deathmtn

I think Christmas is the morning you’re supposed to wake up at 5 AM, not Christmas Eve. Also, only if you’re a child and actually excited about Christmas.

Senior Spotify executives and board members have sold $1.25bn worth of the company’s stock in 2024 — including $900mn in payouts for its two co-founders — as they capitalise on the music streamer’s soaring share price.

The service is actually shittier this year, as widely noted. Shareholder perception is stupid and disconnected with value and productivity.

Chief executive Daniel Ek, who founded Spotify in Sweden in 2006 with Martin Lorentzon, has sold nearly $350mn worth of stock in 2024. He has sold shares as recently as December 11, when he cashed out $28mn. Bloomberg estimates Ek’s net worth at more than $7bn.
Lorentzon, who remains on Spotify’s board, has sold more than $550mn worth of stock in 2024, per SEC filings.
Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s chief product and technology officer, who has been with the company since 2009, sold more than $106mn in stock in 2024.
Chief human resources officer Katarina Berg has sold $38mn worth of stock, while chief business officer Alex Norström reaped $63mn from stock sales during the year.

No one should have that much money, least of all these hucksters. This is just plain bad for humanity.

Data rights very well-framed by Glenn:

Your Spotify listening data is yours, morally, but so inaccessible to you that Spotify can make a yearly spectacle out of briefly sharing the most superficial and unverifiable analyses of it with you.

I'm sure you're dying to know: Are lines and boxes hitting each other?

I gotta admit that Pupperoni smells good.

I found-and-replaced "dest" with "head" in some graphing code. Now it contains comments with the word "headination." I think I'll keep that.

Weird. Opera bought GameMaker three years ago.

The laptop was actually just in another room. Worst Argh I Forgot incident yet. There’s gonna be a lot of panic at whatever nursing home I end up in.

Shit, got back from the airport, and my laptop is missing from my bag.

Back workout done, with the oblique sit ups to avoid any future rib muscle trouble. Eight deadlifts, after which I said “Ossssssss.”

I normally do not like these kind of vocals, but Grendel's Sÿster's are really compelling. Caro sounds like Geddy Lee, but she also sounds really "medieval," even though I think of medieval singing as the kind done by monks. You are definitely not going to AI-generate this kind of voice anytime soon.

We had a small class at judo last night. It was just four people, plus the instructor. What was especially nice was that everyone was "small," meaning no one was more than about ten pounds heavier than me.

We went right into generating power for forward throws and moving opponents because, yeah, we need that. I know about taking big steps to off-balance bigger opponents, but as the sensei pointed out, the problem with that is that you then give them time to also step or counter. Still often worth it, but we worked on moving opponents without moving your feet.

We spent most of the time on practicing a hip spin movement. He kept comparing to swinging a baseball bat, which I don't ever do, but it did help to think about that. With a two-handed sleeve grip, spinning your hips like that can move a larger guy fairly substantially.

The rub comes in when trying to do that with actual throws. With ippon seoinage, you have to swing diagonally down, plus there's all the stuff with locking up the opponent's arm. Often, by the time I've done all that, I end up throwing with my arms again.

Ashi guruma, though, is easier to adapt to the swing by virtue of not having extra arm steps. Grip, spin your hips, then stick your foot out. I should have tried it randori.

Most of the class was actually not exhausting because we spent so much time on learning this movement. But then randori came around, and I did only two rounds and was dying. I do not know when I'll be in "normal" (fifteen years ago) shape, but it's not after six judo classes.

I did try the hip spin thing, but I can't do it fast enough yet. Again, all of the throws I landed were backwards throws: osotogari, tani otoshi. In my exhausted state, I did "muscle remember" the seoinage/osotogari combo I used to do, which is handy. In turn, I was thrown with osotogari a lot. I can counter it when it's the first attack, but I'm always somehow surprised when it's a follow up.

It was nice to get confirmation about this idea that lifting someone upward as a prerequisite for a lot of throws isn't necessary. It's extremely hard to do.

There's no judo for me until the new year. I'm a little concerned with my conditioning dropping, but I have to remind myself that I'm just trying to get whatever may fall my way with this once-a-week judo campaign.

Dang the EV charging spots are taken five minutes before the library even opens.

In this episode of Where Are You Going, about halfway through, the man on the street being interviewed goes off on about illegal immigrants. He supports UKIP. He is a Bangladeshi British person. He’s into Bitcoin because he finds the concept of basic banking corrupt.

This is just one guy, but whoa, I am concerned for the world.

I added a convolver node to my data-driven music project. It felt like it was straightforward, but then I realized that all of the cascading changes took all day to make. (And it breaks near the end of the piece, even after all of that work.) Even when a technical thing goes well and feels right, it's pretty costly.