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mashby

The personal blog of Michael Ashby

Month / September 2017

One Of My Biggest Pet Peeves

Holly and I moved to Nashville in 1998 and we’ve seen the metro area steadily grow consistently every year. According to the Tennessean back in March of this year, we’re averaging 100 new people every day. Of course I didn’t need the local newspaper to tell me that, I’ve have steadily felt the change in […]

Logo for the Internet show The Northern Groove

The Northern Groove Show

Most of my day is spent behind a computer with a pair of headphones on listening to music while I work. In addition to Apple Music and listening to my own personal library, I’ve always found Internet streams to be a great way to find new music. A few years ago, I stumbled across a […]

Lamb – Lusty (1996)

One of my favorite songs came up on my playlist today from one of the bands that I follow very closely – Lamb – and I felt motivated to post about it and share it. The song is called “Lusty” and it’s off their self-titled debut album. The video above is a live studio recording and you can listen to the Album version here.

So long ago I can’t even remember, a good friend of mine made a recommendation and I’ve been listening to them ever since. Thank you Emily! Lamb gets labeled as a “drum and bass” group but I find that they are much broader than that. There are elements of DnB for sure, but also jazz and trip-hop to name just a few.

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Henry Rollins Band – “Liar”

Last night my wife and I were watching the latest episode of Hot Ones – Henry Rollins Channels His Anger at Spicy Wings and Holly was struck at how engaging Henry was. She couldn’t remember where she knew him from which sent us down the YouTube rabbit hole. We watched a bunch of Black Flag […]

Calendar with the 7th circled with a pencil

So Far, So Good

It’s been over two-weeks since I deleted my Facebook account. This means that it is truly deleted with no chance of coming back. Over these past two weeks, I’ve been monitoring how much friction I’ve had not having an account and I’m happy to say — not that much.

  • I lost a recommendation for a graphic designer that was in a Facebook chat
  • I’ve lost contact with a couple of clubs I belong to
  • I’ve lost contact with customers that post information exclusively to Facebook. In other words, not on their web site, or Twitter as well.

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You Are What You Love, Not What Loves You

Swiss-Miss has been on a roll recently and I seem to be echoing almost every post, but there have been some real gems, like this one. This video clip is from the movie Adaptation, which is one of my favorites. I love everything Charlie Kaufman writes and Spike Jonze is one of my favorite directors. […]

The words delete written in graffiti in East London

I Deleted My Facebook Account

I have been in a love-hate relationship with Facebook for a while now and as of almost two-weeks ago, I decided to delete my account. I took it a step further and instead of doing the default by suspending my account, I actually requested that my account be deleted.

Facebook has felt like a necessary evil in order to stay in touch with friends and family, but I found that my usage habits had changed as well and I didn’t like the result. I think, like most people, Facebook has become a welcome distraction during the day. Work/life/whatever sucks, so let’s see what other people are doing, that sort of thing.

After all the focus on how Facebook and bots contributed to the 2016 US presidential election and listening to podcast episodes like Sam Harris: What is Technology Doing to Us?, I became more aware of my habits and began questioning why I continued to use the service. Was it really to stay-in-touch, or was it more a Pavlovian response to stress?

Ultimately I think it was the latter, which is why I opted to delete my account.

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