had this one sitting in draft for a week, whoops
just more taste of life.
It’s time for another tiara post! Check out the Spiky Tourmaline Tiara and read about the creator’s eventful life. Lots of bonus pics and links everywhere.
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I wrote a response to all of the blog posts I’ve read this year about quitting Spotify and replacing it with … yet another streaming service. 
tl;dr: I think purchasing and owning music is better (and often cheaper) for a lot of people in the long run. Renting access to music doesn’t make a lot of sense if you aren’t actively seeking out new artists on a regular basis. I also think that renting an all-you-can-eat music buffet changes the way we listen to and relate to music – and not in a good way.
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Good article, but I have a slightly different approach: I use Apple Music to try music by new bands who aren’t on Bandcamp before I buy their albums on disc. It seems marginally more ethical than finding a bootleg copy on the high seas.
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Caffeine And Lasers Wrapped 2025
Not related to my post, but a mild observation I had after seeing my Spotify Wrapped and my YouTube Wrapped (which is apparently a thing) both making the assumption that the creators I listen/watch to the most minutes of must necessarily be my favorite
And I realized that my favorite artists weren’t at the top of my Spotify lists, because I don’t listen to them while working out, only when I have the time to sit down and savour a whole album. Similarly for YouTube, they were under the impression that I really LOVE streamers more than video essayists, when in reality streamers just have a boatload more VODS and I like having yapping in the background sometimes.
[Comments so long they should have been a blogpost]
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Nice read, I ditched streaming years ago and having been building my library back up again since.
I’ve had a post in draft about “how important music ownership to you”, I might actually get around to it.
I do a lot of purchasing through Bandcamp - mostly build up a cart until Bandcamp Friday rolls around.
Funnily, in similar age to you but I still seek out new artists, mostly local ones but still have a lot of 00s music in regular rotation.
I love music
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Thanks! This is similar to what I do as well, except I use the free tier of Deezer or Bandcamp (if the artist has enabled free streaming on Bandcamp) to preview new stuff I haven’t heard before. Deezer’s free tier is terrible on mobile, but it’s not too bad on desktop. Fine for listening to an album once or twice to figure out if I want to buy it or not.
Thanks, I look forward to reading that post if you get around to finishing it!
I wish I still sought out new music at the rate I did when I was younger … I do try to give new bands and artists a chance if I’ve received a recommendation to check them out, but even then, I’ve noticed that I tend to gravitate towards “new” stuff that sounds an awful lot like the stuff I listened to in my teens and 20s. 
For instance, my favourite “new” music from the last five years was released by The Smile … a band comprised of two-thirds of Radiohead, one of the bands I listened to incessantly in my youth.
Oh, and the kicker re: The Smile. I only found out about them via a Radiohead subreddit about a year after their first album came out. Spotify’s oh-so-great recommendation algorithm should have KNOWN that The Smile would be right up my alley, given the many thousands of hours of Radiohead I’d logged on the platform over the years, but no, not a peep from Spotify! This is why I kind of roll my eyes a little when people clutch their pearls and say “but how will I discover new music I’ll like without Spotify?!” The way we’ve discovered new music for decades … word of mouth and magazines.
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Advent of Code 2025 is done and I did a little writeup on how I felt about it.
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One bizarre thing I noticed about Spotify’s effort to “playlistify” music in general.
I recently got Android Auto in my car and can control Spotify with it. And while I can select individual songs and playlists, there isn’t any way on the interface to select an album to play. It is infuriating.
Idk if it is on purposes, or if album listeners are just such a minority they legitimately forgot that is a way people listen to music or what
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The Games I Remember Playing in 2025 and Somewhere Between Spotify and Owning a Million CDs here.
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I find, on the mobile app, they lock front-to-back listening of albums and playlists behind the premium tier, which is unfortunate, cause I feel like most albums are designed to be listened to chronologically in order. Not all the time, but sometimes at least! They’re experiences! Like books.
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*breathes in
Ok, so I got a blog post to share. I’m trying to reengage in (internet) society, so I’m also forcing myself to share it here: Forcing myself to write this. It might be a bit long-winded but I did include several pics – including cat tax.
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This is amazing! My family has a similar problematic relationship with alcohol. Two of my uncles were “functional” drinkers and I use the past here bc one of them passed away and the other… well. he isn’t functional anymore.
I had to disengage myself from family reunions, but I did it without being very aware that that’s what I was doing.
I really appreciate your post. It made me think about some stuff in my own life.
(Also I love your website, visited several times, but I dont think I left a note anywhere)
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Hey just so ya know - the links you have to the blogposts are dead bc it converted every space in the URL to %25, atleast on my end. Clicking the posts on the sidebar of your page worked fine.
Thank you! I love your site too!
I am glad it’s helpful to you, people talking about alcohol pretty plainly to me helped me make better choices before things went south. I’m sorry for your losses - sometimes the “living losses” hit harder.
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boo-womp :(
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This is terrible. I’m in urgent need of a new drive and now I don’t know what to do
Thanks I have to look into that. 
The Weekly Wrap Up is posted! Links this week include an interactive map that shows events and people from the last 6,000 years of human history, a story about a newly discovered deep-sea carnivorous death ball sponge and what I thought was an interesting thread where Sarah Taber answers the question “do indoor grow light farms owe a debt to the weed man?”. I went out twice this week with friends and family, I have Ceelo the cat visiting for the next week and I share the sites I visit to find links to neat things. Plus, as usual, I listened to, read and watched things.
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Oh, no… I was about to buy one… I really wanna start a home media center 