Editor's Note: The Snooze Button Generation originally published "100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend" in 2019. As we read exceptional books, the list continually updates. Today, "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad enters the Social Conscience category.
When we don't speak up, when we don't acknowledge problems or atrocities or even a genocide, aren't we complicit? Didn't that same situation occur in Nazi Germany in the past century? Why are we so complicit, and why do so many bury themselves in their phone with misinformation, or diversions, that are of little importance or value?
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025) by Omar El Akkad eloquently calls out United States hypocrisy as well as that of the Democratic Party and Western liberals in regards to the Middle East. I have soaked in many of El Akkad's excellent points and have multiple takeaways. One obvious one is that the war in Palestine is absolutely morally reprehensible, and it's a sad state of affairs when that truism somehow is not commonly accepted among the masses — although it actually, probably is but conveniently kept out of U.S. media.
El Akkad worked for more than a decade as a reporter for The Globe and Mail based in Toronto, and to me, his most impressive reporting was covering the war in Afghanistan. His journalism informed him write his first novel, American War (2017), and that book garnered numerous accolades.
One Day... is nonfiction and mostly memoir. His book can be emotional, as he examines war atrocities, especially ones involving children. However, I find its strength to be its non-apologetic logic, and simple reporting, of what is happening in Palestine.
I'd argue that the vast majority of Americans are tired of misinformation, echo chambers and unnecessary wars. The era of misinformation has become so widespread that overly biased, wrong info has even crept into reputable publications. El Akkad points out that The Guardian described the Israeli military opening fire on civilians wanting flour as "food aid-related deaths."
El Akkad also points out: "As with many events in the war between Israel and Hamas," The Economist reports, "the facts are destined to remain fiercely contested."
It is destiny for facts to be fiercely contested, El Akkad repeats. No, no, that cannot be an accepted truth of this war.
One fact I found is that only 16 percent of Americans say Israel's military has the right approach to its war, according to the Pew Research Center. An AP-NORC poll says that 50 percent of Americans say Israel has gone too far in the war. I wholeheartedly believe that number would be much, much higher if more Americans knew the actual facts of what is happening.
Right now, the casualty count is approximately 74,500 Palestinians to 2,000 Israelis. In the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, 1,195 people were killed. Furthermore, in the 74,5000 Palestinian deaths, the majority are civilian. The United Nations estimates that about 21,500 of those deaths are children. Repeat: 21,500 of those deaths are children.
El Akkad explains that on Jan. 26, 2024, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel needed to stand trial for genocide. However, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and six other nations then cut all funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, one of only a few organizations that was providing relief to Palestine. Subsequently, the ICJ basically did nothing.
Later, on Oct. 10, 2024, a UN Commission found war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israeli attacks on Gaza health facilities and the treatment of detainees and hostages. Israel deliberately targeted health-care facilities, and children bore the brunt of the destruction.
Regardless, the U.S. continued to support, and fund, Israel. I don't know how this doesn't sicken Americans, and I don't know why Hind Rajab isn't a household name.
El Akkad's book pinpoints U.S. hypocrisy so well that I believe it may be in the fabric of what this country actually is. He writes: "A central privilege of being of this place becomes the ability to hold two contradictory thoughts simultaneously. The first being the belief that one's nation behaves in keeping with the scrappy righteousness of the underdog. The second being an unspoken understanding that, in reality, the most powerful nation in human history is no underdog, cannot possibly be one, but at least the immense violence implicit in the contradiction will always be inflicted on someone else."
We pretend we're Luke Skywalker, but, hello, we are globally Darth Vader and the Evil Empire.
For anybody who is pro-Israel, that is fine. But I believe someone can be pro-Israel and against this genocide. In fact, I find pro-Israel protesters of this war to be the most inspiring protesters out there. We have many organizations out there, including Standing Together, Americans for Peace Now and Partners for a Progressive Israel, that promote such a stance.
El Akkad was born in Cairo, but moved to Montreal as a teenager. He is a U.S. citizen and lives in the Portland, Ore., area.
I wholeheartedly believe that one strength of being American is the ability to question, and refute, incorrect policies promoted by elected officials. It's not about blind pretend loyalty, especially when elected officials don't hold up their obvious duty — to act on the best interests of their constituents.
By eloquently pointing out putrid U.S. policy and by articulating what life is like for a Muslim American in a post-9/11 world, El Akkad is what an American hero actually is.
When I asked Sophie if she had any hobbies, she answered, "Urban hiking."
After Dina an I spent Labor Day Weekend with her and Chloe, we all partook in the ole pastime of urban hiking and had a blast. Is there any better way to truly see a city than to hit the streets and walk?
We devoted two full days to hitting the streets of San Francisco. We had dabbled in S.F. the past few years and did some cool stuff with visits to SFMOMA and Chinatown leading the charge. However, this past visit, we took our adventuring to the next level by hitting up various parts of town and constantly walking and doing some touristy hipster stuff.
Sophie is quite the adventurer. She sees EDM shows throughout the Bay Area and doesn't bat an eye with traveling to San Jose or Palo Alto. She's a public transportation aficionado, and when Dina and I visited, we had a car. We had wild accessibility to S.F.
Any good traveler likely realizes that the best way to see a city is on foot. It's good to know my daughters already are good travelers as they have an entire world to see.
Before I go any further, I must reiterate "I'm an East Bay guy." Cousin Clyde grew up in downtown Oakland, and I find the vibe in the East Bay much chiller and less tech-bro heavy than other parts of the Bay. Plus, the weather is better in the East Bay. Also, let me point out that Chloe is an adventurer as well, but Sophie truly, truly explores with urban hiking.
In the summer of '94, before my senior year in college, I spent a week in S.F. More than 30 years later, it's interesting to see how the city has changed. It's richer, more gentrified. It's idyllic in certain parts and oozes charm. It's kind of the opposite of some parts of downtown L.A. that are overrun by homeless and feel like a dystopia.
Back in '94, the attitude I had was "aw, man, San Francisco really sold out. What happened to the peace, love and hippies?" The funny thing is that premise was a myth and ridiculous from the onset. I wish I had read Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehembefore then because I might have seen the truth of Haight-Ashbury and the reality of the so-called hippie movement.
Nonetheless, walking around Haight-Ashbury probably was my favorite part of urban hiking. Sophie loved it too. Shockingly, she said, "I've never been here. I didn't even know it existed. I'll be coming back. For sure."
Perhaps we Stevenses have an affinity for countercultures — or at least Sophie and I do. But Chloe pointed out that maybe I just loved the Haight-Ashbury experience so much because a passer-by overheard a joke of mine and laughed hysterically at: "Oh thank god, finally, a smoke shop!"
The original Ben & Jerry's stands on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, and it was fitting that the district's stretch now ends with a Whole Foods. What could possibly signal gentrification more than that? While Didion wrote that teenage runaways and drug addicts filled Haight-Ashbury in the '60s, now I say it's riddled with trust-fund yoga instructors.
Sophie suggested visiting Twin Peaks, and with her recommendation, we drove up to Christmas Tree Point and witnessed a breathtaking view that gave me chills. Wow! The wind pelted us so hard up there that I felt a silly moment of fright. What if we were blown off of Christmas Tree Point and into the mar?
With Chloe living in her first apartment as a sophomore and Sophie a senior, I feel I'm in a good spot with these two Cal gals. I feel close with them but am trying to give them proper space to explore and be themselves. A whole world is out there to explore, and you can't go wrong with urban hiking.
I believe my uncle and my cousin, the World's Most Dependable and/or the World's Most Sophisticated Man, every so often have done mega-walks through the streets of Cleveland. Chloe has a plan for her and me to start a walk in Newport Beach and end in Long Beach.
When I lived in New York City for three years, I hit the streets on foot constantly throughout Manhattan and even Brooklyn and Queens. Perhaps there's a reason why I was mesmerized by the 2018 documentary The World Before Your Feet about a guy who walks every square foot of New York City.
We Stevenses want to get out there and explore. You really can only do that on foot.
Editor's Note: The Snooze Button Generation originally published "100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend" in 2019. As we read exceptional books, the list continually updates. Today, "When the Revolution Comes" by Chris Smalls enters the Humanity in the Digital Age category.
I come from a blue-collar land — "The Land," Cleveland to be exact.
My Polish ancestors worked in factories in the U.S. starting in the 1910s, and my grandfather also worked in a factory and eventually was promoted to a supervisor. But then with my parents' generation and future ones, the mindset became all about college, snagging white-collar jobs and doing whatever we could to stay out of factories.
I point this out to say that in many ways, I am an outsider to many, many jobs in the U.S. I have not witnessed, first hand, the grind of a factory job, or the drudgery of working in a big-box store and many other positions. But to get a sense of what a job like that may entail, I highly, highly recommend When the Revolution Comes: A Fight for the Future of the Working Class (2026) by Chris Smalls.
Smalls received a bunch of media coverage around the start of the pandemic when as an Amazon worker, he asked for PPE and Covid-19 protocols for a warehouse in Staten Island. Amazon's response: They fired him!
Smalls solicited media outlets, and they ran with how unjust the firing was. He became a spokesman for Amazon workers — and even workers in general. Now, he is an all-around activist, or activist for hire, as a media personality.
Shortly after his initial media attention, Smalls helped that Amazon warehouse in Staten Island unionize. On the surface, it's a shockingly amazing success story. But in his book, Smalls points out that it really isn't that successful. Staten Island has the only union anywhere in any Amazon warehouse. He was hoping for a chain reaction of unionizing. Faced with the millions of anti-union dollars Amazon spends, that appears unlikely — actually impossible — to happen.
While that whole Amazon odyssey is interesting, the strengths of the book are Smalls' excellent, page-turning writing, the realities of working paycheck to paycheck in factories and the information dispensed on what the modern-day worker faces.
Smalls writes about an ordeal he went through as a teenage worker at Target, where he was corralling carts and hit by a Mercedes that fled the scene. He incurred damaged ligaments in an ankle. Eventually, they tracked down the driver, he was awarded a minor settlement of $25,000 in which about half went to lawyers' fees. Soon, Target, which has no unions, fired him mostly because the company perceived him as a nuisance.
Smalls makes it obvious early in the book that he is not one to back down for standing up for himself or workers' rights. He starts the book with what he did as a worker in a grocery warehouse. It was physically grueling work, and his writing had me engrossed from the get-go. He repeatedly was verbally abused in his warehouse job, and it certainly feels that likely is commonplace in jobs in which people of color do the brunt work under white supervisors.
Smalls remains unapologetically himself and even refuses to change the way he dresses. Because he refuses to wear a suit and tie, some might not take him seriously. But he has sold me on his argument that true leadership should not have folks looking different that who they represent. His dress came to a photo-op pinnacle when he met President Biden at the White House in 2022 as he remained in his typical garb, reminding my of hip-hop star Nelly.
Amazon (1.5 million employees) is second only to Walmart (2 million) in private employers in the U.S. With these two employers completely non-unionized, except for Smalls' former warehouse in Staten Island, it is a statistical fact that unions are not even close to being seen as a priority or important in the workplace. Why?
While it might be a trap to believe that the workers don't want unions because of constant anti-union rhetoric in social media and the press, the reality is that these corporations' plan is to have their workers turn over so frequently that they are unable to unionize. In addition, neither the Republicans or Democrats really do anything to help workers or their rights. Both parties enable non-unionizing because that helps the people at the top, AKA their donors.
Smalls pulls no punches in his book by criticizing modern unions as corporations — and he is right. Of course, a "corporate" union is better than none, and he also mightily criticizes Biden and the Democratic Party. He points out that when Biden was president and the Dems controlled both the House and Senate, that zero significant pro-labor bills were passed. While I must point out that the PRO Act did pass in 2021, I'll agree that Dems — and, or course, the Republicans too — have repeatedly shown that they are pro-corporation and not whatsoever pro-worker.
When the Revolution Comes is a remarkable book that views modern work from an actual worker's perspective. The last important book that I can remember that tried to do that was Nickel and Dimed (2001) by Barbara Ehrenreich.
In that book, a relatively well off white lady took three brief jobs to see what they're really like, and then she went back to her regularly scheduled privileged life. In stark contrast, Smalls' book is raw and real and recommended for anybody who believes that actual workers deserve attention, dignity, fairness and unity.
I say that line a lot nowadays because, who knows, it might be true. Euros seem to live by that, and we Americans don't. We typically give our lunches away to do more work. Why?
We eat at our desks. We eat alone. We rush our lunches. We take this for granted that this is how it's supposed to be. It's a tough existence — especially if our day is indeed only as good as our lunch.
I have started my third year that I've been taking my time to have a worthwhile lunch. I wish I had done this earlier, but my priorities were different. I figured why have a break in the middle of the day, when I could arrive at work later or leave earlier?
Perhaps I refused to consider the value of lunch because I didn't see many people doing that. They rushed their lunch and ate junky food; maybe I was supposed to do the same. Plus, as a teacher, you just don't have enough time to enjoy lunch. At my school, we have 30 minutes for lunch without a passing period. So, it's really just 25 minutes — that's a rushed lunch.
I have requested the period off before lunch and haven't gotten it. Instead, I have been given one between 10:55 and 11:50 for three straight years. It's not perfect, but I can make that work for lunch.
What I like to do is go to Regional Park in Cerritos, minutes from my school but a drive, do a manmade walking path by a manmade lake and fountains (inherently manmade). I then eat my lunch at a picnic bench in the shade with pickleball courts next to me. Sometimes, I mix up the path and location to surprise myself.
Unfortunately, the heat has been so scorching this year, that I've only done a walking path once. Soon, the daily walks will be coming, and my lunchtime will get even better. Perhaps, needless to say, I do this alone because I assume other teachers do not have time for such folly.
But is it really folly?
How am I living in a world in which having a good lunch is less meaningful than doing extra work or scrolling on a phone? Plus, aren't we even more productive if we're well-rested and well-nourished? I guess it goes back to our overboard consumer culture, and I wonder if anything exemplifies that more than the NFL.
As we begin September and as the NFL season looms, I wonder: What are we doing when we watch the NFL? What are we doing when we watch the Super Bowl? I see a clear connection between the mindless lunches and mindless consumption of the NFL.
An easy argument could be made that we are simply celebrating mindless consumer culture or even celebrating frivolous violence. I don't think we reflect much on consuming the NFL. I don't think we're even aware what we're doing. It's kind of like scrolling — mindless.
I guess my point is that I want to be more aware of my consumption, especially in regards to the food and sports I devour. Perhaps ironically for the age we live in, but my digital consumption is pretty good. While I am a daily Pokemon Go player, I don't scroll or ever go on social media for more than five minutes in a day. I'll take it.
With food, though, I've eaten pretty poorly this past summer. I traveled a bit in the United States, and I guess that means the food isn't going to be too healthy. At home, I'm going to do more specific meal planning and tighten it up when it comes to eating over-processed foods.
With my sports consumption, I will remain an ardent Cleveland Guardians fanatic and watch, or listen, to them pretty much every day, whenever we can. I'm fine with that. I got to not fall into the trap of watching the NFL just because it's on.
So, am I ready for some football? Am I ready for some action? Uh, not really. But I am ready for nice meals with real food, as opposed to food products, if that's possible. I'd like to enjoy my lunches and continue to take time with them.
As human beings, I'm pretty sure we need to eat lunch, and I say enough is enough with rushing through it. As Mae West once said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."
There's one more kid that'll never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool.
Well, those Neil Young lyrics certainly don't apply to my daughters, Irene and Chloe. These two Berkeley students are totally cool. They got to go to school. They will get to fall in love, and they've always been cool.
One of my modest summer goals was to "Keep on rockin' in the free world." What that means is to find new music. I mean how many times am I supposed to listen to Cake's Short Skirt/Long Jacket?
I've successfully found new music this summer, and, surprisingly perhaps, I stole some of it from my daughters.
Before we go any further, please understand the point of this blog entry is to recommend new music I like, and that will happen. My aesthetic is tricky. I'm a Gen Xer who went to the first two Lollapaloozas in '91 and '92, and with the second show, I was like "This is way too commercial. I'm done."
Back in the day, I liked the Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev, My Bloody Valentine, Superchunk, Poster Children, Pavement, Sonic Youth, Boss Hog, John Spencer Blues Explosion, Pussy Galore, Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo and music adjacent to those alternative and indie wizards.
After my '90s indie surge, a few bands, including the Brian Jonestown Massacre and Eels, came on my radar now and again. Eventually, the music world turned to streaming and algorithms, and the computer doesn't really work for me. It just can't understand why I am not into Arcade Fire or St. Vincent. So, yeah, I'm a total indie snob, and the Strokes are way too commercial, produced and fake for me. Hard pass on them.
Maybe I'm thinking about new music more now because Irene and Chloe attended Lost in Dreams in Downtown L.A. for a two-day electronic dance music festival for a second consecutive summer. They're pretty much the same age I was when I was at Perry Farrell's Lollapalooza, and, by the way, the crowd at Lost in Dreams is cooler because there are less frat boys and drunks. However, the people on stage at Lollapalooza actually had musical instruments as opposed to gadgets.
With Lost in Dreams, the conclusion Chloe arrived at, which I totally agree, is that Porter Robinson is the G.O.A.T. He headlined Saturday, and I've listened to a bunch of artists from the festival. Not only was he reported as the best artist live, his recorded music is by far the best of the Lost in Dreams performers — according to me.
Irene already had turned me onto Porter Robinson, and I liked a few of his songs. Now, I have total respect for the G.O.A.T. of EDM, which actually isn't at all my favorite genre of music. However, as a "digital artist," he actually sings and has a unique sound that works for me.
When you're looking for new music as a Gen X indie snob, it's not easy. In theory, the best way to find new music is word of mouth. However, that's tricky because how many friends truly have similar sensibilities? Unlike the '80s and '90s and early 2000's, we have access to everything nowadays. So how in the world do we narrow that and find stuff we actually like?
After being mesmerized by the book Mood Machine about Spotify and realizing that the music algorithm truly was not finding music I liked, I returned to KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic and Eclectic 24 on its app, and I did indeed discover new music to me. Then, I went through two years of Shazams and found a little more that worked.
Newsflash: As I'm writing this, my buddy Doug accidentally turned me onto the Bandcamp website and app. Whoa, a plethora of great stuff there. How did I not know about this until now? If you're reading this and don't know Bandcamp, I say check it out.
At the end of my lengthy new-music search, I can offer only five, or six, artists and music I've discovered this summer. However, I will also list 10 artists I've gotten to enjoy over the past few years and 10 killer songs from this summer. Some of this stuff is, like, a decade old or older but new to me, and some is totally fresh. If you're an indie snob too and like this stuff, great. If not, OK, that is totally fine.
The best artists new to me I've discovered are Westside Cowboy from Manchester, Destroyer from Vancouver, The National from Cincinnati/Brooklyn who is huge and has been around for 27 years yet I never gave the time of day, Aska Matsumiya who did the score for the film Skate Kitchen and HBO series Betty and the aforementioned Porter Robinsonfrom Chapel Hill and just turned 34.
As a bonus rec, I must mention Three Loco, who I stumbled across and released one gloriously hilarious EP in 2012. I implore anyone to listen to either We Are Farmers, Neato or Not Coming Home Tonight and not crack up on some level.
My summer quest to find good new music wasn't all fruitless because I found many, many good songs. However, I just couldn't latch on to artists that had more than a song, or two, and that makes sense in the current state of music. A lot of musicians focus on hits, likes and impressions. I've heard that many are hoping their music becomes a part of reels, and they try their best to make their mark in the first five seconds of their songs.
About a year ago, my beautiful wife Dina gave me a Father's Day present I highly suggested — the Major League Baseball BallPark Pass-Port.
It's a thick book that encourages its owners to go city to city and have it stamped in each MLB ballpark. In this past year, I've gotten eight stamps, and this summer featured my most epic trip — Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
I'm planning on seeing all 30 stadiums in the next seven years. No major rush. Why do this? I have a zillion reasons — curiosity, history, Americana, memories, my dad and fun. In my mind, baseball brings the United States together in a way I find delightful, meaningful and apolitical.
My two teaching comrades, Alan and Will, accompanied me, and I must give them props as excellent travel companions, great friends and all-around good guys. They accepted my incessant talking and agreed to do some oddball stuff, including throwing footballs at bowling pins in Detroit.
We stayed six nights (two in Toronto, one in Detroit, three in Cleveland) and saw four baseball games, so the trip was set up as a whirlwind, which it was. Toronto is huge, the fourth biggest city in North America. Who knew? In the 2010s, the city embraced globalization, and half of its residences were then born abroad.
One cool thing about seeing Rogers Centre, which used to be the SkyDome, is that its retractable roof closed before the fourth inning with the threat of minor rain. For Toronto overall, as my favorite site, I'll go with Kensington Market, which is bohemian and arty. The iconic Garden Car is pretty legit.
In Detroit, Polish food, soul food, free live music at Nancy Whiskey and a Tigers' walk-off win over the Mariners with two outs in the bottom of the ninth highlighted the Michigan leg of the journey. Then, it was onto the Polish Mansion in Brecksville, Ohio.
Mama Stevens put Alan to work immediately by having him change the air filters to the heating/cooling system in the attic. I've done that a handful of times. You got to really crouch and walk a little bit like John Bender in the rafters in The Breakfast Club. Alan did a minor inspection and reported zero asbestos.
My mom referred to his air filter replacement as a "miracle," and while that might be overstating the task, I quickly learned that Alan is indeed a miracle worker as he showed up on the Jumbotron at Progressive Field later in the day:
Actually, that arm and thumbs up on the Jumbotron belong to me.
As a youngster, Northeast Ohio conditioned me to hate Pittsburgh because of the Browns-Steelers rivalry. I assumed the city would be a facsimile of Cleveland or Detroit and have a whole lotta grit and burnt-out warehouses. Boy, was I wrong about that — at least in the downtown area.
It turns out the Pitt is a beautiful town, and its stadium is possibly the most gorgeous in all of baseball. Vistas from the ballpark overlook its bridges, the Allegheny River and revived city. The city truly revitalized when the steel industry left town, and it's so impressive that I was having city envy for my beloved Cleveland. Why couldn't we have recovered like that? PNC Park was so beautiful; it was the type of place where — no joke — we just happened to come across a rainbow:
Gosh, I hardly ever see rainbows. ROYGBIV was not only fitting because of the majesty of PNC Park, but perhaps the stadium felt left out. It happened to be Pride Night at both the Toronto and Cleveland games during our trip, and apparently the Pittsburgh sky is an ally.
Through these adventures, I've become closer with Al and Will, and we're already discussing another trip — possibly Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati or Washington, Baltimore, Philly. We'll see. Will, who is a dependable, understanding and all-around awesome gentleman, had the "visit every stadium" plan before I did. He's further along than me and is now at 17.
I have no real regrets with the trip, but maybe spending more time in each city would be cool. We left some major attractions, including the Hockey Hall of Fame and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, on the table. However, maybe all was fine because it's hard to leave our wives for more than six nights.
When I received the MLB PassPort, I already had seen games in nine stadiums, but four of those stadiums are defunct — the old Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium, Oakland Coliseum and Baltimore Memorial Stadium. I really had only five under my belt, so I figured I could revisit those and get stamps at all 30.
I'm 52. The plan is to see these stadiums in my 50s; I vow not to rush. However, I've been a rushing-around guy most of my life, yet now I'm trying to enact Mae West's famous words: "Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly."
Editor's Note: The Snooze Button Generation originally published "100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend" in 2019. As we read exceptional books, the list continually updates. Today, "Mood Machine" by Liz Pelly enters the Humanity in the Digital Age category.
Well, I'll never look at Spotify and music the same again after reading Liz Pelly's Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (2025). Music matters, obviously, and Pelly dives deeply into Spotify, and the music industry, and has already forced me to improve my listening habits.
Mood Machine is superb modern journalism that I never would have found unless I read The Guardian's book section. The same thing happened with another book I recently recommended, Careless People, about Facebook/Meta's immoral algorithms and horrific political influence. These two necessary books tackle Big Tech and its ginormous influence, and I say the United States' current zeitgeist needs to focus on unregulated technology much, much more.
As a music consumer, my biggest takeaway from Mood Machine is this: I'll never, ever, ever listen to a playlist created by Spotify again. If I'm looking for new, independent music, the KCRW app is a much better answer. I want playlists created by people, not an algorithm. Spotify playlists also have a lot of filler and music promoted by record companies. Some of it is created by AI, and music companies often pay musicians a pittance to create instrumental music and then keep the rights.
Immediately, on page 3 of Mood Machine's introduction, we learn that Universal, Sony and Warner own 70 percent of recorded music. When Spotify launched in 2008, those majors owned 18 percent of the company. It's less now, and Spotify has grown to have have a market cap of approximately $88 billion. The company's founders, Martin Lorenzen and Daniel Ek, have estimated net worths of $9-11 billion.
Streaming accounts for 84 percent of recorded music revenue with Spotify leading the market with 30 percent of that. When Pelly walks the reader through how the revenue works in a detailed, thorough way, it becomes utterly apparent that Spotify is an immoral Big Tech company promoting corporate interests and billionaire culture. Pelly never writes that, and I applaud her for her restraint and objectivity. But, essentially, that's what we're facing with streaming, Spotify and the current state of what many of us adore — music.
It's safe to say musicians don't get paid from streaming. Whoever holds the rights to a song streamed receives .0035 cents for each play. Many times, the record company owns the rights, or a high percentage of that. In fair indie label deals, it's often a 50/50 split. But even if the musician full-on owned the rights, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib estimated that it would take more than 800,000 streams per month to equal a $15/hour job.
In my lifetime, music always has been a commodity. I encountered awesome music scenes in both Cleveland and Columbus in the '90s. However, my realized fear now is that younger generations of musicians see the Internet as the only possible way to develop a following. Music scenes are not what they used to be. I'm still hoping that revivals of low-tech music scenes happen, and perhaps if I search it out more, I can find some cool stuff out here in Southern California. But streaming reigns supreme, regardless.
Back to Spotify, I must admit that I briefly loved the app. Around pandemic times, I discovered legitimate musicians solely through Spotify who I had never heard of. I actually attended two concerts of new artists to me, Brothertiger and George Clanton, with my beloved buddy, Ganley. Fast forward a year or two later, and finding new appealing music on the app stopped. The algorithm jumped the shark, so I moved on to KCRW, word of mouth and Shazaming random songs I hear at coffee shops and in public.
Back to Mood Machine, I must admit that I am not giving the book justice; it's a tour de force. Some of the concepts in the book are new to me and not easy to understand. For example, I was shocked to hear Spotify's ad revenue is only roughly 12 percent. The bulk of its revenue is selling users' data because, apparently, Spotify's data is extensive because it tracks every single second of music listened to or changed. It literally can learn a user's typical mood throughout the day, so that data is hugely valuable to outside companies.
While I learned a lot from the book, and don't totally show that here, the book has some flaws. One is that it can be dense in parts and can take a while to digest the information. Also, a few ideas, such as the importance of artists' collectives, may be too idealistic and not make a dent in the current state of music. In addition, maybe there was a bit too much on Spotify's history.
Mood Machine has truly gotten me to be more aware of what exactly I'm listening to. As a self-proclaimed local and indie music champion, the book has gotten me to be fully aware that the majority of so-called independent music on Spotify is not even close. An indie aesthetic is far from a band on an independent record label.
Irony. I used to think the Internet would help people become more conscious consumers, but apps like Amazon, Facebook, Spotify, TikTok and others exploit the masses' data and keep people scrolling and streaming in an unhappy digital web of overconsumption.
Editor's Note: The Snooze Button Generation originally published "100 Nonfiction Books I Recommend" in 2019. As we read exceptional books, the list continually updates. Today, "Innocent When You Dream" edited by Mac Montandon enters the Big Time category.
What should you do if you're ever chased by a crocodile?
Well, you should run zigzag because the croc won't be able to follow that.
Why are barns red?
Well, that's where the slaughtering occurs, so the color matches the blood.
And did you know that between 1938 and 1945, Heinz released an alphabet soup only in Germany? It not only included every letter of the alphabet, but swastikas in every can as well. ... It was called pastika.
OK. All three of those "facts" are fiction, urban myths. But they're stuff Tom Waits earnestly explains in Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader (2005) edited by Mac Montandon. I recommend the book because Waits is such a creative, innovative soul that he's a gust of fresh air bustling into my world in a time when folks appear obsessed with AI.
Honestly, I had no expectation this book would crack my Top 100 because of its format. It's a collection of interviews and stories connected to Waits from 1974 to 2004. Accidentally, many stories had me reminisce about the conventions of celebrity interviews, concert and album reviews. Those all are pretty much gone, or rare, nowadays in the era of scrolling, non-reading and perpetual ire.
While a handful of pieces in the 39-entry book fall flat, some are so magnificent that I recommend the book. OK, but feel free to go fast over the lame entries.
I first encountered Waits in 1992, when I got the album Bone Machine as a college freshman and absolutely loved it. It won Best Alternative Music Album Grammy that year, and I wholeheartedly agree with the choice. Weird, quirky, meaningful — Bone Machine remains my favorite Waits album, but a lot of his albums are pretty cool. By the way, he won his only other Grammy in 2000 with Mule Variations for Best Contemporary Folk Album.
If you don't know Waits, he's famous for his deep, raspy voice that can be divisive; you're likely to either love it or hate it. In the Tom Waits reader, writers described that voice in approximately one zillion different ways. I mean it's so distinctive that he successfully sued Frito-Lay for $2.6 million in 1990 after the company ripped off his music in a Doritos commercial. ... Wow.
What makes the book so enjoyable is that Waits simply is a different bird. He'll stay stuff that is equal parts bizarre, magical and borderline profound. Is it factually correct? Probably not. But so what? His words, his poetry, are an odd blend of fact and fiction that adds up to twisted and indisputable truths.
In one interview, Waits flat-out says that everybody mixes fact and fiction, and in essence, that's part of being human. "I just need to know two or three things about my neighbors, and that's it," he says. "I'll tell you their life story."
In his early years, Waits — or at least Waits' persona — lived the life of a hobo drunk in the mold of Charles Bukowski, and he was famous for that. He married Kathleen Brennan in 1980, and the two have been business partners, confidants and each other's worlds ever since.
Waits describes his wife Kathleeen as someone who "once worked as a Hollywood newscaster, a Cadillac dealership service manager, and a chauffeur; can fix motorcycles and fly airplanes; is a leading authority on African violets; and was on the verge of becoming a nun when we met."
Hey, man, I find that an exceptionally fun way to say, "I love my wife."
Waits is an utterly cool cat. Full stop. Who's cooler than Tom Waits?
He has an acting career to boot, and I've liked him most in Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law (1986) and Mystery Train (1989). He also was wonderful in Short Cuts (1993) and was great to see in Jarmusch's newer film Father Mother Sister Brother (2025). By the way, Waits' conversations with Jarmusch and fellow rock star Elvis Costello are among the most fascinating, and entertaining, pieces in the book I'm recommending.
I truly think Waits did his best work in the '90s and after he got sober in '95. I find it impossible to not have deep thoughts about him, and his place in American lore, after reading 39 passages connected to him.
To me, he eschews the disillusioned fake materialism of mainstream America. Everybody pretends to be richer than they are. Why? Just buy this. Just buy that. We'll all be saved. ... Waits rails against that culture.
Waits is adamantly non-commercial and accepts the fact that most Americans know they're being exploited on some level, accept that fact and embrace their lot in life, or their dive bar. They embrace the red and white tablecloths at their carb-forward greasy spoon.
While hip-hop stars yammer on and on about Mercedes Benzes while they don gold chains and gold teeth, Waits knows very well that there is brighter bling, and gold, on the low side of the road if you look at it the right way.
To Waits, and me, you can find way more gold at Mitzy's than the superficial fantasies pop stars spew. Mitzy's — officially known as Jerman's Cafe — on 38th and St. Clair, is where there used to be a classic vinyl jukebox but you still can get a $1.50 Pabst tall boy. You're not going to find $10k jewelry there, but you might find a toothless smile from a guy who shares your love of Cleveland baseball.
Unfortunately, we live in divisive times. Sometimes, people get so incensed with others' differences that they have a hard time coping and say things like, "You're dead to me!"
Perhaps no other current, up-to-date debate boils arguers' blood more than this: Who's better, the Replacements or Soul Asylum?
Uh, wait, what? Nah, you heard me. Most likely, the most salacious and contentious debate nowadays is which Minneapolis-based alt-rock band is superior — the Replacements or Soul Asylum.
OK, I jest, of course. Pretty much nobody in the world is having this debate right now. However, I remember being locked into an intense argument in 1991 about this topic.
I was on the Replacements' side. Are you kidding me? Soul Asylum, a mid band, in the same sentence as the mighty Replacements?!? The debate could be dismissed in my eyes. Paul Freakin' Westerberg vs. Pretty Boy Dave Pirner? No contest. Westerberg was, and is, superior. Case closed.
Plus, Bob Stinson was the lead guitarist with the Replacements for its first four albums and masterpieces Let It Be (1984) and Tim (1985). Apparently, he had constant power struggles with Westerberg that turned their music into art. Stinson was an addict who was kicked out of the band in '86 and died a tragic rock star's death at age 35. His brother, Tommy Stinson, was awesome on bass, and then with Chris Mars on drums, the Replacements simply were a super group and American treasure.
If ... it's a temporary lull. Why am I bored outta my skull? Man, I'm dressin' sharp and feelin' dull.
Of course, it's not proper to talk Minneapolis bands without mentioning Prince and Husker Du/Bob Mould — major talents there. Yet I might argue that the Replacements were the closest group the United States ever got to the Beatles, and maybe it's a nice thing they never got wildly famous. They displayed slick, meaningful songwriting over and over, and songs like Waitress in the Sky, Skyway, I Will Dare, Alex Chilton, Within Your Reach and many, many more are freaking amazing.
Lonely, I guess that's where I'm from. If I was from Canada, then I'd best be called lonesome.
Comparatively, what did Soul Asylum have in 1991? They had a couple OK albums with Hang Time (1988) leading the way. Back then and even now, I can't relate to having this debate with a friend who insisted Pirner's outfit was superior to Westerberg's.
Then, Soul Asylum completely knocked itself out of the debate when their '92 album Grave Diggers Union got way too commercially successful. It went double platinum, meaning it sold more than 2 million copies. In contrast, the highest selling Replacements album ever was Don't Tell a Soul (1989) that sold 300,000.
A dream too tired to come true left a rebel without a clue. And I'm searching for something to do.
Off Grave Diggers Union, Soul Asylum boasted the mega-popular hit Runaway Train, a song I loathed that won the Grammy for "Best Rock Song" in '94. Even though the song sucks, the video featured actual runaways, and according to the video's director, 26 runaways were found from the video. While Soul Asylum was on the right side of history with that video, I simply can't stand the song.
Ultimately, Soul Asylum is Pirner with the rest of the band often rotating in and out. This good-looking dude dated Winona Ryder from '93 to '96. Soul Asylum also did the song Can't Even Tell for Kevin Smith's '94 movie Clerks. I love that song, by the way.
Apparently, Pirner has kept Soul Asylum alive this whole time. The group released a live single this year, and a full album two years ago. And, dude, check this out: Former Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson played in Soul Asylum from 2005 to 2012. No way!
Oh yeah, I'll tell what we could do. You be me for a while, and I'll be you.
The Replacements have basically been defunct since '91, but they had two stints when they got together and tried to be a band again. Westerberg remains an exceptional songwriter and has had a solid solo career. He hasn't really done much of note for 20 years, but so what? He and the Replacements' legacy should be secure.
The Replacements had seven exceptional albums from 1981 to '90. When Rolling Stone released its Top 500 Albums of All-Time in 2003, it had Tim at No. 136 and Let It Be at No. 239. The magazine redid the list in 2023 and took Tim out of it while moving Let It Be to No. 156. Whatevs. Listening back on the albums, they're all exceptional, and Pleased to Meet Me (1987) is a contender as their best work.
In my opinion, the Replacements are in the conversation for "Greatest American Band of All-Time." The legacy is set, and maybe it's a good thing that the band just ended and didn't do a zillion tours like a lot of old timey rockers.
To be fair to Soul Asylum, I went back and listened more to them. Better than I remembered — as long as I'm allowed to disregard Runaway Train. Pirner is much more than a pretty boy. Maybe time has allowed me to add a little respect to Soul Asylum, but whatever, the words I thought I brought, I left behind, so never mind.
What does it mean to be rich? What does it mean to be thriving? Well, if it isn't killing it at karaoke at Ellis Island in Las Vegas, I don't know what it means.
I probably had my best Vegas trip ever last week, although, officially, I place it tied with my bachelor party 25 years earlier. This time around, I rendezvoused with Sophie, who had turned 21 two days previously. It was just Dad and Daughter vs. Vegas.
We had a ridiculously fun time, and we gambled in eight casinos. We had a slight money loss with the gambling, but it wasn't too bad for all the time we spent at the tables. Plus, we won in our final two casinos, so it felt like we won.
(By the way, the eight casinos we played were Caesar's, Bellagio, Horseshoe, Linq, Park MGM, New York/New York, Casino Royale and Ellis Island. Also, we went to others, too, including Aria and Cosmopolitan, but didn't gamble there.)
Two days after turning 21, Sophie drank a cosmopolitan and played roulette. She didn't like the cosmo and had just one other drink (red wine) during our three nights there. She is not a fan of the drink, and Dad is very, very happy to see that.
In stark contrast to her disdain for alcohol, Sophie (who actually goes by Irene now to the rest of the world) is a big fan of probability and figuring out odds. So we played roulette — A LOT. She is a math major at Berkeley, and at one time, she wrote equations in a napkin to test gambling ideas we had. Earlier on, I played a little video poker, but realized she didn't like it. So, OK, we focused on roulette.
We are lowball specialists. We normally would play the lowest stakes possible, which was a $3 bet for each spin. Plus, we learned to take off spins and spread out six bets each time while always giving ourselves a long-shot chance. That made it pretty darn fun, and it felt like we won the Super Bowl when our long shots hit.
When we would win 18 whole dollars on a 50-cent long-shot bet, we typically would celebrate, cash out and leave the casino. Victorious!
We also explored shops and casinos and had some incredible food. Angry Gordon Ramsay's Hell's Kitchen delivered as did Wicked Spoon. The Bellagio buffet and vegan dim sum were solid, too, but those other two places were superior, bordering on spectacular.
When Sophie was growing up, her grandma had a vacation place in North Vegas, and she has memories of being being a youngster and often visiting the Bellagio garden and parts of the strip. So a lot of our trip unlocked memories of her youth, and we ran into landmarks in which she has pictures.
"Your Chippewa Lake is the Las Vegas Strip," I said in reference to my family's cottage where I have tons of child memories.
Sophie and I pretty much spent three full days straight together and had a blast. We also had a great time at the Pinball Museum, which should be named the Pinball Warehouse, by the way. Yet I can only place this awesome trip in a tie with my bachelor party.
In that trip, I thought I was meeting my brother and two cousins for four nights (that's a lot of nights). In addition, my dad (the XMan), uncle and two friends, Dave and Jeff, came as a surprise to me. No way! Mathematically speaking, my dad was 53 at the time, and I'm 52 now.
The highlights of that trip were playing three rounds of golf with my dad in various foursomes and battling in fun poker games with our group. The gambling and the glitz lingered in the background; it was more about hanging out with my crew. Even though Sophie and I threw a brick through Vegas' windshield, took it out and chopped it up, it was much more about spending time with her.
Maybe our love language is math 'n' fun. She says that if we played her roulette system infinitely that we would actually net a slight monetary profit. Hmm. She says she has the math to prove it.
I figured out that our relationship netted a major profit. I beheld the sophisticated young woman she has become and saw that she has a great sense of humor and is kind, fun and chill. As we said goodbye, it all added up to me being overwhelmed with emotion as I said between sobs, "I love you. It's impossible to have a trip this incredible."
Odds are, my dad let out sobs and said the exact same thing to me when we departed Vegas 25 years earlier.
But I must say there was a nice stretch, when calling one's self a foodie was totally OK. In fact, if you didn't call yourself a foodie, what was your problem?
I estimate that it was en vogue to be a foodie from 2006 to 2016, when I watched Top Chef. Soon, the United States fell into extreme polarization and something called "doom scrolling." We've been a non-foodie, stressed-out nation ever since.
Not that long ago, a story in the Associated Pressfascinated me. It was about how some influencers are reminiscing about how good things were in 2016, when people were doing more fun, non-serious things, perhaps still pretending to be amateur foodies.
The simplicity of enjoying an elevated dinner now has been erased by inflation, talk of inflation or somebody ruining it by taking a photo and posting it on social media. OK, while I can't say posting a food photo would ruin my dinner, that whole posting of food always seemed peculiar to me. Who does that anymore? What was that all about?
This past summer, I tried improving my food game by taking the Rouxbe (pronounced Ruby) Forks Over Knives online class. The class gears itself to vegans, and while I am not vegan, I do believe that the Standard American Diet (SAD) overdoes it with meat, oils and processed foods.
I realize that some of the best meals of my life have not been in the United States. While I'd love to travel more and experience more different cuisine, the best meals I've ever had were in Italy and France. In a trip to Italy about 10 years ago, I returned switching to espresso from coffee and adhering by the idea that "Your day might only be as good as your lunch."
Too often, Americans rush their lunches at their desk or don't put any thought into their food. They unwittingly dehumanize themselves on a daily basis. To be human, or a privileged human, is to eat and enjoy. Right?
With Forks Over Knives, my big takeaways were the power of healthy grains, including brown rice, farro (ancient grains) and quinoa. I pretty much stopped eating white rice and gluten-filled noodles. I eat a lot of bowls nowadays, and it's best when I mix up the types of veggies and flavors in those.
I also got much better at my cuts, and I learned some basics, like properly steaming vegetables and how to handle onions, that help immensely. The power of fruits and vegetables, and health benefits, indeed will stay with me.
I actually give Top Chef some credit with helping me learn more about cooking. I loved the show so much that in 2013, I named it the fifth best TV show of all-time. By the way, The Sopranos was No. 1 on the list, and looking back, I binged about one zillion shows since then. Maybe I need to update the list with the likes of Breaking Bad, The White Lotus and Stranger Things. (Or not)
Top Chef continues without me, or anybody I know, watching the show. Padma Lakshmi apparently left the show two years ago. Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons still are hosting, apparently. For 10 years, I watched the show, but the show just can't escape this criticism: "Hey, wait a minute, don't we have to taste the food?"
I tried tasting the food once by going to Colicchio's Craftsteak at the MGM Grand in Vegas. It just wasn't good at all. The quality was mid at best, and it was overpriced. Didn't really enjoy it, and this is coming from a guy who didn't mind Ponderosa in the '80s.
Of course, when the 2020 pandemic shutdown wiped out a lot of restaurants, that put a wrinkle into would-be foodies plans. Six years later, many restaurants have come back, but many haven't. I guess I need to accept the fact that foodies are gone.
Ponderosa has dwindled to 15 locations in the United States, after peaking at 150 in the '80s. And Pizza Hut, which has been pretty horrible for decades, recently announced it would close 250 of its 6,000 stores. But I swear, Pizza Hut was cool in the '80s.
I find myself at the Chippewa Lake cottage, and I'm sitting at a card table with my dad, the XMan. I touch the top of this card table, and it's an odd texture — dark green and kind of rain proof, maybe elastic, I don't know.
People are chatting around us, including my grandparents, Ed and Adele. Dina, Sophie, Chloe and my mom are there, too, smiling and talking with relatives. At this table, it's just me and my dad. I'm locked in a Dad vs. Son game of gin rummy.
Maybe these details wouldn't matter in real life, but they matter to me in dreams. I am soaking in this impossible possibility, the comfortable feelings of place and multigenerational love. So many people I care about are there, but the star is my dad, the XMan.
I've had many dreams with the Xman since he passed 15 years ago this month, and I adore these dreams. I didn't know what to do with them at first. Good god, some have been exceptionally vivid. Often, at some point, I'd realize I'm dreaming — just dreaming — and I'd wake up in tears, missing my loving dad.
But now, 15 years into this situation, this loss, this reality, this acceptance, I embrace these random dreams with my dad — usually at Chippewa, for whatever reason, or sometimes in a basement in Brecksville or Garfield Heights. I've learned how to elongate these dreams, milk them. Ooh, baby, I must say this: It feels so good to spend time with my deceased dad.
I wonder how many other people dream about their lost loved ones and enjoy the experience. Who knows? But I wonder.
OK, I'm not trying to be overly emotional, or sentimental. I'm not calling out for help or attention. I also must say that they're not too common. Maybe one, or two, a year? They emerge more around the holidays.
I've learned how to just step back, let the moment develop and cherish the time — in life and my dreams. X and I will be playing gin rummy, and we'll just glance at each other. He'll play a card; I'll play a card. Nothing special on the surface, but I'm with him. And something feels right, loving. It's wonderful.
Memories. Dreams. How do they work? SS. Peter & Paul. Chippewa. Los Olivos. Naples, Fla. I'm in New York now. My memories and dreams often converge on different, distinct places.
Of course, I had to do an Internet search about what dreaming of deceased relatives might mean, and, honestly, whatever, I don't know and don't care. It's more important to know the depth of love I have for those close to me.
I guess meaningful moments are all around us, and maybe a little wisdom is that I recognize them more and stack the deck. When I recognize something incredible happening in actual life, I try to expand that moment and recognize the specialness of that time — yeah, kind of like the slo-mo scenes in The Matrix. Maybe I'll just concentrate on creating more memories with loved ones that one day will return to someone in a dream.
"I'm working, but I'm not working for you. Slack mother******!"
Well, Happy New Year, Gen Xers! Something hit me the other day: It's possible that we Gen Xers have lost our way.
While I know variance exists within generations, Gen Xers — universally — used to stand for something. We used to be disaffected and cynical, and we popularized alternative rock, grunge and indie rock. We used to be cool, man.
Now, I'm not so sure what we stand for. We sold out, man, and we sold out for cheap. So this is a call for us Gen Xers to get off our phones, stop being distracted, get informed and fight for something we believe in. It's time to return to our Gen X roots.
Considering how the United States' media appeals to the lowest common denominator, it's time to give up on the gross, mainstream pop culture of this country and seek information elsewhere (if you haven't already). I highly recommend using DW from Germany as a national/international news source, and I also recommend limiting news infotainment and social media to 10 minutes a day and getting off that darn phone.
Unfortunately, in our current attention economy — which is more accurately called the distraction economy — many of us consume ourselves with nonsense. Whether it be social media, video games, political b.s. or reels, we give away our time to the digital slop-o-sphere, and I contend we don't actually want to spend our time that way.
We need to return to our Gen X roots of the '90s, when we knew that we'd have to fight to keep our souls because the U.S. economy had grown so huge and cruel that corporate life couldn't possibly work for us. (And, yeah, we knew that way back in the '90s.)
Recently, DW published the International Rescue Committee's Top 10 crises the world can't ignore in 2026. Guess what? I did not see the presidential ballroom, Epstein files or mindless U.S. propaganda in echo chambers on the list.
Rather, I realized that, more or less, the U.S. has turned its back on the actual world's crises and instead, enabled crisis No. 2, Palestine, in which 70,000 have been killed, 80 percent of the buildings have been destroyed or damaged and 90 percent of the population has been displaced. What peacemakers we are!
The U.S. ended USAID this year, and I find this morally reprehensible. The world's largest economy killed a huge international humanitarian organization. Yes, it kept 17 percent of its budget and put that in the State Department, but this is a loss. USAID had been around since 1961, and it is estimated that it help save the lives of 90 million people in its existence.
Now, USAID is wrangled lawsuits, and do we ever hear about this in any U.S. news sources? I don't think U.S. citizens are meant to. We have some sort of two-party-echo-chamber system in which discussion of actual issues rarely happens. I believe the masses are meant to consume, consume and consume, mostly digitally, and be sucked into this distraction economy and just accept that.
So what are we to do? Well, remember that the Superchunk anthem says, "I'm working, but I'm not working for you..." We got to get off our phones and get to work.
My suggestion is to think of a cause that really matters to you and do something about it. Replace screen time with action. If you can't find a cause, then maybe replace it with creating some sort of art or craft. Let's replace all this distraction with something worth our time.
I believe this sentiment is leaking through U.S. media, too, thankfully. This week, the Associated Press ran a story about how the U.S. needs a return to volunteerism, and I agree with this. With the billionaires and oligarchs and their corporations obviously not stepping up to help societal ills whatsoever, we everyday individuals are forced to do that on some level. ... Might as well.
While it's unrealistic to go completely without screen time, we can reclaim our lives by limiting our digital world and living the Gen X life we want where we actually help ourselves and others. Yeah, slack, mother******.
