Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #944
Neubuaten's discography is immense. Bluesky and CCPA fail, Ohio vote, thirsty Starlink, the Chameleons, disappearing birds and insects
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am well. I am coming to the conclusion that I radically underestimated the scale of this “listen to all of Einsturzende Neubauten’s discography” project. I mean, the band started in 1980 and I kept up with them well into the 20th century, how many more albums could there be? The answer, it turns out, is more than twenty. Did you know this? Somewhere around the band’s thirty-fourth year, not content with the 10 or so albums they’d already made, they decided to record and release eighteen studio albums and nine live albums, of which I have previously listened to three. My god what have I gotten myself into. Did you know the band had not one, but two different Patreon-style series of full studio albums available only to members? Mein Gott. In my mind, there were two Neubauten live albums — the legendary 2x4 from 1984 and the 2000 one from the Silence is Sexy tour. So I gamely decided that “live albums count” on this discography investigation. Ha well, joke’s on you, Rick. There are nine others! I can’t do that that is too much. I will pick one from each tour. Man. Europe sure gets to see Einstruzende Neubauten live a lot. When was the last time they were in America? It has been too long. I probably stupidly skipped a tour back when they were coming all the time, didn’t I? I bet I did. Hrm Setlist says they haven’t been to the US since 2004 okay cool. Whew.
Ohio! Woooooo! Ohio! The polling on this issue was very sparse and all over the map — many polls had the issue within the margin of error, the most optimistic poll that I could find had the “no” vote up four or five points. “No” won by fourteen points. Fourteen points! If you have not been following this, Republicans in Ohio were worried about a ballot initiative this fall that amended the Ohio constitution to say explicitly that abortion was legal. It takes 50% of Ohioans to pass a constitutional amendment. The Republicans knew they were going to lose. So they put an earlier amendment on the ballot raising the threshold to 60% so that it would be harder to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution. The whole thing was dodgy AF. And it did not work. Abortion rights are popular even in Republican states (let’s stop pretending Florida and Ohio are battleground states for the next few elections). My wife has hopes that this backlash will spread, and I think it will, but I think it will be confined to ballot initiatives. I don’t Republicans who support abortion rights will, like, stop voting for anti-abortion Republicans, because they simply do not see themselves as Democrats. But I will take what I can get.
Let us wish a happy 40th birthday to The Chameleon’s debut album The Script of the Bridge. What a killer debut album: Don’t Fall, Up the Down Escalator, Second Skin, Less than Human, so much more. Damn. Are you going to go see the Chameleons on tour this year? I hope you do. They are so great live. I think I might have to listen to the entire Chameleons discography after this Neubauten project. Although they too have ten live albums now. Not falling for that again. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice… won’t get fooled again.
‘Ole Elon Musk’s Starlink is still trying to get me to sign up, two weeks after they said omg you only have one week to sign up or you are going to lose your place in line. Turns out Elon even lies in his automated marketing emails. Really curious how long this is going to go on. Will keep you apprised.
In other tech updates, it has now been 32 days since I asked Bluesky for my data available to me under CCPA. They are now technically in violation. They did get back to me on July 27th and ask for additional info, which I provided the next day, but that communication does not extend the CCPA deadline, and in any case its now been 2 weeks since then and no additional word.
But let’s keep talking about how Threads is the privacy nightmare.
Man I hope someone out there is writing a doctoral thesis on the intersection of the fediverse and CCPA and GDPR because it is a complete nightmare.
In the depressing portion of the GMHHAY newsletter, let me inform you of the latest data from a 35-years-running study in a pristine Colorado meadow near the immaculately named town of Gothic (I want to move there) that has discovered that more than 60% of the insects have disappeared in the last 35 years. This meadow is free of most pollution, pesticides and other popular explanations for the loss of bug mass, though I’ve no doubt it is still somehow our fault.
Relatedly, 40% of the birds are just… gone. And the birds that are primarily gone — 90% of them — come from 12 species that primarily eat, probably not coincidentally, insects: sparrows, finches and the like. They are just disappearing.
Damon Krukowski, drummer for Galaxie 500 etc, wrote a moving piece yesterday about how quite his neighborhood in Cambridge has gotten through the years, how they used to hear bird sounds all the time and now they just… don’t/
We still hear the birds here, but I swear there are fewer and fewer.
Should probably also mention here that outdoor cats kill a stunning 2 billion birds a year.
God that is depressing.
I need to start a bird sanctuary.
Let’s all start bird sanctuaries.
Jane’s sickness seems to be lifting. Emma’s does not. If you are a friend of Emma’s drop her a line and wish her well. Our neighbor seems to have the same thing and she went to the doctor and the doctor told her it was viral and she had to wait it out but then the doctor didn’t, like, test her for COVID or the flu or anything so who knows. Also Emma discovered CVS no longer does PCR testing that is BS.
Jane had swim lessons yesterday, she “tried new stuff” which is nice. One more lesson before school starts. Her excitement about kindergarten seems to grow commensurate with my dread. This whole thing seems a terrible idea.
Here have a country playlist today. This is some good shit lemme tell you. That Steve Earle song rules. So does Mariee Sioux (thank you, Nick). Went on a deep Jeannie C Riley kick recently, listened to her whole discography and it was just so wholesome and satisfying. She is not, sadly, the mother of John C Reilly, which shoulda been obvious from the spelling but my personal headcanon was disappointed nonetheless.
Talk to you cool cats tomorrow stay cool out there okay you cool cats? Cool.
The Einsturzende Neubauten project should be a good warm up for your next project - take on the entire Psychic TV discography! I was disappointed when I looked in discogs that I only own 34 of the 201 releases (though I do have a few CD only releases that I haven't added to discogs - so I might own 40 or so).