Category: annoying people

Rediscovering Muse

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Say what you like about Muse (and I will be doing just that below), their music is great for a run or a workout. I don’t actually listen to music on my runs anymore – it’s far too dangerous – but if I did, their music would be great for that.
That weird uncatagorisable mix of alt rock, glam rock, pop synth, metal, classical, EDM and even occasional dubstep makes for an often unpredictable – but always energetic – playlist.

Spotify put me onto a remix of their latest single, Compliance:

Echoes of their beautiful love song Endlessly and hints of the theme from Knight Rider. See what I mean about a weird mix of genres?
Still, that got me through a quick 5kms on the static bike. Go whoosh whoosh.

I’ve since been listening to some their other stuff. And it’s been cool to rediscover their sound.

However…

The subject matter of their lyrics does leave me cold. In fact, that was the reason I stopped listening to them in the first place. I just found it hugely annoying to have to hear about Matt Bellamy’s paranoia around the “New World Order” and our alleged reptilian overlords for an hour at at time, broken up into ten 6 minute sections. Think David Icke, but with a decent soundtrack.
Not that he’s not free to believe in that sort of nonsense. Of course he is.
Just like I’m free to switch him off for doing it.

He’s not soft about it either. In Animals, he refers to bloodthirsty capitalists suggesting to them:

Kill yourself, come on.
And do us all a favour.

Searching up that lyric, I’ve now got helpline numbers all over my internet. Great.

In Uprising, he enthuses that:

It’s time the Fat Cats had a heart attack.

Which seems an odd stance, given that each and every record Muse sell pops some more money into the coffers of Warner – one of the three biggest music publishers on the planet. I mean, surely the band could sign to some no-name, independent label, but then would they sell as many records? I guess you could argue that they are just trying to get their message out to as many people as possible. Or you could suggest that they are wildly hypocritical. Will we ever know?

The ticket prices for their tour are difficult to reconcile as well. Some of them beyond £250 for Huddersfield in June. And again, sold through Ticketmaster, who aren’t exactly socialist angels when it comes to doing business.

It’s all a bit of an odd dichotomy.

The pandemic was difficult for a lot of people, but I feel that as an alleged vindication of his ideas on government control, and as an opportunity to create lots more content, it was actually a blessing for Matt. You just need to listen to the track above or look at the lyrics to his anti-lockdown love song/rant, Verona:

Can we kiss with poison on our lips?
Well, I’m not scared

Ooh. You rebel, you.

Can we touch and taste forbidden bliss?
They can’t stop us now, I won’t let you be alone
I am coming for you
Keep us apart, it’s too much to ask
We’re running away
Take off your clothes and take off your mask

Songwriting: 100%
Microbiology: not so good.
And this really just stems from basic Germ Theory (which could actually be the title of their next single).

It leaves me with a quandary. Can I enjoy the music but ignore the often moronic messages that they’re trying to share? Well, yes. For a while, at least. So I’m going to have more high-energy workouts over the next few days or weeks before becoming annoyed again and shutting down Muse for another few months or years.

Don’t do this

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Trendy health things leave me cold. As humans, we haven’t gone for several million years without learning what we can and can’t do with our bodies, and what we can and can’t get away with. Contrary to what Professor Cookbook tells you, there’s nothing wrong with eating a carb. Contrary to what the water filter salespeople at the local mall will tell you, there’s nothing wrong with what comes out of our local taps.

They’re just trying to sell you stuff.

That’s not to say that water filtration is an entirely bad thing though. Water filtration is a very good thing, because if it didn’t happen, people would get sick. And so if you want to go and drink unfiltered “raw water”, you’re leaving yourself open to some nasty infections.

Yep. I mean, it seems a fairly easy thing for people to understand, right? But apparently not.

So why would anyone drink untreated, unfiltered water? Hasn’t we progressed enough that we can take advantage of the privileges of our Western First World Culture*? Well, apparently not, because someone decided to make probably the quickest and easiest buck ever by selling “raw water” to gullible idiots:

That is untreated, unfiltered water collected directly from freshwater sources that is often claimed—without evidence—to have health benefits.

Proponents have argued that raw water avoids undesirable components of municipal water, which they identify as disinfectants, fluoride, imaginary “mind-control” drugs, traces of pharmaceuticals, and heavy metals, such as lead from pipes. They also suggest, without evidence, that raw water can contain unique probiotics and other “natural” minerals and compounds that can improve health.

I think we all know on which side of Ou Kaapse Weg these people would live, were they in the Western Cape.

And yes, I know that you’ll claim that our ancestors survived drinking unfiltered water “and they were fine”, but the fact is that they weren’t necessarily fine. Managing to have several kids (many of whom wouldn’t have survived) and then dying at 30 years old doesn’t scream “success” to me.

The trouble is, not treating water means that bugs like… say… Campylobacter jejuni will still be happily swimming around in the stuff you’re drinking. If you’ve never experienced Campylobacter gastroenteritis, it generally involves watery, mucousy, bloody stools and a good deal of pain. All of which could be easily avoided by drinking filtered or treated water. Or – ironically in this case, at least – simply “cooking” your “raw water”.

Dirty water means disease – WE KNEW THIS IN THE 1850s, FOLKS!

Because yes, the water in the case above came from a concrete box next to an old railway line and underneath a birds nest. Which is ever so organic, isn’t it?

And the fact that this outbreak was picked up by the authorities after just six cases indicates how far we’ve come in being able to prevent diarrhoeal illness, thanks to (even very basic) modern technology.

Now, as my Uncle Alan would always ask of someone (usually me) after they had made a clear mistake:

Have you learnt anything?

Sadly, I doubt it.

* It’s worth noting that these fads are only ever popular amongst the people who have the money to be able to exercise a choice. No-one in the townships can afford the luxury of trying a low-carb diet. No-one in the Transkei would turn their nose up at safe, readily available, treated drinking water.

Off again – and that font?!?

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The issue with our ailing power utility – so we were told – wasn’t the years and years of rampant corruption, but rather the guy who was in charge. He was in the process of stepping down when he gave that bombshell interview about all the corruption and was politely(?) asked to leave immediately.

So, now that he has gone, everything should be ok. Right?

Wrong.

Weirdly, it seems that he wasn’t the issue. So we have no idea what the problem could actually be*, but there clearly is a problem of some sort. Because I’m sitting here for another 10 hours without power today, because of the ongoing demand and supply problem. We want 31.3MW, they can only give us 24.7MW. And if you don’t cut the power to cover that shortfall, everything falls over and it’s a very bad thing.

Those figures come from this tweet from last night:

And I actually love the way that they’ve done their best to cushion the blow by using a whimsical font. Who do we think came up with that idea?

“Not looking great on the grid figures tonight. We’re dangerously short and we need to tell people.”
“OK. Send the twee… no… wait. Do you have a kind of handwritingy font we could use?”
“What?”
“You know. Something a bit fun and disarming.”
“But we’re the official state power utility. Shouldn’t we be using the official state fonts?”
“Well, yes. But let’s show our human side. Just something a bit playful and quirky to take their minds off the awful numbers.”
“Well, I mean, I have got this one…”
“Like, actually Oh Em Gee! It’s So frikkin perfect! Look at the devil-may-care lack of connection on the loops! Observe the mildly curved downstrokes! The capricious overshoot on the Es and Ms! Do it!”
“Er… right. The numbers are still bloody horrendous, though.”
“Who cares? It’s so pretty! Quick, just click SEND before the boss comes back!”

I imagine that’s pretty much how it went, anyway.

Sadly, using my scientific brain, I was able to see through the eccentric and unprofessional choice of typeface, and I’m actually pretty worried about just how bad the situation is. But hey, it’s so easy to get bogged down in bad news. I guess that we should take solace in the fact that they haven’t used Comic Sans yet, so maybe we’re still somewhere just above rock bottom.

* although there is still that years and years of rampant corruption thing, but… surely not?!

Can Jetpack still share blog posts to Twitter?

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Look, we’ve been through this. Firstly here, and then more recently, here. But twitter is falling apart.

The third party mobile apps disappeared, and then the first party web app stopped working. Instagram won’t share images to Twitter anymore, and yesterday, when I posted this post, the Jetpack plugin failed to connect to Twitter. And it doesn’t seem like the issue is at this end:

Jetpack is the plugin that 6000.co.za (and many thousands of other websites) use to tell people that there’s a new blog post fresh and ready for them to read. And now it’s not working – on Twitter at least. It’s still happily telling my Facebook fans that there’s been an update, and it would still post to LinkedIn if I wanted it to.

I don’t want it to.

Anyway, it seems likely that one of two things has happened here. Either, being allowed to connect to twitter from Jetpack (and Instagram) is now something that is now only allowed for paid accounts (no, I’m not going to), or something at twitter is broken because they (he) sacked all the competent staff.

Either way, there does seem to be a real rush to load a lot of straws onto the camel’s back to see what effect it will have.

EDIT: And, as Ian Betteridge predicted, no, it can’t.

Going elsewhere – come follow

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Once Space Karen got hold of the Twitter reins, things were never going to be great. It’s not like we didn’t see it coming. But now he’s hammering nails into nails that were already in the coffin.

Some of them are very clearly penetrating the corpse. It’s leaking. Eww.

Shutting down Tweetdeck is a big loss for me, and the requirement to pay for so many features just isn’t happening. I have no issue paying for a good quality service – I pay for plenty of them on the internet – but that’s not what Twitter is anymore.

And yet, I don’t really want to leave: it feels like deserting an old friend (it’s been over 14 years!). But that old friend has become unruly, unpleasant and abusive, and isn’t nice to be around. And so you’ll definitely see (even) less of me on there from now on.

So, where are we going to go and play instead? Well, there are few issues with that. Firstly, that there aren’t many good choices: although there are plenty of mediocre ones. And you need one to stand out from the crowd because you need a critical mass of users to make it function and be useful – for it to work well – in the way that Twitter did all those years ago.
Nothing has stuck its head above that parapet… yet.

And so I have profiles at a couple of places – you can see all my socials at the top of the sidebar up there [indicates upwards and right]. But right now, I’m throwing my weight behind Spoutible.

Find my profile there… er… here.

It seems the best option with lots of the good twitter features, and fewer of the bad ones. And it also seems to take a lot of user feedback and suggestions into account when adding stuff. It also has some pretty strict rules about abuse, harassment etc. So if you think that’s likely to infringe on your right to “free speech”, then maybe it isn’t for you.

Shame.

It looks promising. But it needs to be bigger before it will work properly, and so if it doesn’t make that critical mass I mentioned above, then it won’t fly. If that’s the case, it will hopefully be because something equally good (or better) has made it.

Anyway, I’m lucky enough to have this place [indicates general blog space] so that I can at least tell people where I’m going to be if Spoutible doesn’t work out. So please keep coming back here even when we’ve all left the hellsite that twitter has become. After all, everyone needs to regularly visit at least one hellsite, just so you can be reminded of how good the rest of the internet is.
And if it’s not the Loud Mouth Space Wanker’s place, then it might as well be here.

So. This isn’t a complete farewell, but it is a definite move to set up home elsewhere.

I look forward to you popping in for coffee soon.