory))
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notably of these, the CD. "erm.... i can make playlists on spotify! i can blah blah blah" shut up!!! it's a damn interesting piece of technology. a laser pokes tiny little holes in the disc lacquer in the burner, then the reader reads these indents and turns it into music.
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## part 1 - CDs are pretty fucking cool
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i find the enjoyment in music can sometimes be attributed to the rituals around it. i wake up, turn on a playlist, shower with music on, walk outside with it, smoke with it and sleep with it. sometimes it feels like digital media platforms can in a way take the joy out of this.
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### shopping around
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this is not to mention the ritual of finding CDs itself. I like heading down into town, and sitting down by a massive shelf flicking through 100 pieces of absolute trash until i find something really personally meaningful, or an album i haven't really had a chance to fully explore.
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i found this to be the case with a CD i found in my last haul. it was "tears for fears - songs from the big chair".
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recently though, other albums i've found within my hauls have been the colour and the shape by foo fighters, adrenaline by deftones, decade by duran duran, and in utero by nirvana.
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### dopamine (evil!)
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i could've just as easily turned on spotify and listened to any of these. actually no, it would've been far easier! not to mention losslessly and all of this bullshit.
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but for a few reasons, that would've made this series of events, this ritual i have crafted for myself, a completely different experience.
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#### longevity
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spotify will certainly not last forever. what will it matter when all of this music you have collected disappears into the ether?
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but, god willing, i will NEVER allow my hifi to ever die. if it does, i will drop £20 and get another. CD breaks? i'll burn it from a ripped copy.
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#### overlistening (dopamine, yet again!)
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you find that PERFECT song, or revisit one that you know you damn love. you play it constantly on your headphones. then one day, maybe a week later, you realise that listening to it this much has ruined the song for you forever. maybe it'll take a whole year for you to like this song again.
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but the thing about a hifi is that i cannot and will not be able to always have it on. i have university lectures, work and otherwise cannot always be home. on top of that, i have about 100 CDs now, and i burn lots every month so it keeps growing.
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keeping this ritual, but dialling it back means that i never tire of the songs and albums that mean everything to me. music has always been so important to me, and i have killed numerous songs overlistening like this!
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at the end of the day, i love the special occasions where i can play a couple of albums while getting my work done.
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#### holding stuff and making stuff is pretty damn nice
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i'm superficial, i just like holding stuff that i own. this CD, if stored properly and ignoring the [imminent solar flare](https://phys.org/news/2024-01-solar-maximum.html), i could listen to this until the day i die.
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i like making my own designs for discs i've burnt. i love making tracklists on my typewriter, and this again falls back into this ritual pattern i mentioned. humans love patterns.
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#### discovery
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i have overlooked so many albums, because of one bad track i've heard from them. there are so many albums i have not paid attention to by artists i love because i just didn't think much about it. diamond eyes and gore by deftones, live and loud by nirvana, concrete and gold by foo fighters ([you should listen to sunday rain, by the way](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0jX8y53ceY))!
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(and yes, the irony of sending a link to this song over the internet is not lost to me, but fuck you! i'm not posting you a damn cd! i dont even know where you live!)
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#### hackability
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i love making shit. i love writing software. turns out all the linux GUI frontends for disc burning are damn broken. solution? write my own little workaround.
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these projects always renew my joy for writing software. there is no motivator like actual personal interest in seeing through a project until the end. luckily, this one was short. [here's the repository!](https://github.com/shrapnelnet/shr4pnelburn). send a pull request (if you dare) (please do.)
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## part 2 - cassettes (magical magnet boxes)
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cassettes are pretty special. gen x hoarded a lot of music on cassette while they grew up, and they're very effective time capsules.
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lots of unheard music is ONLY on tape, because during the 90's and early 2000s it was the easiest way to record from analogue.
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contrary to popular belief, they're not low quality. cassettes are actually very good mediums for high quality audio recording, it's just that a lot of tapes were recorded direct from the speakers of radios, rather than from analogue or through a hifi.
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CrO<sub>2</sub> tapes are always fun to come across. most tape in a cassette is made of iron oxide (or other ferrous oxide). chromium tapes are an awesome deep black colour, and provide incredible audio quality on par with lossless.
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tapes, if you don't know, work by threading a reel of tape from one spool to another. this tape is split longways in half right down the middle. the tape heads inside your tape deck read the tape from the hole on the bottom of the cassette, where the tape is exposed, before it is spooled around the reel. when the tape finishes, you can play the other half of the tape by flipping it around and putting it back in the tape deck.
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the way tape recording works is pretty complicated. you have to cover two holes on top of the cassette, and at this point, you can press the record button and tape via the line in port, or from other sources like CD if you have a micro hifi.
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i cannot explain how the process actually work because i know fuck all about electromagnetism, but essentially your music is zapped onto this tape using magnets. pretty cool (?) i think so.
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## part 3 - floppy disks, who the hell uses floppy disks?
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me. this one is a little niche, but they're a pretty fun toy. as a developer, they're great to use to challenge yourself. as a writer, i love writing little stories onto these and distributing them. i have written lots of poetry and short stories onto them.
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it's hard to work with 1.4MB of storage, but limitations make for the best solutions sometimes. fucking around with audio codecs to fit them onto floppies, making games in old versions of C, and playing with old DOS versions is always fun.
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albeit impractical. but at very least they're good decorations!
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## part 4 - vinyl (boo!!!)
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||||
unpopular opinion, but i don't love vinyl. they used to be a cool option that you could buy on the cheap from grandmas and at charity stores for cheap, but as this trend grew, the music industry happily grabbed onto it and commercialised it.
|
||||
|
||||
you can't even buy a new pressing for £30 any more! taylor swift (who i would never listen to) supposedly charges upwards of £100 for some limited pressings. this fucking sucks.
|
||||
|
||||
i also dislike the lack of hackability of the medium. nobody is pressing records at home, and since they're an analogue medium, they're pretty hard to write software for (nigh impossible)
|
||||
|
||||
not to mention the swarms of people claiming that they are a superior medium. no offence, but CD is quite literally magnitudes higher quality than vinyl. don't forget that the sound is produced by scratching a needle on grooves!
|
||||
|
||||
i won't deny that there is a difference in sound when you play vinyl, i even own a few albums that are important to me. but i do consider it to be a toy medium appropriated by those with far too much money to spend (or too few brains to spend it well).
|
||||
|
||||
not to mention those who buy them without players to display them on their walls! i shudder at the thought.
|
||||
|
||||
## part 5 - VHS (huh?)
|
||||
|
||||
VHS are big big cassettes which also store video data. often associated with the CRT monitors of the day [which are actually better at rendering retro video games](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/302555/what-advantages-do-crts-still-have-over-more-modern-display-technologies)!
|
||||
|
||||
these are definitely only here for the nostalgia factor. i spent a lot of time with my gramps watching horrifically racist loony toons cartoons. i liked the episode where bugs fucked with the dude playing baseball for like 30 minutes. also loved all the wile e. coyote segments. sadly these are all back home, same as my VCR.
|
||||
|
||||
recently i picked up liar liar and have i got news for you (funny english talk show) on VHS. they go for free in a lot of marketplaces so it's worth picking some up at very least for the joy of it
|
||||
|
||||
## conclusion
|
||||
|
||||
owning shit is pretty nice! i'd love to see some of your latest hauls, be it old floppy software, cassettes, albums or vinyl LPs. email your photos to me at [admin@shr4pnel.com](mailto:admin@shr4pnel.com). looking forward to seeing what you've picked up!
|
||||
36
_posts/2024-03-05-roundup.md
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36
_posts/2024-03-05-roundup.md
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@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Music roundup #1: March 2024"
|
||||
date: "2024-03-05T21:06:29.663Z"
|
||||
permalink: "roundup"
|
||||
description: "Tyler fills your head with excellent excellent music free of charge. how does he find the time?"
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
---
|
||||
# Introduction
|
||||
|
||||
Welcome to the first installation of this thrilling document: the shrapnelnet music roundup of march 2024.
|
||||
|
||||
Today, I'll focus on some stuff you should listen to. wow! what a topic! shut up!
|
||||
|
||||
## Secondson: Esoteric, otherworldly production
|
||||
|
||||
Secondson is a Welsh composer known for his work in production using vintage equipment and rare or otherwise relatively unknown instruments with UK hip hop artists. A collector of synthesisers, vintage audio equipment and all manner of niche instruments. He blends interesting sounds together to create a beautiful composition out of instruments i couldn't even name.
|
||||
|
||||
For now, he is mostly working on his solo career, but previously he has worked with figures in the scene like Xeno. Together, they worked under the name "Plague" and created several excellent albums, my favourite being [Plague](https://sfdb.bandcamp.com/album/plague).
|
||||
|
||||
He also created a large project with a number of notable, talented UK artists such as Chester P, Jehst, Sway and Lewis Parker who are all giants in the UKHH scene. This project was called "[& His Orchestra](https://sfdb.bandcamp.com/album/his-orchestra)", including one of my favourite UKHH songs of all time, "Turn it up to the red" featuring Jehst.
|
||||
|
||||
## Snot: Alternative metal done right
|
||||
|
||||
Snot, as they are best known, released only one album before the tragic death of their lead singer Lynn Strait. "Get Some" was the name of their debut album, and in my opinion it is possibly one of the best metal albums ever released.
|
||||
|
||||
Get some features hard hitting, important lyrics and accomplished this far before their time. They touched on bigotry, racism and homophobia with remarkable lyricism. The song "Stoopid" in particular is an excellent critique on the backwards thinking of extremists and how their beliefs stem solely from self-hatred and intentional ignorance.
|
||||
|
||||
They are absolutely worth a listen, and if not for their lyrics (in case you're who they're singing about) then for their incredible work on the guitar, with funk inspired riffs and general awesome shredding in most of their songs. worth a listen!
|
||||
|
||||
## The song "dirty" by Korn. yeah just that one.
|
||||
|
||||
you all know korn so i will not write you a little essay but this song in particular deserves more attention. the final song on the album "issues". korn, personally, can be very hit or miss often due to the corny voice they do (i know its a staple of the genre but i cant stand it) but i LOVE this song. raw gutteral vocals, albiet simple, all tied together by a neat little chorus. i absolutely love it.
|
||||
|
||||
## Conclusion
|
||||
|
||||
who said you deserved one, huh?
|
||||
30
_posts/23-08-07-diversifying.markdown
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30
_posts/23-08-07-diversifying.markdown
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@@ -0,0 +1,30 @@
|
||||
---
|
||||
title: "Diversifying tastes in music, or: \"why you should be listening to good music instead of your music\""
|
||||
description: "Tyler covers the riveting music scene and mentions a lot of niche bands and people you should listen to."
|
||||
date: "2023-08-07T19:11:30.201Z"
|
||||
permalink: "diversifying"
|
||||
layout: post
|
||||
---
|
||||
Without attempting to feign some claim that I am some sort of hyper-cultured sophisticate who smokes long cigarillos like a leonardo dicaprio wannabe, most music is really really bad. I can't watch TV, not even a period drama, without there being an Ed Sheeran song playing on the fucking lute. This is a consequence of the conglomerates who own the airwaves also owning most popular musicians, and those musicians losing all cashflow if they write songs that are too interesting to cater to the largest possible audience
|
||||
|
||||
<img src="/article/misc/dicaprio_optimized.jpg" alt="Leonardo Dicaprio smoking a pipe" width="184" height="106">
|
||||
|
||||
Small mock-up of me: an absolute intellectual with always correct opinions and 12 inch flaccid wood
|
||||
|
||||
Recently in the news we learned Taylor Swift is an actual fucking collossal cunt. "What does she do", you may ask? Essentially she gallavants about in her private jet constantly. To me, her music always felt really repetitive. She does nothing mitski cannot do better.
|
||||
|
||||
Ed Sheeran triggers my uncanny valley effect. Also he has his own hot sauce and you can tell it was made by him because it is supposedly about as spicy as ketchup.
|
||||
|
||||
When I think about popular musicians that I actually like, I first think of Aphex Twin. Really distorted synths and complex slowly developing loops characterise Richard James' music. Often called ambient, which I don't really get because ambient is like rainforest noises or like setting up a camera at a pond for 12 hours but again I'm not a linguist.
|
||||
|
||||
I love Nirvana, they make amazing t-shirts and I think they used to do music or something. Not going to tell you much about Nirvana because you have already heard them but did you know there's an entire Kurt Cobain song where he sings about almost having sex with a mentally handicapped girl before trying to kill himself by [putting cement blocks on his chest and lying on train tracks](https://genius.com/Kurt-cobain-aberdeen-annotated). I'd like to write an entire post about how fucked up the whole debacle was.
|
||||
|
||||
конец солнечных дней make what some losers online call "shoegaze". I please petition you to call it alternative indie because no genre should have to endure being named after a shoe. The band is pronounced "konets solnechnykh dney" and it directly translates to "the end of sunny days". It is not often that you hear music that resonates with you despite not understanding any of the lyrics but the raw emotion that the band produce is pretty unparalleled in the genre (alternative. indie.). They're pretty niche too, which is important to me because i'm a philistine or something
|
||||
|
||||
The Microphones are an experimental project fronted by Phil Elverum, also known for his work with Mount Eerie. All of their works, from beginning to the end, have this ethereal sort of feeling. It kind of reminds me of the existensial dread of Elliot Smith, a remarkably talented songwriter who passed away too young. I enjoy The Microphones for their fast transition from quiet to loud, how the instruments layer, and the crashing drums that appear in a lot of their songs.
|
||||
|
||||
LAUSSE THE CAT has been an interesting figure in my life. Not because I've ever met him or anything, but just because of how unique his project is and the people I met through my love of his music. Known for his ability to weave French and English in the same verse and for his graffiti all over Leeds and south London. He is a breath of fresh air in the UK scene, which can be really oversaturated with people trying too hard to be more like american rappers. Backing tracks are often gentle drum beats with piano over them as well as random string instruments with the occasional beautiful vocals of Bawhe. One of the best UK projects out there, I hope you listen.
|
||||
|
||||
King Krule is another project that will resonate with other people raised in London or big cities in the UK. Archy Marshall is a singer-songwriter and if I was to describe his genre I would be paraphrasing wikipedia because of how unique his sound is. Dissonant vocals accompanied with harsh strums of the guitar characterise many of his songs, but to say that this encapsulates most, if little of his discography would be untrue. It's something you have to listen to yourself.
|
||||
|
||||
I hope you found something you enjoyed here. If you did, let me know at my mastodon at [tyler@blobfox.coffee](https://blobfox.coffee/@tyler).
|
||||
Reference in New Issue
Block a user