Deflock is a crowd-sourced mapping tool which shows the locations of Flock surveillance cameras, searchable by zip code or address. I’m kind of shocked that there are only a few in my general area. If you care about civil liberties, tell your local lawmakers you don’t want Flock cameras, and if they’re already installed, tell them you want them removed.
About five years ago I made a mental decision to document all of the songs that get stuck in my head. This might be hard for some people to understand, but when I get something in my head, it usually takes a couple of days for it to wash out, and there’s no telling how it’s going to get in there in the first place: it could be playing on the loudspeaker at the grocery store, it could be used in an Instagram reel, or it could be something that just pops in there. I was curious the other day and decided to make a list of all of the earworm songs I’ve made note of on this site, which was a lot more than I thought it was, 88 in total to date. There are only a few I’m embarrassed by, but typically I’m not in charge of these things.
- Never Enough, The Cure
- Wire, U2
- Regret, New Order
- World (Price of Love), New Order
- Angel, Massive Attack
- Geek Stink Breath, Green Day
- Heavy Metal Suicide, Ringo Deathstarr
- Iris, Goo Goo Dolls
- Fu Manchu, Mongoose
- She Drives Me Crazy, Fine Young Cannibals
- Falling Hard, Crystal Method
- Ladytron, Destroy Everything You Touch
- Dark Neccessities, Red Hot Chili Peppers
- Lights Out, Royal Blood
- Phantogram’s Howling at the Moon
- I’d Really Love to See You Tonight, England Dan & John Ford Coley
- Auto Pilot, Queens of the Stone Age
- Hands All Over, Soundgarden
- Outshined, Soundgarden
- Burden In My Hand, Soundgarden,
- Something’s Always Wrong, Toad the Wet Sprocket
- Light Design, Turnstile
- Never Enough, Turnstile
- Wires, Red Fang
- Blue Light, David Gilmour
- True Widow, Theurgist
- Dreams, Beck
- Daymom, Drop Nineteens
- You Can’t Quit Me Baby, Queens of the Stone Age
- Pull Me Under, Dream Theater
- Apocalypse, Cigarettes After Sex
- A View to a Kill, Duran Duran
- Love Spreads, The Stone Roses
- Then She Did…, Jane’s Addiction
- How to Handle a Rope, Queens of the Stone Age
- Young Americans, David Bowie
- Tristessa, Smashing Pumpkins
- Mexican Moon, Concrete Blonde
- Eurotrash Girl, Cracker
- Spring and Summer, Fall, Blonde Redhead
- Atlas, Battles
- Armageddon It, Def Leppard
- ill peach, BLOOM
- This Conversation is Getting Boring, Acopia
- Beautiful Disaster, 311
- Inertia Creeps, Massive Attack
- My People, The Beaches
- Dirty Movies, Van Halen
- Cemeteries of London, Coldplay
- Council Skies, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds
- She Sells Sanctuary, The Cult
- Afterlife, Arcade Fire
- Welcome to the Pleasuredome, Frankie Goes to Hollywood
- Valerie Loves Me, Material Issue
- World Impact, Drug Church
- Sometimes, My Bloody Valentine
- Need You Tonight, INXS
- Golden Brown, The Stranglers
- No Time To Die, Billie Eilish
- Ocean Size, Jane’s Addiction
- Giant Peach, Wolf Alice
- Brushed, Quicksand
- Nothing to See, Miya Folick
- Maria También, Khruangbin
- Fight Test, The Flaming Lips
- SWEET75, Sleigh Bells
- Shotgun, Soccer Mommy
- New York, Richard Ashcroft
- My Own Worst Enemy, Lit
- Lies, Chvrches
- Glamour Profession, Steely Dan
- Guilt, Ringo Deathstarr
- Around the World, Daft Punk
- Music Sounds Better With You, Stardust
- Japan, Tycho
- Don’t Waste My Time, Sault
- Cosmonauts, Quicksand
- Valerie Loves Me, Material Issue
- Two Urns, Windhand
- Party in the USA, Miley Cyrus
- Falling Hard, The Crystal Method
- Sometimes, My Bloody Valentine
- Cure for Pain, Morphine
- You Made It, DJ Shadow
- Here’s What’s left, RJD2
- Saturdays, Cut Copy
- Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime, Beck
- One Too Many Mornings, Chemical Brothers
From a link on Metafilter, I found a webcomic called Strong Female Protagonist, which was published online from 2012 to 2018. It’s a standard superhero setup but completely upends the standard genre by investigating what happens when superheroes realize that punching bad guys doesn’t actually solve anything, while navigating friendships and romance after revealing their secret identities. There are some very interesting (and, at points, navel-gazing) discussions about right and wrong, free will (in the context of a superhero who can read minds), and other moral and ethical questions about what it might mean to have extraordinary abilities. The creators went on hiatus and have not finished the series, sadly, but have gone on to bigger things. I shared the link with Finn and she devoured the entire series in a day, which is the best recommendation I can give.
This is Never Enough, by The Cure. This appeared on a comp album they put out called Mixed Up, where they had a bunch of different artists re-imagine earlier work, and was an extended version of a new single. My roommate bought the album and I had this one track on heavy repeat back in the day. All of the current streaming versions are different than the one I remember—the one on the cassette was a little shorter and simpler, and I like that one best.
Happy Birthday, blondie. I love you!
I took the girls out for a pre-birthday brunch on Sunday at a place called, unfortunately, Bunny’s Buckets & Bubbles, a southern comfort food place now installed in the dear departed Wharf Rat in Fell’s Point. The food was very good, the drinks were strong, and we ate enough that we went home and didn’t eat for the rest of the day.
* * *
I was using my old MacBook Air as a travel machine for a while, leaving the big new one on my desk as a dedicated video editing machine, and I found it to be super-handy. Not worrying as much about bringing my primary laptop out to the dirty garage, for example, was liberating. About a month ago I threw the travel laptop in my bag, not realizing one of Hazel’s travel water bottles was also inside, and that it was leaking from the lid. Before I knew it, about 1/4 cup of water had leaked onto the laptop, and when I noticed it, I immediately shut it down and tipped it up to drain out for a couple of days. Carefully booting it back up, I was happy to hear the startup chime and see the screen come up, but the trackpad and keyboard refused to work.
Annoyed, I followed the disassembly directions on iFixit and pulled the trackpad assembly out to find corroded circuitry at the base, where the trackpad/keyboard ribbon connect to the main controller board. Pulling the bottom cover off with the required force to disconnect a bunch of clips, I wound up cutting into the ribbon at one of the 90˚ bends (d’oh!) but was able to get the trackpad assembly out with no problem. iFixit had the trackpad I need in stock, but the ribbon is not. I ordered the trackpad and put myself on the notification list for the ribbon. I’m hoping water did not find its way further inside and onto the logic board—but I figure the fact that it boots up with no problem means I’m in the clear there.
Here’s a video update from July, which includes a bunch of truck stuff but ends with some good camping footage. My output has slowed down dramatically in the last couple of months, as I’ve gotten busy with work-work and also gotten a little burned out on shooting, editing and posting every week. I don’t know how you’d be able to do this as a solo creator for years on end unless you had an outside editor, but that’s a success problem I don’t have at this point.
Ooof, this is a tough one. Mark Lanegan (of the Screaming Trees, Queens of the Stone Age, and an extensive solo career) did a cover of Alice In Chains’ Nutshell about six years ago: a song about addiction—but really, what AiC song isn’t about addiction? He dedicated it to the memory of Layne Staley and Mike Starr, who both overdosed at different times. Lanegan and Staley were good friends, and Lanegan was also an addict, and was apparently clean—but died of unknown causes two years after recording this.
He’s singing in a completely different voice here—I didn’t recognize him at all without the rough growl, and his clean voice is achingly beautiful. I’m always wary of pedal steel, but his accompanist is masterful—she’s just perfect. What a beautiful tribute.
Trump administration admits grants for clean energy were canceled based on politics:
The administration has acknowledged in court documents that it canceled $7.6 billion in grants for hundreds of clean energy projects “based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state” — in this case, 16 states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
…Projects that were cut were located in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
Americans rewire their grocery shopping routines while digesting the biggest price jump in 50 years:
Buying food to eat at home has gotten 33% more expensive in U.S. cities since the beginning of 2019, according to government figures. In the 7 1/2 years before that, prices rose 6.4%.