Seattle,neighborhoods and families

I miss neighborhoods.

I know about many of the reasons for this and they vary in my opinion of them, or the complexity of my opinion of them at least.

On the positive side of that is the fact that the Internet provides people with many more opportunities to find and commune with similar people and it's no longer essential to people to live in proximity to people like them in order to stay in contact.  Or at least feel like they're staying in contact.

In a city like Seattle, the cost of living has driven a lot of that. My ex-girlfriend and I lived in the heart of Seattle's once vibrant Capitol Hill neighborhood as genuinely poor people. Now, Rae, Conan and I weren't even able to consider living in the much diminished version now with significantly better and more reliable income.

But then I don't really recognize much of it when I visit anyway. I guess too many of the parts that I connected with were driven in some significant degree by people who were as poor as I was.

And here I openly wonder if it's the lack of neighborhoods and more the lack of a neighborhood that matches us.

In part, the character of the neighborhoods have gone, specialty stores have more trouble keeping up being able to pay the rent for brick and mortar locations, and ones that are able to succeed in online sales to a wider group, I suspect, find themselves wondering why to bother. So, there's a lot of people living in areas largely by habit with little of the benefits of any kind of neighborhood character. We moved to the north end of the Maple Leaf neighborhood, just on the border of the Roosevelt neighborhood, just north of the U District, thinking that the mix of hip young people to the south and families to the north would result in other people like us being around.

The problem is that the middle class liberal Nextdoor types one finds in Maple Leaf is the kind that Rae, associating their self with the white trash elements of their white trash background, feels intimidated as well as condescended to by. I grew up an undiagnosed Autistic in Seattle private schools, so I have much more experience with them, which only leads me to having a much stronger allergy to being in their presence.

And the younger, hipper crowd is mostly unencumbered by children, which makes their lifestyle different enough from ours to make it difficult to associate as a regular function of our lives, even when we've intended to.

It seems like most of the people in our income level and lifestyle moved to the suburbs, which we tried and hated at least as much as we expected to. Well, Conan was of an age to associate herself with her surroundings and maintains some warm feelings for Shoreline that Rae and I are unable to share. This seems like a kind of surrender. You can't dream of a better future while living in the suburbs, except the one where you move out of the suburbs.

But proximity is really such a strong part of most social groups. I think of my high school friends and a statistically enormous percentage, including Wade Bradford, waited at the same bus stop as me. Even in adulthood, the period where I had a strong enough group that I was able to attempt making my movie, Lakeside or whatever, was in some significant part because so many of us, including Ryan Allred, lived near one another and could gather and conspire over it.

I was saying to Rae that I wished there was a website for hip, nerdy, creative and/or outsider families to associate online, but also to find ways to be nearer in real life. Somewhere that you could find answers to the best places to live or meet in your city or which ones would best fit you in other cities you might consider moving to. Kind of a non-Nextdoor, but also a craigslist, Meetup and even a little goddamn Facebook.

We even tossed around the idea of starting it ourselves, but I think it would be tough to find the small starter version that would serve the necessary function while it grows. It would probably need to be started mostly formed, which is probably beyond us.

I don't really have a conclusion at this point. It's just what's been on my mind, of late.

Spotify likes and dislikes

One of the things I want the most from this blog is to keep it a place of positivity for me, so I'm going to focus a lot on how much I love Spotify first and foremost.

Let me say that way back when they introduced the different multi-disk CD players, I came to fantasize, to myself and the handful of people nerdy enough to humor me when I'd talk about it, about a system that functions much as Spotify does. I could put in all of my favorite music in some massive computer driven jukebox and it would play it completely randomly or randomly within the parameters of the mood I as in.

So, with Spotify, I have made lots of obsessive playlists and sub-playlists that I put in folders and sub-folders so I can play in various orders as well as randomly in connection with one another. It's the kind of thing I can obsess over sometimes to the detriment of even getting normal enjoyment out of listening to music. It's the kind of activity that Rae finds utterly confounding about me.

Up until recently, the only thing that frustrated me was the Daily Mixes. This is mostly because for so long mine were in the neighborhood of just what I crave. A list of mostly things I like and listen to, separated into motifs that fit my musical moods, mixed in with similar music it's introducing me to. It's like the thing radio used to be, but more personal.

But they were always... off.

Now, they always smoothed over my taste a little, but not just acceptable, but it was desirable. At their best, they really were like the radio stations that might be in another universe. Sure, the bands I listen to that have few enough listeners that Spotify doesn't know how to place them among my more successful favorites fall by the wayside, but I can make time for them on their own, that's cool.

Simultaneously, I'd avoided the "Like" button.

As I understand it, this is normal for a lot of people. Netflix went from ratings to Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down because most people can't be bothered to put the time into ratings.

I, on the other hand, am drawn to rating things like a fly to shit. I've whiled away hours and hours, adding up to weeks and months, just sitting around rating things with some degree of utter compulsion.

What was key to Spotify's success at keeping me from this otherwise irresistible urge? They made a folder of "Liked" songs.

That's the whole story. I didn't want that folder and I was annoyed it was there. It also made my likes feel like they were accounted in order to make a playlist I didn't want, when I'm more than capable of making my own playlists.

But occasionally, very occasionally, I'd click "Like" on something or another, just because I'd feel enthusiastic about it at that moment, and I began to notice that it helped. My Daily Mixes, among other things, would be improved, at least a little.

At first, it was hard to tell. I didn't think it was the only thing improving them, and I still don't, but it was increasingly obvious it was a real factor.

So, me being me, I dove off the deep end. I started liking songs all up and down my playlists. And occasionally even find things I haven't made playlists for.

Yeah, I probably need to go ahead and make a Little Willies playlist soon, now that it's come up.

I was making good progress with what I wanted.

And, more importantly, my Daily Mixes were getting better and better. Increasingly amazing blends of the things I like. Intermingling the kinds of things I like more, but still generally in ways that kept them in moods that made sense.

And then...

I hit the ceiling.

Apparently, you can only "Like" so many songs.

I posted Like button limit on the Spotify forums and a comment led me to see Increase maximum songs allowed in your music that this issue has existed and been recognized for at least five years without action.

Spotify has said it's a "good idea" to fix the problem, but because the arbitrary limit only affects 1% of listeners, it's on a back burner, despite the fact that, as "lolo341" points out, here, 1% of Spotify is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 listeners. Not only that, but 1,000,000 of the most dedicated listeners. And potentially, the 1,000,000 most satisfied listeners, rather than the 1,000,000 most disappointed listeners.

Here's the thing, in the past, I'd have been on a forum like this to pointlessly threaten that I'd stop subscribing or listening. Perhaps moving to one of the other services that I already know I don't like as well.

I say as I sit and enjoy one of those very playlists.

But now, I'm just curious.

I've worked around technology and business enough to know this has to have a reason.

I suspect the original reason this exists is indeed because someone thought the "Like" button was for the thing I didn't want, a "Liked" playlist, and that playlists needed to be capped, because... reasons. Capping playlists makes close-to-enough sense to me, so I won't ponder the arbitrary limit.

But they embedded that connection deep enough that it can't just be removed.

They've acknowledged it's a good idea to fix for at least two years. And they know if disappoints and frustrates its most active users, so there's a reason they can't just flip a switch and just say "Likes" aren't the same as a playlist, make the "Liked Songs" playlist an exception to the limit or just remove that limit as arbitrary. So, there's something it does. It's a load bearing wall.

I'm just not sure I get what the load is.

But, seriously, one of my Daily Mixes just pulled this out song, so I can't be mad.