Decided to take a break from spotify and try out some real lossless music streaming from Qobuz, the French streaming service - heard about it a lot and decided to try it out for a month or so. So far so great.

Really great selection of classical and a curated feeling about albums they show you - not as frequent as spotify but very good.

So sad to report one of my passive speakers for my hi-fi system really has finally died it seems. It survived so many floods and damage over the years but I really can't get it to work.

I hated the sound of just the right speaker so bad I dusted off my Google Home speaker that I haven't used in over 5 years to take over music duties. I don't like no stereo sound but it is designed to work alone, sounds good with FLAC files and is room filling. The right side Kenwood from the receiver wasn't cutting it.

Where do I even get passive speakers that aren't made for a bookshelf? They are all too tiny these days. 

My most favorite computer I've ever owned (that I am typing on now) is my 2016 Pixel book Pro I got on a great black Friday deal on Google. 

I wasn't going to buy it at first, but then I just decided to go for it. I've written so much on this little machine, but it has been pushed to the back burner sadly though the acquisition of so many other great computers: A couple of Lenovos from work, and now an Apple Macbook Air 13 inch just acquired from work in the spring. I also have a pretty nice tiny Samsung laptop with an amazing AMOLED screen that I sometimes travel with. 

This computer is outdated, screen wise. It has a very blocky, wide bezel screen that is easy to see but isn't in the modern proportions we'd expect. My Air feels "wider" somehow. This screen also looks a little pixelated too. But it has a huge advantage: It's a touchscreen, and also is much easier to read for typing. 

The battery has been through a lot so now only holds about 4 hours compared to when I first got it 9 years ago where the battery would claim 8 hours left but really go for days without a charge. 

Another huge advantage is that I don't think this computer tracks me as much as my work laptop. I'm quite cautious, maybe overcautious about what I write on my work computer. We have quite the adversarial/wartime relationship with the administration so I wouldn't put it past them to track every keystroke we make on our work machines. Before you ask: No, I am not posting this from work wireless - I'm at home for this post!

Most important: This keyboard. It's the most fun, easy, smooth, and joyful typing experience I've ever had! 

I've written countless papers on this machine including writing one of those grail-projects that you never think you'll ever see in print, my essay on Allen Ginsberg's poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra." I wrote it in 3 sessions over 3 days next to a sunny window during lockdown in 2020. 

The keyboard flies but most importantly it doesn't get in the way. I don't think about it. I'm just looking at the words I'm thinking appearing on the screen. There's nothing quite like it and I've been at pains to find a similar keyboard for my desktop or for any other machine so I can have this same typing experience. 

This machine also sideloads apps through a Linux of some kind, so I can run MS Word if I don't want to or can't use Google Docs. There's no lag in any of the side loading software.

All in all, the best computer I've owned is this one. But this summer it will lose its security upgrades. So I have to decide what's next for this machine. Perhaps Linux alone? Or maybe I can get away with Chrome OS for a while yet without the updates. I think Linux is the safest option but I do not look forward to all the hardware compatibility issues and loss of power efficiency that I know I'm going to face in such a transition. This thing is designed for Chrome OS so there has to be a loss when swapping operating systems. 

I'll post here during the transition but that's months away. I think I'll just enjoy this little laptop a while longer!

Here's my April Listening stats: 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/month/4

It seems I'm not as full speed ahead as I was in January, I wonder what accounts for that? 

There's not a lot of great stuff coming out right now in my preferred genres, but I'm finding interesting stuff to play. Now that I'm home most of the time, I think that the numbers should go up!

Week Notes for May 4th 2025

• Finished my essay for a book on teaching that will be published probably in a few months in Italy. I'm thinking it is ok but could be better. 
• Wrapped up the spring term. That means that this fall will be the start of year 19 of working as a professor. 
• Started working in earnest on my summer projects, which include two big video lecture series. We'll see if anyone watches them. 
• My essay that is over a year old came out in Argumentation & Advocacy What a long process that was! Taylor & Francis isn't interested in being a good publisher, they just want to make free money off of academics. We let them!
• Read Jefferson Fisher's book The Next Conversation and I'm going to make a YouTube video review of it. Spoiler: It's terrible.
• Starting to read the most recent biography of Alexis de Toqueville

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/man-who-understood-democracy-life-alexis-de-tocqueville

Here's this week's Music Listening see what you think. Obsessed with Ariana's new album. 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/week/17

The second time you do something is hardly a tradition, but it is definitely a step toward a tradtion!

Week Notes for April 27th

This week's listening stats.

• Listening is always off kilter due to how Last FM does the listening tracking (Thursday to Thursday) but maybe it will catch up one day? Who knows? This is just through the 24th. I definitely need to shut down the Google Chrome plugin for Last FM as it's ruining my stats by putting in interviews and other non-music choices I make on YouTube. 

• This week's listening brought to you by the Coachella YouTube live feed, nice weather, new porch furniture, a bluetooth speaker, and oh so affordable Kirkclaws (Costco branded whiteclaws). 

• I have been sick since Tuesday night. I think I got some viral bug from one of the many children who were at the house on Easter. The incubation period holds up and I didn't follow my rules for eating at an event where children are present, so that's a great way to catch something.

• I took the week off to recover plus I didn't want to be "that guy" who gets everyone sick the last week of the semester as the stress for finals starts to ramp up. People are going to be wrecked anyway; why contribute?

•  I'm trying to figure out how to address these new and decidedly poorer quality students that we are bringing in these days. They have been well-trained to be incapable. I'm starting to make a summer to-do list already for my fall courses.

• I finished moving all my files into a decent order on my NAS and started cleaning out duplicates and broken files. There are a lot. As of today the total storage of the NAS has changed from 8.2TB to 7.9TB. That's significant and shocked me once the NAS wiped the recycle bin. A little goes a long way. My strategy has been to delete about 10 or so things whenever I'm taking a break at the computer. 

• Finding all kinds of great old images I didn't know I had! Here's a sample! 

  

  

  

  

• Finishing an essay I've had months and months to work on as the deadline keeps getting pushed back. I'm still not happy with it but I really only have today and tomorrow to finish it up. Been typing away on it during the week.

• Playing a lot of No Man's Sky, amazing game always

• Reading an interesting book on Translation and Henry Giroux's new book on teaching

I have spent a significant portion of being sick with a cold watching some of these playthroughs of the games that defined my sense of what a video game should be. Sierra games!

All of these are worth watching.

My friend Alan clued me in to the new trend of posting week notes on a blog just to make a list and talk through what you did. It's sort of a throwback in my mind to the earlier days of blogging when the writing was an "open diary" or "open journal" rather than what it is thought of today - a form of publishing. The vibes are very different between the two. This practice is a recovery of blogging's origins as a "web log," an online journaling practice that just allows you to dump everything that happened, everything you did, and everything that can't easily be classified between the two.

There is a humorous timeliness to the recovery of this kind of post thanks to Elon Musk. But this is a reduction and a simplification of human effort and experience. I don't think the Week Notes is meant for that. Instead it should be thought of as a way to reflect on what you did, tried, didn't do, etc. It can be expansive and constructive rather than an account, testimony, evidence, or proof that you are worth something to someone, anyone. That dark way of thinking about accomplishments pervades our lives. Maybe actual blogging, week notes, can chip away at that. 

Here's my first attempt!

Last Week's Soundtrack is down from the previous week mostly because I wasn't listening to a lot of music! I only listened in the car or the gym. Last.fm is very good for seeing your music habits in the micro and the macro.

I moved all of my files off of my 5TB OneDrive provided by my university after I realized they would probably claim ownership of my writing, or delete it, or mess with it if they felt like it. This was a huge ordeal. I did clean off a lot of duplicates and now I'm in love with the Synology interface and software on my NAS more than I thought was possible. 

I spilled about a pound of fancy coffee all over the floor one night before bed and my auto-delivery scale didn't trigger, so I'm drinking my emergency Costco coffee - and it tastes great! Is it quality or is it just change?

I edited the PR copy for my forthcoming book and suggested an alternate subtitle for it. Still considering re-writing the conclusion but why mess with what works? The word count is tight and I just know that if I were to do that I'd be at least 2k over what they want. I can just wait for the second edition, which they seem to think will happen. They know better than me! The second edition would be in 2028. 

I sold my PS5 to my good friend and shipped it off. It didn't feel weird at all; it felt good! I realized that in a shared house you can't play a TV dedicated console ever. Plus the only thing I used it for was playing Fallout 76, a prior gen game. Once No Man's Sky allowed cross save, I moved everything to Steam and said by to it. Maybe I'm too old for consoles? I am eagerly looking forward to the new Pokemon game on Switch though.

Regularly making two 45 minute podcasts a week and it's fun. I realize I can just kind of chat about ideas and it is pretty good quality. You don't really need much in terms of a producer role. Podcasts are conversations!

Ok well that's the first attempt. Let's see how this next week goes. I wonder if I should arrange them around the Last FM conception of a week (Friday to Thursday). Kinda weird. Thoughts on this welcome!

Support the blog!

http://stevellano.voicenotes.com

I have been using the Voicenotes app for a while now. It's really great, and a good way to not lose track of ideas when they pop into your head while you are doing something else. 

Today they launched a blog service - is it a blog? - where you can post voicenotes directly to a public website. This strikes me as something I was missing from the old LiveJournal days, where you could call a phone number and make a voice post. I doubt LiveJournal still has this feature (it's almost completely taken over by Russians anyway) but it was so amazing. I loved it and haven't found anything really close to it. 

Voicenotes might be considered a podcast but perhaps it's more like a blog that is only audio posts. Not sure what to do with it just yet but I thought I would share the link and see what people think of my early efforts.

Of course my real podcast is where it's at: In the Bin

That one slaps already. Not sure what to do with this new one but it is fun to play with. 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/month/3

March was when I was obsessed with Pvris. Excellent albums; why was I so unfamiliar? 

I'm listening to her still (her, I think? It seems there's a band but most of what I read says it's her, like Nine Inch Nails is to Trent Reznor) but also listening to all sorts of other good stuff coming out. 

I've been getting into ambient music quite a bit and Apple Classical, at least while I have it free for 3 months, is a great addition however it doesn't really appear on Last.fm like it should. 

This video seems to suggest that there's a band? I'm very confused. Anyway, this is my favorite tune from them/her at the moment. 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/week

Music listening down since the winter. I wonder why that happens?
Perhaps I listen to more music during the cold days. Maybe I don't notice it? I feel my listening amount has stayed the same. 

Last.fm is so important to me as the data - when I look at it - makes me consider my relationship with music. It raises a lot of questions for me that force me to create explanations and accounts, which is great rhetorical practice. 

I heard this song on the radio the other day and I felt quite sad as I really saw the connection of it to many of the experiences I have been having this semester. Plus, the meta of remembering listening to this song in college and really liking it. Even the like of the song has changed (faded) from the meaning and association I developed at first (shimmer).

Really getting back into pop music this month, but how could I not? There are so many good releases right now. I also have a trial of Apple Music and I'm wondering if I should keep it. It doesn't work well with last.fm however so that's a big strike against it. 

This song is too good. I hope the rest of the album is as good. This song really hits me, I love it! 

In two years I will have been a professor for 20 years. Too long to do anything!

I should have left much earlier; now I don't think I can leave!

It's a bit much trying to adjust to the students' incapability all the time. But what else would a teacher do? 

This term is nearly over, and my run as an authoritarian did not work out well at all. I thought I'd try it as my colleagues get such joy out of this kind of power. I wanted to see what the fuss was about. There's no fuss and nothing about. 

In the fall I shall go totally lax to pay back some of the karma. Not sure it works like that but we'll hope.

Four weeks left of this nonsense then the summer for thinking.

Should I refresh every old computer I work on? Probably.

However I think that if a computer works and can do the tasks that you need it to do, just leave it alone. 

This old Macbook has been backed up and I removed a bunch of software from it that is outdated or no longer working. Seems fine. I think I'll just leave it as a writing machine - one that is distraction free because trying to run a Google Search on it takes longer than it does to make a cup of coffee in the Keurig. A big cup. 

I should finish up Violet so I can have my Pokémon ready for A-Z which was announced at the Pokémon direct the other day.

I'm excited for a Pokémon game that is in the modern Pokémon era but has the play style and combat innovations of Pokémon Legends: Arceus which was the best one so far in my opinion. 

The Fedoras on all the characters is a hilarious subtweet I think of the player base. But then again maybe not. I'm not sure why I like Pokémon so much but I'm definitely not one of those kinds of fans.

Watching this speedrun while working this morning really brought back some great memories. I think this is my favorite Super Mario Brothers game if not the best one. 

I think a lot of people might say Super Mario World is the best Mario game. Not really familiar with the debate around the best Mario games but I think my ranking here is a mix of nostalgia and just the relaxing, no-timer play that feels very Metroid Vania, even though technically this isn't a Metroid Vania. 

Maybe "feels like" is my standard for what video games I really love? 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/month/2

Big difference here between January and February but March should be larger than January. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out to listen to but Spotify isn't very good anymore about notifying me. I have to rely on producer websites, emails, and label-spam, all of which is so easy to just ignore or delete out of your email. 

The super low week was because I wasn't alone at all - hanging out with the best person ever! But chatting and doing stuff cuts into music time, and I always forget to run shazam on my phone when driving around listening to XM radio. 

Posthaven is great and simple but even greater and less simple (but still simple) is News of the Day (NOTD) who really has the best model for this online posting, newsletter, writing thing. 

https://notd.io/s/NYsophist

Here's my site there, go check it out. Yes it costs some money but this keeps the servers running. Also they don't collect data or sell ads or anything like that. 

I kinda gave up on NOTD and I can't remember why but go check it out. Gonna start posting there again.

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/week/8

Music data coming along for the year. It still has me at a 36 song a day average to eclipse last year, which I think is deceptively easy to do. It's easy to lose track of such a small number, but I've been playing music quite a bit here. My preferred way of listening these days is with some AudioTechnica headphones I bought cheap that are wired into my mixer. It sounds pretty good and has the added benefit of freezing out noise around the house when working. 

I've become soft. I remember being able to work through so much traffic noise and otherwise when I was living in Queens. Being out east has come with an appreciation of the quiet to be sure, but more insidious is the reliance on the quiet. I feel like I need to find a cafe and bring the laptop from time to time in order to keep silence's value. But the only cafe around here that I think I could go work at for a sustained period is a Starbucks. Not really the best place to be hanging out. 

Oklou is an amazing artist I wish I had found sooner. This album though - it has no flaws whatsoever. Every track is really perfectly placed and just wonderful. I wish I had better linguistic equipment to talk about how much I like this album, but that's about all I have. I can listen to it all day. It's just right for reading or writing, and just active enough to pull you in and away from your focus only to allow you to refocus in better and sustainable ways. I love it. It should eclipse my most listened to for February in March, but we'll see what else comes out. 

There are so many good ambient video channels on YouTube you could probably make a whole blog dedicated to them, reviewing them, saying which ones are best for what kind of tasks, etc. 

There are so many good artists and thinkers and creators - it's really a boggling time to try to figure out what is best. But I think it's great to have a rubric of what you like.

This one is my favorite. I even considered giving them some money through a subscription which I never thought I would do on YouTube. I think that being a premium YouTuber is really enough to be honest. However, this is so great, and so handy when reading or writing that I am still considering it. 

Spotify is great, but more often than not these days when I am working I click on something like this. 

https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/week/6

Looking good! I've gone down one track per day average to beat 2024 already. If I maintain an average of 35 tracks a day (so it says) I will out listen 2024. I guess that's a cool goal, but I'm also just weirded out about what I want to hear and when. The question always on my mind is: Why do I stop listening to a song?

I'm hoping some time space coordinates and frequency can help me figure this out. Still cranking on Oklou and hardly listening to new Linkin Park at all now which is SAD. I love that new album, but hardly ever put it on. 

Peter Gabriel still fire though. Why? 

So much good music and so many ways to examine what I am listening to and when and how. I do love last.fm. 

pov: You are arriving at Penn Station and see the official ambassador and welcome sign to New York City.

The Port Jefferson LIRR is one of the few lines left if not the only line that relies on diesel locomotives to operate. There are a lot of reasons why the line can't be electrified, which means service is very slow and pretty cumbersome. 

Here's the Port Jefferson train arriving at Hicksville station to pick us up to take us off the electrified rails to Port Jeff. Once I arrive there, it's still a 20 minute drive out to where I live. 

I think within the next few years we will move closer to NYC but until then this is one of the lifelines I depend on to get to and from the city. Luckily I just drive to my work in Queens, but for some people this train is an everyday necessity. 

This album sounds so good to me it's difficult to describe it. The phrase "so good" isn't really enough because the album isn't exactly pleasurable or comfortable to hear, it's just a good thing to hear although it's rather uncanny all over the place.

I find it to be really amazing and will probably obsess over it for a lot this year. I fully expect it to dominate my listening charts on last.fm when December rolls around and I'm looking at my annual stats. 

I think it's just hitting at a perfect time when I'm getting a little tired at some of the repetitive harmonies of trance and dance music, and listening to a lot more atmospheric and minimal stuff.

This album is really, really short too. Which I typically don't like. But it doesn't feel short at all. 

She loves it, but it's kinda cold out here.

Typically we'd see some wildlife but I think they are all hunkered down today!

Is there a correlation between the strength and extreme tone of a political post and whether it's set to friends only or public?

it's so strange to me that so many thoughtful, timely, and powerful political arguments, positions, and ideas are hidden behind the freinds only status on social media. 

This is a waste. Wouldn't you want your strong political arguments to be seen by people unlike you, who see things differently than you? This seems to be where the most impact could take place.

Thinking of my own friends list on social media sites, it's pretty wide and there are a lot of people on there I don't know too well. I suppose others could have a list like this but I imagine it is people who already share your political and social views. They can just hype you up with their already extant agreement in a comment, but there's little development of their point of view or, maybe more importantly, yours.

I suggest that one of the best reasons to make an argument is to improve your own position through the feedback you get. If the audience is curtailed to a group of like-minded people you might not get a lot of push or any pressure on your position. 

Plus you aren't making much of an impact there. It does feel like you are doing something powerful and good, and that's important in times of political instability and uncertainty, however there should be a balance.

I'm all for adapting your message to the audience - that is the study of rhetoric after all - but why are we speaking on social media to the "world" but behind the walls of a compound of our own design, with our friends and allies? 

This slippage is dangerous as it might, in the terms of Freud, be a form of repressive desublimation where we enjoy the release of the frustration before it's ready to boil over and push us to create a new or aberrant or artistic expression for the world to see. Perhaps the relief we experience isn't the positive good we get from political engagement, but pleasure only. Maybe there's a way to use social media posts to keep a positive vibe, do something meaningful, and release some of the frustration that moves us to the keyboard in the first place.