Disagree. It beats the alternative. My 50's are getting smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror soon to be joined by my 60s.....and I find myself more and more happy to have made this many laps around the nearest star with a few dots left on my dice and the ability to feed myself, provide for my family, and watch more than a few sunrises........benefits from a workday that begins BEFORE that happy event. Bring on the 80s....OR the 90s!!!
So... recently bought a set of really great budget earbuds last week, Anker Soundcore A40s... They're amazing at their retail price of ~$90, but sell on Mazzy for just over $40 now. Have probably the best bass response w/o distortion in mids or highs in its retail competition -- and better than some costing $200+ w/ all marketing blather, no arse (Cambridge Audio Melomania, utter garbage sound, laughable retention in-ear, and expensive as well). Like most earbuds post-covid, they come with noise-cancelling which I never use for its lairy provenance w/ problems in child cognitive development -- means the brain hears and changes to accept it, even if your conscious mind does not. Not a fan getting of trained to hear counter-sound all the time... mostly because what if you need not to hear it? Conflict -- and thus dependence. $40 for earbuds of this quality's a steal in 2025. But got my set and found, when pass-thru's selected -- only squelchy static. Plays music and audio for media just fine, plus no chg in any other features... but got a bum pair. Annoying... and uncharacteristically for the company, they're ignoring my drop in rating (usually get a msg from Anker a few days after going live, for all my products of theirs). So a few weeks later, my second backup pair also died (bought both A40s in 2022), so ordered another set (at $40? Done). Got that yesterday... Soundcore did some updating to the earcups, which is really the only point of contention I had with the old original pair. Now they stay in even better, almost as good as the more pricey athletic versions, and far, faaar better than their P40i and Liberty Pro earcups, which are oval in cross-section vs. round. My ear canal's round, and the P40i I bought in '24 was not it -- constantly fell out no matter what size earcup. Wrong shape is wrong shape... But my FFS, involved how Soundcore designs their audio options on-board, accessible with the Soundcore app. There's a feature called HearID, which uses a hearing test to gauge how to set EQ freqs customised to you, L and R. Based on how you answer, the app uploads this data to the buds, which tunes your sound. Because I had such good exp with prior A40s, thought without doing this test, would have identical sound to the old ones -- which was mind-blowing. Huh -- sounded thin, almost like hearing AM radio. What happened? Wasn't the EQ presets... so took the HearID test. And it actually got worse. Did they send me another production line reject? Nope - w/ a bit of fiddling around... found that if you want the full potential in sound from these earbuds... you have to lie. There are 8(?) challenge rounds in the HearID test, each with 5 volume levels of a certain freq. Each round, you answer Yes or No if you hear it. On the 8th and last one, is a very low freq challenge, in my 50s I can't hear anymore. Trick is to answer Yes anyway. Why? Because despite supposedly catering this preference to your hearing ability, it takes out way more output than you'd think... and even though all of the last challenge's freqs were non-existent to me... boy did I hear the difference, when I retook the test, nasty-funky-lying to the app. That's annoying. If you offer a custom EQ setting matched to your hearing, do it properly -- in fact set 'Yes to all' as default setting, no HearID test necessary. Haven't seen any drop in battery life doing this, get 10 hrs consistently as never use noise-cancellation. Now back to my playlists -- which is a separate FFS I'll post later on (right now off to enjoy Nujabes' album 'Modal Soul', John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme', maybe some peak late '90s Stereolab, Dreamcatcher, and Red Velvet to keep it interesting. All waaaay better with deceived A40s)
Touched on this in my Bodywork post... but oh boy do I hate people who let their effing dogs crap anywhere they choose, and ignore it. I don't use 'hate' lightly... but since ancient times, human beings knew proximity to feces brings disease and sometimes death, if an expectant or birthing mother. So there's clear reason for people to be taught not to let your f***ing pet lay a deuce, and you not take responsibility for it -- by fixing the problem... Sorry -- I don't care if your boss hates you, your spouse or sex partner or kids hate you, or you have any number of excuses for ignoring what your pet did. It's an animal -- go get it trained properly, or clean up its dump -- it's not its fault; it didn't choose to inconvenience others, like you chose to. Not impossible -- I had to reach into vomit / shite-overflowing toilets as CQ in Army days -- or there was hell to pay (and more importantly, pay shorn from your already-indentured paycheck by an Article 15). Of course I hated it, but executed, as no f***ing excuse for not tackling the problem like an adult, was acceptable. Not so in the civvie world, apparently... What's effed up about the fact it's there at all, is there's a rent-a-cop trolling in his little golf cart SxS taking breaks to watch sports, passing it a dozen times before I got there. Take a paper towel or pet bag, pick it up (it's dried on the outside, Tinkerbelle) and throw it in the garbage. Nope -- can't be bothered... sense a theme here. 'Maybe someone else will pick it up... I'll wait until they do -- I ain't doin' sh**'...' Were it my responsibility, it'd be gone -- I'd have picked it up, walked my arse 1 min to a can, and done -- I was both a guard and a security mgr, and I had to pick up dog crap for the same urchins, even in mgmt. So now there's a sullen, petulant rent-a-cop who had to hear me tell him what he already knows. F*** him, deserved it. Better not see it tomorrow, or we'll have this little talk all over again.
Kinda makes me glad I'd owned several, wrenched near 20y, and roadraced as well (if a short career). But also these kinds of saves, won't have to happen (or not happen ) anymore: Had lots of my own close shaves over 20y but fook me, these are arseflower-diamond-making legend
Fri wrapup of OFFS : Mfrs who make and sell bagged goods in 'sustainable' packaging... but 1) make their 'reusable seal' bags incompetent for actually sealing your goods, and/or 2) call it 'sustainable' but use copious plastic to line inside and seal with... CEOs / climbers who greenlit this, should be collected outside in a fire drill, then individually tazed Starbies paper cup lids, and training for Starbristas who don't know it they're sealed. Watched a few people in line ahead of me dump a Venti condensed-milk-walled-but-w-oat-milk-hokay sugar-bomb, all over the floor (and splash my feet, in sandals). So now all in line at the till and for drinks to be made, have to wait whilst this drink is remade for them, which is never an iced cow-milk latte. Kiddos, just put the lid on the drink, then use your thumbs and work it to the far side of the rim from you, and press until you hear and feel a 'snap', FFS. Test, offer to customer, done. But sure... go ahead and rush and half-arse this cantankerous, moisture-mushing paper travesty, so you can force 10 people to wait 10x as long for you to fix it. But really... it's not even the kids' fault. The plastic cups had lids that in the late Y2Ks in Seattle, Starb's HQ, were nice and sturdy and snapped authoritatively onto equally-strong and consistently-made plastic cups. Those days seem a generation away now (esp thru covid and after, the Age of Enshittification). Whilst I don't mind the reasoning paper became de facto for all drinks... whomever decided to make flat, thermos-car-cup-like sippy lids, must've been partaking of the leaf. They already have domed paper lids for the foof w/ whipped flair'd wigs -- which are much stronger and splash-resistant, just weirder to sip out of. Why not make a hybrid domed lid with a sippy 'spout'? probably because it'd require more paper than the flat sippies.. but doesn't explain why you'd make domed lids at all, if it's the same amt of ingredients just a different stamping Toyota... why do you light the 'READY' lamp on my dash after hitting the Power button, then scold me to wait until the car is ready, when I shift? probably another one of the leisurely CAN lag issues we all have to live with now... but here's a brainwave: light the lamp after your diagnostics routine actually knows it's effing ready. Not a hard thing for you prestigious Tokyo-University-graduated engineers... except, if you didn't have the time to test or just lowered standards, both to save face. Which is one of the reasons why I will never work in Japan, under their native-rich-elder-male-dominated societal contracts. It's a great machine... but for some irritating, avoidable showstoppers. Just like Japan itself (I am 100% JA, btw) Last... is more an observation of Starbies corporate stores, vs. the kiosk I go to in my local Target. It's much more effort to get to (must park and walk 50m at least, in lot traffic where people think the bulk of their cars insures right of way over pedestrians); a bit slower since fewer Starbristas behind the counter; and well, Target shoppers can be insufferable since most of them are tourists. This one early-20s kid there, had married young and is one of the coolest heads behind that counter. Rare to see men that young nowadays handle the chaos of barista life w/o acting out... but figure the long years as a baseball player (travels even now for it, West Coast and Asia). Sick a line of 20 people all w/ insufferably-complex orders on him, even alone... and he just executes. Maybe it was more understood back in my day what your purpose was behind the counter, as real Karens (m and f) didn't exist outside maybe Hollywood and Wall Street... but he gets it in an old-school way... which is rare, esp if not transactional... like at all corporate stores here, with only rare exception. FFS, why aren't all Zoomers like this? Fine, fine, know the answer... but things would flow so much smoother, and I'd be behooved to show appreciation for your devotion in doing a proper job w/o reward. A codger can dream
