At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ Me: Yow, that’s a lot of books I have stacked up.
Also me: Any news on upcoming novels from Don DeLillo, Jennifer Egan, William Gibson, Sayaka Murata, or qntm (Sam Hughes)?
▰ Plex (along with Plexamp) makes for a great music player (MP3s, etc.). I’ve got my audio files on an ancient Mac mini, and I can access them anywhere, at home and away: phone, laptop, iPad, TV, car. Plex is not great as a high-level overview of a music collection. Is there something good to run in parallel?
In response to my inquiry, I got plenty of recommendations, which was super, among them so far: Jellyfin, Spite Music Player, Roon, Mediamonkey DLNA, Audirvana, Subsonic/DSub. I’ll be checking them out.
▰ Reminder to download that audiobook before venturing into mountainous territory
▰ Took five episodes for Star Trek: Starfleet Academy to work a theremin into the story. (Not a great episode, especially the side story, but I was stoked for Lower Decks voice actor Tawny Newsome — who co-wrote it — to make an appearance, albeit as a different character.)
▰ Kinda fascinated by how when I think back to an episode of subtitled TV I watched (e.g., currently the German thriller Unfamiliar), my brain recollects fragments of dialogue as if they had been spoken in English (maybe because I’m remembering the voice[s?] in my head when I read/watched?)
▰ Wishing a posthumous February 14 happy birthday to the late great critic/teacher/violinist Edith Eisler (1925-2011), who’d be turning 101 this year
▰ Go back in time and tell younger me I’d get “too much” music in my inbox. He/I’d be like, “What part of ‘too much’ don’t I comprehend?” Tell him/me his/our inbox would have 3,318 emails at the start of the week, not counting the 18,000+ that get automatically sent to a subfolder. Anyhow, inbox is now down to 576 (as of 9:11am on Saturday, February 14, 2026), and should hit 0 by the end of the long weekend. Whew.
▰ Didn’t finish reading any books, but in the midst of several.