The year is 20% done. Is that exciting, or terrifying?

No blog post this week, nothing caught my fancy to a level that a blog post formed in my mind. Well, actually, one did, but it's only about 80% done. I'll probably finish it this week. Maybe.

Elsewhere on the Internet tubes, there were a few interesting things published.

Speaking of tubes, the golden age of streaming is over.It's already getting more expensive, and selection is getting worse. Yay progress!

Staying in the entertainment world, vinyl outsold CDs in 2022 for the first time since the late 80s. Is it a hipster trend that is peaking, or is this desire to connect physically with music a real, sustainable thing?

The NYT ran a lengthy excerpt from an upcoming book titled, Why Does Poverty Persist in America?

The tldr; answer is that the ownership class profits from it.

More from the bad news department, parents exploiting their kids for profit online](https://www.teenvogue.com/story/influencer-parents-children-social-media-impact) is 100% legal and the kids can't do a damn thing about it, yet.

And to end on a fun note, this YouTube channel is nothing but 3 minute video compilations of short clips sent in by auto mechanics. It's as funny and terrifying (these people are on the roads with us!) as you are thinking.

I wrote one whole blog post this week. Sadly, averaging one per week would probably put me in the 1% for people still writing on a blog 2023. I questioned if a business with a dominant market position (Spotify) is really a viable business if they used that market dominance to lose $500,000,000 in 2022.

In other stuff...

This Rolling Stone listicle of the best songs by made up musicians is really fun, and I can't argue with their #1 pick.

I thought I knew how to read topographic maps, but it turns out I only kind of knew the basics. This article leveled me up, which might be useful in the coming social collapse of the country.

This chart on the National Park Service website ranks the parks and historical monuments by number of visitors. I would have guessed visits were more concentrated at the most popular parks, but the top park barely accounts for 5% of visits. However, there are probably multiple barely visited parks near you where you can get away from the crowds this summer.

This article confirms what you've been thinking about Amazon, it really is getting worse. We let Prime expire last year, and have not missed it.

Spotify controls about a third of the streaming music market. It's closest competitor is Apple Music, at 15%. Surely, with 10+ years of experience and that kind of market domination, Spotify must be a profitable company by now.

Spotify lost $500,000,000 in 2022.

That's one-half of a billion dollars. If you are losing that kind of money with overwhelming market share something is very wrong. They've lost over $2 billion in the last 5 years.

I've never been a big fan of streaming music, and I've never depended on it at all. It's convenient at times, and not a bad way to discover new music. I've been plenty critical of the streaming music model over the years, partly because I didn't believe the market could really work at $10/month. I had assumed in the last couple of years that I had been wrong about that, but seeing Spotify's 2022 results suggests I was actually right all along.

We know artists are mostly screwed by the streaming business model. This article suggests an indie label artist would make about $2000 from 1 million streams. So if it's a 4 piece rock band they pocket $500 each. There was a time when a good cover band could get that for one gig at a local club. The local music scene has faltered too, so I don't know what the money there looks like today. It's probably safe to assume it's not good.

So Spotify isn't making money and the artists (with the exception of global superstars) aren't making money. The founders and folks in earlier for the inflated IPO certainly cashed out with FU money, but companies losing $500,000,000 a year aren't making their investors rich. At this point the streaming market has to be leveling off. It's not like there are vast numbers of people not aware of Spotify. Everybody that wants a Spotify account has one at this point.

They could start buying competitors, but the creative output of people doesn't scale like that. There aren't serious economies of scale to be found by Spotify buying up their competitors. All they'd be doing is buying money losing subscriptions in bulk.

So what does that leave? Change the business model and/or increase prices. All you can eat pricing might be in danger. $12 a month subscriptions probably have to go too. Will you pay $20 or more monthly for Spotify that has usage limits? That is still about the equivalent to buying 2 albums a month, which on the surface seems like a great deal. But we all know people aren't good at math.

Where does that leave artists? Given that most barely make beer money from streaming, it probably doesn't impact the 80% part of the 80/20 split all that much. They'll keep making music because they are artists, and artists have to create art. it's what they do.

As usual, I don't have any brilliant answers. I kept buying MP3 albums all along, so drastic changes in the streaming market will have zero impact on my life. I have YouTube Music because it comes with YouTube Premium. I have YouTube Premium to avoid all the ads in YT videos, the music component is fun for exploring new music sometimes, but it if went away tomorrow I wouldn't miss it. If you have a collection of carefully curated playlists on a streaming service, it's probably a good time to think about just how meaningful they are to you, and how you might get along day to day if you lose access to them.

Last night we were at Kroger and I saw an ad on a shopping cart for the no-alcohol Guinness. Advertising apparently works on me because I brought a 4-pack home, even though I had no intention of buying beer, with or without alcohol, when I entered the store.

I've tried a couple of the newer no-alcohol beers, and although none of them were bad, none felt like something I would want to drink regularly. This Guinness is different.

It comes in the famous nitrogen charged Guinness can, and pours exactly like a normal Guinness, midnight black with a long lasting, frothy head. I noticed when done that the pint glass was laced with foam, just as you would expect from a pint poured at your favorite pub.

My initial taste reaction was...wow, this tastes like Guinness. After drinking two pints, that reaction holds. The mouthfeel is a little different, it's thinner, but not dramatically so. The finish lacks the creamy smoothness you expect from a Guinness. It's not bad though, more like a nondescript dry stout than that classic Guinness smoothness. The taste holds up. It basically tastes like Guinness, which is exactly what you want your alternative 0% alcohol Guinness to taste like. At only 60 calories per pint, it's very middle-aged metabolism friendly too. That unfortunately, is becoming a more important factor for me.

The bottom line is that it tastes like Guinness, and I plan to start drinking more of this. Now to find a really good no-alcohol IPA.

I was busy with a new job this week, so I expect this will be short.

I realized after noticing the similarities in a couple of books I stayed up late every night reading that I really enjoy sci-fi and fantasy books that are set in the modern world, except for one thing that brings the sci-fi or fantasy element to it. In The Cartographers, it was magic maps. In The Measure, it's knowing when you'll die. I was struggling for the genre term to find more books like those, and found this article suggesting curio fiction is the term I seek.

American Girl released their new historical doll, and it's a 90s skater girl. It's basically Avril Lavigne. I don't know who should feel worse about this; me, or my kids that were born in the 90s.

I found this really cool old school music blog. It feels like 2006, and I mean that as a compliment. One guy, writing about his passion, with a nice audience in the comments section. I miss that Internet.

In other news, I upgraded the home wifi to a mesh network, and upstairs download speeds went from 10 MB to 100 MB. Also, I went birding today, and Echo Lake Park was a happening place for birds. There was a flock of Common Grackles making a lot of noise in the field just outside the park. There were also about a dozen Fish Crows, a species I had never seen before at the park. I spent quite a bit of time convincing myself they were Fish Crows and not American Crows, but the call is very distinctive. It almost sounds like a duck. There were also 3 Double Crested Coronets in the lake, and I logged about 15 Yellow-rumped Warblers.

And finally, since I did mention Avril above, have a link to the Sk8er Boi video.

This question at Ask Metafilter about taking volcanic rock off the island of Iceland reminded me of my wife bringing lava rock back from our Hawaiian wedding and honeymoon. I told her not to do it, but did she listen to me?

Nope.

Apparently she never watched the Brady Bunch either.

Anyway, we got back to GA and she proudly showed my parents her souvenir lava rocks. My dad immediately freaked out and started telling her she was dooming our life together by angering Pele, the Goddess of Fire and Volcanoes.

I put the lava rock in the gas grill, under the theory that might appease Pele and gain us forgiveness for my wife's egregious lack of judgment. We've had a pretty great 31+ year run so far, so it probably worked.

However, we have not been back to Hawaii since. That might not be safe.

Last week I had a week off between jobs, so we took advantage to go to Atlanta to visit family and friends, and to play tourist while there. We drove south on I-85 from Richmond to Atlanta on Superbowl Sunday. I can highly recommend Superbowl Sunday as a good day if you need to plan a road trip. It was pouring rain almost the entire trip, but since there were no cars on the road, there were no delays. It even seemed like the truckers all took the day off to eat, drink, and watch the big game. We got to my Mom’s right about the time the game started.

We mostly recovered from the all day drive on Monday. Not only that, but we did get out to hit a couple of birding hot spots that afternoon. Hot spot is a relative term, as the data in e-bird suggests birding is not a popular pastime in the Cumming, GA area. We also met up with a friend we had not seen in a long time for dinner.

Tuesday was a tourist day, as we spent it in Atlanta at the MLK Historic Site. We tried to visit Centennial Park, but had to be happy with photos outside the fence, as the entire park was closed on Valentine’s Day for a movie shoot. The MLK historic site is very well done. We got a guided tour of the home he was born in, and we walked into Ebenezer Baptist Church. We learned that MLK’s favorite game as a kid was Monopoly. Unlike most, he actually understood the message of that game.

On Wednesday, we went out to lunch with Mom, and then headed into town to meet friends for the Atlanta United MLS match. It was my first MLA match, a sloppy but fun 4-3 for the visitors from Mexico.

On Thursday, we had lunch with another friend that we had not seen in person since in close to 20 years.

On Friday, we went back into tourist mode, visiting the Carlos Museum at Emory, which has a nice collection of art and artifacts from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the Americas. We had planned to also hit the CDC museum, but I decided I didn’t feel like submitting to a full search of my car to visit a museum. Instead, we visited the DeKalb County museum, which is 4 rooms of static displays in the old courthouse building. It was interesting, especially the history of Avondale Estates as a segregated community where people of color were welcome to work, but could not live there until the Civil Rights Act. Friday evening was a family dinner with mom and one of my brothers and his family.

The drive home on Saturday was thankfully unexciting. I had not spent a week in Atlanta since we left in 1998. Downtown to Cumming, and east to west from Acworth to Gainsville, is basically one huge suburb, with no breaks and horrendous traffic. Our old neighborhood that was “in the sticks” is solidly in the ‘burbs now, and the real estate prices reflect that. It was fun to visit, but I have no desire to live there again.

Busy with new job
No time for a good haiku
So this one will have to do

Happy Anniversary of the the day we "met" Michelle. Met is in scare quotes because it wasn't me she was interested in that night.

I'm starting a new job tomorrow, so this week was a vacation week between jobs, which we spent in Atlanta visiting family and friends.

I did learn that if you need to make a all-day drive, Super Bowl Sunday is a good day to do it. I-85 between Richmond VA and Atlanta was as empty as I've ever seen it. Even driving in a downpour almost all day we made good time as there was no traffic to cause a delay in the bad weather.

The story of those "love tester" machines you used to see in arcades or bars is interesting. They started as legitimate attempts to quantify love or sexual attraction, and were taken advantage of by scam artists for a quick buck. Some things never change in this country.

And I loved this story of John Jaso, a MLB player who retired about 5 years ago at age 32, even though he almost certainly would have received a 2 or 3 year contract worth at least another $10 million had he continued to play. This check-in 5 years later finds him living his best life traveling the world and sailing the Caribbean, with no regrets at all about quitting after earning "only" $17 million.

NPR's Tiny Desk Concert featured the Indigo Girls this week.

Finally, this weekend is The Great Backyard Bird Count. I did a count for our bird feeder this morning, and saw my first American Robin since the fall at the feeder. Also, the goldfinches are starting to get their yellow coloring back. Spring is coming!

Last night's experiment with non-alcoholic beers was Sam Adams NA IPA. It's advertised as a hazy IPA. It pours a medium dark straw color with a light and frothy head. The nose has notes of pine and citrus. It tastes like a New England IPA. If handed this beer in a pint glass I'd have no idea it was non-alcoholic. It's simply a good beer, regardless of the ABV.