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A Perfectly Trippy Ambience
But like a dream, the Mellotron’s time was fleeting. Just as it proliferated in psych-rock, what we know as the modern synthesizer was coming into its own ... As the rest of the world turned to burgeoning digital technology in all other facets of life, the clunky, temperamental Mellotron soon became dated. It popped up every now and then on singles, but the last Mellotrons—due to a copyright dispute, sold under a new name—rolled off the factory floor in 1986. from Tape Heads
Terry Gross is a national treasure
Oh hey, it's Monday morning, time for that most relaxing of musical treats, the NPR Tiny Desk Concert! Today's artist: GWAR.
AI hates women and minorities.
But we knew that. An [Asian-American] MIT student asked AI to make her headshot more ‘professional.’ It gave her lighter skin and blue eyes. “In just a few seconds, [Playground AI] produced an image that was nearly identical to her original selfie—except Wang’s appearance had been changed. It made her complexion appear lighter and her eyes blue, ‘features that made me look Caucasian,’ she said.” (Boston Globe, limited free articles.)
Amazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women. “It penalized resumes that included the word ‘women’s,’ as in ‘women’s chess club captain.’ And it downgraded graduates of two all-women’s colleges, according to people familiar with the matter.” (Reuters)
What does it mean, Country Music, and why does it all sound the same
In the New Yorker:
Country music's Culture Wars and the remaking of Nashville. All about Music Row vs. what they're now labeling Americana, and more. Is Nashville Music Row anything other than "bro country, slick, hollow songs about trucks and beer, sung by interchangeable white hunks"?
(archive link)
(archive link)
Inside Britain’s first heat pump village
Inside Britain’s first heat pump village. How did a rural Cambridgeshire village switch en masse to renewable energy? Thanks to one fateful pizza night, 100 huge boreholes and heroic navigation of the planning system, they have trailblazed their own zero-carbon heat network.
Kevin Mitnick Dies at 59
Obituary
"He grew up brilliant and restless in the San Fernando Valley in California, an only child with a penchant for mischief, a defiant attitude toward authority, and a love for magic. Kevin's intelligence and delight in holding the rapt attention of audiences revealed themselves early in his childhood and continued throughout his life. In time, he transitioned from pranks and learning magic tricks to phone phreaking, social engineering, and computer hacking."
“sonic architecture”
The Unexpected Genius Behind Akira's Legendary Score [SlashFilm]
There's never been anything quite like the soundtrack to the anime classic "Akira." To this day, the pulsating rhythms and otherworldly chants still sound unlike any other music put to film. That uniqueness is due to the unorthodox approach of composer Shoji Yamashiro, whose background in amateur musicianship allowed him to create a score completely outside the realm of professional tradition. "Akira" utilizes a host of sounds that may seem unfamiliar to Western ears. The soundtrack is an eclectic mixture of traditional folk music and digital synthesizer programming, eliciting a raw and primal feeling amidst the futuristic cyberpunk skyline of Neo-Tokyo. Yamashiro incorporated a form of Indonesian music called gamelan jegog, which stems from Bali and is made up of fast, intense rhythms played on bamboo instruments. The composer also drew from the chants of Noh, traditional Japanese theater. Combined with polyrhythmic drum machine beats and synths tuned to gamelan microtonal scales, these styles give a sense of ritualistic tension to the dystopian world of "Akira." [YouTube][Geinoh-Yamashirogumi "Kaneda" from AKIRA]
British Girls' Comics
Girls' Comics of Yesterday
From the 1950s to the turn of the 21st century, generations of British girls enjoyed weekly comics full of text and picture stories, about an astonishing range of topics: ballerinas, aliens, ghosts, Victorian serving-girls, magic mirrors, wicked stepparents, boarding schools, horse riding, sci-fi dystopias, boys, plucky heroines solving mysteries, and really anything you could imagine ... although to be honest, there were a lot of ballerinas.
“We did not, above all else, want to be characterized as a militia.”
Oops. DeSantis' new State Guard, which in an unusual move is under his "direct command, rather than under the state Department of Military Affairs and the National Guard," doesn't pass the smell test by members of other state guards.
Understanding the Business You're In
From Steve Shives, "Why Are Studio Executives Like This?" (SLYT)
SAG/AFTRA contracts expire without a deal, strike expected
The union, which represents professional actors in the USA, will make a formal announcement at noon Pacific time.
With no writers, and no actors, what will the streaming services do for content?
tomorrow is a very busy day of not talking to you also
Types of Monk, In Order of How Often They Want You To Visit by Daniel Lavery [The Stopgap]
Meet the New (Transphobic) Boss. Same as the Old (Homophobic) Boss
Shaun, YouTube lefty and agitator, presents his 2 hour treatise on Kellie-Jay Keen (AKA Posie Parker) a noted anti-feminist and transphobe. CW: transphobia (obviously), misogyny, homophobia, Nazis (both neo and classic), hate speech, etc.
Crows are ungovernable
Science nerds in the Netherlands have observed local corvids building bird nests out of anti-bird spikes [PDF], which creates extremely punk homes for their eggs out of the hostile architectural features that are also quite effective at deterring predators.
The Most Hated Man in Hollywood
The reviews are in on you sir, and they are not good.
On Monday, GQ published a story from freelance film critic Jason Bailey summarizing Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's rapid and shameful ascent from anonymous executive to widely loathed cultural villain. Bailey's key observation is that Zaslav seems neither to care about nor especially like movies, which makes his leadership of such a powerful company a tragic outcome for everyone who does.
Within hours of the article's publication, readers observed that the piece had been heavily edited and its sharpness sanded down. Shortly after the edited version of Bailey's story went live, GQ deleted the entire blog from its website.
That giant owl is dynamite
Goblin Bet, akin to Salty Bet (previously), lets you wager pretend gold pieces on the outcome of monster fights. Fighters use their 5th edition D&D attributes. Stats are displayed on the sides of the screen, and you can click on the little question mark by a fighter's stat block to go to a page with information about them. Look out for random special abilities some fighters have, listed at the bottom of their stat block.
WA's new Indigenous women's ranger team help threatened golden bandicoot
WA's new Indigenous women's ranger team helps threatened golden bandicoot survive. (Text article with photos of cute bandicoots.) After 12 days surveying the bandicoots in remote bushland and a few bee stings, possum bites, and green ant invasions, the rangers returned with impressive results. "We ended up catching 94 individual golden bandicoots over the six nights of live trapping, which is just way above our expectations," AWC's Kimberley regional manager Skye Cameron said. "To see that they're flourishing in this landscape was just really heartwarming."
Social Change and Protests
Social movements ranging from Black Lives Matter to the climate movement are a fixture of political life. But what makes some social movements more successful than others?
Apollo Academic Surveys surveyed 120 academic experts in Sociology, Political Science and other relevant disciplines to investigate this question.
After the cyborg, a bestial revelation
Following the chimera out of the dead soil of the human will be an unnerving experience.
"But that’s precisely how we’ll know we’re on the right path." Leo Kim asks us to think beyond Donna Haraway's cyborg, and towards a speculative monster better suited for our time.
We’ve added a psychic hotline button to your web browser!
The LLMentalist Effect:
How chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con.
somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document
The recent SCOTUS decision 303 CREATIVE LLC ET AL. v. ELENIS ET AL. [PDF link, decision] was decided on the basis that Laurie Smith might be asked to make a gay wedding website. In the original court filings was included a possible inquiry about such a website that included a name and phone number and other identifying information. The New Republic called that phone number, and reports that is false information. Maybe SCOTUS will reexamine it, Salon summarizes thinking about that. NYT's The Daily discusses the case and context for a half hour.
Making Accessibility Part of My Home
The sweet vulnerability of creating an accessible home with the person you love and the tenderness towards yourself it requires
“That’s how I feel about anyone seeing proof of my disabilities before I’ve wrapped my head around the fact of the disabilities: like I’ve reached a fragile peace with it, and any harsh comment, any misguided sentiment, any gawking could wreck my growing understanding and acceptance of how much I’ve changed.” (Happy Disability Pride Month!)
“A visionary novelist and a revolutionary chronicler of gay life”
I got to know a man willing to discuss nearly anything but his own literary significance. Openly sharing the most intimate minutiae of his life—finances, hookup apps, Depends—he recoiled with Victorian modesty whenever I asked why he’d written his books or what they meant to his readers. “I write, I don’t speculate about what I’m writing,” he reminded me a bit sharply after an interpretative question. For Delany, decency entails remembering that the author is dead even when he’s sitting across the table.–How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City by Julian Lucas.
Language Is a Poor Heuristic For Intelligence
With the emergence of Large Language Model “AI”, everyone will have to learn something many disabled people have always understood.
“Language skill indicates intelligence,” and its logical inverse, “lack of language skill indicates non-intelligence,” is a common heuristic with a long history. It is also a terrible one, inaccurate in a way that ruinously injures disabled people. Now, with recent advances in computing technology, we’re watching this heuristic fail in ways that will harm almost everyone.
“Renton says it’s a miracle that he made it out of adolescence alive.”
He’s The Trans Son Of An Anti-Trans Influencer. It’s His Turn To Speak.
A long article by Christopher Mathias about Renton Sinclair. [CW: attempted suicide, conversion therapy]
Another Week of Police Brutality
The Justice Department’s report [on Minneapolis PD] was almost uniformly critical, painting a disturbing portrait of a dysfunctional law enforcement agency where illegal conduct was common, racism was pervasive and misconduct was tolerated. Minneapolis Police Used Illegal, Abusive Practices for Years, Justice Dept. Finds
What is gender-affirming care?
"So what is gender-affirming care, exactly? And why is it important? The 19th spoke with health care professionals who provide gender-affirming care to adults and adolescents — as well as trans young adults who were comfortable sharing their experiences — to answer those questions."
I don't really like to talk about myself
Happy Pride Month! Ferron [Wikipedia] is one of the godmothers of queer woman's music. She talks to Rainbow Table along with filmmaker Gerry Rogers about her career and songwriting. [~50m] Trailer for documentary Girl On A Road. [4m25s] But because this is Ferron, there is a second documentary! Thunder sneak peak 1 [9m30s], sneak peak 2 [7m12s], trailer [4m50s] And from 2022, Ferrron's full set at Vancouver Island Musicfest [58m]
Skulls of your enemies, but planted with succulents
What is cozy horror?
At the Mary Sue Julia Glassman explains the subgenre and offers examples, notably Over the Garden Wall.
Suffering from Success
The Instant Pot Failed Because It Was a Good Product
The Instant Pot is, by all indications, a perfectly good machine—maybe even a great one. The IP, as the device is known to its many devotees, is a kitchen gadget in the most straightforward sense of the term: It’s a classic labor-saver, promising to turn ingredients into family meals while you clean up, tend to your kids, and do all of the other things you could be doing instead of keeping an eye on the stove. Once you get the hang of the electric pressure cooker, it seems to basically deliver on that promise, chugging along gamely through years’ worth of weeknight dinners of pork green chili or chicken tikka masala. Since its debut in 2010, the Instant Pot has sold millions of machines and spent years as a must-have kitchen sensation.
Sure enough, in 2019, when the private-equity firm Cornell Capital bought the gadget’s maker, Instant Brands, and merged it with another kitchenware maker, the combined company was reportedly valued at more than $2 billion. A few years and one pandemic later, the company filed for bankruptcy on Monday, weighed down by more than $500 million in debt after years of supply-chain chaos and limited success expanding the Instant brand into other categories of household gadgetry. Perhaps counterintuitively, that the Instant Pot remains a useful, widely appreciated gadget is not unrelated to the faltering of its parent company. In fact, it’s central to understanding exactly what went wrong.
The Façade, Not the Perversions
Ann Rule had spent most of her career warning other women about the “monstrous self behind the pleasant face.” But even she could not escape this final betrayal. As naïve—about the police, about psychology, about the larger forces that shape crime and criminal justice—as Rule’s books can seem now, after decades of social change, she got that one thing right: We’re the most vulnerable where we most trust. from How the Queen of True Crime Transformed Murder Stories Forever
Another stroll through the Google Graveyard
killedbygoogle.com lists 285 projects, services and pieces of software that Google has terminated during its history. Let's look back at some of them.
The Archandroid Is Back With New Programming
Happy Pride Month! Longtime MeFi favorite Janelle Monáe has been in process for years. Their newest singles Lipstick Lover [3m26s, possibly age restricted, clean version] and Float continue the unpeeling, unveiling of her current incarnation, a goddess of Pleasure. Janelle sits with Angie Martinez to talk [55m] about where they are now, how they got here, and what they're thinking about with the new album [Jun 9!] and tour. Similarly, here is a print interview with OUT Magazine about this new phase in their presentation.
Also contains some sick burns on Eliezer Yudkowsky
"Venture capital’s playbook for AI
is the same one it tried with crypto and Web3 and first used for Uber and Airbnb: break the laws as hard as possible, then build new laws around their exploitation. The VCs’ actual use case for AI is treating workers badly."
40 Years of Natty Novelties
Archie McPhee, Seattle novelty store, wholesaler, manufacturer, and mail order purveyor of weird gifts, the "Outfitters of Popular Culture" with catalogs cool enough to be collected by the Smithsonian, sellers of rubber chickens and devil duckies, is 40 years old. The Seattle Times did a short piece on them and their history. Some of their catalogs are collected on their website. They got a blog, and a podcast called "Less Talk More Monkey" (iTunes, Google Play), which explains why, for awhile, PayPal wouldn't let them sell tardigrade-themed merchandise through their payment service.
RIP 3rd party Reddit clients
Reddit has announced its pricing for 3rd party app developers to access its API... and it's a lot higher than expected. The creator of the popular iOS Apollo client estimates it'll cost him $20 million/year to pay for all his users' API access, far beyond what he can afford. The change will affect all Reddit clients, with the developer of Android app Reddit is Fun assuming they want all third party apps gone.
Better Living Through Algorithms
Naomi Kritzer has a new story out.
An app that tells you what to do? Turns creepy, then beneficial/friendly, takes turns that fit with our era. Somewhat reminiscent of Cat Pictures Please.
"Naming your son Maverick definitely doesn't make you an outlaw."
Fastest-rising baby names in the US, 2012-2022
(chart from Axios, data from SSA) Biggest gain: Everleigh. Biggest drop: Alexa
"That would be me."
After getting picked up by Netflix after being a casualty of the Disney-Fox merger and the ill-fated Chapek regime, the Nimona movie now has a teaser trailer and a release date - June 30th.