I always give my playlists random names before actually naming them and adding the art. This one was called “winter is coming and so is death or whatever man” so yeah. It’s got some really great jams on it though.

Here it is. Press play, enjoy. Then keep reading for some thoughts on the specific brutal brand of American capitalism, growing up on the internet, cozy tech, trans rights, Juan Soto, and two great new TV shows.

They’re not on the playlist, but congratulations to Do You Know Who You Are? by Texas is the Reason for winning album of the year for the 29th straight year!

Casino Capitalism

It’s interesting to me, as a child of the generation who grew up on the internet, our parents told us not to believe everything we read on here. We took that advice, yet those same people now fall for everything they read on here. How did this happen? Part of the problem is that scams are ever present; we all get them texted and emailed to us constantly and everywhere we click they’re ready to pop out from every corner. This is a real problem. They told us to think critically about what we read and then abandoned that notion themselves.

Growing up on the internet was foundational to everything I am today. An open world to be explored, especially with respect to seeking out music. I was a kid who taped songs off the radio on the cassette stereo in my room, and always got annoyed if the DJ talked over the beginning of the song or if they cut it a bit short. I just wanted to listen to the songs I liked on demand. That was the goal. So to download Napster and have access to so much music was a magic portal with endless possibilities. The bands I really liked (Third Eye Blind, blink-182) led me to dig deeper and find bands that weren’t on the radio. I got my hands on everything I could when I really liked a band, like live performances and singles and B-sides. Taping the radio evolved to burning CDs, not just for myself but for others, so I could share the taste I was cultivating. Sitting around my computer with a tower of blank CDs and Nintendo 64 was a fun afternoon for me and my friends. When one of us found a new band, we all could share them. AOL chat rooms weren’t specific enough so I joined music message boards and talked to other people who felt the same connection with music, the same longing to discover the next great song, the next artist to love for a lifetime, follow their career, watch them evolve, see them perform live over the span of decades, see them retire or go on hiatus and maybe decide to come back. That’s how I made friends, that’s in part how I learned a sense of self, developed taste, learned how to get upset, argue, be wrong, talk shit, apologize, coexist. And now I make playlists, ostensibly for the community of fellow music lovers I’ve met through the tubes of the internet, but also for anyone else who will listen. It’s a long way from the stereo in my room but there’s a direct line.

And now a handful of giant companies whose goals are diametrically opposed from their users make it harder to just connect with people. Facebook is for boomers, and in between ads for things you don’t want or need you might see a post or two from a friend, but Meta controls that algorithm tightly. You can’t just see what you want. Just last week Threads decided that maybe they should actually allow you to see your friends posts and see them in chronological order, but only because Bluesky is having a moment, due in part to the fact that they’ve always just allowed that. Meta is one of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world but a small group of 20 people built a platform that’s better in every way. That’s like blowing a million 28-3 leads in the Super Bowl. That’s like Zoom passing Skype. You had it right there, dude, but you didn’t care what your users wanted. Twitter/X has become unusable and unrecognizable as it is managed by a lunatic. You can mute or block Elon Musk but logging in to that hellhole is like standing in a wind tunnel of right wing nonsense and getting blown away. You barely see posts from the people you follow, but you sure see every dumb meme Elon posts plus more lies from the absolute worst people in the world who have been replatformed. He continues to claim “you are the media now!” which doesn’t even make sense even if you try really hard to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s simply a message of ‘believe what we tell you, everyone else is lying.’ As Charlie Warzel wrote in The Atlantic: “the truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality.” Musk continues to claim X is the place for truth but the entire site is now built on lies. Posts with links get pushed down and barely seen, in what he calls “lazy linking” because he doesn’t want you leaving his service. Why are journalists still on a platform that is trying to destroy journalism and replace it with propaganda? Who knows what will become of Bluesky, but it feels like it has potential to replace Twitter as the place for journalism and real time news and shitposting. You know, what Twitter used to be, but with better moderation. If you’re promoting yourself by posting links and you want those links to be seen and clicked, it’s the place to be. And maybe it can serve as the best place to share music for fans and artists. I’ll be there doing just that. Join me?

This unhinged growth-at-all-costs model we live under in the U.S. should be called Casino Capitalism. It’s rigged against us and the house always wins.

Cozy and calm

Calming our brains in an increasingly hostile, vulgar, and frightening world is a tall task. I enjoyed this article: The Fantasy of Cozy Tech by Kyle Chayka. Lately I’ve been enjoying hours and hours of PowerWash Simulator. The light hiss of the water spraying, going back and forth across a house or a truck or Shrek’s swamp, watching the dark sludge disappear with every swipe… it just tickles a certain part of my brain. It also gives me time to put on some music and bundle up on the couch. That’s cozy. I recently downloaded Pokémon TCGP on my phone and I love the specific hit of dopamine I get opening the digital packs. I play most games to maximize time/points/winning, but with this I just like opening a pack or two per day. There are no stakes, I don’t particularly care if I get dupes, I just love looking at my little monsters. Cozy. I don’t even know the most efficient way to deploy the items I collect and I am fine with that. I also just downloaded Sonic 1 & 2 on the Switch and have enjoyed rediscovering games I spent countless hours playing as a kid. The number of things I still remember is wild to me, when I can barely remember when I did yesterday. Sometimes I want to play Magic and think deeply and strategically, but it’s nice to have cozier, calmer options, and that’s what I’m leaning on these days.

Trans rights are human rights

Research has shown that trans people do not pose a threat to anyone in public restrooms, or anywhere else. This fight about bathrooms is a completely made up problem. In fact, trans people are far more likely to be the victim of harassment and assault in public bathrooms. And yet the entire discourse ignores all of that. Nancy Mace and others like her can claim they’re trying to protect women, but they’re actually making public bathrooms a more dangerous place for everyone, all to score political points. Selfish and stupid. It also gives away the game: men are a threat to women. Cis men, specifically. That’s a real problem, but that’s not one that they’re going to take on. So much for “protecting women.” It’s about power and control and grinding trans people out of existence, and they won’t stop there. Nothing short of full throated condemnation is appropriate.

But just like most right wing talking points, they repeat them so often that people just assume it must be true. Repeating lies does not make them true, but as we just saw with the election, repeating lies enough times will absolutely convince people that they’re true. It’s a strategy, it’s evil, and unfortunately, it works. It’s depressing. (Immigrants are eating animals, someone else will pay the tariffs, I don’t know anything about Project 2025, Kamala is a left wing radical socialist, etc. All just patently untrue statements!) I don’t know how we fight back against this asymmetrical information war. I liked this Adam Serwer piece about how “remarkable, delusional, and frightening” that is.

Their playbook is so simple, but unfortunately effective. It goes like this. Step one: Trump does something illegal, immoral, wrong, damaging, etc. The media reports on it and lightly points out that it’s illegal, immoral, etc. Trump then says “they’re attacking me!” No dude, they’re reporting on the heinous shit you do and say. He’s all actions, no consequences, and now that he’s won it looks like he’ll get away with all of it. He gets such childish treatment from the media most of the time, if he acts half normal for even ten seconds they play the “maybe he’s a changed man now!” card which is never true and was never going to be true. Lucy and the football ass media. Everyone else is held to some standard, except him. If a liberal-leaning judge makes a decision, they’re “activist judges!” If a judge he likes makes a decision, that’s perfect and beautiful. When he pardons family and friends for lying to protect him, it’s just him being him, no big deal. When Biden pardons Hunter and it’s the worst thing in the world, and now some idiots are even saying “Biden is setting a dangerous precedent!” Trump already did the same thing, and everyone barely blinked! He campaigned on doing it more! Everyone else is held to a standard of norms and decorum, but not him. That’s part of how we ended up with him in the first place. It’s a stunning failure by the media.

The New York Times keeps running anti-trans pieces about sports that don’t quote a single trans person, and cite retracted or unreviewed research to support a biased stance while ignoring actual peer-reviewed research. It’s a colossal failure by the paper of record to accurately describe the world we live in, and the Supreme Court is quoting their bullshit. It’s not about women’s sports. It was never about women’s sports. It’s just bigotry and hatred and it won’t stop with trans women.

One more thing regarding Trump’s appointments: why doesn’t he know one normal person? One person who doesn’t have a history of assault or fraud? Nope. It’s kind of the point with him. They’re flaunting the lawlessness. They’re laughing at us. It’s like the Evil Avengers or something. Just the worst of the worst.

One Juan Soto, Please

I really hope the Red Sox sign Juan Soto. I watch a lot of sports and what it comes down to is having great players on your teams makes life better. Watching games can be so much more enjoyable every day. The “you just root for laundry” crowd has a point, so isn’t it better if the guys in that laundry are great players? Yes! Of course! Like having Tom Brady in New England for so long led to so much joy and excitement. (I’m falling for all the Drake Maye propaganda, and can’t wait to see what he can do with a few other competent players around him.) Soto is Ted Williams 2, an absolute superstar, one of the very best players in baseball. Just pay him! Make the team better and more exciting for a long time! This one signing can turn the whole franchise around, just like that. These guys are all rich as hell and they can afford it! No one should be crying for John Henry’s wallet.

This week we got the news they signed Adoldis Chapman, who is a huge scumbag. He choked his girlfriend so he’s a big loser. I don’t care that his fastball is still very good, he sucks. Here’s some laundry I won’t root for. I hope he never actually wears a Red Sox jersey and I don’t particularly care what happens to make that come true.

Television Corner

I really enjoyed two new shows: A Man on the Inside and Nobody Wants This, both on Netflix.

A Man on the Inside is purportedly about an older man going undercover in a retirement home to investigate a theft, but it turns out it’s actually a vehicle for a deeper exploration of grief and loss, life and death. Eight episodes is just the right amount of time to spend with these characters. Michael Schur and Ted Danson get together again and while this is no Good Place, it’s a good show. Warm, funny, and sad. A perfect weekend binge.

Nobody Wants This stars Adam Brody and Kristen Bell and the title could not be more wrong. It’s hilarious, led by the two charming leads and extremely strong supporting cast. For a ton of laughs with a hearty side of romance, this is it. Warning: there’s a very good chance it will make you want to go rewatch The OC.

It’s Bandcamp Friday. Buy something from one of your Wrapped Top Artists. Post about it. Pass it on. That purchase will make them more money than all of your streams.