This fits my experience as well. Lately I’ve been listening to music as a main activity, not as background noise. I use my laptop, an external DAC and a pair or nice open back headphones. The whole setup keeps me tied to my couch, I can’t go wandering around and doing other stuff, I don’t keep my phone in reach, I just lay and listen. I’d say good music deserves the foreground.
You either get it or you don’t. Using a dedicated music player feels like treating yourself, whereas using your do-it-all smartphone feels austere. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a nice phone, or if your music player is an old iPod or an old garbage mp3 player or one of those modern DAPs (which are basically android phones with fancy DACs and huge batteries).
I regret selling my old iPod, I would be modding the shit out of it if I’d still had it right now. But alas, it became “obsolete” the moment I got a smartphone with internet connectivity and YouTube and streaming apps.
…And one last thing™: the click wheel was awesome and it was probably the best input solution for a portable music player ever. It was truly special.
This. Degoogling and using FOSS alternatives can only take you so far. We should drastically reduce smartphone usage. I got a dumbphone so I can be reachable. Outside of work, my smartphone is mostly powered off. I can’t realistically get rid of it, as I need a bunch of banking apps, authenticators, Google Maps at times (and no, there’s no real alternative to this, everything else sucks). But I only use it when I absolutely need it. It’s gathering a lot less data than it used to. I’m striving to be as low value to big tech as possible. Reducing smartphone use has also done wonders for my wellbeing. I read more, I’ve regained my attention span, I have more time to do stuff I like. Stop scrolling, there’s nothing but bullshit on the next screen, you’re not missing out on anything. Stop trying to replace one app or site with another. Just let it go, it was never worth it.
Bum music off of Spotify and save up for a home server in the meantime, got it.
Here’s a link to the paper, so you don’t have to read an article about an article.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289625000893
You either get cancer or you get diabetes, but you can’t have them both in this economy.
When I said I miss the old internet this was not what I was thinking of!
Don’t search for “sqrt girls”, you’ll be gravely disappointed.
I don’t think that getting rid of bot accounts would be a good choice. It feels like half of all reddit activity is from bot reposters and comments.
If you actually read Revelations you’ll be surprised that the word antichrist is nowhere to be found.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the Earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the Sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you…
Oh, not these values.
Right wing American politics has made a mockery out of Christianity.
The only Apple product I ever had was a 5th gen iPod. I remember having to “sync” it to my iTunes library. The concept of syncing was alien to me at the time, it seemed unnecessarily complicated (and it was!). Of course, I didn’t put up with that crap for long so I installed Rockbox on it. That let me copy files directly. It supported .flac and a whole lot of other formats and it ran DOOM and a Gameboy emulator.