Sorry for the lack of cat picture in last week’s newspaper. The responsible parties have been appropriately reprimanded.
A Thing in My Possession: New Headphones Bluetooth might be my favorite technology of the recent past. It’s hardly new, but it is such a specifically useful feature for device to device communication. The most common use of bluetooth is of course, headphones. Now the actual audiophiles out there will say that listening to anything without a wire is bad for you because your life will be demonstrably worse without the richer fuller sound that a wire can bring, and they’re probably right! But I’ll take convince over quality three out of four times. And there’s nothing more convenient than bluetooth headphones. I have owned apple AirPods, but they wore out over time because the batteries aren’t replaceable and batteries are a disposable product. But airpods are expensive, so the last time I bought some headphones I waited until there was a sale on meh.com and bought the most reasonably priced AirPods knockoff they offered. now I say knockoff, but they look nothing like AirPods, instead they are just “true wireless” earbuds, meaning they don’t connect to each other and have a little charging case. This is, of course, the exact style of headphone that the AirPods pioneered and arguably made very mainstream. These, however, were much cheaper. I got two pairs for twenty bucks. I like that I have two pairs, because one of the least fun things about bluetooth headphones is disconnecting them from one device to connect to another. I have my computer that I want them to be attached to during the day, but in the evenings or on weekends, I will often connect them to the tv, because our tv is in the bedroom and I don’t want to disturb my sweetheart if she is sleeping. So now I have a set in my office and one by the tv and all I have to do is pop them in and they connect. It’s great for my specific use case, which is all that matters.
Poorly Organized Thoughts On: Patreon I don’t know anybody who uses pattern as a service (either creator or customer) who actually likes pattern as a company. What they offer is valuable despite all the work the company does to create new features that people don’t want, or turn off features they do.
When pattern was created, they offered a “per creation” style of supporting creators. You pledged a dollar amount and when the creator released something, you paid your pledged amount. It was truly a crowdsourced form of art patronage. It was a killer feature that allowed artists and creators to set up a recurring mini-kickstarter that supported the creation of their art specifically. It was a huge success and ever since then the company would like you to stop using that feature instead of any other options they offer. Those other two options are “first of the month” billing and “monthly subscription” which sound similar but are slightly different. With first of the month billing, you only charge your patrons on the first of the month, which makes sense. This also allowed for a sort of “try before you buy” option to creators, where you could not charge for the first month when they signed up, and let them sample your wares and decide if they wanted to stick around. Or you could charge them they day they join and then have a recurring charge afterwards. Choices! Choices are good! So there are three different ways you can run a patreon with the ability to customize to fit your needs. Nice.
Except, Pay per thing billing was a mess on patrons end. They had to pay a lot more in processing fees instead of lumping everything together into one lump transaction. That was money their investors really wanted. Because their investors were silicon valley types who didn’t want pattern to be a payment processor, a profitable and stable business, no they wanted pattern to experience 10x growth, which meant making new features and squeezing every dollar out of the platform as possible.
A while ago they turned off the ability to start a new pattern with a “per thing” pricing. My podcast was only able to get away with it because I had an unlatched patreon sitting around from before the cutoff. And now they’re removing the First of the month option for creators as well. So instead of creators getting one lump sum at the beginning of each month (helpful for budgeting) they’re getting amounts scattered around. And for patrons who support multiple creators they are no longer charged for all of their first of the month subscriptions at the same time (the first of the month), but instead on whichever day of the month they subscribed. So if you support five different creators, you could have five different subscription payment dates. So by november 2025 (still a ways away) everyone on patreon will be forced to switch to this model, even if you previously had a different payment setting.
Patreon is blaming this change on Apple, because (according to patreon) Apple is forcing them to switch to apple’s subscription model (recurring payment on the same day of the month) for everything or apple will remove the app from the app store. Plus Apple will be taking their exorbitant 30% cut from all subscriptions through the app. Patreon is “helpfully” letting creators eat the cost, or helping the creators raise their rates for Apple customers.
But Patreon has another option. Ditch the app. The app is bad. Lean back towards being a payment processor. You can save your creator’s money by not paying apple extra money they don’t need, you can still host everything on a website (remember websites? They were the thing we had before apps.) And once you start bending to these rules from apple, you’re going to be bending to more. There are a lot of creators on patreon who make “adult” content. Patreon hides them, because if you get flagged as adult you can’t be searched for, but if they have an audience outside the platform (and most creators on patreon do) discoverability within the app is next to useless. Have you ever discovered someone because patreon recommended them? I haven’t.
But I don’t think patreon wants to ditch the app, and I think they weighed the costs and benefits (to them) and decided this was the path they wanted to go down, while trying to blame apple for their decision. Apple doesn’t need my support, but they’re at least setting the terms fairly (unless yours one of the companies who gets a better deal, but that’s for another time.)
So I don’t know what I’m going to do about my very modest patreon. Maybe I’ll shut it down, completely and go back to just making the podcast without support. Maybe I’ll let the automatic switch to subscription billing happen and just roll with it (which is what patreon wants) but either way I won’t be happy about it. Maybe patreon will listen to their creators for once, but I’m not holding my breath.
Stuff I'm watching: I really enjoy the youtube channel Veronica Explains, which is run my a self described "Linux mom" who, well, explains things. She does a mix of retro comupting, gaming, and linux content, but shes fun to listen to and explains things in a way I can understand. Her videos helped me make the switch to linux a few years ago and I'm glad for it.
Another youtube channel I like is Michaelcthulu who is a welder wo makes really giant swords. He does a great job of making long form videos that explain what he's doing and how it works, but they also take a long time to make, so he only puts out a couple a year. They're still worth watching though.
A third youtube channel I'll recommend is Uncommon Ephemera which is a channed dedicated to preserving filmstrips. You remember film strips? The slideshows that you watched in class where a series of static images were played alongside a tape? The whole channel got nuked awhile ago due to a copyright strike, but they've been rebuilding it, and it's worth checknig out if you want to learn about things like journalism from Scooby doo, or how syphilis works.
