Schenectady Population Through the Years

Schenectady Population Through the Years

Schenectady, like many Upstate Cities, has seen a change of it's fortunes, with year after year population declines slowing then stopping, with more people moving to the city during the early years of the 21st century after recent declines in crime and pollution.

Best selling Christmas Singles

Best selling Christmas Singles

Further evidence that Christmas music is pretty awful based on what people are parting with their hard-earned cash to download legally from the interwebs. Plus a fun exercise in webscrapping with Wikipedia to make a graph.

library(rvest)
library(tidyverse)

music <- read_html('https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Christmas_singles_in_the_United_States')

table <- music %>% html_table()

table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`=as.numeric(gsub("(\[.*|,)","", table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`))
table[[1]]$`Artist` = gsub("\(.*","", table[[1]]$`Artist`)

ggplot(table[[1]], aes(x=table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`, y=reorder(paste(table[[1]]$Title,table[[1]]$Artist,sep="n"), -table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`),
                       fill=table[[1]]$Rank)
       ) + geom_col() + geom_label(aes(label=scales::comma(table[[1]]$`Digital downloads`)),hjust='right', size=6, fill='white', nudge_x = -20000) +
  scale_x_continuous(labels = scales::comma_format(scale=1/1000000, suffix='m'), expand=c(0,0), breaks=seq(0,3,0.5)*1000000) +
  scale_fill_gradient2(low='darkred', high='darkgreen', midpoint=mean(table[[1]]$Rank)) +
  labs(title = 'Best-selling Christmas singles',
       subtitle='',
       caption='Wikipedia/Nielsen SoundScan began trackingndigital download sales data at the end of June 2003. ',
       tag=paste('Andy Arthur,', format(Sys.Date(), format="%m/%-d/%y")),
       x='Digital Downloads',
       y='',
       fill = "", ) +
  theme_bw() +
  theme(
    text= element_text(family='Overpass',size=14),
    plot.title=element_text(hjust=0.5, face='bold',size=28),
    plot.background = element_rect(fill = "white", color="white"),
    plot.subtitle=element_text(hjust=0.5),
    plot.tag=element_text(size=10,hjust=0, color='#555555'),
    plot.caption=element_text(size=10, color='#555555'),
    plot.margin = unit(c(1,1,1,1), 'lines'),
    plot.tag.position = c(0.0,0.01),
    legend.position = 'None',
  )

ggsave(paste('/tmp/christmas.svg',sep=''), width=1920, height=1080, units='px', dpi=150, device = grDevices::svg)

Alexia and buying shit on Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday and not having Alexia at home…

I do not have an Amazon account or for that matter internet at home. 💻 I certainly don’t have Alexia to talk to when I’m lonely or to command to buy shit 💩 for me. There is too much plastic crap in the world today, and I’m not talking about the shopping bags that people in Albany are talking about banning.

Technically, I could order things off of the E-commerce websites using my phone 📱 and sometimes I do 🎁 but rarely do I. I don’t like spending money on stupid stuff and Amazon is full of stupid stuff from China that nobody really needs. The sales and the subscription fee makes it so people waste money on the site. 💵 Being that I don’t drive to work, it’s not easy to go to the store 🏬 and buy things except on my weekly trips to the big box. Plus I pay to get rid of any trash I can’t recycle β™» so I try to avoid waste as much as possible.

To be sure I sometimes will buy an odd component on Ebay or electronics parts off of Aliexpress. βœ‰ But that’s kind of different because when you order from those sites it can take a while for the products to arrive. And it’s not the instant gratification economy. I like to delay my purchases 🐢, wait for them to arrive and take advantage of delayed gratification.

I did buy something this Cyber Monday. I bought a 12 month certificate of deposit to replace the one that had matured, adding some extra money to it. 🎫 It’s not making a lot of interest but I know it’s locked away for a year where it can quietly grow and I can add more to it in the future. 🔮

It’s Black Friday and the orgy of consumerism πŸ›οΈ

It’s Black Friday and the orgy of consumerism πŸ›οΈ

While I don’t own a colored television and are immune to much of the advertising these days, it seems like many of the frenzied sales of years past have been dialed back with the pandemic and the problematic nature of crowded shopping mauls. But to a certain extent its moved online.

I really don’t understand why people would want robot vaccums or internet connected toasters. But a quick search of the internet says they’re hot gifts this year. I don’t know, I tend to think they’re toxic e-waste meant to be used for a while and tossed. Kind of silly if you ask me.

I don’t plan to stand on line to get vaccinated from the China virus nor do I plan to stand in line for overpriced Chinese junk with some fancy label on it. I hate lines and I hate crowds, and social distancing is helping to keep myself safe. I’m heading up to the Adirondacks where I doubt I’ll see many except for an occasional hunter passing by in a pickup.