In these brand new days apart from streaming music platforms for my first time in TEN years, it shapes how I view the larger world. I don't have to own or have access to everything. I know, this runs counter to the Internet age, this push that every book, movie, TV show—whatever medium, should be under our fiefdom.

Now on the surface, such access seems like a good thing, doesn't it? Why wouldn't we want to have everything? Whereas journeys toward the infinite might appear to be a fun ride, we are finite creatures. A succinct analogy: when we are thirsty, we should not attached ourselves to the hose attached to a fire truck.

But, isn't that life in today's Internet age? We are overwhelmed by the 24-hour news downward cycle and the ping pong volley of social media. Music is an extension of this: instead of holding to a valued (and worn) set of albums, it is all about quick access to a flurry of singles, thereby ignoring the nuances of each album and musical morsels. Try it out: put on a favorite vinyl and afterward queue up a single in a playlist; there's a qualitative difference.

Like my cutting the cord of music innovation, I continue to appreciate my departure from daily news and social media—it hasn't been absolute as I was bummed on Friday of learning of last month's passing of Grant Imahara. But, I have otherwise remained ignorant of all that others choose to occupy their minds thereby shaping their worldview for their own real world application.

I came to this realization on my own, or perhaps my recent bruxism with its accompanying TMJ peril informed me.

Turns out, I'm not alone. Today, as I listened to Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, I ran across better articulated thoughts that parallel my own experience:

It takes a huge investment in introspection to learn that the thirty or more hours spent "studying" the news last month neither had any predictive ability during your activities of that month nor did it impact your current knowledge of the world.

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...the mental probabilistic map in one's mind is so geared toward sensational that one would realize informational gains by dispensing with the news.

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...newspapers do not have to have a screaming headline saying that nothing new is taking place (though the Bible was smart enough to declare ein chadash tachat hashemesh—"nothing new under the sun," providing the information that things just do recur).

Finally, I love this Taleb quote so much that I had to stop immediately what I was doing so that I could record it:

My problem is that I am not rational and I am extremely prone to drown in randomness and to incur emotional torture. I am aware of my need to ruminate on park benches and in cafés away from information, but I can only do so if I am somewhat deprived of it. My sole advantage in life is that I know some of my weaknesses, mostly that I am incapable of taming my emotions facing news and incapable of seeing a performance with a clear head. Silence is far better.

My thoughts in these recent weeks have rolled into the crescendo of a scorched Internet policy!

While my first 15 years on the Internet created some 150-200 login accounts, I've reduced and maintained that amount to the 30-40 range since 2011.

Today, I am down to 18, with 11 essential logins, things related to paying bills and such, leaving 7 accounts as discretionary those things we choose to join.

What did I axe? What services did not make the cut?

FitBit

Great resource IF you're part of a thriving community of real life friends. Just a Big Data suck with an aging app if you're part of a Me Party.

Steam Game Platform

While an easy cut to make, it took all day with tech support to delete. While I liked my Civ V purchase, that title has nicotine tendencies. There were times when I didn't even begin to touch because I knew I'd be on it for a long time.

Spotify

As you might have guessed from the prior blog, this one was on the chopping block, despite my near decade of involvement. Of course, with its demise, I'm breaking in The 14th Expedition schema of my blog titles. It's only a shame because I was rolling out some interesting synthwave covers of popular music that I was excited to feature.

Last.FM

Again, its dismissal is the product of a recent post. Without Spotify, this one was a no-brainer.

DNA sites: 23andMe, Ancestry, and Promothease

While on Ancestry yesterday, it occurred to me that not only did I pay for the test and spent hours building my family tree, I also have to pay to use the service or they'll hold my family lineage hostage. "Want to know more about your grandmother? Pay us $35 a month or no grandma!"

And honestly, what value is it to me to know about the basic demographics of Nth great-grandparents? While I loved to read about August Hermann Francke, if I actually discover all lines up to my 15th great-grandparents (as I did with one line), my TOTAL amount of great-grandparents would fill up the Liberty Bowl to capacity!

And for those of you counting at home, yes, that number is SIGNIFICANTLY beyond Dunbar's 150.

As far as DNA research regarding health, if I don't maintain awareness, predestination kicks in. The interpretation of DNA right now really does come off too much like reading tea leaves with tendencies instead of foresight.

Various Vendors

I let some go because there's value in releasing things that don't bring us joy. Others like my tea and soybean providers were more of an acknowledgment that I've changed and moved on.

The Matrix

Now, this is the one I'm most proud of and indeed, it is the most work to leave. GOOGLE. I could talk at length about this and have written in the past, but, you can Google Google and its initial motto of "Don't Be Evil" and basically hit my reflections about this corporation. Consequently, I moved to ProtonMail and ponied up $48 for a year of its paid service for my custom domain. I love ProtonMail's recent post, How Apple uses anti-competitive practices to extort developers and support authoritarian regimes.

Now, I cannot live entirely from Google's influence as I have my Android OS phone and I do like how it has crawled across the Internet. However, I have no interest in the merging my life with Google. And I'm sure they'll maintain a shadow copy of me on a server farm somewhere, but, I'm learning to release the things I have no control over.

After over 3 years of scrobbling almost 65,000 songs into Last.FM, I'm leaving the platform. I originally signed up years ago in 2006, back as it wanted to be a social media hub of music lovers. CBS purchased it and its popularity has fallen over time as it now exists as little more than a Big Data conduit. There's likely something fundamentally flawed in paying a monthly fee to access your own data in a context where the company isn't rolling out any new features.

The reason I returned in 2017 was to show live data on my WordPress site—I always thought it gave a zing of vitality/humanity to this space. Sometimes this virtual world can be a lonely place to roam, passing the AI denizens that stream through the cyber metropolis...rarely does it feel fully alive.

All of this, from news sites to social media, from cooking blogs to sports fandom off come off as a well-coded piece of AI, code with an intent to make me think in line with the Ivy League intelligentsia or how on some fundamental level, my insufficiency can be resolved by Just Another Subscription Service.

Speaking of music and JASS, my year-long subscription to Spotify is winding down at September's start. While I jumped aboard Spotify early on—although Rdio was the superior platform—my current user profile only spans back to 2014. Yet, I'm thinking about moving on from Spotify.

Food for thought: if I kept $720 in my pocket instead of spending it on my current Spotify account, couldn't I own everything I listen to with how cheap CDs are today? I could convert them to a FLAC and MP3 formats and retain the benefits of digital medium. Instead of paying $10/month, I could buy a used CD or three a month.

Perhaps, this is an impractical approach to put into action. Yes, in the past week, I've felt the need to listen to Don Davis's score to The Matrix, but, could I defend its purchase? I could argue from a perspective of substitute goods and indeed there are albums I love to listen to over and over again. But, what about artists with limited, popular availability?

I love synthwave music, a phenomenon that only really exists in this virtual world. Yes, you can buy The Midnight's catalog on cassette and vinyl as novelties, but, it appears they've run out of CDs. And what about Gunship, Timecop1983, Kalax? Or any other artist sampled from The 4th Expedition? I would basically be punting the entire genre.

And while I'd have to see what is relevant today in setting up my own streaming server again, that's more cash required to set up a dedicated server...and lest I forget, I'm out in the country with no wired access to the Internet so my streaming service might as well just be my vinyl collection.

Plus, I have a propensity to resist collecting things, because I ENJOY collecting things. It's a foolish pursuit and I typically clear everything out in an unmitigated, SHOCK-AND-AWE response.

Endgame: am I saving money? I've already demonstrated that not only would I spend the same money every month, I suspect I'd spend more. Sure, there comes a time when I'm satisfied with the music I have, but, now we're talking about decades in the future before there's a strong reason to not rent music. If I had kept my 800+ CD collection I built from 1995 to 2002, then a strong argument could be made against music rental. But, with this literally handful of Battlestar Galactica soundtracks and Garth Brooks albums remaining, does it make fiscal sense to own?

It funnels down to which service to rent and since my data shape my experience in Spotify, again, I pay for my own data. Thanks again, my ever obese, android friend at my Enterprise's conn, Big Data.