April 3.

2025-04-03T15:10:16Z

April 3. I'm still taking a break from politics, but if you're interested in discussion of the Trump tariffs, here's a massive Hacker News thread.

My subject today is music, magic, and fit. When a person says a thing is too hard, it means that thing is a bad fit for that person. That's totally normal in modern life, which is why we're all preoccupied with ease and convenience. But if you really enjoy something, you don't mind if it's hard, because that makes it a fun challenge.

I enjoy making playlists so much that I add rules to make them harder. They have to be between one and two hours, and every song has to fit, if not by sounding similar to the other songs, at least by having good transitions with the songs right before and after. I end up cutting a lot of good songs, and when I do, I move them to an "Orphans" folder.

That folder finally got big enough that I divided it into categories and started making playlists. Making songs fit, that were selected by not fitting, is so challenging that I developed a new system. I listen to the songs on shuffle, and when I notice a good transition, especially if it's surprising, I make a note of it.

Here's where the magic comes in. On my laptop, I use VLC, and its shuffle is hit and miss. But when I walk around on headphones, I use my old Sansa Clip mp3 player, and its shuffle is hit hit hit. This is neither objectively testable nor mechanistically explainable, but to me it's obvious that the Sansa is much luckier, and my explanation is that it's a rare item that I've used and appreciated for many years. I even soldered in a new battery. I've put enough energy into it that it's now a minor magic item, with the power of picking the perfect song.

My four Orphan song categories are soft, regular, jarring, and long. I used the shuffle trick for the most difficult "jarring" category, and the Sansa pulled up one great transition after another. That list still needs work, but the soft list is done and polished, and I really like it, Orphans 1: Flowers. While it's not in any order other than good transitions, it happens that the first song is the oldest and most played (1963/25M), and the last song is the newest and least played (2024/6K).

Ran Prieur

April 3.