Mine In Mono

Mine In Mono is a personal weblog written by Robert — a mere Christian, aspiring minimalist, budget audiophile, inveterate notetaker, and paper airplane mechanic.

  • Frisson

    When I got my new tube-based headphone amp/preamp, I got chills when listening to certain music. Apparently, this is phenomena called “frisson.”

    Frisson happens when multiple parts of your brain activate at once, especially the areas responsible for processing sound and those tied to emotion and reward. Research shows that people who experience frisson more often tend to have stronger connections between these regions, allowing them to respond more intensely to music. Your body follows that signal as your nervous system activates, your skin reacts, and your heart rate can shift slightly, creating a response that feels immediate and physical while still being rooted in emotion.

    → What Is Frisson? The Science Behind Why Music Gives You Chills

  • Choosin’ Texas

    I have seen a few references to a song called “Choosin’ Texas” by an artist named Ella Langley beating out Mariah Carey for the longest-running No. 1 song of all time on the Billboard Hot 100. The surprise in all this is I’ve never heard of Ella Langley or the song that broke the record. I haven’t been into popular music since I was a kid and married to the radio, but I had an awareness of what people were listening to.

    John Herreid notes the strange period we are in with respect to popular music.

    Moving radio and television to on-demand streaming means there’s no longer a common culture for stuff like this.

    Like, in 2005 if you never heard of a #1 hit it was because you were an insufferable elitist hipster. In 2026 it just means you listen to Spotify or similar.

    The video and song are full of the self-referential material that themes most country. Exaggerated accented twangs, territorial regionalism, bars and booze. I’ve heard stronger hooks in radio friendly chart toppers, but the song has a fairly powerful chorus and the narrative video helps to convey its emotion. Langley is attractive in the way marketable contemporary country music stars often are. In other words, one of the stronger of the typical country songs and presentations, but certainly nothing that takes your breath away and screams this deserves to reign as undisputed champion of the airwaves.

    Ella Langley – Choosin’ Texas (YouTube)

  • Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
    Lay your shadow on the sundials
    and let loose the wind in the fields.
    Bid the last fruits to be full;
    give them another two more southerly days,
    press them to ripeness, and chase
    the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
    Whoever has no house now will not build one
    anymore.
    Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
    time,
    will stay up, read, write long letters,
    and wander the avenues, up and down,
    restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

    Autumn Day – Rainer Maria Rilke

  • Mountains of the Drowning

    The Atlantic lets you read their articles free through RSS. Nevertheless, I like to share articles, and so I sometimes think about getting a subscription.1 However, when I read pieces like this one from Jonathan Chait defending female Democratic politicians being abusive, it dampens my desire to pay.

    Chait wonders why people make a big deal when Representative Mary Peltola physically assaults someone at work. I mean, as Chait brings up, the guy didn’t die! Do you know how much trouble you would be in (if you were still employed) if you shoved somebody where I work? As Chait goes on, it becomes apparent that he believes female Democratic politicians should have license to assault people at the office.

    This is another one of the mountains of examples of where the journos at mainstream media don’t seem to understand the world the rest of us live in.

    1. My sister used to gift me a subscription for my birthday every year until they raised prices. ↩︎

  • Feed Confusion

    I’ve gotten myself in a confused state with regard to my RSS and social media feeds.

    1. I’m using Reeder, which allows you to follow RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky and Micro.blog feeds. I’m following all four of those in a jumble.
    2. I’m also using Indigo, which can follow Bluesky and Mastodon feeds.
    3. I like the native experience, so I’m using the Bluesky app and site. I also use the Micro.blog app and site.

    All this means I see posts multiple times. Since I’m only really using one RSS reader (Reeder), disentangling from this mess will mostly mean being more deliberate about my social media following. I’ll have to unwind where I’m following what people, which could take a while.

  • I just read Dario Amodei’s convincing “We Must Pace the Frontier.” Much has to go right in his plans to create measurable effect, and with our current administration against policing AI companies for fear of giving China an advantage, I’m less than optimistic.

    Good thing I read this piece by Cal Newport to dampen the effect of the rhetoric and balance things out.

  • Rina

    As someone born in the mid-seventies, I almost entered this world with a predisposition to like Sylvie, the project of Ben Schwab (Golden Daze, Drugdealer). The band was inspired by finding tape reels recorded by Schwab’s father John and his band Mad Anthony in a barn in 1975.

    (more…)

  • I Had A Plan That Was Built On Thinking Too Long

    Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

    I’ve read a few pieces recently that focus on the negative effects of activities that were believed to be universally helpful to mental health. One, an article by Bryce D. Fuemmeler in Mere Orthodoxy, explored the era of self-focus.

    Not all of this can be blamed on Oxford—or, in fact, any other university whose students deal with these problems—but it is no secret that universities have intensified The Era of Self-Focus by centering campus life around self-care and grievance-based ideas. For example, while I was at Oxford during the coronavirus epidemic, we were inundated with self-care messages from the university administration asking about our well-being. Though well-intentioned, I found this mildly baffling. I was fantastic! I was at Oxford having an intellectual adventure! Yet even in my optimism, I noticed that the more messages I received to this effect, the more I began to question my own well-being. Put another way, I became more focused on myself, and less focused on ideas bigger than myself. A more realistic version of the administration’s messages might have been: Are you thinking about yourself enough today?

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  • ’Til All Are One

    Transformers: The Movie is showing in theaters in 4K starting in September to celebrate its 40th anniversary. I’m going to be like a kid when this comes out. I was so excited when the movie first dropped and fulfilled expectations with drama, action, and an exemplary cast of voice actors.

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  • I’m Coming Out

    Bill Gates is coming out of a period of semi-seclusion to raise the alarm bells about generative A.I. Karen Weise covers the story for The NYT. One of the main concerns that Gates has is the potential for massive job losses.

    He proposed a new tax on A.I. use, known as a “token tax,” to make it more expensive to replace people and provide money to help those who do lose work. A token is a basic unit of A.I. computing. The idea of taxing it has gained some traction, including on Wall Street, as a way to increase the cost of using machines instead of human labor.

    Gates wrote a personal essay on his site about how dangerous the situation could be if not taken seriously.

    AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice.

    The man is not downplaying the stakes here. He believes that the reason his peers are not coming forward is that there is too much money to be gained.