Never Post’s Mike Rugnetta backs reliable power

reliable power – In an interview that moves from studio gear to daily habits, Never Post co-creator Mike Rugnetta makes one point feel unavoidable: when power is unstable, everything else gets harder. He’s in a prolonged fight with Con Edison over low voltage after a winter po

When Mike Rugnetta turns on his day, he doesn’t start with software. He reaches for an audio interface—an RME Fireface UCX II—because it’s the first piece of equipment he powers up every day and the last he turns off.

He says the same kind of dependability is what keeps his creative work moving. For about 20 years. he’s used Sony MDR-7506 headphones every day. trusting them “more than some people” he’s known for as long. Recently, he’s noticed the “telltale signs of headphone age,” but he thinks he can repair them and keep going.

Rugnetta’s faith in steady tools extends beyond audio hardware. It’s also why the thing he calls “most underappreciated” isn’t an app or a workflow trick. It’s reliable power.

In his case, that isn’t an abstract concern. He and the landlord of his studio building are in a “protracted battle” with Con Edison to address the building’s low power service. He points to a winter of “brawny snowstorms,” when the building lost power for over a week. When power returned, it didn’t restore normal conditions—service came back in “near-brownout” status with “really low service voltage.”.

Normal service, Rugnetta says, is around 122V. Right now, the power conditioner he’s looking at reads 114V. He says it often drops as low as 107V. That kind of dip. he adds. causes “all kinds of weird problems. ” most of which he has workarounds for—except for the minisplit in his space. The result has been blunt: he hasn’t had ductless heat or AC for about a month.

He brought in a window unit, but it’s not a clean replacement. He calls it loud and “really inefficient,” and says it connects to the internet even when he tells it not to. It also turns on and off randomly for reasons he can’t determine.

He leaves the comparison hanging there, mixing frustration with a dark joke: he says he’s reminded of the printer tweet and that he “really don’t want to have to buy a handgun.”

The pressure of unreliable power shows up elsewhere too, in his view of the devices people accept as normal. When he talks about what he wishes he could change about his phone. he points straight at the removal of ports—specifically the 3.5mm headphone jack. He says the 3.5mm jack is “one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments. ” and that deleting it from some of his otherwise favorite devices makes him feel like “society is crumbling around my feet.”.

His day-to-day tech habits are built around keeping systems stable. On a new phone or computer, he installs Firefox and Firefox Focus on his phone. On a new computer, after Firefox, he says he downloads Alfred and Max simultaneously. On the question of what he uses most socially, he answers Bluesky.

For focus. he describes a setup designed to reduce interruptions: the only notifs on his phone are text. email. and work Slack; his studio is in the back of the building. off the street. under a big tree. near but not inside his apartment. He adds that all his clients and coworkers are remote. so during business hours it’s usually just him and sometimes his dog.

What he struggles with more than focus. he says. is motivation—especially the clerical stuff like emails and invoices. and paperwork because he’s a “small business.” Music is often how he gets moving; he says he’s listening to a comp of Italian electro-acoustic music right now. and he’s also been served well by the most recent release from the English kraut/post-rock outfit Gnod.

Rugnetta’s answers keep circling back to the same idea. even as the topics rotate from hardware to software. from podcasts to games. When something as basic as stable voltage disappears, creativity doesn’t stop—but it has to adapt around the damage. In his studio, the “workarounds” ran out at the minisplit. For a month, he’s been living without ductless heat or AC, trying to make a window unit behave.

Even his comments about the creative process are shaped by this insistence on momentum and the next step—because. he says. when artists get stuck it’s often about forcing a project to be something it isn’t or dealing with insufficient input. He says distance helps. and sometimes the fastest way to solve a creative dead-end is to “go entertain” himself—reading or watching something while he should be progressing. because he needs to see what’s possible.

In the end, his most readable theme may be the one he insists on when he talks about what keeps his work alive: if the power isn’t reliable, everything downstream gets harder—heat, signal, focus, and the simple confidence that your tools will do what they’re supposed to do.

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