I do recognise that 6Music and the BBC as a whole isn't my personal broadcaster, but fuck me, I wish they'd shut the fuck up about the fucking Traitors.

I've never watched a second of it. I have absolutely no idea what the format is. I have no desire to learn anything about it.

Please, for the love of god, stop fucking trailing it. You cunts.

Can anyone who understands Wordpress and Nginx and such possibly offer me some pointers on why my site is only giving a 502 Bad Gateway?

One positive thing to take from all of the AI slop that abounds is that low effort shitposting has become the unquestionable height of human-crafted art.

No one will look at the garbage you knocked up in your image editor of choice in five minutes and accuse you of using an AI to make it. The shittier the art, the more likely that it's artisanal, handcrafted by people who care only just enough to make their stupid idea a kind of reality.

We're making things shitty, but in a good way.

Just ONE HOUR until this week's edition of #ThePlaylist...

Two weeks ago I admitted the terrible secret of my birth, and the disco banger that heralded it, which has led to wanting to hear your:

Birthday Number Ones

We weren't cruel though, and allowed you to pick from tracks that have attained the summit of Mount Pop on any of your birthdays, be they singles, or from albums. And there are some CRACKERS in the pile.

https://stream.djdarren.site to join in the chat and defend your disgusting youth, or
https://audio.djdarren.site to just enjoy the audio without being reminded how very old you are.

// https://stream.djdarren.site // Monday 19:00-21:00 UK //
// https://djdarren.site/archive/podcast/ //

#Podcast #NowPlaying #Music #Radio

Oh yeah: yesterday I needed a fiver, because the cat tree we bought offarletplace was £35.

I had a tenner, so I popped into Tesco where I asked if I could change it.

Nope.

I must have looked like an idiot, standing there, brain short circuiting as I tried to comprehend the notion that the management at Tesco have stopped employees from breaking notes.

I've never had anyone tell me they weren't allowed to do that. Sometimes they say they can't because they don't have enough changes, or whatever, but never that they're not allowed to.

Is this a thing now?

I hereby propose that the way a pigeon walks be named 'bidging', so we can sing 🎶 When the lovely pigeon goes bidg, bidg, bidging along 🎶.

Was chatting last night about the current state of of technology, and what occurred to me is that I'm angry about the future that's been taken from me.

Thirty years ago I was a keen reader of monthly technology magazines, where I'd see all the cool new stuff that was coming along. Music players that could hold your entire library, video players that could slip into your pocket. Wifi was becoming commonplace, and computers could do all manner of things.

It all felt so utopian. Many were already well-versed in the art of The Internet, while many more of us were taking our first steps online, where we could collaborate on things, and share ideas.

Then smartphones came along, and it was cool because suddenly all of those things were one thing. One thing to carry, one thing to charge. One thing to buy.

But then it all began to change. Gradually, over the past fifteen-odd years, almost every new tech product has become just another way to siphon off data, or provide training for LLMs and military uses. Even the fucking television sets have been pitched against us.

Our utopia was stolen.

Sure, we can still hang out online, in spaces like this, but people using Mastodon are very, very much the minority.

And more and more I feel like my use of technology is adversarial. Constantly having to grapple with my personal balance between necessary and evil. Having to learn how to be my own sysadmin because I can't trust cloud-based products to not steal all my data then put the prices up as well. Having to accept a compromised mobile phone experience, because I don't want to give literally everything about myself to Apple and Google.

It's undeniably the shittest time to be someone who grew up in the '80s and '90s loving the awesome new technology we could see on Tomorrow's World.

It's exhausting feeling like I have to care so much, and not being able to just...not.

The shame of forgetting to put out the glass for collection one week, then having to put out two week's worth of beer bottles.

I'll be the talk of the street this week.

Just remembered something mad I witnessed yesterday.

Walking along, I heard a car pulling out of a space along the side of the road. You know the sound tyres make on tarmac when they're not rolling? That grinding, scratching noise. Well, it was that, but much more.

The driver appeared to be having trouble pulling away, all the while there was this grinding noise whenever it moved. But still, they persevered.

It was a 72 plate, so four years old. Not an old car by any means.

Turns out they still had the handbrake on. They managed to drag the car down to the main road, grinding and scratching the whole way, leaving rubber tracks on the tarmac.

I'm watching this, thinking that they *must* know there's a problem, right? Surely they're not going to pull into the next road - which is a busy one - knowing that their car is having trouble?

Yeah, they pulled out into traffic, still grinding and squealing.

OK, so I guess the handbrake's locked on. But if they know that, why try to drive the car normally. That's madness.

A guy crossed in front of them as they stopped with the traffic, knocked on the window and presumably told them that their handbrake was on, at which point we crossed in the other direction and into a nearby park.

Reader, the car made no more sound after the driver was told about the handbrake. So I can only assume that they just didn't release it, and tried to drive off normally despite the car protesting, loudly.

Today is my birthday, so @nprofile1q... and I are taking the hovercraft over to the Isle of Wight to visit Osborne House. I've not been on a hovercraft since I was about 8, so I'm very looking forward to it.

The iMac stuff will have to wait until later though, because first: Eastleigh Pride!

The sun is shining and it ought to be lovely.

A spicy take, I'm sure, but as much as I admire Elton John and his exceptional back catalogue, he should be banned from re-recording his own songs.

Don't get me wrong, his voice is still strong, but he has a tendency to add a significant amount of flourish where no flourish is necessary.

And then, of course, there's whatever the fuck this is:

https://youtu.be/SnPPwBIAenw