Best day: -Browsing for hours to find the album worth spending my meager babysitting fund. -The clerk who got me to buy a Firesign Theater album by acting out his fav bits. -Sliding my fingernail along the plastic wrapper to take out the record. -Reading the cover while listening to the music.

"Happy Chrimble and a Very New Year!" @firesigntheatre.bsky.social

Was reminded the other day that the barely-recognizable processed voices for the pilot and the bombardier in this game were Phil Austin and Phil Proctor of the Firesign Theatre. www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM1E...

After much research and development I have made an offline version of ChatGPT. Now you can save water and electricity while navel-gazing, and carry one of the world's most powerfully annoying AI chatbots in your pocket.

Found this very late in the game -> an early and great stab at describing @firesigntheatre.bsky.social via the Situationists. Fun to read and not pedantic; fans who listened to the records, read some theory and did their own thing.

Thanks, @bartona104.bsky.social for inviting me onto her great Continuous Wave newsletter. This week's installment features an excerpt from the radio/How Can You Be in Two Places at Once chapter of Firesign (with color photos). @firesigntheatre.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social

includes discussion of Sonic Youth's Martin Mull cover:

Yes, ripped from the maw of the historical void—or more specifically from an open reel tape marked simply "Claypool"!We've uploaded WAV and MP3 files to the Internet Archive where they'll be saved for posterity and free to all comers. Now FINALLY this great art by @mahendra.bsky.social can pay off

Beginning of my reckoning with Cheech and Chong (but not only them). C&C's records always sounded great, and there was a reason for that. @firesigntheatre.bsky.social @sidfudd.bsky.social

One from the vaults: Lost NBC Pilot "WAP! V.1.0" (2000), featuring Scott Adsit, @blainecapatch.bsky.social, @gregproops.bsky.social, @philproctor.bsky.social and @mariabamford.bsky.social youtu.be/9sDz3AT0mtY

Final ep of an 8-part series on radio sources for the Firesign Theatre's *How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All.*. This last installment felt eerily up-to-the minute. @firesigntheatre.bsky.social [Links to all 8 episodes at the bottom of the post]

I mentioned a while ago that I was obsessed with the Firesign Theatre's comedy LPs as a teen. I just got a copy of Jeremy Braddock's Firesign, which deconstructs the technical and cultural composition of these albums. Talk about a treasure trove!

"Eggs to Market: The Story of Automated Egg Processing" (1964, Film Associates of California), featuring uncredited narration by our own David Ossman (who says "I think I did a half dozen voiceovers for these guys"): www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzRH...

part two of my trip into Ginsberg, audiotape, war, rock, &c.

The @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social had a long piece about Jeremy Braddock's book about the @firesigntheatre.bsky.social. Now available through @ucpress.bsky.social. Link in replies. We also released Firesign's double #LP for Dope Humor of the Seventies (scroll for image), available on our site now.

I wrote about the audiotape Allen Ginsberg used to compose his great Vietnam-War-and-media poem "Wichita Vortex Sutra" @firesigntheatre.bsky.social

MEDIA OBJECTS episode 6 // Artificial Intelligence, as reality // with Steve Jackson, Mendi and Keith Obadike, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, and The World According to Sound @mendiandkeith.bsky.social

MEDIA OBJECTS episode 5 // Artificial Intelligence, as metaphor // with Gili Vidan, Chris Csikszentmihalyi, and The World According to Sound

MEDIA OBJECTS episode 4 // Typewriters // with Philly Typewriter and The World According to Sound

MEDIA OBJECTS episode 3 // Buttons // with Rachel Plotnick, Roger Moseley, and The World According to Sound @rachelplotnick.bsky.social

MEDIA OBJECTS episode 2 // Containers // with Brooke Erin Duffy, Jeremy Packer, and The World According to Sound / @brookeerinduffy.bsky.social

MEDIA OBJECTS episode 1 // Extensions // with Andrew Campana, Anna Shechtman, Erik Born, and The World According to Sound soundcloud.com/worldaccordi...

The Library of Congress is a research library. The Congressional Research Service researches for Congress. Scholars & researchers apply for passes to research. NO children’s section. Even the general public has very limited access.

THE POPE'S MOM WAS A LIBRARIAN

📺 Just released by the BBC: a powerful video on the mission of the Internet Archive & the Wayback Machine. “A time machine for the web,” preserving everything from lost government websites to books & records—before they vanish. 🔗 Explore: web.archive.org 🎥 Watch ⬇️ youtu.be/jh98N46DM5k

I had a blast talking with @leev.bsky.social on his great STS Peoples & Things podcast. Topics discussed: Firesign Theatre, the history of recording, Trevor Pinch, obscure robot statues. @ucpress.bsky.social @firesigntheatre.bsky.social newbooksnetwork.com/firesign

An insightful article in #LARB by Colin Marshall brings back memories of 1960s-1970s Firesign Theater like "the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist." Contextualizes them, uncovers layers I had no idea were there. lareviewofbooks.org/article/ther...

I'm reading Daniel Weizmann's neo-noir debut and a book about the media collective/comedy group the Firesign Theatre

Like so many others, I am so sad to learn of the death of Jonathan Sterne yesterday. A decade ago, he came to Cornell and asked why the humanists, STS people, Information Science, and Communication faculty weren't collaborating (look at the people you have!).

Yes

I'm part of the NYC Public Library Action Network; our research team is hoping to identify other cities, towns, county systems, etc, that have successfully secured a ⭐ fixed percentage of their municipal budget for libraries ⭐ (we're trying to convince mayoral candidates to commit 0.5% every yr!)

My book Emerson's Daughters is coming out in July. Use code UMASS20 for 20% when ordering directly from @umasspress.bsky.social www.umasspress.com/978162534876...

Portland's KBOO-FM had me and the great David Ossman talking on the air about the Firesign Theatre, media archaeology, and everything else last week. Here's the extended cut. @ucpress.bsky.social @firesigntheatre.bsky.social @kenjones.bsky.social

We talk #FiresignTheatre on JONESY today with Firesign David Ossman and @jbraddock.bsky.social, author of FIRESIGN: THE ELECTROMAGNETIC HISTORY OF EVERYTHING AS TOLD ON NINE COMEDY ALBUMS (U of Calif Press). Tune to KBOO Radio at 10am PT, live on kboo.fm or on-demand after bit.ly/41egFWx

I'll be on Portland's KBOO-FM with the Firesign Theatre's David Ossman (!!) today at 1:00PM EST. (I'll post a link to the archived conversation for those who miss it.) @firesigntheatre.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social kboo.org

"Within the National Archives, officials are bracing for this wider purge to touch on them, and are taking a Trump-vengeance bloodletting as a given... Archives staff are 'talking in terms of inevitability,' says one person familiar with the situation, noting that 'it’s been grim.'"

David Suisman and I will be at People's Book in Tacoma Park to talk about our books, Instrument of War and Firesign, this Friday Feb 7 at 7:00. DC people, I'm sure you need a break - come hang with us! @dsuisman.bsky.social @peoplesbooktakoma.com @ucpress.bsky.social @firesigntheatre.bsky.social

While the future of libraries is currently unknown, make sure you have as many library cards as possible and use them regularly. Libraries need active patrons. Books that get checked out are more likely to stay in the library system. Purchase requests also play a role in what books are available.

I wrote about the greatest work of Firesign Theatre fan art and how it led, via the Situationist International, to the Church of the SubGenius. @subgenius.bsky.social @firesigntheatre.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social

"Space Delinquent" (1957) -- A teenage Martian tries to sell some hot marijuana to a federal agent when there is a strange noise from space. Helen Whipple, Maurice Bumstead. [From Jeremy Braddock's new book "Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums"]

Firesign Theatre: The Greatest Satirists of 20th Century Media Culture and Its Techno-Romanticism.

My parents had copies of the first couple of Firesign albums on reel-to-reel. They formed a big part of my childhood. I can still quote from a lot of them. This book is good, a lot of background that helps explain the context of all those hours of weirdness that permeated my brainmeats.

For years, the public has called them "fake artists." But internally at Spotify, the program has a name: Perfect Fit Content. My investigation, and the first look into my book Mood Machine, is the January cover at @harpers.bsky.social. Online now & on newsstands next week harpers.org/archive/2025...

This book is all kinds of great!

Firesign Theatre: The Greatest Satirist of 20th Century Media Culture and its Techno-romanticism were… Not Insane! An Interview with Jeremy Bradock magazine.mindplex.ai/firesign-the... Absolutely SHARE with any Firesign nuts (Stans, Fans... whatever

In this week's post I talk a bit about the Firesign Theatre's amazing archive (now at LoC) and share a short recording of David Ossman reading through a script draft from 1970. @firesigntheatre.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social

Have any of you seen reliable estimates of how much electricity a ChatGPT query uses? This website is giving me 2.9 Watt Hours per query as an estimate. balkangreenenergynews.com/chatgpt-cons.... I've seen estimates on Reddit from 1 to 10 Watt Hours.

The Onion should buy Elsevier next

Wow, just signing in here and seeing a mass exodus. Good. Will post more later. For now, here's a link to my new book on the Firesign Theatre. www.ucpress.edu/books/firesi...