11 Comments
Sep 11Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

Having had to spend an eye watering amount on a new laptop, (I’m stuck in the certain brand catch 22) I wholly empathise with the doing pointless tasks to check processing speeds. Unfortunately the cost outlaid doesn’t equal what I hoped for, I now just have a bigger more bulky flip phone that doesn’t even have a touchscreen. 🤷🏼‍♀️

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Oof. Sometimes it seems like we just work in order to afford to upgrade the tech we work on.

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Sep 11Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

Of course women remember their early childhood and (and everything else) better than men. Why? I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you. 😉

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< backs away quietly >

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Sep 11Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

Whitesnake were on heavy rotation on my LP Player during my formative years "Is this love that I'm feeling? Is this the love that I've been searching for?"

I often find myself singing songs to myself from a time when access music was limited, where you would spend hours poring over liner notes, and looking at the sleeve design (obviously gatefold was best). It makes me wonder, do "the kids" nowadays still have that same relationship with music that we once had or is everything now instant gratification, shuffled playlists.

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Totally wonder the same thing, and I think even substacked about that a while back. I'm sure there are advantages to the modern system, and features of it they enjoy that we never had, but I miss those days of limited access and therefore obsessive interest in things like liner notes. I doubt they even exist now, and they were a little genre in their own right.

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Sep 12Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

“I am convinced that women remember their early childhood better than men. Why would that be?” Couple of hypotheses - women are the lore-keepers, the bearers of familial wisdom; women keep receipts! ; women will hold things against you and carry grudges for a lifetime. This may, of course, just be me.

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Oh, it's not just you, I've found ;-) And I think you're right about the lore-keeper piece — also the guardian of tribal and family bonds, which often requires recall of deeds gone by...

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Sep 12·edited Sep 12

It's funny because, of course, the obsessive compilation of useless granular data is culturally seen as a male thing, be it of the now-popular "culture nerd" variety where you memorise every episode of Space Skirmishers or the eternally-popular "sport nerd" variety where you memorise everyone who ever kicked a ball for the Red Pendulums.

I don't know if it's relevant but, apparently, there is a fundamental difference between girls and boys at play that crosses all cultural barriers and is seemingly hard-wired into being human. Given the choice, little boys will build things (often to enjoy knocking them down, but they build first) whereas what little girls enjoy is to put a thing inside something else. Jewellry boxes, with their manifold caches and hidden drawers, are a favourite globally.

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Sep 12Liked by Michael Marshall Smith

“ Songs which structure your understanding of love when love is still something you only feel for your parents and your pet — and don’t yet realize what a tricky, dark, failing and vicious fucker it can be; when you have yet to learn that love may come in a pretty box but can be a chemical weapon for the soul.” My god, how true. The pretty pop songs about love of a type that never happened for me. The tortured wailing-guitar laments of how wounding it can be, and the gut-punch of regret or betrayal or leaving in the night…. Playing the song that found your middle C of emotion over and over until the neighbours bang on the wall… Hearing a particular song decades later and worlds away when not even the cells in your brain are the same ones you had back when it mean everything, and having to flee the store, trolley abandoned in the aisle…

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That last point is brilliant — it's not even the same CELLS you had back then! — and beautifully put... yep, been there.

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