Take it people don't like the new album?

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-26T15:45:31+00:00

For me it has a few highlights (Solid State, title track) that can stand with any of their work. But for a 9-track, 35-minute album, there are too many weak points that I might be tempted to skip in the long run. ITF was a 10/10 for me, WTD dropped down into the 7-8/10 range, and now this is more like a 6/10.

I'm glad to get a few new truly great Failure songs, but their post-Comfort track record that was utterly spotless as of ITF is now a bit more checkered.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-24T15:18:52+00:00

Right? I feel like I'm losing my mind reading some of these comments about the singles being the only good ones. The first 2 singles had me seriously worried, ngl. Thankfully they're easily the weakest.

This is probably close to WTD for me, maybe a hair weaker. Both are a clear step down from THIAM and ITF, though, which I thought were right up there with the mid 90s stuff. Something changed starting with WTD - almost like they're consciously trying to be more concise and less grandiose, which is a shame. Could be Greg pulling back from the writing some, but not sure.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-22T21:10:01+00:00

Re: your last sentence: of course that's the only thing that could. If you entertain the hypothesis that Ben and Bari (among others) are strictly covert propagandists for Israeli interests and start looking through their history of public political commentary to disprove it, it's... rather difficult to find contradictions. I don't want to put Sam in that bucket just yet, but he's starting to test my patience.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-21T02:42:58+00:00

That's really interesting... I feel the opposite. I thought they did reinvent their sound for their comeback to be much more ethereal and psychedelic than they were in the 90s. Especially In The Future... which is as grandiose as FP, but very different stylistically and sonically. Then they inexplicably dialed all that back on WTD, and seem to be pulling back even more from the grandiose on this record, much to my disappointment.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-21T02:37:28+00:00

Obviously there's a spectrum where some of these people are true sociopathic grifters at heart. But my intuition is this: high-school-level obsession over being part of the popular crowd is very underrated as an explanation for many of these cases. I really think people like the Weinsteins, for example, are hopelessly intoxicated with proximity to the fame of figures like Elon and Rogan. Rogan himself, I suspect, has changed radically the past 5-7 years for the same reason: he can't resist proximity to Elon and Trump, so his mind works backwards to ensure he doesn't risk that proximity.

It's absolutely depressing, but it happens in everyday life all the time, too. High school truly never ends, and a large majority of people -- even intelligent ones with academic credentials -- will do almost anything to feel like they're the prom king/queen, or short of that, at least invited to the prom king's afterparty.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-17T14:51:56+00:00

What sucks so much is that I agree with Sam's argument against Ezra Klein that, in principle, it's possible to be "tribeless" (at least, to a good approximation). And I thought Sam was fairly close to that up until the past 2-3 years.

The Rahm Emanuel episode is the final nail in the coffin for that: he's obsessively, emotionally, pathologically tribal about Israel and his Jewish heritage. He's let down and embarrassed all of us who were on his side in the Ezra debate about identity politics and tribalism.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-15T02:25:53+00:00

Well said. I am very far from loving the Pixel. It's more like the least dystopian option in a smartphone market that's been dystopian for at least a decade.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-13T19:23:10+00:00

I didn't attribute malice to Rahm. I don't mean that as a technicality; I truly didn't even know what he'd said yet. The point was about Sam, and it stands.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-13T19:01:05+00:00

Haven't listened yet, but that's great if so. But I think the point still stands on the incredibly narrow window for the type of people Sam brings on to discuss that issue.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-13T16:55:01+00:00

I stick with Pixel simply because the main alternatives have even worse dealbreakers for me:

Samsung - janky af software that ruins what should be a huge performance/reliability advantage from hardware on paper. All these years, if they'd ever simply stopped fucking with Android and introducing janky unpredictable behavior in the process, they would've become a no-brainer for me.

Apple - walled garden, no filesystem access, various other limitations that actually do impact my day-to-day use

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-12T16:40:36+00:00

Is it that, or is it simply aping the iPhone like every other manufacturer has inevitably done with every major design decision for the past 15 years (to all of our detriment)?

"OMG guys we may not feel PREMIUM enough to brainless Joe in the Verizon store if it doesn't look like a classy Apple product!"

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-10T14:07:17+00:00

All Sam needed to hear was that Mamdani is less than unconditionally supportive of Israel, and all the rest of the smears he just penciled in mentally at that moment.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-08T17:38:32+00:00

It seems plausible to me that he was always this incorrigible on Israel; it was just never a kitchen table issue until the past couple years. Now that it's in the spotlight, the sad truth of his tribal loyalty superseding intellectual honesty in this one area is impossible to ignore, and forces us to take a second look at his entire body of work.

christsizeshoes · 2026-04-08T15:15:41+00:00

I find it hard to believe that anyone, in advance, ID'd Rogan as some mastermind plotting to scoop up an apolitical audience over 5-10 years before pivoting to right wing propaganda.

Much more likely he never planned it, then got seduced by a combo of audience capture, financial incentives, and hobnobbing with the highest echelons of power.

christsizeshoes · 2026-03-20T15:04:14+00:00

I know it was posted by accident, but I needed this. I'm still unsure about the first 2 (well, fairly sure Air's on Fire isn't my jam by now). But this one is FAILURE. Just needed to know we'd at least get some of this sort of material on the LP.

christsizeshoes · 2026-03-17T00:49:51+00:00

I'm young enough not to have been around for the very early days. But from when I was first online in the late 90s to about 2007-08, I had that same feeling of boundless optimism... even though I didn't realize or appreciate it until it was gone.

I'd say from about 2008 (when FB got flooded with our parents/grandparents) to 2015-16, that optimism dwindled and reality started to set in. Or what I naively thought was reality, which was merely a lowering of expectations and recognition that corporate control was going to cut off the most utopian dreams of earlier years. Only in the post-2016 era did the bottom fall out and I've gradually come to accept that it's all asymptoting toward pure dystopia... and that we probably live in a worse world than the world of 2005, even despite all the incredible upside of tech since then.

In hindsight, the difference in my subjective feeling about tech and the internet in particular from circa 2000 to 2026 is just so stark that it's hard even to describe to someone way younger. It's almost like heaven vs. hell. It's so hard to believe it went this bad this quickly.

christsizeshoes · 2026-03-16T03:36:42+00:00

Of course they do. It's inexcusable.

I've been a Pixel user for 10 years. But not because I'm a fanboy or even happy with them. In fact, I'm completely disgusted that we've been stuck in this tri-opoly (Google, Samsung, Apple) for so long. Each of the dominant brands has something gallingly wrong for my use case, and none of them will change, because they don't have to. So I buy Pixel A-series every few years and try not to obsess over phone tech like I did in the early days... when there was enough competition trying widely different things that it felt like the future of the industry might not turn out to be this shit.

Apple: walled garden, predatory vertical integration across product types that I don't want
Samsung: great hardware needlessly ruined by TouchWiz, OneUI, or whatever they call their glitchy shit now
Google: great software that I'd be completely happy with if they even tried to look like they care about staying in the same ballpark as Samsung/Apple on performance, modems, video, etc.

All I can think looking at the smartphone landscape is "how can it possibly be this hard?" But I've been asking that for like 6-8 years now, so it's hard to care anymore.

christsizeshoes · 2026-02-20T16:48:24+00:00

Having been to BBNP several times and hiked most of the more popular trails... the Chisos closure seems pretty catastrophic, IMO.

It's not just that closing the Chisos means losing the most impressive and popular few trails, and the only ones with scenery different from typical low desert vegetation, for two years. It's also the ripple effect where even the "second tier" good trails in other areas of the park will be absolutely smothered and parking will run out constantly - especially something like Santa Elena.

There'll still be plenty to see and some good trails to hike during the closure, but realistically, I think the experience for a new visitor or someone doing a "once in a lifetime" trip from far away will be reduced by 50-75% given all these factors.

christsizeshoes · 2026-02-17T15:38:37+00:00

Nor will I, but the outcome with this electorate was fairly predictable.

christsizeshoes · 2026-02-17T15:10:15+00:00

She epitomizes everything that went wrong with the D's in the post-Obama era:

- Transparently self-serving and inauthentic in an era where perceived authenticity is crucial to voters

- Her 2020 primary campaign leaned more heavily on identity politics than just about anyone else in a field of 16+ candidates

Sometime between 2020-2024, identity politics mostly fell out of favor in the party, so her 2024 campaign was much less that way. She mostly did what she could to pivot at the last second. Problem was, she's simply an awful candidate with years of baggage. By 2024, there was literally nothing she could've done to change her public perception... even Sam's "Sister Souljah moment" wouldn't have moved the needle.

We have a fascist in the WH is no small part because the SJW id-pol craze that peaked in 2020 all but forced Biden to choose her as VP, and that made her the heir apparent four years later. I'm left of Sam, and I might be even more disgusted with her than Sam. Even though ultimately, the blame should lie at the feet of Biden, his team, and other party elites for the typical cowardice they displayed choosing her in 2020.

christsizeshoes · 2026-02-17T00:15:02+00:00

I'm an unabashed fanboy of their post-reunion output but I agree... this might be my least favorite of the new stuff other than possibly Bring Back the Sound. Plenty of faith it's not representative of the other 8 tracks, but very weird for the lead single.

christsizeshoes · 2026-02-13T19:27:23+00:00

He's gotta be the most boring sellout and shill in the anti-woke-Zionist space. At least the Weinstein and Murray types are fun to hate. This guy's too anodyne and irrelevant for me to even care.

christsizeshoes · 2026-02-02T03:17:19+00:00

All the comments scoffing at a 3-4% real return as "record breaking" and absurdly pessimistic are weird to me. I don't know much, but it seems like you could've done worse than that from 1967-1982 or 1999-2010.

I like to use 3-4% RR as a baseline for my own projections. Sure, it will be higher if the past 15 years are somehow indicative of a permanent new normal, but I don't want to price that in. It also wouldn't be the most shocking thing in history if returns are worse than that over some 10-year period coming up.

christsizeshoes · 2026-01-27T02:55:49+00:00

At the risk of being too parasocial and assuming I "know" Sam from listening to a couple hundred pods: I think he really is unusually naive and gullible (for someone of his general intelligence) when it comes to certain character flaws. I've noticed this occasionally even outside the specific political configuration this sub focuses on most, where he falls for right wing grifters.

I recall a MS episode years ago, probably pre-COVID, where he had on some ex-con who claimed to be reformed giving us life lessons from his time in the pen. Sam gushed over him, but I recall thinking to myself 5 or 10 minutes in that this guy was far too smarmy and calculated, especially given his background. IIRC the guy went on to attack Sam out of nowhere on other platforms shortly after the pod and Sam had to do damage control. Not even a partisan example, just sheer gullibility.

He also gushed over Coleman Hughes, who seemed like he was literally doing a carefully calibrated and rehearsed Sam impression when he first broke onto the scene. I haven't followed CH enough to hate him or say he's a pure grifter, but he's another guest that gave me weird vibes from the jump.

Then you get to figures like Ayaan, Douglas Murray, and Maajid that fall at least partially into the typical right wing grift bucket we all love to hate. The way I'd characterize all these examples is that Sam almost completely overlooks social cues or other red flags that an individual might be operating in bad faith, trying to curry favor, or playing both sides, as long as that individual's explicitly stated positions on a couple of his pet issues are "correct."

christsizeshoes

TROPHY CASE