I've always felt that this week's #6 artist, The Presidents of the United States of America, were kind of a jokey band. Their big hits, Lump and Peaches, off of their eponymous album, are odd with not quite sensical lyrics. The songs are fun earworms, certainly, but I would not call them sophisticated. The band are not one-hit wonders¹. However, they are one-trick ponies, and one-trick ponies do not have staying power.

My recommendation is that PotUSA is fine, but nothing essential. Listen to them when you want a taste of the 90s, but only a taste, because they're not a full meal.

1. They are two-hit wonders and should have been featured in this radio show. ↩︎

Hitting #1 in its first week, All Eyez On Me by 2Pac, is one of the most highly-regarded rap albums ever. 1996 was peak Gangsta Rap, 2Pac was a genre-defining Gangsta Rap performer, and All Eyez On Me is one of the best examples of the genre.

I've never been that into 2Pac. I'll enjoy a play of California Love from time to time, but I am not a 2Pac aficionado. The last rap album I reviewed (by Easy-E) I didn't particularly like and I felt it was poorly made. Conversely, I can tell that All Eyez On Me is a high-quality album, and while I don't listen to it very often, I don't think I will never again listen to it. If you want some Gangsta Rap, you can't go wrong with this album.

Hitting #9 after ten weeks in the charts, Enya's The Memory of Trees is boring. I can't even generate the energy to have my own opinions about it. There are very few occasions when I want her music played, and this album did not change my priors. Judging by the popularity of her albums on last.fm, even those who like Enya agree that this album is not her best. There it is the fifth most-listened to album, with one third the listeners compared to her most popular album, A Day Without Rain.

There's no reason to ever listen to this album. It turns out the trees may have memory, but this album is forgettable.

Here's a bunch of various kid arts for February, 2026.

Released nearly a year after his death in March 1995, Str8 off tha Streetz of Muthaphukkin Compton by Easy-E hit #3 in its first week on the charts. I was never that into Easy-E when he was actively popular, and thirty years later my taste hasn't changed in this regard.

The album was unfinished at the time of Easy-E's death. It had to be cobbled together with whatever material was available, which almost certainly reduced the maximum achievable quality. There are some albums that I don't like but I can tell are well made. This one, I'm afraid, is not a quality album. This album can be ignored; I certainly won't be listening to it again.

Going all the way to #2 on the charts in its first week, Boys for Pele by Tori Amos was released just in time for the founding of Pitchfork, thirty years ago this month. Ironically, they didn't review the album until last year, because this album is catnip for Pitchfork. Pitchfork loves albums like Boys for Pele, albums that are experimental and different from what the artist has done before. I swear they give an extra two points in their review if the music is different, regardless of quality. Indeed, they gave Boys for Pele a 9.2 out of 10, which is very high for Pitchfork ratings. Sometimes experimental and different is a good thing. In the case of Boys for Pele, I'm not so sure that it is.

I should disclose that I am not a Tori Amos fan. Before listening to this album I had only two Tori Amos scrobbles, and I'm 100% sure they were part of some mix or online radio station. I do not choose to listen to her music. I did not like this album; there was nothing on it that interested me. She was trying for something, and either she missed, or she accomplished it but I'm too dumb to understand it.

On the one hand, this album is quite a bit different than most of her work, so it is perhaps less fair to judge her from this one album. On the other hand, this album has not changed my mind about Tori Amos. I think I try to allow my mind to be changed by listening to these thirty year old albums. That didn't happen this time.

My recommendation is to not listen to this album.

January continues to be a slow month — this is only my second and last review of the month. Indeed, this week's album wasn't even released in January, 1996. (What's the Story) Morning Glory, was released in October 1995, and took over three months to break into the top ten, and only barely at #9. Oasis is the best known member of the Britpop genre.

Thinking back, I am sure I was aware of Oasis, and the songs on Morning Glory in late 1995 and 1996, but it wasn't my favorite. I didn't dislike it, but I don't think I chose to listen to it, and only heard the songs on the radio. Thinking back even more, I didn't listen to that much Oasis until I spent time in college with someone who was a huge fan (hi Olivia, I'm sure you're not reading this, but I hope you're well!). Since then I've come to like Oasis more, including, and in particular, Morning Glory. It's a very good album and deserves to be listened to. I suggest you do.

I try to keep personal and professional accounts separate on my computer. For example I typically use Safari for work related things and Vivaldi for personal stuff. I know that Safari supports profiles that would accomplish the same thing, but using entirely different browsers makes it easier to keep things straight. Similarly to web browsers, I split up my email by application. I used the macOS mail application for professional email, and accessed my personal email via a web browser (i.e. Vivaldi).

Recently, I decided to try out Thunderbird and bring all my email into one application. It can handle multiple accounts and does it with pretty good separation. Also, I wanted to set up PGP for my email, and Thunderbird seemed like the easiest and best way to do it. Almost no one uses PGP with their email, but that doesn't mean I can't. PGP can send fully encrypted emails, but this only works when the recipient has PGP set up, too. Since most people have not set up PGP, instead I send emails with plain text content and a digital signature file attached. This means that PGP uses my private key to generate a cryptographically signed bit of text that, when combined with my public key, can prove (or disprove) I sent the message. It can also be used to confirm (or deny) that the content of the email wasn't changed between sending and delivery. Almost nothing I send is super important, but the effort involved was small, so why not? I've pasted my personal email public key on my About Me page if you want to use it.

Because Thunderbird is open source and is heavily based on Firefox, you can add extensions to it, just like Firefox. I decided I wanted an extension that adds random quotes to the bottom of my new messages. Some quick searching showed this didn't exist, so I decided to write one. And by "write one," I mean I asked an AI to write one for me. I don't know JavaScript, I don't know how to write Firefox extensions, and I didn't want to learn. The AI did a good enough job and only had one bug that needed fixing (which it fixed after being asked to). I've published the code on github, and it is simple enough to use if you're interested. The plugin has a few built-in quotes, and I have made a library of cycling quotes that will be added to my emails going forward.

Finally, I can endorse Choosy. This is a simple utility that allows you to choose which browser opens up a link. For example, I have it set to send all web links I get in Slack (which I use for work) to Safari. If there is no predefined behavior, it gives you the option to pick which browser to send the link to. It's $10, so it's not free, but if you're like me and want this kind of separation, it's worth it.

As of this writing there is a house for sale here in Boulder that I am slightly obsessed with. It is located at 2595 Glenwood Dr (Redfin link) in North Boulder. We live in South Boulder, but this house is only a few blocks away from where we lived when we first moved to Boulder. It's also on one of the primary routes I use to go North/South through Boulder on my bike, and I've had a chance to keep an eye on the location for years. I am not obsessed about it because I like the house in particular. It's in a fairly typical modern style with multiple exterior materials and way too much white paint inside. It's nice enough, and I assume well built, but it's nothing unique nor special. I'm obsessed because I find the history of the property fascinating. I find it fascinating because the people involved have been delusional for years about the worth of this location. In another universe, if the sellers had been less delusional, we might have thought about building a house on it. I'm also obsessed because I have a small bet with myself of the price at which the house will eventually be sold, and I want to be correct.

There is some property history in that Redfin link above, but I'm not sure it's complete for the story I want to tell. The earliest record is December, 2022, but I think my obsession started even before that. Below is my best recollection of the order of events:

• The lot the house sits on used to be part of a larger lot for the house next door, immediately to the West. Some time before December, 2022, the owners of that property put the East half of their property on the market. At the time that house had an extension that impinged on the proposed East lot. The property listing indicated that this extension would be demolished, but the upshot is they were trying to sell a piece of property that wasn't ready to be sold and developed. This is the first indication that the sellers were delusional. Delusion count = 1.
• If my memory is correct, they first asked for $750,000. At the time, even during the height of COVID house pricing mania, the most expensive houses in that neighborhood were in the $1 to $1.2 million range. This means that to build a house that was in line with the neighborhood, a builder would have less than $500,000 to spend. This was not realistic, meaning that any house built would have to be the most expensive in the neighborhood by a large amount. Delusion count = 2.
• Needless to say, the lot didn't sell. I think during this period the extension was demolished and the original house remodeled.
• After some time, the lot listing was updated, but this time it included architectural designs and a $150,000 price increase to $900,000. I think this brings us to December, 2022. To summarize, the lot didn't sell at $750,000, and they thought that including plans for the house they wanted next to them justified increasing the price by $150,000. Maybe they thought that following through on the extension demolition justified part of the price increase? Delusion count = 3.
• The property was eventually sold for $500,000 in June, 2024, a year and a half later. Redfin doesn't show this sale, but it's available on the Boulder County Property Assessor Site. The current owner is "GLENWOOD SPEC LLC," which is almost certainly an LLC created for the sole purpose of building and selling a home on this lot. There's probably nothing shady nor unusual about this, but it is interesting.
• Apparently the build went fast enough that it was put on the market in February, 2025, for $3,250,000. This is roughly three times the price of any other home in the neighborhood. It is quite a bit bigger than nearby houses, and newer (of course), but it is on a small corner lot next to a semi-busy road which are demerits that other homes do not have. Delusion count = 4.
• It was at this point I made the bet with myself that the house would sell for no more than 70% of this price, or around $2.3 million. By the way, I cannot be sure, but I think that the real house is nothing like the design that was being sold for $150,000.
• In the (almost) year since, they have slowly dropped the price. They dropped it by $300,000 after three months of not selling¹, but since then by increasingly smaller amounts, with the most recent drop a few days ago of just $30,000, bringing the latest asking price to $2,570,000. It looks like they got a bite in August, 2025, but it didn't go through. It's almost certain that in the last year the owners have been paying construction loans, insurance, and property taxes that I'm sure are at least $10,000 a month². This means that each month that goes by that the house remains unsold, they are effectively lowering the their profit by $10,000 by being stubborn. I'm going to count this slow pace of price reductions and stubbornness as Delusion count = 5.
• This brings us today, and if my bet is correct, still nearly another $300,000 to drop until it's sold. And I could be wrong about my bet by being too conservative. The actual sale price could be lower than that!

Would I buy this house? Certainly not for $2.3 million. There is a price I would pay, but it's a price the seller would never accept. The lot is really small, and I don't think I would want to live next to the semi-busy road. I do like the neighborhood, it's a few blocks to the nearest grocery store and a short bike ride to downtown. We would like a bigger house, but I don't think this is for us.

Finally, here are two regressions predicting when the house might sell. First, if we assume a linear pace of price reductions with respect to time, the $2.3 million price I predict it will sell for will be reached at about 420 days after the initial listing. That's around three months from now.

The sellers probably don't want to sell the house at a loss, meaning that there's probably a floor below which they really don't want to sell. In that case, the ask price might be following a 1/x-like curve. Using that to fit, I predict it their price floor is $2.26 million and it will take around 3615 days to reach $2.3 million, which is about 9 years from now. If this fit is correct (it probably isn't and and I hope it isn't for their sake), they would spend over $1 million on taxes, insurance, and the construction loan before the house sells, which would likely be a massive loss. Which is why this fit is almost certainly baloney!

You can be sure I'll keep an eye on this property. Will the seller find new ways to be delusional? I'm excited to find out! I'll follow up even if I end up being wrong and the house is sold for more than $2.3 million.

1. This is just shy of what we paid for our whole house! ↩︎
2. If not higher. Construction loan rates are usually 2-3% higher than conventional mortgage rates ↩︎

If you're not from England, I'll bet you didn't know that 16 stone is equal to 224 lbs.

Early 1996 must have been an exceptionally slow time for new music because this week's album, Sixteen Stone by the English rock band Bush, took roughly a year to reach #10 on the sales chart. This album featured several singles I remember hearing contemporaneously including Comedown, Glycerine, and Everything Zen.

I have listened to Bush a decent amount, but interestingly I have listened to a different (and less popular) Bush album The Science of Things more than Sixteen Stone. My guess is that most of these The Science of Things listens are from before I subscribed to a music streaming service and I listened to that album because it's what was in my collection. Having listened to both albums a fair amount, I agree with the consensus that Sixteen Stone is the better album. I do recommend giving it a spin.

For the second year in a row, I managed to increase the number of music tracks I listened to year-over-year. It's the most I've listened to in ten years.

Like last year last.fm offers a year in review, and it looks like they made some changes. One thing that stood out to me is my "Music By Decade" bar chart, copied below. If you ask people about when their favorite music is from, or equivalently when the best music was made in their opinion, they generally pick music from their teenaged years¹. I won't deny that a good fraction of my favorite music is from my teenaged years, but I make a concerted effort to listen to new music. The chart below shows that the plurality of the tracks I listened to in 2025 are from the current decade, which shows I followed through on this effort. Even listening to 30 year old albums nearly every week hasn't tipped the distribution heavily to the 1990s.

Let's see if I continue to listen to more music, and new music too, in 2026!

1. see the chart at the bottom of this post ↩︎

I'm not sure it was a New Year's resolution, exactly, but in 2025 I tried and (I would say) succeeded in reading more books than I have for a long time. Early in the year I signed up for goodreads¹ and dutifully kept track of all² the books I read throughout the year. According to goodreads, I read 40 books, but I think there was one I didn't finish because I disliked it, so the real total is 39.

Nearly every book I checked out from the library. My local library branch is just a few blocks away from my home, and except for the most popular or newest titles, I can request a book to be put on hold and it will be delivered to the branch within a few days. That's just about as fast as ordering the book online and way cheaper. A decent chunk of my property tax goes to the library, so I figure I might as well take advantage of it!

Some highlights:

• I really liked the John Scalzi books I read: Kaiju Preservation Society, When the Moon Hits Your Eye, Starter Villain, and Redshirts. I suggest you check them out!
• In the Spring I dove deeply into urbanism with the classic The High Cost of Free Parking and others (1, 2, 3, 4)
• Not all books were new to me, I reread a few books like The Hunt for Red October, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Ender's Game

I think the pace of my reading was just about right. It didn't feel like I had to force myself to read, and nearly all the books I enjoyed. I hope to achieve a similar amount of reading in 2026. You can see my year in review here.

1. Yeah, I know it's an Amazon product, but I've already admitted to hypocrisy when it comes to Amazon. Besides, I'm not giving Amazon any money here, just a lil' bit of not very interesting data. ↩︎
2. I didn't track the children's books I read out loud at bedtime, which probably added at least one per week. ↩︎

It's time for some end of year recap posts, starting with my year in cycling 2025. A year ago I posted a recap of my year in cycling for 2024 which covered a wide range of topics including a short history of my bikes, cyclo-computers, and overall trends over two decades. This year's update is much more brief: I've updated the plots I made a year ago with another column for 2025. Here are some highlights:

• I went on 164 rides, which is 31 more times than I ever have previously¹. To put this in perspective, in 2018 I rode my bike only 22 times total
• My total distance of 6,735 KM and time of 277 hours is second only to 2011, which was pre-children. This even bested two years (2006, 2007) when I was still a graduate student and was actively participating in races
• I climbed over 80,000 meters, which is my most ever²
• I climbed 3.5% more meters per KM than last year, but my average speed was basically the same, which I think is cool

I don't know if I can practically beat some of the maxes above unless I make some life changes, such as moving somewhere without four seasons, or convincing someone to pay me to ride my bike (which in all honesty, no one should). Overall, I feel pretty great about my cycling in 2025, and my goal for 2026 is to achieve about the same results.

1. It's likely that my true maximum(s) are higher, such as my gap year between college and graduate school when I was basically unemployed, didn't have a girlfriend, had no responsibilities, and rode my bike a bunch. But I don't have records from then ↩︎
2. I did some of this analysis a few days ago and realized I was this close 🤏🏼 to besting my previous climbing max, so I purposely did a hill repeat ride to close out the year ↩︎

There is no new album in the top ten this week, nor next week. The holidays seems like a bad time to release a new album.

In the meantime, an application named RadioX I wrote about previously was updated (not sure when) and now includes automatic last.fm scrobbling that saves a play per each new song. Previously you had to manually click a button with each new song to scrobble. This was really the only feature missing from it and now it's basically perfect. I suggest you check it out!

I'm going to keep this short. The #8 album this week is a greatest hits collection of Alan Jackson songs. I've reviewed one of his albums before, which I gave a big ol' "meh." This gets a big ol' "meh," too.