Personally I like technology but I understand it as something that 1) Reliably 2) Does something useful. That doesn't seem to be true for these chatbots outside of some limited applications but we're supposed to act like it is and saying otherwise is Luddism

Gavin Newsom & the New York Times are doggedly working to strip rights and human recognition from transfolk, while insisting anyone who *doesn't* share their obsession is obsessed with "pronouns". Trust no one who claims to oppose Trump while taking delight in bullying the same people Trump bullies.

I just learned that there’s a type of building called a “famine folly,” and it makes me sad that somewhere out there, there’s a goth band looking for a name that doesn’t know that. youtu.be/s7FDWao4t88?...

wanna know who made the deal that we could have a website not owned by Elon but we would be doomed to repeat the same four discourses until we bring the social media gods enough offerings of touched grass

Everyone's clowning on Sam here but this logic actually makes perfect sense if you believe the sole purpose of a human life is to answer inane questions from strangers.

Where's SMT happening this year? Debating if I want to go just to hang out.

me: i like this thing. the internet: that thing sucks. you are stupid for liking it. i like this totally unrelated thing. this is rude behavior. it is antisocial and weird. why are people like this. if you wouldn't do it irl it is rude to do it on the internet.

"Replace one word of this title with [thing]" is the Cards Against Humanity of posting. (extreme pejorative)

The fascist wants you to feel “how can it be possible for such a clown to have the powers of a monster-god” and it is your duty, privilege, and joy to instead feel “this fuckin’ clown thinks he’s a monster-god.”

Far too many interviews with artists about how they wrote their songs are just about how they wrote the lyrics. I want to know why you chose that rhythm, that chord, that timbre! At least talk to me about lyrical *structure*.

My morbid curiosity got the best of me. To save you all from the same fate, the prompts are all basically "Ask ChatGPT how to build a business". The first one is literally asking it what your side hustle should be.

You're all laughing, but I, Mr. Monopoly, truly believe this.

Emo Con Schedule is live today!!! With links to sign up for virtual presentation! www.emocon2026.com

Even if you fully intend to vote for whoever the Democratic nominee ends up being, there’s a huge difference between doing that quietly in November 2028 and loudly announcing it years in advance with zero conditions attached.

Finished the script for one of these! Now I just have to figure out how to conclude the other and I'll have a good two weeks to practice presenting them. Looking forward to this.

I keep seeing people use the "It's not _____, it's ____" construction as a red flag for AI writing, and folks? We don't have to concede the concept of juxtapositions to the machines. It's a very useful rhetorical device, stop being weird about it.

make bad art it's where you start and sometimes where you end do some shit and publish it or show it to a friend make bad stuff! it's good enough and never ever stop if someone tries to criticize say "what are you, a cop?"

DAILY MEMO: Border Patrol Has Left Los Angeles, ICE Carries On Taking Around 25 People This Week @eltragon.bsky.social

I'm looking to interview some non-American musicians or bands who've decided not to tour in the U.S. this year because of ICE. Please hit my DMs if you are willing to chat about this decision.

This one was fun, I got to work with @vcmusictheory.bsky.social on some of the stuff he's been researching and revisit a style of music I haven't really thought about since I was a teenager. Huge thanks to Varun, and check out www.emocon2026.com if you like this sort of thing!

My timelines usually look pretty clean but that's 'cause most of my shenanigans involve rate stretching which doesn't show up on this view.

It's a bunch of if statements and matrix multiplications. Glad I could help.

It's been 20 years of avocado toast. I'm so tired.

I will not support any funding deal that puts money in the hands of Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and this violent agency. Defund and abolish ICE now.

I'm sure I have some followers who'd be interested in helping with this:

Apparently we're posting bangers that aren't in english, anyway here's Babymetal's collab with Joakim Broden of Sabaton:

You know you're on the right side of history when you're putting "love" in scare quotes.

This is a particularly apt metaphor because as you expose yourself to more metal vocals, you learn how to understand what they're saying, a thing you can also do with *checks notes* Spanish.

It's so funny to see so many people pretend that they only enjoy music when they have a deep understanding of the lyrics

Art is, famously, a race.

"I need AI to make art, human art is only for the rich and privileged-"

I live in Los Angeles and I promise you, it could work here.

Reminds me of the dynamic where R's say all their nonsense about the radical Marxist indoctrination in universities and then Dems very nervously say "um we believe that higher education plays an important role in training our nation's future workforce, btw we can no longer afford the English dept"

Tech policy is complicated and I'm no expert, so I'm very open to being wrong about this, but at a glance this seems really good?

By the way, if anyone happens to be in the Vancouver area, I'm gonna be doing a pair of lectures at UBC Vancouver on March 5th and 6th! I believe they're both open to the public, so feel free to stop by.

This is musicology.

I taught a class on “hope” last year and the few theorists who’ve written on it all point out that hope is the harder choice - that despair is easy and too often fashionable

Extremely cool news.

Off the top of my head, probably this one:

Remember all the shitty people online who are making our world shitty are able to do this because of deliberate business decisions by tech companies and advertisers. The world has always had dickheads, but the current late stage capitalist model of social media has empowered them

I love a good graph.

I got this email and I legitimately can't tell what it's trying to sell me on. Like, is there a platform for these auctions? How do you auction a course? I don't read my comments very often, are people bidding in them? What's a "Loom"? And how does any of this add up to 6 figures?

As an autistic person, it's always personally offensive to me when people use neurodiversity (and specifically executive function) as a counterargument to pro-labor/social justice policies, but this one in the screenshot feels particularly insulting.

I've almost doubled the number of entries in the music notation timeline this year alone--and it's hard to believe that in a year this resource will have been online for a decade! silpayamanant.wordpress.com/timeline-of-...

Any song can be a protest song, as long as it does the actual political work of bringing people together in a shared commitment. You can make the Vengabus song a protest song if you want. Lyrics and vibe don't matter, it's the way the song/musical experience grounds solidarity that matters.

I'm sorry, the Melania movie did what now?

Federal judge has ordered the release of Liam Ramos (the bunny hat boy) and his father. A brief and rather remarkable order. Clearly written to be shared widely, so please do. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Hey just a philosopher noting that the original academic meaning of “performative” is that words aren’t just symbols but DO things in the world.

To be clear, we're in such bad shape because the U.S. regime has been a detention regime for a very long time. Now the long-term crisis is getting exponentially worse, with funding already allocated to do incalculable harm. But not all the necessary materials are at hand yet, and we can still act.

One small thing I try to do to combat this in my own social media usage is if I see someone post a video of someone saying something with a description of what they said, I watch the video to see if that description is accurate.