A couple of mentions so far for Ursula K. Le Guin and I’m here to echo them, and to mention my favourite book of hers that I’ve read (so far): The Dispossessed.

It tells the story of a brilliant physicist from a collectivist, anarchist society who must travel to the hierarchical, individualist, capitalist society that his ancestors split from many years prior. Great story with really interesting politics weaved throughout.

I’ll also add the Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) by Kim Stanley Robinson. A huge, sprawling narrative about the colonisation and terraforming of Mars. The development of eclogy-based politics and economics plays a big part in the story, as does the development of a new government and constitution. The “hard” science fiction of the novel seems to put some people off (at times long scientific descriptions of landscapes, physical/geological processes, etc.) but I love these books.

Trump also thinks it’s 50x larger than it really is because of map projection effects.

I buy vinyl for older albums (or current favourite artists I follow that release LPs), and all my digital purchases are through Bandcamp. I host everything (flac or mp3 files) on a Navidrome server and stream from that.

Yes, I have. I suppose I should have said “ALWAYS super keen to see whatever is coming next”.

Weeeird movie! Some truly bizarre stuff in there, visually and tonally. Need to watch it again. I’m a big fan of Alex Garland, super keen to see whatever is coming next.

Battlestar Galactica! All of the themes for the various characters fit really well, and the taiko-style drums during space battles, which at first might seem stylistically a bit strange, work amazingly well to amp up the sense of urgency.

I love everything of his that I’ve read. I think my favourites are Green Mars, Aurora, and 2312. I also really loved The High Sierra as a very different example of his work.

I’ve still not read The Years of Rice and Salt or Shaman – definitely need to get around to them. I tend to pace myself with my very favourite authors.

Thanks for all your work on this fork! I use Tempo every day and I’m so glad there’s development continuing. Do you already have a new name for the project in mind?

It depends on the client app you use. Some support it, some don’t.

I use Jellyfin for movies and TV shows, but never tried for music because I already had Navidrome set up. It is so good, really one of my all-time favourite pieces of software. It greatly repays a well-tagged collection, relying on embedded metadata only. Not sure how Jellyfin works here, maybe there is some ability to scrape album info from online sources (?), but I believe it’s pretty strict about directory structure (one folder per album), which Navidrome doesn’t care about.

REAPER is absolutely one of the best pieces of software out there. I’ve been using it too since maybe 2009, though not so much in the last few years (not moved to an alternative, I’m just not doing so much audio these days).

I love the business model, the development cycle, etc. and even though it’s not open source it kinda has a similar community feeling. Every bit as feature-filled and capable as any of the industry standards.

“Since 2022” - not a headline-worthy comparison imo

For me it’s Irish traditional music. Aside from having an interesting history, the style often takes a very high level of musicianship to play well. A single monophonic instrument can play a tune and the fast-moving stream of notes can simultaneously spell out melody, counterpoint/call-and-response, and harmony, as well as providing a strong rhythmic pulse (it is music to dance to, after all).

I have had issues before with the 2i2 on Linux, where it seemed that no matter the setting in software, the hardware would always sample at a set 44.1kHz. So, with software thinking it was sampling at one rate, the playback would always be at the wrong speed. Doesnt sound like the the same as your issue of distorted audio, but yes, clearly there is something lacking in the kernel drivers for the 2i2!

Wish I could offer a fix but I have used it so sporadically thay I just tolerated my single choice for sample rate.