Birmingham’s Finest. Tony Bontana.

Still the best Blueskeet of the century so far .

everyone should start a band. no one should start a generative a.i. music company

“A substantial rise in supply could probably only unwind a small fraction of the huge rise in house prices … This suggests that politicians’ primary focus on supply may be fundamentally misdirected.” Is the argument high house prices are solely due to supply finally falling apart?

If you want to make housing more affordable, implement, a Singapore style stamp tax Foreigners pay 60% Corporations pay 65% Citizens pay 0% for first home 20% for 2nd homes and 30% for 3rd homes Ban politicians from being domestic real estate speculators or landlord’s conflict of interest

An @abeba.bsky.social tweet turned into a protest banner artwork at BCU MA graduate show. Brilliant!

This is true, even when considered in purely ‘Western’ terms. Zoom out to thinking more broadly/globally and it becomes more intensely true. We should be cultivating diversity and plurality of practice.

One of the great embarrassments of music academia, to me, is that we are constantly producing musicians who think that their knowledge of classical music supersedes the knowledge of practicing musicians from completely different genres or traditions.

A Borges story about a guy who gets AI to summarize all the world’s information for him, and then summarize the summary, until the AI has the whole world summarized into a single word. He sits alone at his desk, staring at the word, repeating it endlessly, certain he is experiencing everything

Hey, remember when the Panama Papers were released and they showed how basically every wealthy person on the planet was avoiding taxes by offshoring their money and nothing was done about it except the reporter who broke the story was murdered with a car bomb?

Almost can’t believe this happened… At a (quasi) academic conference?!?. Solidarity with @abeba.bsky.social

@zohrankmamdani.bsky.social’s Zionist accusers can’t even describe how it is that he’s supposed to threaten Jews. That’s because they can’t, since he doesn’t. They also can’t accept that in our socialist, anti-Zionist politics, there is real Jewish community. New from me in @zeteo.com:

The Bleeding Commons www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

I gotta say I find a lot of AI discourse around higher ed very confusing. "if ChatGPT can write your essays is college even worth it?" did people think math teachers were assigning problem sets because *they* couldn't figure out the answers?

you know when I knew the US was in deeper 💩? that debate moment when Biden and Trump started arguing about golf scores.

There is no plan. There is no 3D chess. The president has a toddler’s understanding of the economy and will continue to just do things (and then undo them, and then do them again).

IQ is like dick. those possessing very little obsess with it

At Google, I asked why they were fixated on building THE LARGEST model. Why are you going for size? What function are you trying to achieve? Why is the thing you were upset about that you didn't have THE LARGEST model? They responded by firing me 🤷🏼

The impossibility of automating ambiguity (Birhane 2021)

These people are your enemies

Great piece from C Thi Nguyen on ‘The Limits of Data’ and quantification of every aspect of life. issues.org/limits-of-da...

Opening paragraph…. daft

Embarrassing on all levels. However, does reveal: a) They think (and will legislate) largely in sporting terms, and b) Consider nations simply as individuals in competition with one another for ‘spoils’ Daft.

In my world of music, the term DIY has been taken too literally, because it’s always been Do It Together. Grassroots creative collectivism has been replaced by antisocial rugged individualism and the result is just plainly going to be worse music.

Exactly this. When you think of ‘AI’ deployment in terms of advertising logics, the whole endeavour takes on a new hue… in terms of both the aesthetics of generated text and images, as well as the business practices that underpin them.

The old money at least was honest with themselves and thus became an aristocratic patron class, largely because they also received an education in humanities as was standard in the prep to Ivy pipeline. The new money focus on STEM alone denies them this lonely self awareness until it’s too late.

@carlabusuttil.bsky.social This checks out.

The AI Con..

X,Marx,Despots: The evolving intersection of ideology, power and hyperonline trauma. This is the paper somebody should write.

Happy finals season to all who celebrate

Excited for this… Liz’s talk at CTM 2019 was a real lifting of the veil on Spotify moment for me. Excellent.

Friends, this week marks a monumental step forward in my path towards pushing for a greater ecology of accountability in the age of AI. Thrilled to officially announce the AI Accountability Lab (AIAL) @theaial.bsky.social at Trinity College Dublin is launching today, Thursday Nov 28, 2024 aial.ie

Superb takedown of prepping and apocalypse bunkers as hyper-individualist ego fantasies. By Cory Doctorow @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy pluralistic.net/2024/11/24/m...

@carlabusuttil.bsky.social In defence of wrong art

large institutions/orgs are integrating AI into critical infrastructures, and most importantly, the public has been sold utopia based on lies and any realty check that points out the failures/harms from AI is framed as pessimism, making pushbacks difficult

Snow!

Superb piece today on artists’ rights without power from Cory Doctorow pluralistic.net/2024/11/18/r... Especially this analogy from Chokepoint Capitalism: ‘giving more rights to a creative worker who has no bargaining power is like giving your bullied schoolkid more lunch money…’

What a Record

Anticyclonic Gloom in Birmingham,Uk

I genuinely can't fathom this level of hate

if i've learned one thing from doing union stuff while also doing other forms of organizing, it's that you're better off with people you disagree with who are nevertheless trying to do the same thing as you than with people you agree with who aren't trying to do anything

Something nice for debut Bluesky post... My article on cultural flatness, Artificial Intelligence, and emerging spikelets of aural resistance. Published in Alluvium, as well as FORM Journal in South Africa. alluvium.bacls.org/2021/06/04/a...