Reilly Spitzfaden (they/them)

I did not know this was by Blues Traveler, but as soon as I looked it up, I thought, “oh God, THAT song”

“Don't Stop Believin'.” In isolation, it's not the worst thing, but it's one of the biggest mismatches between how I feel about it and how other people feel about it. When it comes on and people get all excited, I feel both very left out, and often irritated by their energy level.

I did listen to an episode of Matt Bernstein's podcast w/ Ryan Broderick as a guest, and Taylor Lorenz's podcast w/ Matt Bernstein as a guest that talked about Ashton Hall (the wacky morning routine guy) & “male loneliness” and kind of touched on this.

As far as I understand, yeah

I'm trying to think where I got this impression and I'm coming up blank on a source, though

From what I've heard, it does seem to be a right-wing talking point. The gist seems to be “women are too picky and like to ‘date upward,’ leaving a lot of men lonely,” or something to that effect.

The view from a second-floor balcony. There is an old, painted wood railing and corner column in the foreground, and a deciduous tree and a roof in the background.

There's a second-floor balcony attached to my apartment, and it's really nice to be able to easily come outside to program, compose, and drink coffee

It always makes me happy to hear people expressing distaste for AI

I remember a camping trip one year where we got to see some really nice meteors that I think were from the Perseids.

Perseids - NASA Science The Perseid meteor shower peaks in mid-August, and is considered the best meteor shower of the year.

I'm sharing this to remind myself and inform others about the dates—I often lose track of these kinds of things and I would really like to see them more often.

This year, they're from July 17 to Aug. 23, 2025 (Peak night: Aug. 12-13) according to this article.

science.nasa.gov/solar-system...

I had not heard of Don Hertzfeldt, but looking him up, I definitely need to watch some of that early stuff!

Fluidity, by William Fields 7 track album

Got some new music from William Fields and Kelley Sheehan/Hoodwink Duo for Bandcamp Friday!

williamfields.bandcamp.com/album/fluidity

kelleysheehan.bandcamp.com/album/new-ea...

#BandcampFriday

GitHub - reillypascal/RSTelecom: Lo-fi plugin with telecommunications codecs and glitching effects. Allows instruments to sound like a telephone line, cell phone, or video conference call! Lo-fi plugin with telecommunications codecs and glitching effects. Allows instruments to sound like a telephone line, cell phone, or video conference call! - reillypascal/RSTelecom

I was also able to get this plugin that sounds like a phone call/video conference compiling with CMake pretty easily! It'll take a bit to add some of the features I want before making another release, but that will be cross-platform (Linux/Mac/Win) too

github.com/reillypascal...

In a similar vein, I love how people can see a face in a trash can. Trash can faces always look hilarious to me.

Releases · reillypascal/RSAlgorithmicVerb Retro algorithmic reverb plugin in JUCE with multiple algorithms (including emulations of classic hardware) and more to come. - reillypascal/RSAlgorithmicVerb

You can get the latest version of my reverb plugin here: github.com/reillypascal...

#JUCE #Cpp #CPlusPlus #Audio #MusicProduction #Programming #Coding

Plugins for Everyone! Cross-Platform JUCE with CMake & GitHub Actions My C++ reverb plugin is finally available for macOS, Windows, and Linux! Here's how I'm using JUCE's CMake API and GitHub actions to make that possible.

I finally have cross-platform (Linux/Mac/Win) release files for my reverb plugin! I wrote today about setting up a CMake build process (instead of Projucer/Xcode) and using GitHub actions to compile each version:

reillyspitzfaden.com/posts/2025/0...

#JUCE #Audio #MusicProduction #Programming

As I was walking out of the grocery store, I saw a guy casually walking around with a bearded dragon on his shoulder

It looks cool! Somebody at the IndieWeb homebrew website club mentioned that one to me last night

Curate your own newspaper with RSS Escape newsletter inbox chaos and algorithmic surveillance by building your own enshittification-proof newspaper from the writers you already read

I love RSS for following news sites, newsletters, and blogs, and you can even follow YouTube channels if you want!

I use NetNewsWire for macOS (and iOS back when I used that) and Capy Reader for Android.

www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-...

Substack’s “Nazi problem” won’t go away after push notification apology Substack may be legitimizing neo-Nazis as “thought leaders,” researcher warns.

Substack claims removing Nazis “doesn't make ‘the problem go away—in fact, it makes it worse’,” and has included Nazi newsletters in push notifications/the “rising” list, which features popular newsletters:

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Thanks!

Zero Knowledge Proofs Alone Are Not a Digital ID Solution to Protecting User Privacy In the past few years, governments across the world have rolled out digital identification options, and now there are efforts encouraging online companies to implement identity and age verification re...

“Until the hard questions of power imbalances for potentially abusive verifiers and prevention of phoning home to ID issuers are addressed, these systems should not be pushed forward without proper protections in place.”

(3/)

www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

#Privacy #Surveillance #AgeVerification

Now I see things becoming less open, private, and free, and because age verification requires more resources, I worry that the new laws will make it harder for small platforms and websites to exist.

(2/)

The Internet Is About to Get Weird Again The internet seems ripe for change, and millions of people seem poised to connect in new ways, as they reconsider their relationship to technology.

All the age verification laws are making me extremely depressed about the future of the internet.

There was a period where I had some optimism (in this vein: www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...) about things like the Fediverse, Bridgy, Bluesky, the IndieWeb, etc.

(1/)

Ah, that makes sense! I do have a copy of Gravity's Rainbow lying around that I haven't gotten around to yet lol

Oh yeah, this definitely approaches supernatural belief from an aesthetic perspective. Also, if you have other recommendations for writing in the vein that you're talking about, I would be interested!

It's one of my favorites! I don't think she takes them super literally. She maintains an interesting position of never fully embracing or disavowing genuine beliefs in the supernatural. Overall, it reads like somebody assuming an open mind for the purpose of understanding things.

That's amazing. It's very haunting in the way a lot of Kristen Gallerneaux's discussion of media in this book is: www.kristengallerneaux.com/high-static-...

Also I'm definitely going to be listening to the 99% Invisible episode that the Wikipedia page mentions

6. I'm less and less convinced that Max/Pd are (in the long run) conceptually any easier than programming in something like SuperCollider.

No shade to Max — I still love it and use it all the time — but I do think we tend to undersell how challenging it is to learn *well*.

If Not React, Then What? - Infrequently Noted Frameworkism is now the dominant creed of today's frontend discourse, and it's bullshit. We owe it to ourselves and to our users to reject dogma and embrace engineering as a discipline that strives to...

5. High-quality, vanilla HTML & CSS are just as challenging as something like React, should be given way more respect, and should be used far more often than they are.

Obligatory mention: infrequently.org/2024/11/if-n...