I definitely parsed the headline wrong at first! But c’mon, even if you’ve never heard of the band, the second sentence of the article links to their webpage…

That’s why I specifically called out the phrase “free speech absolutist”.

In my experience the vast majority of people who truly do advocate for freedom of speech are willing/able to understand nuances such as the fact that your freedom of speech does not grant you immunity from the social consequences of unpopular speech. I.e., other people exercising their freedom to disagree or opt not to use their private platform to host your speech. The “absolutists” will unironically call that censorship, rather than recognize other people are not compelled to engage with their speech.

Without exception, “free speech absolutists” just want to say a specific brand of horrid shit themselves without social blowback. It never applies to free speech as a legal concept, and certainly never applies to speech they disagree with.

These days I pirate the music, and if I like it I go back and buy the album directly from the band (when possible). If i really like it, I buy concert tix/merch. If it doesn’t tickle my fancy, then I don’t.

In either case, I don’t think the artist is too worried about the pennies lost from my Spotify plays.

Yeah, Lidarr is easily the weakest of the *arrs in my experience. As a newbie to setting up that stack, it was definitely nice to have a similar interface and functionality between the apps, but the last few months have me ready to look for something different for music.

As far as I can tell, no. I haven’t been able to search or import releases since about April.

I think the issue they are referring to is that Lidarr’s API or interface with the MusicBrainz database has been broken for a few months now, which means it’s impossible to search or add new artists/releases to your Lidarr library.

And as far as I can tell, it’s still down. I have been unable to use Lidarr for anything since about April, except for finding releases that I had already added to my local database.

There are kind of two different questions here.

First of all yes, humans are pretty good at telling whether someone is looking them directly in the eyes or not. So if you were to ask someone directly whether you are looking in their eyes or some other part of the face, they would probably be right most of the time.

The second part is whether they would notice it consciously without bring asked. That’s a little trickier. I suspect if you were staring directly at some other part of their face, people might get self conscious (do I have a zit? Is my nose that huge?) But looking at a spot between their eyes, or shiftng your gaze periodically would probably fly under the radar.

I love Biscoff cookies, but had never had them outside of a snack on a plane either. First time I realized they sold them at stores was when my local Costco started carrying them in giant boxes, which is a little like being Sir Gallahad the Chaste, and stumbling into the castle Anthrax.

Aldi has a pretty goof knockoff version in normal size packages if you have problems with moderation 😉

But to answer your question, a long time ago, my wife and I did the “Love you”, “Love you too”, “Love you… three?” thing, and apparently got up to 5 before we decided it was silly. Many years later, “Love you five” is the normal response to “Love you”.