Notices by Matthew Haughey (mathowie@xoxo.zone), page 6

Slowly realizing our current existence on planet earth is actually more dystopian than almost any fictional story told but when faced with a plague of inhumanity my strongest protest is giving out as much love, compassion, and kindness as possible.

actual pre-internet conversation I had probably around 1995:

him: what are you listening to?!

me: Social D, they fuckin rock

him: no, I mean, what the hell are they singing?

me: Ring of Fire, one of their best

him: are you serious right now? That's not their song

me: Sure it is! It's a Social Distortion classic!

him: it's a Johnny Cash song, you numbskull!

me: whaaaat-ever

fact: Smooth Criminal by Alien Ant Farm was the best thing that happened in 2001

I’m not a weirdo that doesn’t trust banks, but I gotta say I don’t have complete trust in the storage of my life’s savings at this particular branch

me texting STOP to every text coming at me from tiny district reps begging for money ever since I gave $100 to ActBlue 8 years ago

My new favorite band is Hop Along, which I found from @hotdogsladies talking about them.

It’s hard rock indie with an incredible lead. Imagine if The Hold Steady had a young Janis Joplin singing. Super good stuff, Painted Shut is a good album to start with.

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/hop-along/526442612

kinda jealous when I spotted this license plate in the wild because it’s taken and I can’t get it

pretty wild to read about Arizona trying to ban contraception on international women’s day https://heartlandsignal.com/2024/03/08/arizona-gop-refuses-to-pass-contraception-protections-as-party-leader-tells-women-to-put-aspirin-between-your-knees/

@mmasnick it was too big and heavy, and handled like a giant chevy suburban, but in a straight line it had insane speed (to the point it was overbuilt for 0-60). Also I've known a few people that worked there and they said it was pretty terrible place to work for tech folks and all the upper management hates customer requests to add CarPlay to the dash units, and they'll never add it. No CarPlay is a dealbreaker for me at this point.

I'm pretty meh about Rivian after owning a R1S for a short while, but the new R3X looks wild, like a late 70s/early 80s Ford Fiesta but all hopped up to be a rally racecar

Launched YouTube Music (a fork of YouTube) and saw a new podcasts area (a fork of the Google Play store that became Google Podcast app that is closing down in a matter month) and realized Google throws a lot of shit at walls to see what sticks

2 things:

1) I’m looking at British soccer team results a few weeks ago when I realize for the first time that “Ipswich” is a real place and not just where Windows FTP programs come from

2) I’m visiting Italy in 2012 when I turn a corner in a Florence museum and I see this painting and exclaim “holy shit it’s the woman from adobe illustrator!”

I updated my personal blog: https://a.wholelottanothing.org/ive-moved/

jesus christ have you tried using Thesaurus.com lately? Every page is covered in ads plus you get popover ads that take over everything, complete with a dark pattern to trick people clicking Open to engage with the ad. #enshittification

I did not sit through two hours of Red Dawn (1984) in a mall cineplex to have republicans today try and say “Russian aggression is good, actually”
#wolverines

@annika I had to every morning in the 1980s and hated the performative bs of it all

it really is weird americans play our own national anthem at our own events on US soil, the entire world (literally everyone but us) only plays anthems at international events, as a way to welcome a visiting country’s team.

I realized blogs are just a series of longer toots and I much prefer comments as replies on mastodon vs native comments in a dumb web form.

I’d love to federate my blog posts here and figure out how to replace comments with mastodon replies instead. Or display my favorite replies as comments on my Wordpress blog posts.

$40 a month just for the chance to experiment by putting my blog into the fediverse seems way too steep and against the kind of open web we’re all trying to build together.

I did eventually find the fediverse setting (which points to a.wholelottanothing.org@a.wholelottanothing.org) but wanted to experiment with the full activitypub plugin, and that does require the more expensive $40/mo account to enable plugins.