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Amaroking away the afternoon

Here’s what I’m listening to over the next hour.

Selection_001Using the Amarok player, I’ve set up a dynamic  list that finds songs with (Rating > 3 stars and  ( (PlayCount = 0) OR (LastPlayDate MORE THAN 90 days) ).This gives me a nice, fresh mix of the 11,800+ tracks in my library.  I had been an Amarok user since my early Linux days, but then they messed up the playlist functions and I switched to RhythmBox.  Recently, RhytmBox became totally unreliable on my Fedora 23 system, so I switched back to Amarok. It’s a happy experience.

What are you listening to now?

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Every step you take, I’ll be watching you

Image via EFF
Image via EFF

Have you noticed that you’re being tracked across the web?

If you look at shoes on Zappos, then you see ads for shoes on Facebook as well as other sites. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes it’s just creepy. And if “they” are tracking that, what else about your online behavior is being tracked?  Every breath you take, every step you make… they’ll be watching you.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has just released a plugin for Firefox and Chrome that blocks tracking “supercookies” without breaking websites. If you want to opt out of tracking, try adding Privacy Badger to your browser.

When you listen to that song and actually listen to the lyrics, it’s really creepy. (But look at how young Sting is!)

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You have to read a LOT of Dr. Seuss

moonlightingI was discussing the famous “You don’t have a square to spare?” Seinfeld episode, which led me to recall an episode of Moonlighting.  The mere prat of a youth with whom I was speaking had never heard of the show or seen Bruce Willis with hair. Thus, I present this for his (and your) edification and enjoyment.

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Abigail Adams on #TheNew10

Abigail Adams
Image: http://www.firstladies.org/

We can call the new bills “Abbies”.

My nominee for the new $10 is Abigail Adams, wife of President John Adams, mother of President John Quincy Adams, and the woman who kept it all together back on the farm when John was off being a founding father.

She was an advocate of the property rights of women and strongly opposed to slavery.

Through her letters with John, she exerted a great deal of influence on the formation of our country.

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It’s an OUTRAGE!

hidingfaceI’ve been examining my reaction to emails and social media posts and I think I have a diagnosis: “Outrage Fatigue”. I am flat out tired of everything being an outrage, a precursor to the apocalypse, and the end of life as we know it.

Folks, don’t sweat the small stuff. We will get by.

And if you think your thing is bad, remember this: Winter is coming.

We will get by. We will survive.

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Deal: Drumming with the Dead

Photo: Jack-Gardner on http://billkreutzmann.com/
Photo: Jack-Gardner / billkreutzmann.com

I just read Bill Kreutzmann’s book, “Deal“. It was like sitting with a really stoned dude for several hours while he tells you stories that are sort of in order but sometimes not and of course you’re stoned too so you don’t worry too much about it making a lot of sense, but you can see and feel that he has some pretty strong feelings. And he has a lot of love/hate going on, and he really, really misses Jerry.

It’s good you’re back into the music, and I completely understand, Billy, why you didn’t want to have anything to do with Furthur, even though it brought a lot of happiness to the ‘heads.

Listen to a bit of Billy and The Kids. He’s doing alright now.