Current* conditions near St. Helena Island, MI:

News — University of Central Florida (UCF) abruptly shut down two of its three libraries today, plus an important resource desk within the main library. Staff were given no warning. UCF is the 2nd largest public university in the country w/ ~70k students. Library hours page confirming closures:

it's always a good day to say "fuck Stephen Miller"

Someone please invite me for a book talk where we chat about AI Hype between powerlifting sets

#beansky I was very impressed by the black beans in the Detroit Street Filling Station's southwest salad, which I had for dinner tonight (DSFS is an excellent vegan restaurant in the next town over, one of the best restaurants Ann Arbor has to offer)

By contrast, Rachel Dawson was fired after a shoddy, inconclusive investigation for allegedly saying things I am certain she did not say. “Accountability" means resigning. www.chronicle.com/article/anat...

You've meshed your last uggah

I'm just starting "Planetfall" by Emma Newman and I'm hopeful I'll like it so I can follow the trilogy; to me, the hardest part of this yearly reading season is finding books I'm in the backyard at York and I think the mayor of Ann Arbor who preceded Christopher Taylor is also here

Summer term starts next Wednesday, over read four novels since Winter term ended, which isn't bad considering a handful false starts and abandonments I think I'm slightly ahead of pace from last year, but the real business happens when teaching starts

1. no 2. fuck you and the horse you rode in on

Yeah, I don’t want to be uncharitable, but every “was visibility a mistake?” debate boils down to “should these people be allowed to exist in public?” to me.

Was just remarking to a colleague about how great Charles Mills was on a human level, just a really lovely person with a fantastic sense of humor, in addition to being a towering intellectual figure. I am so grateful for the support he extended to me early in my career. A legend, he was.

Current* conditions near Frankfort, MI:

I think I need new basketball shoes, I've been wearing Sabrina 1s I got on sale a couple years ago but I think I need more ankle support Do I have any hooper to friends on here who can make a recommendation along these lines?

Erik Satie didn't lose the manuscript to his in-progress ballet "Jack-in-the-box" when it slipped behind his piano only for his brother and Darius Milhaud to find it decades later as they went through his apartment following his death for you to tell me AI is "inevitable"

Our cover story explores how Black artists are reclaiming the gaze and asserting agency over identity and representation. #BlackArt #PrideMonth

Kendra Preston Leonard is a scholar and librettist whose work is just cool. Here's a scene from her collaboration with composer Angela Elizabeth Slater, a two-act opera about The Jane Collective, an underground feminist network in Chicago that provided abortion access before Roe v. Wade #RadioSky

Maddalena Casulana didn't go through the trouble of rebuffing the misogyny of her sixteenth century Italian art world by publishing a book of madrigals (the first known European woman of the era to do so) so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable" youtu.be/F6CvMbGP3v8?...

Big is back. Because bigger is better.

@saratea.bsky.social and I went to their Ann Arbor show a few months ago (at The Ark, no less!), a really lovely performance that featured our friend Fred Thomas as opener

Irina Ratushinskaya didn’t scratch her poems into a bar of soap with a matchstick, memorize them and wash away her forbidden work as a political prisoner in a Soviet labor camp for you to tell me AI is "inevitable"

Current* conditions near Houghton, MI:

Lynda Barry did not squeeze your heart and simultaneously explain the point of all art with the barest of line drawings so you could tell me that AI is "inevitable."

On her album 'System', Izzy Hagerup, aka Prewn, builds maximalist songs alone in her home studio, using 'self-indulgent' cello and multitracked vocals to convey the gravity of being trapped inside something much bigger than herself. Prewn Weathers a World Riddled with Systems:

Why don't we just send them some dinner rolls baked by Michigan voters? That might distract them for a while

Dear internet, I will be on the radio & streaming this Friday at 11am PT / 12pm MT / 2pm ET! As part of my residency with @mediaarchaeology.bsky.social I'll be taking over KVCU 1190 for an hour, playing the weirdest & wonderfulest computer music I can find from the 80s and 90s! 1190.radio

can’t believe a narcissist is being so publicly humiliated by a reflecting pool

My @ranchogordo.bsky.social Bean Club shipment for this quarter finally arrived thanks to RG's skilled customer service staff (apparently the first package was lost in transit)! I'm very excited for this batch of excellent legumes, especially the new offering from the Rancho Gordo-Xoxoc Project

I just learned Tarris Reed, another former student of mine (before he transferred to UConn), was drafted last night by the Spurs! It's new for me to have *two* former students picked in the same pro league draft

I think the Lizzo song "Juice" rips off this delightful Diddy by Gilberto Gil: youtu.be/ou78Tuy_MNM?...

Can anyone recommend scholarship or research-driven journalism about Dolly Parton's relationship to Black music?

This song is in my head for no reason youtu.be/uWWwKDttHnM?...

I've never felt the historic Ypsilanti water tower is ominous

Now listening to Richard Strauss' "Metamorphosen", which I remember listening to when I would go on runs in Boone, NC the year I worked at Appalachian State far away from my wife and community in Michigan I think I was depressed...but I still love this piece of music!

Haden Plouffe is a brilliant composer and you should commission her to write for your ensemble and/or video game

I'm gonna follow this with Metamorphosen and then go to the gym, what a day

Current* conditions near Eagle Harbor, MI:

I'm in the market for a second reverb (ideally reverb/delay) pedal because I want to use every plug on my power strips I have perfectly fine Sonicake Levitate, but I want something a little more powerful/dynamic what do people like? bear in mind this is mostly for synths, not necessarily guitar

I'm listening to Richard Strauss' "Eine Alpensinfonie" and there is nothing you can saw that will stop me from having a great time

this is a great illustration of one of the fundamental insights of democracy — that there is no such thing as "the people" and that majorities are elusive and ever shifting. no election, no decision, is final and treating an election as a final decision is profoundly undemocratic.

I'm back with an unexpected (by me) Day 2 of what I'm tentatively calling RadioSky. I'll be re-posting independent music made by BlueSky users all day. If you'd like me to share your music (or something your loved ones made), please feel free to drop a comment or seven in the thread linked below!

Took Gerald to the dentist earlier and he asked that we listen to Dolly Parton's "Light of a Clear Blue Morning" on repeat; I love that he has excellent taste in music and I feel like the orchestral madrigalism with the ascending strings as she sings about the eagle would make Richard Strauss smile

I was so skeptical of cosmic crisp apples when I first learned about them and now I'm hopelessly devoted to the crunch, those apple scientists over in the PNW really outdid themselves with this creation

In my view the left needs to come together before a true proletarian party can emerge and split and carry the revolution forward. You are of course free to disagree with my analysis

something that really sticks with me from Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits" is that the men who participate in and enable the fascist aggression described in the book's final section (which is based on the real Chilean junta) are all sex criminals, abusers, and pedophiles, which seems apt

As tempting as it is to see this as evidence of what will come in November (which is how a lot of the reactionary takes seem to be framing it), I am a little skeptical because my understanding is that the specific constituencies in New York and NYC have been building towards these outcomes for a bit

yes but also biden (and obama) refused to hail the wins

behold the boring, fenceless, tarpless pool

HenselPushers in the house! If you don't know Fanny Hensel (1805-1847), you should—she was a highly prolific composer whose work was unfairly eclipsed by that of her (imo) less talented brother Felix Mendelssohn. HP is an important project for women's and music history. Please show some support!

When we were in South Haven last week, I took a brief sojourn with my boys to Saugatuck (mostly to distract them from a pair of brutal meltdowns) and we saw two cybertrucks there (among other things)