Bring Back the Clay Tablet— They’re a love language. And a reminder of the hope we once had.
Sing me a song about shitty copper.
Fuck … Erm…Shite
There once was a man named Ea-Nasir His business practices were very unclear He got so many complaints Some real, some ain’t But one lasted for thousands of years
Bring back that whole timeframe. We weren’t all so stuck up our phone’s ass.
Yeah, growing up as a teen it was the opposite. I was burning CDs and had this phone stuck up my ass
CDs and had this phone stuck up my ass
Kids will think you’re joking, but the vibration on those things was a proper… well, vibrator.
Nothing like getting a text from your crush with your phone in your crotch for her/him having indirectly caused you sexual pleasure.
(Also we did actually have contests on who’d throw their phone the highest without failing to catch it. And the throw were easily 5-15 meters high. And lots of misses. But not a single disabled phone. Small scratches on the covers maybe, but you could also buy new covers so it was no problem.)
Posted in r/teachers yesterday:
I took my own children to a park, there were about 8-10 kids running around between the ages of 1 and 6. The children were feral. The parents were on their phones the entire time. None of the bad behavior was noticed, let alone corrected. A three year old boy sat in a tunnel and screamed and pushed anyone who came near. Mom was oblivious. She wasn’t watching her kid, she was on her phone. Another girl (about 5) was being extremely rough around some of the toddlers (kicking towards them, jumping over a one year old at one point). Her dad didn’t correct the behavior. He didn’t see it. He was on his phone. I could go on. Besides the occasional glance, parents were completely disengaged from their children.
Cassettes would like to have a word.
That word
By: Lorie Ransom, The Daily Drawing
It’s weird though. Pencils were never a good way to transport tape. It was also investigated that only certain Japanese pencils fit as these are bigger. In my memory we always used a BIC ballpoint pen which fits perfectly.
I find that most my old cassettes still play, can’t say the same for the CDs.
imho in a weird way cassettes were better/more fun. Like wanting to record a song you like so you’d sit in front of the tape deck for hours on end listening to the radio waiting for that ONE song to come on so you could record it. It would take you hours, maybe even days, to make that mixtape of songs you didn’t own.
Also when I was a kid I had one of those fisher price tape decks that had the microphone attached to it. I wanted to make a mix tape of all my favourite songs from my NES games or games that I would rent (like the Battletoads theme song, or the music from the Batman videogame) so I would pop the game in then hold the microphone up to the TV speaker and record the songs.
Um no. Having to rewind the tape was annoying. If you had a janky player it would eat it.
Jumping across the bed to hit record when a song came on is a core memory.
What no love for the mixtape? We have to go straight to CD?
There was a certain intentionality to burning a CD that a Spotify link just can’t replicate. Spending an hour picking the perfect songs to fit exactly 80 minutes, and then handwriting the tracklist… it was a real labor of love. It’s a shame that convenience has replaced that personal touch.
And why is burning an audio file onto a CD better than having the same file on flash storage?
Being old does that to people
Why do some people like vinyl? Why did the iPod’s scroll wheel evoke joy when used? Why is the OG PSP’s UMD drive clicking open and closed enjoyable?
If you’re looking to abstractly optimize consumption and sharing efficiency, it’s worse. But if you’re looking to optimize personal connection to the art and to other people, having some tactile interaction and giving a physical object that embodies the music arguably does that better.
I’d even bet that if you scanned brain activity of someone opening an MP3 versus someone putting in a disc and hitting a play button, the disc’s physical interaction very likely creates stronger neural pathways that trigger more chemical rewards.
Its not inherently better than sending someone a playlist by any other means but on the other hand I just think its neat to have a physical thing that you have to intentionally plug into something and listen to in a specific order and way. That and the way that tech/streaming is changing the ways we interact with music on a personal and cultural level is overwhelming to me, makes me nostalgic for the limitations of older mediums. When you had to be intentional about what and how you listened, it (at least to me) made a deeper connection between me and the music as a listener. Fortunately we can still be intentional in many ways, its just easier to not do that with streaming and algorithmically recommended stuff.
I do wish that my friends would still send each other playlists in any format.
That authors’ view is explained in the article.
Unlike a burned CD from a friend, there’s no social contract that compels me to sit with something new, and take the time to better understand it. There’s very little on Spotify that will compel me to dive into the catalogue of a new-to-me artist, then seek them out when they go on tour.
Elitism
What a dumbass article. It’s way too easy right now to burn a CD, we need another 25 years before were nostalgic about this one.
I disagree. Find a prebuilt PC that ships with a drive. Extremely rare unless you custom order it.
On my desk sits a usb CD/DVD writer. Majority of my non tech friends might have an old bluray or DVD player laying aroung or a PS3/4.
With your statement, you can say floppies are too easy to burn since you can buy a usb writer and a stack on amazon.
It’s true. Using floppies is too easy for decent nostalgia usage. To prove the point: how many people do you know who use floppies for nostalgia reasons?
In audio circles stamped cd’s have been making a comeback. It’s much like the last decades vinyl revival.
It’s not the older generations getting nostalgia, it’s the younger generations looking for ‘experience’ over content. Buying a physical thing, storing on the shelf, having a visible collection of disks to show off.
Additionally it is a revenue stream for artists, where despite the costs of mastering and pressing a cd, they can get more money from a cd release than from streaming. So artists have been incentivized do make releases a big deal since they money goes straight to them. It’s a bit like a ‘buy me a coffee’ but with a physical item.
You can buy brand new cd players, not just blueray players or vintage units that need service.
It’s a thing.
In terms of nostalgia-buying, we millenials are now the older generation. I doubt it’s all the 15-20yo who are buying CDs.
I went looking for data and it seems cd sales are on the decline again. So my info is outdated. It looks like it was trending younger with Taylor swift and k-pop titles as the top sellers. It appears to be less of a revival and more of a fad.
It looks like vinyl is still growing in 2026 even while cd decrease again.
It’s a bummer since artist can get a bigger cut of physical media sales and cd are easier to make than a records.
It’s a bummer since artist can get a bigger cut of physical media sales and cd are easier to make than a records.
Btw, what about digital album sales? On Amazon, for example, you can buy a CD digitally. You just get MP3s or similar, but it costs the same as the CD, just without the physical media.
No, we need transferable digital licenses. I want to both own my software and download it on the go
I was in Publix the other day when this really eccentric wizard looking lady approached me and had a story about how she needed a few bucks. She said she had music for sale that she made herself. I said well how do I purchase it? She reached into her bag and said “ I’ve got cds “ I gave her a few bucks and was on my way feeling good. Got into my fucking car and realized oh shit I’m not a teenager anymore in my old car with a cd player like I thought I was for a solid 10 minutes after buying the damn thing. Got home and had to dig out a cd player for my laptop. Music was weird as fuck which I enjoyed. She bought a jug of cough syrup with the money lmfao
I never stopped. How else am I going to burn PS1, Dreamcast, and 360 games?
I think all of these have sdcard mods now (and the 360 had long had HDD mods from memory).
Oh yeah, they do. I’m just weird lol
PS2 for DVD-R
Mix tapes were better
They each have their place. Tapes fit in your pocket though, which was great for casual carry. I always had a mix tape in my pocket.
I think people undervalue cd/dvd/bluray. Up to this day it’s best format for giving away data like family photos.
With any usb device there’s much larger security risk. Also people want to get storage back.
This is stupid. Just make your own streaming service.
I’m not sure if they’ve degraded, but I’ve got one of those CD-R spindles with a few disks left on it somewhere
I could burn a mix CD this afternoon if I felt like it?
Thing is if I gave half of the people I know a mix CD I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t actually have a means of listening to it
Just brought out my old dvds and put them on hard drive. They were burned 18 years ago and used organic dyes. I recovered avout 50% of them. Old me should have spent more on nonorganic discs… but old me couldn’t afford them back then, so he gets a pass I guess. Plus new me can easily dl most of those discs in an hour or two now.
