Geo

HELLO -- are you looking for some ambient presence while you do the dishes? the laundry? physical therapy exercises? do you like it when 2 idiots play things like: iSpy, Nancy Drew, Shopping Cart, Big Game, Goosebumps, Curious Case, American Truck Disassociation Simulator, and Liturgical Clip Art Disc We Found At The Thrift? then do i have GREAT NEWS FOR YOU

welcome to jack & kat's

COOL SUMMER OF STREAMS

jack and i are planning to stream some fun stuff this summer, and will kick off this FRIDAY EVENING at 7.30PM EASTERN TIME, 4.30PM PACIFIC over on my twitch, which is at twitch.tv/katbamkapow. on friday we will finish out our iSpy and Windows 98 adventures. after that.... well. :)

i hope to have a recurring schedule 4 you soon, thank you for hanging out with us & passively contributing to the concurrent viewership that will fix my car. if you are thinking of sending money anywhere right now please send it to the people of palestine via the PCRF or UNRWA, thank you

i am so excited to hang out this summer and try and work through some of the weird stream ideas we've been batting about. i want to do a stream about rivers! i want to do a stream about liturgical clip art! i want to do a stream about calendars! i want to do a stream about 1970s home movies! i want to do a stream involving a large bag of plastic animals! we might also play portal 2

i sometimes think about the people who will go “please buy indie games” or “go unionize” as if that will console the people who just got laid off.

and it makes me think these kinds of platitudes are just meant to help folks cope with the fact fans, journalists, and commentators don’t have any power against capital. they need to say something positive, something nice.

but i guess when all you have is stuff like this, it just feels like you’re telling yourself that you are trying to be an ethical consumer. nothing that helpful to the worker who lost everything.

of course, nobody likes to feel powerless and everybody hates the fact that all they can likely do is boost the workers’ portfolios and donate to fundraisers. but i do think it’s better to accept the grim reality that Capitalism is violent than say, “I’m gonna buy an indie game this time round.”

it’s okay to feel glum. there’s just no sugarcoating it. you can buy indie games if you wish, but don’t do it out of an obligation to “help” displaced workers. the worst case scenario has already happened, all we can do is watch out for each other and help out as much as we can.

Spotify's aim with the unspeakable move of demonetizing songs that don't get 1,000 streams a year was to discourage spammy uploads on the platform.

What it's actually doing a month later is not stopping that spam which was always going to occur, hurting most musicians on the platform (everyone but a fortunate 14% or so) and creating this cottage industry of "playlist community/promotion" dudes who are not real promoters. They promise chances of popular playlist placement for money or putting you on their community playlist with... everyone else who paid them, I'm sure real people definitely listen to that. These people always existed, but now they have this real fear of not breaking the 1000-stream barrier to use as leverage.

If you use Spotify to listen to "smaller artists" (hell, I still have some tracks that probably don't get 1000 streams a year), forget the percentage of a cent thing--they might not be getting paid at all.

P.S. We still don't understand if that means you have to hit 1000 plays every year, or within 12 months of this change, or what. If anyone knows let me know, lol.