My gender is liminal, I’m just passing through. she/ae/aer

Former Hare Krishna, Trekkie, digital minimalist, Vim evangelist, Chaos Buddhist, statistician. Not necessarily in that order.

Links at https://tntgl.cc

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: May 14th, 2023

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  • Good one! It was certainly an unexpected cover when it was released, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Johnny Cash version had overshadowed the original in terms of audience familiarity. I’m also fond of Nine Inch Nails’ cover of Queen’s “Get Down Make Love”, it was a rather niche track for both bands - so much so that despite being a Queen fan, I heard the NIN version first.




  • a band called Genesis.

    Man, this made me feel old, and also I had to laugh. Yeah, little band called Genesis. 😂

    When I was young Genesis was everywhere. You couldn’t listen to the radio for more than 30 minutes without hearing a Genesis song. Since you seem to not know of them, allow me to introduce you: Phil Collins (vocals/drums), Mike Rutherford (bass/guitar), and Tony Banks (keyboards) is the lineup that most people know. They were the three left over after Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel left the band in the 1970s. In the 70s, they were a prog-rock band, but in the 80s the three remaining members shifted from prog-rock to pop, and the rest is history.

    I adore their old stuff, and there is so much to potentially introduce you to, but let’s go with this performance of Abacab from '87. The song was released in 1981, and is still in their ‘transition’ period from a prog band to a pop band. They were absolute powerhouses onstage. Phil Collins in particular is an incredible performer. This song sounds like the 1980s squeezed into pure music, but really, Genesis didn’t sound like 80s pop music. 80s pop music sounded like Genesis. Have a listen.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvOms5JXDXY


  • “Mad World” is the classic “what do you mean that’s a cover?” song… here are some great ones that I haven’t seen mentioned yet:

    • Nine Inch Nails “Dead Souls” (from The Crow soundtrack) is a Joy Division cover.
    • Guns ‘N Roses "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door" is a Bob Dylan cover.
    • Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You” is a Dolly Parton cover.
    • Nirvana’s “The Man Who Sold the World” is a David Bowie cover.
    • Fugees “Killing Me Softly with His Song” is a Roberta Flack cover, but Roberta Flack’s version is also a cover, it was initially recorded by Lorie Lieberman.


  • Oof, yeah. The 3310s are basically bricks now with so many carriers discontinuing 3G service. Nokia makes a couple of 4G feature phones, the 225, the 6300, and the 2780 Flip. The 225 runs S30, the 6300 and 2780 run KaiOS so they have some app support like a web browser, but functionality is very limited. And you won’t get good photos out of any of them.

    If you’re looking for privacy, look into the Fairphone. If you’re looking for a feature-rich phone that will force you to use it a lot less, look into Sunbeam. They run a stripped-down variant of Android with only the most basic functions.

    I got a Unihertz Titan Pocket earlier this year, I highly recommend those too, though they run Android 11 so if you are serious about privacy you’ll probably want to do some degoogling. Its camera is… okay.



  • I used a dumbphone for quite a while last year and honestly loved it. I have a small collection of them at this point since they are relatively inexpensive.

    Today I use a Unihertz Titan Pocket which is technically an android, but looks like a Blackberry. I’ve gotten a bunch of comments on it. It will certainly do more than I need, but I’ve disabled the play store and use it mostly like a dumb phone, with the exception of streaming music, which the dumbphones obviously wouldn’t do. I bought a dedicated mp3 player for that purpose, so that’s not the feature that brought me back.

    I switched because while I could absolutely use the dumbphone to do everything I needed to do, group texts were ultimately the thing that brought me back to an android. Though it’s been a known issue for many years, group texting on Nokia’s feature phones is just bad… when it works at all. I still keep an eye on the dumbphone market and will absolutely switch back when group text messages are sorted out.