This is Album of the Week #5 ~ This week's album is Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP

Year of Release: 2000
Genre(s): Hip Hop
Country: United States
Length: 72 minutes
Album.Link

Excerpt from Pitchfork:

But the anger and trauma he conjured from his childhood of abuse and bullying felt uncomfortably real in all his performances. On The Marshall Mathers LP, he suits the action to the word and the word to the action. He picks the right tone for the right mood, the horrorcore of “Remember Me?,” the beleaguered artist on “The Way I Am,” the impish malevolence of “Criminal,” or the tortured, regretful, loving, deranged, murderous everything-all-at-once feeling of “Kim.” We don’t really believe it, but we believe Eminem really believes it.

Discussion points:
Have you heard this artist/album before? Is this your first time hearing?
Do you enjoy this genre? Is this an album you would have chosen?
Does this album remind you of something you've heard before?
What were the album's strengths or weaknesses?
Was there a standout track for you?
How did you hear the album? Where were you? What was your setup?

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Album of the week is currently chosen randomly (via random.org) from the top 5000 albums from a custom all-time RYM chart, with a 4/5 popularity weighting. The chart is recalculated weekly.

Missed last week? It can be found here.

Any feedback on the format is welcome ~~

I've been writing and rewriting this to make it more formal, but I've decided to screw it because the original was raw and can probably describe my needs better than my rewrites could ever. So apologies if it doesn't fit the tone of Tildes

As of right now, I am currently not seeing anyone for my mental health. However, I'm in the process of getting help. I already have a consultation form for one and all I have to is figure out if I'm saying too much because one part ended up being like 16 paragraphs long and I don't think mental health professionals like that...

Anyways, I've been having trouble getting myself to clean. There's a gap between my bed and the wall that I put in case I ever got bedbugs (never got bedbugs in my life) and what ended up happening is various items of clothing would fall into that gap without me knowing. Which led to a whole bunch of carpet beetles suddenly flying in my room a month and a half ago.

Here's my concern: I did have a period where I found fleas in my room, and after seeing them a few times I went on a cleaning spree. Eventually my dad had to stop me because I was deep cleaning the house every single day, and when I wasn't doing that I was researching about pest control. When I wasn't able to clean I ended up researching too deeply on pest control, which led me to find out about scabies. Which led me to a delusion that I had scabies, then went straight back to my cleaning frenzy again, this time with this newfound fear that I'm infesting my family with scabies if I don't babywipe or vacuum everything.

Then one day, I started getting psychosomatic hallucinations that matched the symptoms of scabies. At night, I wouldn't be able to sleep because I would feel hundreds of bugs crawling inside my skin every time it got dark, forcing me to sleep with 3 lamps around me to mitigate the sensation. Every time I got out of a hot shower I could feel it too, but not as strongly as at night. And then when I sought out a dermatologist, because there was no way I didn't have scabies if I was going through all these symptoms, it just suddenly... stopped? Which was my biggest indicator that it wasn't scabies, because it would have never stopped if it was scabies.

It was a... bizarre experience for sure, but an impactful one. Especially now that it's been about a year since it all went down, and I've been having trouble sleeping because my room gets so stuffy. I keep my window open at all times, even when I'm too cold to sleep, just because the air is so musky and makes me feel like I'm on the edge of throwing up. I don't feel hunger in my room, and all I can think of is how there's carpet beetles in those gaps and how I will have to clean them when I get better. Because I don't want to repeat what happened last year. I don't want to clean and have these stupid carpet beetles or whatever else I find in that gap briefly take over my life like those fleas and imaginary scabies did. For the past few years I've been swinging between moments of depressive symptoms, grandiosity, and paranoia one after another and a few months ago is the first time in five years since I stopped having these back-to-back moments and I just... can't have another one again. Not until I get help.

But it has come to my attention that help might take a long time. If I need therapy, that might take months, if not years, and there's a good chance if I need medication I won't find the perfect one right away. So either I have to wait until months or years of my room rotting more and more or I clean it now. To clean knowing full well that I might relapse into another stupid paranoid episode because it was a trigger before and can be a trigger now.

I don't know. I don't know what to do. I want to clean but I don't want to trigger what I went through in the past again. I don't want to trigger anything. Any causes to my episodes I keep it in my head and make it a rule to avoid at all cost, but how do I avoid cleaning when it's impacting my physical health not to clean? I know I should get help, get treatment, but I shouldn't do anything funny while I wait for the perfect solution right? When I have the right treatment and coping mechanisms I can tackle my triggers, so best not to clean? If that's a trigger? I hate this. I just want guidance

Let me start by saying I really enjoyed playing the Mass Effect games. They are awesome.

I found the plot, though, incoherent. Especially in ME3. I don't mind small conveniences like "good thing this random teleporter beam designed to suck up corpses has easy entrée to the reaper's command center," because it's a game.

But how on earth did Cerberus amass seemingly billions of elite special operations forces with nobody noticing? What do you mean the secret weapon against the reapers has been improved each cycle by people who didn't know what it was supposed to do? How could that possibly result in a functional device?

It's clear, I think, that this wasn't necessarily the direction the first game was going. Cerberus was the subject of a side quest, but nothing more. The authors of the lore seemed to be taking great pains to ensure everything was logical, based on the in-universe rules they had established.

...and then ME2 kicks off and the series is almost as much about Cerberus, from this point on, as it is about the reapers.

What did you think about how the plot unrolled?

(You may also wish to read this series of essays. It's about 18 billion words long, though - fair warning. https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=27792)

Always a fan of Sloan here, but I was recently reminded of Pure and have been grooving to “Spiritual Pollution” and “Anna”. So make me a virtual mix tape: What were your fav Canadian bands, albums, or songs of the ‘90s?

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

Rules:

• No grey market sales
• No affiliate links

It is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the game/games are worthwhile.

If you don’t want to see threads in this series, add save point to your personal tag filters.

Platform: Android

What is your calorie counting/meal planning application of choice? Looking for something simple and hyper-focused on calorie counting, and I'm ok with a bit of macro tracking, however that's all I want it to do - no feature creep into other wellness/fitness goals and coaching, etc.

I'm fine with paying (as long as it's reasonable) for a simple application without a ton of ads that does this one thing really well.

Suggestions?

Spotify recently increased their price, making it the same price as Apple's service. I've had Spotify since 2016 (started with the free version), and got premium in 2018 when they had the college student deal where you would get that and Hulu for only five bucks a month. I've been an off and on Premium subscriber since 2019. Only re-subscribing to it when Spotify would send me offers to sign up for three months for the price of one. This is actually the first year that I've consistently had Spotify all year since I was in college.

But now that they're the same price I was wondering if I should switch over. I don't want to get into the whole quality thing and lossless (I don't even know what that is) but I haven't been happy with Spotify's algorithm for a while. Streaming services have always been how I discovered new music, going back to me using Pandora while I was in high school. But now Spotify keeps suggesting the same songs whenever it's on smart shuffle. For example, if I play a song from the late 60s or early 70s, I know the next song Spotify plays is going to be Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Whenever I play an indie pop song, like a Lana Del Rey song or something, I know that the next song is going to be Borderline by Tame Impala.

I'm kind of sick of it at this point, and I feel like it's limiting the scope of what I'm listening to. I'm not sure what Apple Music's algorithm is like, I've heard mixed things with some saying it's better than Spotify and others saying it's worse.

I'm also happy taking recommendations on other things to do or try with Spotify to correct this.

Any advice should be suitable for a non tech person who knows how to google and follow instructions but not code in any way.

Can anyone suggest which firewall and or antivirus might be best? All suggestions for making life easier while dealing with a new machine are welcome.

I became a fan of Premier League Soccer after an epic battle with YOShInOn, my smart RSS reader. (I tried to convince it I liked American football and not the other kind of football but in the process of trying to understand why it couldn't learn the difference I changed my mind.)

There's a free Premier League game on NBC OTA TV around 12:30 PM EST and once I got hooked a Peacock subscription seemed like a good idea so I can catch games (somewhat) early on Saturday and Sunday. The university I work at has men's and women's soccer games that I go to (it was fun to go to one where youth players showed up and I felt like we were part of a huge soccer universe) and sooner or later I am going to check out the games of the college on the other hill.

I know there's Major League Soccer here in the US and I understand it's gotten better than it used to be, and I understand you can get an add-on subscription to Apple TV which has all the games. Is there anyone out there who follows MLS?

I try to post a few articles a week about the Premier League and European Soccer and I think it would be great if somebody did the same for MLS, as something interesting has to happen every gameday.

Update us on your progress so far!

• What did/didn't you get done this week?

• Anything go according to plan?

• Anything go off the rails?

• Any successes or struggles to share?

• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

I’m a software engineer. Any time this topic comes up it’s clear I’m the odd one out. Recruiters will tell me “don’t worry, we’re fully remote!” but that’s not what I want to hear. Co-workers that are mandated to return to office go on a quiet rebellion to stay at home (and to be clear, I love that they are displaying the power that laborers have even without a union). But for me the quality of the work is lower when remote. Video calls suck and are emotionally draining. Collaboration is core to doing work for me. Sure I can close tickets just fine from home. But what if I’m there to wrap my head around the entire system and all of the people involved in it?

A few things I’m aware of that influence my opinion here:

• I don’t have kids
• I am comfortable asserting my free time. I take plenty of time off and typically work six hour days, never with any push back from anyone. I can usually get much more done in six hours than is asked of me
• Programming is my dream job

Thankfully I am still able to find fully in-person opportunities around me. So this is really just a matter of understanding the rest of the labor market. I don’t need to or want to change anyone’s mind here.

Every nonprofit organization I have ever worked with does some form of publicity/public relations to support their mission. Many have speakers bureaus of volunteers who give talks about what the organization is doing. Many work to get articles written about their mission and efforts.

I think more could be done to remind people and inform people of a few things about nonprofit and small scale internet sites. For example that the early internet was centered around universities not corporations and marketing, that news organizations such as NPR and the BBC provide a valuable counter perspective to corporate news organizations, that nonprofit sites including Lemmy and Kbin and Mastadon and Tildes exist, to remind people that you can add forum or blog to a search to find small scale content and more. The point would be to make the case publicly that nonprofit and small scale internet sites 1. are still possible and viable, 2. already exist (insert several examples) 3. and and should form part of a strategy to resist corporate monopolies/dominance and create more diverse conversations and communities online.

What are your thoughts? I'm curious about timing, (will there be a better future time?) about possible methods and strategies and about whether this is something some members here want to think about.