Preemptive counter-strawman: No, I’m not saying everything in academia is perfect. Yes, I agree some things need improvement. But higher education is currently under assault by the US federal govt, and the main reason is not the public demanding it based on informed, organic opinions. Come on.

dude if even this guy knows it’s bad, it’s bad bad

Probably more helpful to think of them not so much as “Canadian wildfires” but rather “climate change wildfires currently consuming Canada”

“American lungs are paying the price for Canadian inaction, year after year,” - letter from 4 Republican members of the US House of Representatives, from a party that loves to deny that climate change exists, and does the bidding of oil companies and tech companies demanding data centres.

Since people enjoyed my podcast episode about quintuple meter so much, I did a followup about septuple meter ethanhein.substack.com/p/seven-myst...

the sky above the port was the color of a television tuned to the present terrifying moment.

I get automatic NYC text alerts on my phone, and even though I'm not there this month, most of my friends and family are. So when I get two texts back to back about the risk of flooding from thunderstorms and the unhealthy air quality from wildfires, that is a lot of emotions.

Septuple meter podcast episode is mostly done. Features Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Dave Brubeck, the Beatles, the Grateful Dead, Cordelia’s Dad, Venetian Snares, Eleni Prodana, Gothart, Şevval Sam feat. Onay Şahin, Vojko V, and Angine de Poitrine, often overlaid on each other

This remains the funniest half second of television ever

White supremacy explains a lot of apparent contradictions. Your colleagues are mad that Black folks are still voting.

OSSOFF: “Isn’t it humiliating to be unable to answer this questions? To have to indulge the president’s delusions?” To normal people, yes. But these men love being his little pets. If they could purr like a cat on his lap, they would.

I did a tonne of research so you don't have to. I talk about masking, air filtration, and air quality rating systems, & I give concrete suggestions to help you keep yourself and your loved ones safe. If you don't have this information yet, it's time to get educated. Wildfires don't respect borders.

This might be the coolest summer for the rest of our lives.

The Las Vegas skyline from Blade Runner 2049 vs the Toronto skyline from right now.

According to Wikipedia, the number seven is a lucky prime, a happy prime, a safe prime, and a sexy prime, and I am not making of any of those up en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7

Podcast episode about quintuple meter was such a hit that now I'm going to do one about septuple meter. Come for Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel, stay for Angine de Poitrine, plus mashups of all of the above

Heck yeah it is

I Shazamed this out in the world and have zero context for it but I like it www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBmw...

I love how consistently I'll have a full-random music situation going, hear something awesome but strange as hell, check to see what it is, and find that it's once again it's Herbie Hancock

Something I enjoy about the Dave Brubeck Quartet is that it's impossible to tell from looking at them who is the devoutly Catholic straight-laced family man and who is the alcoholic drug addict (it's Brubeck and Paul Desmond respectively)

There is a vast and untapped imaginative world out there, with more stories to tell to get the next generation interested in art, fiction, and adventure. It is tragic that the biggest kingmaker in children's entertainment is helmed by some of the most anti-art humans alive.

I am extremely happy to see this. Children of the 2020s deserve original, beautiful musicals, and Disney needs to push its endless resources towards brilliant writers, composers, lyricists, and actors--people with vision--instead of cynically playing IP slot machines every summer.

Podcast episode is going up tomorrow about Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, Jaco Pastorius, Brad Mehldau, the Beatles, Nick Drake, Tim Eriksen, Béla Bartók, Gustav Holst, Led Zeppelin, Sungazer, Kendrick Lamar, Noname, the Grateful Dead, Radiohead and Hit Em.

One of the best things we have done on this visit to the in-laws is going to see My Neighbor Totoro on the big screen. That movie is plenty magical on your laptop or whatever but you really want Totoro to be 20 feet tall.

Someone should write a story about a curséd device, lusted after as a transformative source of power, that renders its users unnaturally youthful long beyond their time

With no surviving legitimate heirs, it is logical for the fiefdom of south carolina to pass from Lord Graham to his closest living relative. bsky.app/profile/cnn....

This is so awesome.

Very interested in this new-ish music theory textbook by Dariusz Terefenko and Benjamin Wadsworth because it's trying to solve some problems that I'm interested in solving www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

when i say he had "a life well lived" i don't just mean a lengthy career on stage and screen, nor a healthy relationship with an adoring public. i mean he got to be friends with laura dern

Can we not with the AI slop, even for comedy

Dig deep and find it in you to be as real as Sam Neill was

Best “remove glasses to look at something unbelievable” in cinema history.

I gotta sleep but everyone please take this moment as a prompt to check in with friends and make sure everyone is on the same page with your wishes: Do you want to be woken up when it happens or not?

One of the most intense insights of this trip has been realizing how absolutely cooked the American academy is, and how unaware we are of this condition.

My high schooler and middle schooler got most of their assignments ON PAPER and completed them by hand this year. Their @bostonschools.boston.gov have figured out what many colleges can’t seem to. Deskilling (or robbing students of skills in the first place) with AI is a choice, not fate.

I love "Take Five" played in eight

I'm going to do a podcast episode about songs in 5/4 time and man oh man are there a lot of bad songs in 5/4 time. The band is always like, hey guys let's do a song in 5/4 time, and then you can hear everyone counting furiously and it's incredibly stilted and awkward

New Kelela, sleek dystopian R&B meets trip-hop meets Depeche Mode kelela.bandcamp.com/album/new-av...

children’s publishing needs a drastic scansion intervention

It’s the mighty Mavis Staples’ birthday. Seen here with Pop Staples & The Band performing a joyous version of a classic: youtu.be/Z2eTW8qZBtk

Goals

Here's an elderly Hungarian couple playing a duet on fiddle and... I think it's called gardon? Like a cello except she's drumming on it? I have no context for this but it's extremely cool youtu.be/N5eC5ksZQag?...

One of the sillier ideas I have had recently ethanhein.bandcamp.com/track/eleano...

I had wondered

Maine officials search the rocky beach for a new senate candidate. They find an unconscious man clad in tattered rags washed upon the shore. The sea provides for Maine, it always does

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but please do not ask your students to cold email independent scholars for reading lists in our areas of expertise. You want to use my work? Check the bibliography I didn’t get paid to publish.

The problem with Ambient Music is that for most people, granular samples or synth pads washed in reverb are too far from normal music to sit unobtrusively in the background. In practice something more like Oasis or late period RHCP calls less attention to itself and in that way is much more ambient.

As far as art goes, AI peaked with Deepdream style transfer and dog faces appearing in JPEG compression artifacts

Oy gevalt