jmac

jmac, 7 months ago to random

A long-dormant wish to learn music was activated by a visit to the amazing Moogseum in Asheville.

I fell in love with electronic music as a listener decades ago, but I never really thought about the science of its production before. I came away from my visit starving to know more.

http://moogseum.org

jmac, 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to Health

If you spend time outside on hot days, and you notice your pee has an unusually deep color, you are becoming dangerously dehydrated, even if you feel fine.

Attend to this immediately by doubling your water intake—whether or not you feel thirsty. You'll know you're clear when your pee is less colorful.

I ignored this advice on my vacation, and got to enjoy a foreign-country ER-visit adventure hours before a transatlantic flight. Do better than me!

#Health #ClimateChange

jmac, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

In "Running Up that Hill", Kate Bush wants to:

jmac, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to random

Never mind the calendar, the 1990s truly began with:

jmac, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to VideoGames

I am haunted by several great games that I have played a bunch of but walked away from for one reason or another. Which one should I make a push at this weekend? #Videogames

jmac, 10 months ago to Athens

Two nighttime views of the partially excavated Stoa Poikile, or “Painted Porch”, in #Athens. Zeno of Citium and his students hung out here so regularly, some 2,500 years ago, that #Stoicism takes its name from the building.

Note the furry gray Athenians lounging at the top of the stairs. Handsome feral cats prowl and laze all over the monumental ruins here!

A fenced-off excavation site in the middle of a lit and busy city block. A cat is snoozing on a nearby platform.

jmac, 10 months ago to random

Do any native English speakers pronounce "asked" in ways other than "ast" and "axed”?

I never realized I've been pronouncing it "ast" my whole life until I took some voice lessons recently and really paid attention to how I pronounced everyday words. But if I try to pronounce every letter in "asked", it feels super-weird.

jmac, 10 months ago to music

No matter what I #music listen to on Apple Music, the content of my "New Music" playlist is always 95% low-fi beats instrumentals. Sure, that's some of what I listen to at work, but not that much!

Hypothesis: the euro-electropop dance-clash that I enjoy the most hasn't been in fashion for decades, and new albums in that genre are rare. Meanwhile, ambient-music artists with names I'll never remember can poop out an album a week by just tweaking the inputs on their Python scripts.

jmac, 11 months ago to random

What's the current intergenerational state of #Discordianism?

Like. Steve Jackson Games helped bring me and untold numbers of my fellow Gen-X seekers into the fold with a beautiful new paperback edition of the (squarely Boomer-rooted) Principia Discordia in the late 1990s.

Is anyone doing anything like that today? Are there, in fact, any self-identifying Erisians left who are younger than 32?

Am I, let's face it, asking if I should perform another public exegesis of a book that shaped me? 🖖

jmac, 2 months ago to VideoGames

A thing about #VideoGames I think of now and again:

I am anticipating a possible middle-future cultural phenomenon where a ton of people, starting with #GenX-ers, express that they love video games and want to play more but they're getting too old for them. That is, their eyesight and reflexes and so on begin to drop below the threshold to enjoy them, en masse.

This hasn't been a problem with other mass-cultural media before, right? You generally don't get too old for books or movies and such.

jmac, 6 months ago to Vienna

Hi friends. I am traveling to #Vienna next week, and then #Budapest the week after that. Other than seeing “The Third Man” once, I know nothing of either place!

I am very open to any suggestions for sights and experiences, and your advice for an English-only visitor.

jmac, 7 months ago to random

I wanna finish Outer Wilds.

jmac, 11 months ago (edited 11 months ago) to Athens

Visiting #Athens for a week, starting a week from now. I would be most grateful for any recommendations of things to do or see—especially non-obvious ones—or any advice for first-time, English-only visitors.

I know it will be stupid-hot! My traveling companions are Itinerary Makers who have already packed the days with guided-tour activities, and they shall not be swayed. Or wilted. That to one side, I am very interested in nighttime activities.

#Greece #Travel

jmac, 3 months ago to random

I am delighted to discover that 48 of 65 respondents think that Cheez Whiz is stuff that you spray out of a can.

You are all thinking of Easy Cheese. Cheez Whiz is and was always a cheesy sauce that comes in a jar. You spoon it out, or you heat the jar and pour it over your cheesesteaks and your nachos.

But it feels right to call the spray stuff Cheez Whiz, right? You have held a can clearly labeled EASY CHEESE in your hand, and called it Cheez Whiz. https://masto.nyc/@jmac/111898965657423858

jmac, 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago) to Steamdeck

Best twin-stick shooter on #SteamDeck?

I don’t know, I’m asking! I haven’t played a good one in ages and I have the itch.

jmac, 7 months ago to random

I have resumed my piano lessons. I'm happy with my choice of the Samson Carbon. My total outlay for this adventure so far comes to less than $150.

I have figured out how the keyboard wants to be used: pop an iPad running a MIDI-capable app like GarageBand into its “cup-holder", and it becomes a perfectly good self-contained novice-friendly synthesizer. The tablet even powers it!

Also, yes, I have scrawled notes about notes onto the white keys with a black dry-erase marker. It's my keyboard.

jmac, 9 months ago to random

I did not care for the TV adaptation of "The Peripheral", which is one of my favorite contemporary novels.

It started out quite promising, but the sheer amount of gun violence made my head swim, and I had to take a long break halfway through.

On returning, I found end of the final S1 episode deeply disturbing and horrifying in ways that I feel certain were not intended, making me like it even less, in a meta-loop.

jmac, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago) to StarTrek

We gave #StarTrek LD the ol' college try after SNW's “Those Old Scientists” but man, feeling out of gas after four episodes.

The main characters are just, like... not likable! Right? Boimler and green lady are cringey fuckups, and Mariner is a cringey jerk.

E3 got my hopes up—I liked the parody of management antipatterns, and the unexpected horniness—but E4 refocuses on what a jerk Mariner is, and how nobody likes her! And like: yeah! I don't like her either! And she's the main guy! Eh!

jmac, 11 months ago to linux

Dear #Linux folks: Do you have a favorite application for working with a folderful of #Markdown files?

I am currently using Obsidian, which isn't necessarily my favorite, but at least it's familiar.

jmac, 7 months ago (edited 7 months ago) to movies

I have at last watched BARRY LYNDON. My goodness what a gorgeous picture. I expect that it's largely famous for its countless pull-back shots showing a brooding character shrinking into rolling hills and hedgerows stretching to the horizon. I watched most of it at night with all the lights off, and it was the candlelit interior scenes that really got me.

Time to re-read Todd Alcott's nine-part analysis of it!! http://www.toddalcott.com/kubrick-barry-lyndon-part-1-2.html #Movies #Cinemastodon

jmac, 10 months ago to StarTrek

#StarTrek SNW Season 2 feels like a show that knows people are watching it, and is trying a little too hard to please?

E2 was fine. E3 had some very effective character moments and ended gracefully, but pacing was wack, and it had poopy time-travel mechanics that conflict with S1 episodes.

(My time-travel rules in a nutshell: Branches yes, palimpsests no, get outta here with that.)

E4 was harrowing, especially if you have experience with dementia. Best of S2 so far, but I hope E5 is happier.

jmac, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to nyc

Wonderful #VNVNation show last night. Went with partner and a couple of coworkers.

Ronan was crabby all night about lighting issues; attached video shows him signaling frantically to the crew as he began singing "When is the Future?”. This of course only adds to the fun, in a backhanded way.

My first truly packed concert in #NYC. Many were the elbows delivered unto my gut and stomps upon my toe. This is to say that everyone was dancing and this was a net positive. #ElectronicMusic

jmac, 3 months ago to random

Dear #fediadmin / #mastoadmin folks: Does the community have any experience or guidance about incorporating a nonprofit entity to manage a fedi server?

Building a charitable nonprofit to legally hold and maintain a medium-sized, community-serving instance strikes me as a good idea, along the lines of a charity that runs a small public garden. (We have a lot of these, in New York…)

I'm interested to hear any stories or advice folks might have about this!

jmac, 8 months ago to random

Join @dougo and I Friday at 8 PM Eastern as we play more of “The Little Match Girl 2" by @rcveeder for a couple of hours. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_38cKhGDT0 #InteractiveFiction

jmac, 7 months ago to random

I told someone at dinner last night that Ubik is an accessible starting point for exploring Philip K. Dick's oeuvre.

That feels wrong because it's such a weird story and maybe I should have said The Man in the High Castle instead?

On the other hand Ubik is such a wonderfully, arrestingly, unsettlingly strange story, and if you like it, you'll probably like most everything else the man wrote.