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007: Home is where the heart is.

007: Home is where the heart is.

February 22, 2026
6 min read
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media-notes
2026
2026-02-22
weeknotes

Hello, world!

I love how clearly the hills of the Alleghenies are reflected in the Ohio River in this photo. The land mass in the foreground is the northern tip of Neville Island. Despite the wintry view and today’s snow flurries, there are more signs that winter will once again give way to spring: there’s daylight for a meaningful amount of time after work and I have placed my seed order!

🌟 My Favorite Stuff from the Internet This Week

🧰 Tools

My favorite tools this week are Current and Koito. I first heard about Current on Mastodon this week. I gave it a go after observing how it integrates with my existing workflow, especially with Miniflux. I use (and love) a number of RSS clients but I like how Current alleviates the phantom obligation introduced all to often by RSS clients and workflows. Stay tuned to hear how Current fits into my workflow over time.

My music scrobbling on last.fm is split between two accounts:

This week, I’ve been focused on knitting these scrobbles together on my end. This helps to reduce the impact on my end of having scrobbles across multiple last.fm accounts. I did that with my own code to assemble all scrobbles into a single .csv. I am also doing that with Koito. As I write, I’m importing scrobbles from both last.fm accounts into my Koito instance. Since Koito also offers a ListenBrainz-compatible endpoint, I have Pano scrobbling directly to my Koito instance.

🌱 Gardening 2026

I placed my seed order for the 2026 gardening season this week. I did the initial planning earlier this month so I knew what I wanted.

  • Cosmos
    • I got Apricot Lemonade cosmos.
  • Dahlia
    • I got 2 bushy long-blooming varieties of dahlias.
  • Daisy
    • I usually wind up with the classic Shasta daisy. This year, I am got German Flag daisies.
  • Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’)
  • Pumpkin
    • Pumpkin vines can take up a lot of space so I’d been wanting to find bushy container-ready pumpkin varieties. I settled on Kandy Korn Plus for this season.
  • Sunflowers
    • The sunflowers are the most important part of my garden each year. The specific sunflower varieties I got this year are: Arikara, Autumn Beauty, Busy Bee, Chocolate Cherry, Ice Cream, Lemon Queen, Mammoth Grey Stripe, Mongolian Giant, Skyscraper, Sunray Yellow Hybrid, Teddy Bear, Taiyo and Titan.
  • Tithonia
  • Zinnia
    • I got 5 varieties of zinnias: Benary’s Giant White, Cupcakes Pink Mix, Profusion Apricot, Queeny Lime Blush, Zahara Starlight Rose

I rounded out my purchase with the Pennsylvania Wildflower Seed Mix offered by Eden Brothers. I hope to acquire additional seeds through seed libraries and the like. I don’t plan on buying additional seeds unless I spot very compelling types of sunflowers.

Gardening can be a lot of pressure but my goal each year is the same:

  • 🥅 I just want one flower to bloom from seed.

While there are no guarantees, I’ve managed to achieve my goal every year.

🎮 Gaming

My Steam playtime was mostly focused on two favorite games: Mini Motorways and Spirit City: Lofi Sessions. I 💯 completed all the achievements in Spirit City this week! I still have a number of spirits to find so I am not done with the entire game yet.

🏆 Steam Achievements

Steam Achievements - bbbbbbbbrie at achieved.by.brie.lol

🎧 Reading

I’m exclusively focused on reading The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi — the current book club selection. Published in 2015, the near-future dystopian setting and emphasis on the politics of water scarcity make the vibe of the book feel a bit “on the nose” given headlines like this one:

The importance of the Colorado River is highlighted both in the book and the article. The earth.com article summarizes an article that appeared in the Water Resources Management journal:

At a minimum, the abstract is worth a read.

🔗 Social Reading

I keep track of my reading in various places across the Internet:

📖 Music

For the first week this year, my music listening has extended beyond the iron grip that Bad Bunny had. The best new album I heard out of this week’s batch was Baby Keem’s “Ca$ino”. The opening tracks of “petal rock black” were intriguing and I listened to the entire album before identifying the artist as that Willow (Smith).

🎧 Last.fm Stats

Total tracks scrobbled: 459

Top Artists

  • Justice (67 plays)
  • Baby Keem (34 plays)
  • The Black Keys (31 plays)
  • The xx (29 plays)
  • Radkey (26 plays)
  • Soulwax (20 plays)
  • The Jimi Hendrix Experience (18 plays)
  • SZA (14 plays)
  • Deftones (11 plays)
  • Willow (11 plays)

Top Albums

  • Justice - Justice (52 plays)
  • Baby Keem - CA$INO (34 plays)
  • The Black Keys - Brothers (30 plays)
  • The xx - xx (27 plays)
  • Radkey - Delicious Rock Noise (26 plays)
  • Soulwax - All Systems Are Lying (20 plays)
  • The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced (Deluxe Version) (18 plays)
  • Justice - Hyperdrama (15 plays)
  • SZA - Ctrl (14 plays)
  • Deftones - Around the Fur (11 plays)

🔗 Social Listening

I scrobble my music:

Sporadically, I write song reviews:

Talk to you next week!

— Brie