Sluagh Sidhe Productions

 Many years ago, I read an article about a man who needed to install iTunes on his computer for some reason. I don't remember exactly why, and I can't find the article again. But for some reason, even though he didn't want to use the programme, he needed it on his computer. He was disturbed to find that iTunes had taken all of the music in his library, most of which was in a lossless format, and much of which was unique, original, or hard to find, and replaced it with lossy, low-fidelity mp3 versions. When he called Apple support, it took him a while to find someone who was able to address his concerns at all, but when he did, she simply kept repeating the phrase, 'The system is working as intended.' In other words, it was a feature, not a bug. The software was designed to do this. I don't pretend to understand why. But the way iTunes was written, it was meant to upload all the original files to the server, delete the originals from the customer's hard drive...

 I recently read a post on Tumblr that said that 'There are two kinds of people: those who think, "I don't want anyone to suffer like I did," and those who think "I suffered, why shouldn't they?"' I found myself really struck by that sentiment. I'd never thought of it that way. But it explains a lot. I'm one of the 'I don't want anyone to suffer like I did' variety. I had a horrible childhood. Despite being a straight, white, able-bodied cis male, I was constantly the subject of scorn and derision. My classmates constantly bullied me, because I didn't dress the way they did. I didn't act like they did. I was smarter than they were. And it sucked. Anyone who says 'Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me' has clearly never been the subject of constant exclusion and ridicule by their peers. Humans, as social animals, need to be accepted. Words will, in fact, hurt far more than sticks or sto...