234 North

Forgot to mention yesterday that I got my first issue of The New Yorker in the mail! Very excited to have a subscription to a real magazine again!

I’m always amazed (not sure why) when I read stupid shit about music. This comment in a Rick Beato video of the top 10 tracks when the video was released about a month ago:

20 years ago albums were a thing and not just a collection of tracks sounding the same, bands were a thing, artists were artists and not just for looks. The music in last 20 or 25 years is far from memorable and mostly chewing gum for 5 mins

“Far from memorable”. Then I listen to this unmemorable song from 11 years ago:

Yep. No “artists” there.

Even if you don’t like that style of music it’s pretty clear when watching the level of artistry on hand in that performance. Never mind that the song is 10 minutes long and nobody is reading music…

Here’s another non-memorable song that sounds like it’s straight out of the 60s. Gardot clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing.

Snark aside Melody Gardot puts on a hell of a show. I saw her several years ago at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, IL. Fantastic show.

Another reason I like Fastmail more than Gmail: filters are so much better. There is no way to have a filter stop as soon as it runs inside of Gmail so in order to have the same types of rules in place you have to jump through hoops.

Related to the special election in Tennessee today to fill a House seat and which is supposedly pretty tight in a very red district: seen in a photo of the Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn on a sign behind her: “Vote Early. Vote Aftyn”

From the “cool science stories nobody is seeing because Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the universe of news” dept: Research roundup: 6 cool stories we almost missed

Wrote about kids and the news today.

It’s Christmas music season right? I tend towards the stuff from the 50s/60s — in other words the stuff I grew up on. But I also highly favor early music/traditional carols these days and nobody does them better than The Sixteen.

They have a huge catalog of Christmas music but my absolute favorite is “A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection Volume II”.Wrote about kids and the news today.

It’s Christmas music season right? I tend towards the stuff from the 50s/60s — in other words the stuff I grew up on. But I also highly favor early music/traditional carols these days and nobody does them better than The Sixteen.

They have a huge catalog of Christmas music but my absolute favorite is “A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection Volume II”.

It reminds me of the old choral groups from the 50s/60s but much better arrangements, singing, and production.

My favorite tracks?

The whole album is fantastic though!

Oh and a bit of good news: I got a promotion! Of course now I’m responsible for managing people but it’s the first promotion I’ve had in the…14? 15?…years I’ve been working at my current job. It’s exciting!

From the AP:

Many of Lily Ogburn’s classmates get their information from social media. Their parents didn’t watch or read news reports as they grew up, so they didn’t pick up the habit, said Ogburn, a senior at Northwestern University’s journalism school.

As with everything else it starts with the parents.

I get that working people don't have the time to keep their nose in the news like some of us (cough...me) but there is no reason in 2025 that people can't get news briefs from good sources. It's all easily available for free. Instead people turn to social media which is unfathomable to me. You can't trust a journalist but you can trust some rando on social media who has no credibility? OK...

That said it's not all bad news:

That’s one of the lessons that 16-year-old Brianne Boyack has taken from her course in news literacy at Brighton High School in Cottonwood Heights, Utah. She had little trust in news going in, but has learned the importance of double-checking sources when she sees something interesting and seeking outlets she’s found reliable.

Her classmate, Rhett MacFarlane, applied what he learned in class to investigate when a friend told him the Louvre was robbed in Paris.

“I’ve learned that there is definitely fact-checking (in journalism),” MacFarlane, also 16, told The Associated Press. “You guys are professionals and you have to tell the truth or you’d be fired. I thought you guys just did whatever you wanted and chose what to say about a topic.”

The article notes that these types of programs are rare. They need to not be rare. Schools need to be teaching this stuff, along with civics, and basic consumer ed.

Start of a new week, end of a month. I spent basically the whole damned day shoveling snow. I got rid of our big snowblower back in September instead of fixing it. Big mistake as yesterday was the snowiest November day in Chicago history, beating a 74 year old record. We got about 10 inches here. Not fun to shovel by hand.

What a difference a year makes. Who would have thought the Chicago Bears would be on top in the NFC at this point in the season? For that matter who would have thought New England would be on top in the AFC? What a crazy change of situation in the NFL. As a Bears fan I’ll take it!

I wrote the other day about writing online/blogging:

That goes along for a bit until it doesn’t. So I’m not sure where that leaves me. At least this time I didn’t nuke all of the sites like I have in the past. Stuff is sitting there ready to go. The urge to publish to Ghost is there. Maybe I’ll turn off the private option and not update the domain name for now.

That didn’t last long. A day after that was posted this blog was public again. We’ll see how it goes.

I also mentioned yesterday that I was back on social media - Mastodon. I’m planning on having this Ghost site be my Fediverse presence but I need something to test the connectivity with the rest of the Fediverse. I have no plans on hanging out on Mastodon regularly.

Given the weather here today…

“Dibs”, an apparently unique Chicago thing during the winter. Here is the story of dibs: “How did dibs become a thing”

A bit more Chicago snow-related info: a look back at the top 5 snowstorms in Chicago history: “A look back at Chicago’s Top 5 biggest blizzards in history”

I somehow have blocked out the “Super Bowl blizzard” of 2015. Groundhog Day is burned in my brain because of having to go to the ER after shoveling snow.

The 2024 Paris Olympics came up in my YouTube suggestions yesterday, specifically the performance by the French metal band Gojira. It is in a long line of absolutely epic performances. Here are my three favorites in no particular order:

2004 Athens

I mean come on - it was in Greece!

2008 Beijing

Who could forget Beijing with the drummers - 2008 of them.

2024 Paris

As noted - Gojira’s performance at the Conceirgerie

Thunderbird seems to have a long-standing bug related to subscribing to folders. When you click on subscribe for multiple folders it only seems to do the first one, so they have to be done one at a time. There is a setting under Advanced in server settings to turn off only showing unsubscribed folders. I expect most people want to see all folders in their email account so it’s an odd way to do things.

Learned some interesting things about the Meslo font I’ve been using for years in iTerm on the Mac and had never bothered to look up before:

1. Meslo comes in three “line gaps” to control spacing between lines:
   – (S)mall, (M)medium, (L)arge
2. There is also a DZ variant of each of the above which contains a dotted zero.
3. There are Nerd Font variants of all of the above. Nerd Fonts are patched with lots and lots of extra glyphs.

I’ve got to admit, Kagi is a damned good search engine. I paid for a month of unlimited to see what the fuss was about and I get it now.

It was a beautiful sunny day today. Cold but sunny without much of a breeze. I worked on getting a few things done outside before the big snowstorm tomorrow. The last bit of leaves are out of the gutters and thankfully it looks like the trees are done shedding them (finally). Had to cover up the lawn furniture with tarps, etc. The garage needed some work too. It was a mess in there!

Got everything done outside. Was rushing around thinking I had until 3pm before the Bears game started. Unfortunately for me the game started at 2pm and I missed almost the entire first half 😂 Productive day though! My back is killing me but its all done!

I’m back on social media, Mastodon, mostly to test the Fediverse support in Ghost. It's definitely rough so far.

Bears beat the Eagles 24-15. Bears came alive (finally) in the 4th quarter but boy was the rest of that game rough to watch.

Went with the kids for our annual Thanksgiving trip to Andy's for an Apple Pie Concrete. Delicious as always. But glad to be home with no need to go anywhere tomorrow.

Just discovered this guy. The DJ sets are really something and the set he did in Rio at the statue of Christ the Redeemer was absolutely amazing. Full set here: