Category: Culture
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My Wish for Pride this Year is Solidarity with Immigrants
In this Pride blog, I’m speaking primarily to a queer audience, an audience that is, unfortunately, as is normative, mostly white, calling us in to greater solidarity and away from white supremacy. My wish for Pride is: I wish every white, US trans person who was crying “trans genocide” several months ago were just as…
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Spotify is a Digital Landlord
Spotify, Apple Music, etc. are rent-seekers. A rent-seeker capitalizes on something freely available, that could have been freely given, and charges a premium for it. Spotify et al are digital music landlords over their vassals, big record companies, and the rest of us serfs, in this new age under an emergent system of oppression which…
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A Dubious Account of the Invention of Poetry
It probably started with some weirdo writing down their thoughts, not using punctuation, but instead organizing thoughts line by line, slightly out of order, indenting some lines, but not others. Oh, and not indenting new paragraphs, because that would make those other indents look rather confusing, but instead showing new groups of new thoughts by…
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AI Music Cannot Replace the Joy of Making Music
Mikey Shulman, CEO of AI music generation startup Suno, actually thinks people don’t enjoy making music anymore. “It’s not really enjoyable to make music now,” according to him. “It takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of practice, you need to get really good at an instrument or really good at a piece…
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The Best YouTube Comment I’ve Ever Seen
This comment may be the funniest “found humor” I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure I have ever felt so much desperation as one Anthony Rotella. User anthonyrotella8791 on YouTube writes, regarding a chiptune remix, “Beautiful…please add another like…it is at 666 likes.” Beneath the comment is the downward-pointing arrow and the text “1 reply,” beckoning…