I think one of the problems is that people keep saying conservative when they actually mean racist. No conservative is like, "Oh, I can't listen to Kendrick because I'm actually in favor of a small, limited government that doesn't put money into a social safety net."

Daily Memo: ICE Is Detaining People Who Show The “Know Your Rights” Red Cards

Ok fine. In-N-Out is a better burger than, say, McDonald's, but that says a lot more about McDonald's than it does about In-N-Out.

As one of those people who did, for a long time, manage to hack my neurodiversity into a productivity superpower, I'd also add that while it can be very effective in the short term, it's painfully unsustainable. What looks like a prolific output is often just deferred burnout.

In researching the production of this song, I've found multiple sources confirming a particular technique was used, but they're all like youtube videos and blogs and stuff and none of them cite it to anything so I'm pretty sure this thing happens but I'm not sure how confident I can be AAAAAAAHHHHHH

Social media *is* my job and it's *still* not my responsibility to waste my time and emotional energy on twitter. I can't even begin to fathom why someone who's not even a professional content creator would still bother with that place.

why are you proofreading? just believe in yourself

One of my least favorite genres of music theory video title is "This song that you would assume is bad based on what/where/who it's from is actually really good!" All songs are good. Being surprised is a skill issue.

Stockhausen is just astrology for boys

Dang it, I made a cool connection about the song I'm analyzing, then when I went to look at the wikipedia page for unrelated reasons, I saw it was one of the first things mentioned, so now people will think I'm just reading wikipedia. I promise I'm a qualified professional who noticed on my own!

This is musicology.

Even *I* take my research obligations more seriously than these responders and I'm just out here making fun little youtube videos about beeps n' boops.

This is always true, but especially so for media creators talking about celebrities. You can just look up interviews! It's not hard to find clips of famous people saying their own names!

lol call me crazy, but I think we can emphasize clear communication without demonizing academia. 🤷🏿‍♀️

This is musicology.

Feature-length video essayists are really something else. If I had a word count even vaguely approaching five digits I would simply melt into a fine mist and drift away on the breeze, never to be seen or heard from again.

"This one small action won't fix everything so there's no point in the one small action" is just nihilism disguised as savviness. Why even bother commenting on anything if you don't think small actions can ever be effective?

I've been wanting to make a video about this for, like, 8 years, and I decided it was finally time. Enjoy!

This is the only correct way to respond to these sorts of things.

happy may day! every right you have as a worker was written in blood ❤️

No matter how long I do this job, I hope I never become so jaded as to not revel in the post-upload ritual of closing a bunch of tabs and documents that I don't need anymore.

theory/ethno/musicology

I don't think artists were meant to have this much granular information about how much people do or don't like their work

I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but I'm gonna be speaking at this conference in July, so if any of y'all are gonna be there, lemme know so we can say hi!

The main thing I'm looking for in any movie is for it to be describable as "competent". "Very competent" is even better, so I am excited for this technology.

Video essayists, I know that smooth segues make ad reads more effective, but I promise it's ok to let your video have a conclusion.

Let me be clear: I do not want free patreon memberships, discovery feeds, or "quips." Patreon should be a payment processor with viewable links.

Youtube just recommended me a video called "I Solved Connect 4", and like... Connect 4 has been mathematically solved since the '80s. What are we doing here?

Relatedly, if you do any audio editing for videos or podcasts, watch reality competition shows and listen for the splice cuts and ADR. They're *brutal*, and a great reminder that most people don't notice or care.

Oh sick, I'm on that list. Glad to be in such good company.

In my music theory classes, I try hard to reinforce the fact that tonic chords are good and dominant chords are bad. Of course, we spend most of our class time debating this using students' lived experience with these chords. But at final paper time they can get at most a C if they disagree with me

Just a reminder to all grad students that we definitely DO NOT keep a "Grad Student Power Ranking" in the faculty lounge where we update your ranking weekly based on performance (along with little arrows indicating your movement relative to last week). Just something faculty, again, do not do

...Cool.

Takes like this frustrate me because the reason bots pick up this sort of language is because they're trying to copy good writers, and good writers use it! Juxtaposition, negation, and amplification are very powerful rhetorical devices, and ceding them to bad actors is pointlessly self-destructive.

The obvious answer is some combination of pomodoro and telling yourself it's a draft that you'll delete later, but also, honestly? Go for a walk, or do something else that takes time but doesn't take focus. Give your brain some dead air so it can put the pieces together while you're not looking.

Nothing more relatable than a youtuber complaining that no one watched their video while showing a screenshot of it having gotten like half a million views.

You should really only be listening to whole tone music. It’s got the whole tones in it. A lot of these artists, they use semitones, which is just half of the tone and trust me, it’s not the part that’s good for you. It’s basically junk.

Any random set of words in Rob Zombie's "Well, Everybody's F*ckin' in a UFO".

Obvious choice but it's gotta be Rob Zombie, right?

Was getting all ready to brag that I was finally managing to publish a Ghost Notes episode on time for once, and then realized I never uploaded last month's at all so once again I have been struck down by my own hubris.

Orbán's electoral crushing is a far greater achievement than most people outside Hungary realise. He systemically consolidated power for 16 years, fixed the electoral map, abused govt power for political purposes & censored media. The hurdles that Hungarians overcame for this moment were immense.

AI ethics aside, specific vocational skills are not the place of core curriculums in either k-12 or college; just practically they develop way too fast to be embedded in curriculum, and morally, the cost of hyper-specific vocational skills ought to be born by industry, not the public.

Decided to take this script in a different direction so I have now made *negative* progress this week. It's gonna be a banger but I have no idea when this video's coming out.

This is musicology.

You know that feeling when you're about to finish writing an essay and you suddenly realize you have no idea what your conclusion is? It sucks.

it's weird to be numb and incandescently angry at the same time

Hey if you're a young adult in the US pay very close attention to the moment because in shockingly few years the popular account of who did or said or supported what right now will be at times unrecognizable. Don't let that break your brain or just you, as a person.

i think if you tweet "a whole civilization will die tonight" you shouldn't go to the hague, the hague should get to come to you

One of my favorite things about the small amount of academic writing I've done is getting a chance to work with an editor. I like to think I'm a pretty good writer, but these people rip my work to shreds and it always winds up better.