Before & After & Inbetween

I decided to use this blog a lot more next year, so let's start early with that, shall we?
2024 is still six days to go, but here I am. :-)

Changes during 2024 (part 1)

Spotify to Tidal:

This is the most recent change. Spotify crossed the "has to go" enshittification threshold a week ago, when I first needed fifteen minutes on their crappy app to find the christmas music playlist I made last year and then discovered that half of the songs on it were either missing or replaced by "suggestions" of elevator music. Then there was this blog post by Cory Doctorow that linked me to an article about Spotify's muzac side-gig on Harper's (explains a lot, really!), plus their abysmal paying of the artists (think 227 streams for 1 Dollar [source]).
So I canceled my abo (effective Jan 2, 2025 - after which that account will be deleted) and looked into alternative services: Deezer, Tidal, and Napster. I didn't consider Apple (I'm on Android and Apple doesn't play nice outside its sandbox) or Youtube (Google is unreliable when it comes to continuing services) and Amazon is so close to the enshittification threshold by now that I certainly won't take any new business there. Deezer and Tidal have both intuitive apps and all my must-have favs.
I'm now on Tidal, of the two, they pay the artists better (80 streams vs 157 for 1 USD) and I liked their app a tad better. I didn't use their transfer service for playlists and such, since Spotify made a mess out of my lists anyway and I prefer listening to albums. For that I already spotted two new ones from "Two Steps From Hell" that I never found on Spotify and the audio quality is superb even on my tinny kitchen speaker.
Also, their themed playlists, something I avoided at all costs on Spotify in the end, are a positive surprise. Starting the "Rock Christmas" playlist (I needed a soundtrack on short notice yesterday) with "Fairytale of New York" by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl is certainly a bold choice and I was halfway through the list before one of the ubiquitous jingles showed up (Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney). And there are a lot of songs on that list I never heard before. Wow.
If you like podcasts and audiobooks along with your music, you'll probably want to look into Deezer, but if it's music in superb audio quality: have a look at Tidal. I'm certainly positively impressed at this point.

Twitter to Bluesky and Mastodon

My Twitter handle (AKK666AKK) was unused and the account locked since EM bought the company and put enshittification on speed dial.
In November 2024, I deleted it for good. I started accounts on Mastodon, Threads, and Bluesky - and found myself using Bluesky (AKK666) and Mastodon (AKK666) the most, with Bluesky being mostly books, fan activities, art, cats and plants, and commentary in English, whereas Mastodon is German everday talk and science. More to Threads later.

Facebook, Instagram, Threads:

I stopped using these cold Turkey a couple weeks ago, when they demanded that I as a EU customer (a) confirm again that I'm fine with being ad-tracked and (b) get unskippable auto-play ads that are so much fun on a commuter train in the morning in my feed if I don't pay through my nose. Nope. Nope. Nope-ty-nope!
The accounts still exist, the apps are still on my phone - because I enjoy seeing the desperate notifications of "you missed this..." and "look at our crap..." that are increasingly off the mark regarding my interests (so much for their algorithm *eg*)
So, if you want to stay in contact with me, find me on Bluesky as AKK666 or here on this blog. :-)

There's more to come, but this post is certainly long enough by now.
Feels good to post in a format I'm atuned to. Verbose text. ;-)

current chapter word count: 4178 (of which 200 are new words)
less because redundant scene bits were removed and the new scene in a different POV is more concise & to the point
new pov character: Akechi (throughout instead of a back and forth between him and Subaru)
character "on the prowl": Ijyuin Shigetoshi
character not wanting to go there: Subaru
surprisingly useful plot devices: tattered manga, consumer electronics, Huawei Technologies' office on the 46th floor of the Petronas Towers (tower 2) in Kuala Lumpur (though the latter may be used more extensively in the future)
research of the day: upcoming consumer electronics manufacturers of 2000 in Asia & plagiarism accusations, Kuala Lumpur in general, Petronas Towers and Islamic symbolism in particular (will be of interest in the further use of the location in the upcoming plot)
quote of the day: "If you continue like this, you'll wear a visible path into Imonoyama's parquet."

unrelated sidenote: I'm firmly addicted to the currently airing Korean period comedy "Sungkyunkwan Scandal" (same level as with Queen Seon Duk and Drama addicts summary is so not doing it any justice!). I wish there were English translations of the novels on which it is based.
related sidenote to the unrelated sidenote above: because I found myself refreshing the subbers' site about every other minute for the updates of it, I finally got myself a twitter account (AKK666AKK). It will be useful to keep track of the other sites giving twitter updates as well. I don't expect to say or retweet much, though.