2026-05-10
Oh yeah baby, Animal Collective is back and her new name is Chanel Beads. I caught their NTS set and thought it was bonkers awesome, but was a bit disappointed to find their main work is more electronic than the jazz/modern classical vibe from their NTS set. Still, Shane Lavers is cooking with some sauce, and I'm here for it. I tried figuring out who plays the piano on that NTS set because it's so fucking good, and the closest I have is from articles about Shane where he mentions that he's not a classically trained musician in any way, so I'm going to safely assume that it's the cute girl playing the piano. Can someone track her down and send her my email? Please? It might also be the guy on violin but I'm not sure. Or it could be just some random sub they got for the gig, I don't know. Whoever it was, send them my email. Also the cute girl, thanks.
Ever wonder what them Victorian people with the first microscopes were looking at? Well wonder no more. Microscopes are cool, and looking at really small stuff and seeing the intricacies of these unseen structures really makes you think about the tapestry of it all. Also, can we bring the word tapestry back? I know the LLMs went kinda crazy with that word, but that's totally fair for them to do that, come on. Moving through this tangent a bit more: I'm not sure what the new taste trends for prose are with LLMs. I remember like ten years ago, it was super in vogue to be laconic and minimalist with punctuation like Hemingway or McCarthy but now we've totally pivoted back to punctuation maximalism and dense clauses. What, you haven't written a sentence with like five clauses recently?
M.I.A. got kicked off of Kid Cudi's tour for being based. Who the fuck even listens to Kid Cudi anymore anyway? Also, can you believe that woman is 50? What a babe.
I just learned what a scold's bridle is today. For all the flack people give fourth-wave feminism, there's some truth to it, man. I mean, imagine being at that time and place and having to wear that and not being able to take it off because your husband is such a deranged chud that he won't take it off of you. The sexual revolution wasn't a good thing, I don't think, but all this talk of going "back to tradition" makes me a bit sick to think about it—especially when I find out that shit like this used to be normal. Shudders, man. Shudders.
My one-way relationship with Cory Doctorow is complicated. The way he does his work is great, and I definitely agree with many parts of his ethos. However, his blog Pluralistic can be a bit too much for me sometimes. I'm sure that's how all of (You) feel with my shit, but man, Cory keeps making me come back. This post was a very interesting read, and I think there's a good bit of truth on taking a guy like Ashley Keller and comparing him to a vulture—a little gross, but still quite useful. He stated that "capitalists hate capitalism" because what they really want is feudalism and a total "self-determination – for themselves, at everyone else's expense." The problem is that underlying this is the assumption that self-determination is not only a good thing, but something everyone should have—classic American liberalism. Have you ever seen someone so stupid and destructive and remember "man, that person can technically vote." This is kind of on the same territory as that stupid Voltaire quote, "I wholly disagree with what you say and will contend to the death for your right to say it." Some people really shouldn't be allowed any kind of self-determination, okay? Before you whine about me just saying this regarding people I disagree with, let me give a more "moral" argument. There is a growing contingency of people with immense intellectual and physical disabilities in the world today, and those people, if given that same "self-determination" as everyone else, would be so immensely harmful to society that it would make people hate them instead of plea for their right to live. People like Cory think that you can have a right to life and self-determination, but you can't have your cake and eat it too. For me, I'll take life over self-determination any day of the week.
Are you trying to achieve the flow state? Just pinch and roll your balls, dawg.
Having to remind myself every five years or so how much of a genius Jaco was, man. I don't think anyone will be that innovative with the bass ever again—truly a shining star.
Here's some more discourse on the problem of hard consciousness for the philosophy bros here. The writer, an astrophysicist, makes the claim that the soul is no metaphysically different than sensory experience. Tsk tsk, typical astrophysicists. Anyway, while the guy's obviously Roman Catholic philosophy is mostly bunk and basically one "Did Jesus really do all that?" away from monist pantheism, I relate to his general line of metaphysical thinking. Being all composed of star dust will make you start huffing that demonic Kool-Aid pretty quickly, though. There really is no explanatory gap between thought and experience, and that's because all of our thoughts are just lesser spirits possessing us anyway. Don't give into them if you can.
Going back to Jaco, this set at Montreal was a total banger. Randy Brecker, Mintzer with the fro—just insanely amazing how hot this set was, man. Listen, I don't care if my wife is about to give birth to my first born son; if you get the call to go to Montreal, you drop everything.
Check out IDA Radio: like NTS, but Finnish.
Interesting article from WIP on the irony of "artificial" stuff being bad. From SF weirdos making sushi out of stem cells to naysayers of 19th century "artificial" ice, we seem to forget how much of what we do is a result of our creative impulses and never-ending desires. I've been on a kick lately about how the dichotomy between artificial/natural is bogus anyway, so whatever is cheap and helps me stay fed is a good thing in my book. As humans, we seem to think we're oh so powerful that we'll snap the world in half one day. This little place of ours will be here long before us, and long after us. We ain't shit, man, so let's go eat some fake sashimi while we still can.
Article about NYT using LLMs to track and analyze manosphere podcasts and generate comprehensive metasummaries. With the sheer volume of media out there, using LLMs to parse through it is a rather sound idea for journalists, and I respect the hustle. Friends I know use their mainstream LLM accounts to do this and make "personalized podcasts" for themselves, which to me is cool in theory, but in practice I might get kind of tired of it. That's not even because of potential misinformation via model hallucination; I just like to know the hand that feeds me, I guess. Taste and curation has always been an important thing in determining one's outlook and decisions, so finding ways to make that better for one's self is crucial. But honestly, I've never been a guy who cares too much for staying in the loop. I can be a Certified Digger for things that I find personally interesting, usually music and good fiction books; however, I've never been a big fan of super intensive "research" because knowledge is always such a fickle thing. To me, it's less about gathering and synthesizing data, and it's all just a grand chase of novelty. Novelty is good in certain doses, but there's so much power in the mundane.
You guys know about burger music? I'll spoil it for you: it's just music being played in Current Year that's derivative of Playboi Carti. But it seems that the real diggers are gonna start co-opting burger as the new "whack" or "uncool" or "mid," so I'll keep y'all tapped in. You're welcome.
An old viral hit for you: DubFX feat Mr. Woodnote—Flow. This track inspired the shit out of me back in high school, but then I saw how much the gear cost and thought "eh, I'll try something else." Sometimes I think I was meant to be a songbird; ah well.
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