First off, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ARIANA GRANDE! I LOVE YOU!
This is really sweet from her bro:
https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx1sEkwb9-tWd4ADKVjIFpje8ciPiKq8YU
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I woke up with my favorite song by The Killers stuck in my head. Oh yeah, guess who has an amazing cover of that song?
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Also, the first video in my suggested feed?
Perhaps the greatest episode of Wild Geese there has ever been. “When I Accept Myself Just As I Am, I Change.” Radical acceptance. I have NEVER had this for myself. But now, I realize, for the first time in my life, that I DO need to move on. I just never knew what I was on to, exactly. None of us ever do. Still, I wander, but it seems like the stream of the collective consciousness is forcing me into a particular direction, one which promises great bounties of beauty, a deliverance from this seemingly infinitely stretching melancholy.
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Also, Muse dropped their album the WOW! Signal so you know what I’m listening to! Time for the notebook to come out. I don’t know exactly how these thoughts will be used. But what matters is that they are written down, that I absorb the genius of Matt Bellamy into my bloodstream.
“The Dark Forest” is a direct reference to the so-called Dark Forest Theory of the universe, a concept heavily popularized by sci-fi author Liu Cixin. The hypothesis states that no alien life has been found so far because advanced, intelligent civilizations hide from each other to avoid annihilation.
https://genius.com/Muse-the-dark-forest-lyrics
Taking lots of notes in the New Vibrations notebook I’ll type up eventually.
OMG THE WOW SIGNAL IS A BREAKUP ALBUM LIKE OR3!
https://inews.co.uk/culture/music/muse-matt-bellamy-break-up-prioritise-kids-4482748
Like me, Matt Bellamy is positive about the future of AI, not that he agrees with using it in music, BUT it’s not like we can stop it, either. He’s being pragmatic and investing in the tech for its positive connotations, and really, that’s the best thing you can do. I personally am only using AI going forward for truly agentic things, things that don’t involve creativity and nothing else. It’s still useful as a sounding board, but I’d rather have actual people for that process.
“It’s a good question,” he says. “I don’t like AI music. It sounds very generic to me. The question is, is it stoppable?” The creative result, he says, “will probably democratise user creation even more, so you don’t even need to be a musician. From a political point of view, you could argue what AI is doing to the arts is almost communist.”
This much is true. But the Omnichord, were it not so expensive, would democratize music too. Although I think these RTX spark machines will have something similar as a computer program.
I love what Matt said here: “Hyper-specialised intelligence is now being downgraded. It’s very communist. It’s flatlining everyone to be on the same competitive sphere. The musicians you’re mentioning don’t realise that they want to go back to a capitalist system, which is where only the intelligent win, only the specialised win, and if you’re not born with it, you don’t deserve to win. It’s a grey area.”
I’ve never hyper-specialized, so I suppose that puts me at some sort of advantage that I didn’t realize before… he brings up such a fascinating point.
I WOULD LOVE, LOVE, LOVE FOR MATT AND OLIVIA TO COLLAB <3
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OK review complete, best album ever behind the trinity SOUR / GUTS / AOTY. Time to mess with the omnichord.
After my Friday ritual of blasting F211’s cover of Last Friday Night and my new tradition of also listening to “Friday I’m in Love” with Robert Smith and Livie at Glastonbury, I can move onto what I MEANT to do yesterday which is mess with Omnichord stuff.
This Aryy video was very helpful! Especially as I have the OM-108, which is the newest and most complex version of the instrument.
This is INCREDIBLE, TOO! I can’t believe this stringless Lava Genie guitar exists! It’s like guitar hero, but real life.
She is awesome! Gonna watch more of her videos when I lay down later.
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This is so me! Morgan is SO PRETTY!
This is very important! Being Neurodivergent often means we’re gender agnostic. She looks so great with no makeup and natural hair and comfy clothes. Such a great channel.
Morgan got me thinking about why I struggle to interface with the queer community; it’s because they tend to overperform gender in a way that makes me extremely uncomfortable. I’m seen as a trans guy when I’m quite the opposite, and no one listens to me when I correct them… continuing to call me he/him and I just up and leave, never returning to that venue. It’s really sad. I simply just don’t wish to perform gender roles because, honestly, that’s counterproductive.
Meanwhile, I’ve sort of never really tried that hard to fit into the autistic community because, ironically, I have a hard time interfacing with people, period. However, I have sort of an unusual ability to see red flags and other subtle social cues that most autistic people and neurotypical people miss out on, thanks to training myself extensively on body language and other tells. It’s served me well and softened the blows when people are strange with me. It still leaves me isolated, but then at least I know it’s not me; it’s on them. I’m not the one with the social skills problem. They are.
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I keep thinking about what Miss Morgan said about how us autistics are having a difficult enough time being human beings, never mind figuring out how to be a boy or a girl, or following trends… recognizing all of the people around us are performing variations on a theme, corporately sponsored fast fashion disposable wardrobes, and soon, disposable people who can be interchanged with a puppet run by intensely trained algorithms meant to replace the soul.
There is another gear unlocked within me as I contemplate the meaning of gender agnosticism. Many people would consider that term to be a state of “questioning” that must ultimately be resolved. Honestly, I’m not sure that’s even a fair thing at all, being that even the most “heterosexual” individual has their fair share of man-crushes, girl-crushes, and curiosities that must be explored sexually. To be fair, I believe that in modern society, the idea of gender roles is outdated and entirely unnecessary. There are necessary biological differences between male and female, yes, but birth sex and gender are well-known, by those who aren’t so driven by forcing every single human being into a limited binary box they can fit on a spreadsheet, to not be the same thing.
I might add that it seems like whenever my autistic lovelies I come across with these soundbytes and video clips of wisdom on being a neurodivergent individual, it comes across as this is some sort of severe disability. I’d argue that it’s the society and how it’s structured that’s the problem; even neurotypical people experience this stress and burnout that we experience, but just not with the same level of intensity. We expend so much more energy because we simply run at a much higher vibrational frequency. We love more intensely, despise more malevolently, and study more copiously. We need to dig deep, dive in headfirst, even if it means we might even forget how to breathe before we ever get any inkling that we even need oxygen to survive in the first place.
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OMG Brandon Flowers is doing country! This song ‘Plans’ is fucking awesome!
So is “Miss America.” Can’t wait for this album!
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OMG CARLY RAE JEPSEN!
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God, this girl is amazingly sweet! Talk about lullabies!
Fantastic cover of “casual” by Chappell Roan
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Gracie Abrams absolutely nailed this interview.
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Probably the best topic that Jess of the Shire has ever covered!
I have quite a few thoughts about secondary fictional worlds. And tertiary, and quaternary, and so on. So many dimensions of fiction and nonfiction layered like sandwiches we sink our teeth into so we don’t grind them down to the gums.
Of course, fiction is a great way to expand our search space to answer questions through creating laboratories of setting, character, and plot in which reality can be twisted in any which way that words can relate. While this is true, narrative is often weaponized by those who are either entirely delusional or have agendas which necessitate the masking of truth.
This quote!
“Law is the soil in which alone beauty will grow; beauty is the only stuff in which Truth can be clothed; and you may, if you will, call Imagination the tailor that cuts her garments to fit her, and Fancy his journeyman that puts the pieces of them together, or perhaps at most embroiders their button-holes. Obeying law, the maker works like his creator; not obeying law, he is such a fool as heaps a pile of stones and calls it a church.”
- George Macdonald, “The Fantastic Imagination”
And this one from the master of fantasy himself:
“The peculiar quality of the joy’ in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a ‘consolation’ for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, ‘Is it true? The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world. That is enough for the artist…”
- J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories”
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Original song by Nicole Alexis. Really solid lyrics in the first verse.
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OMG Connie, this song is INCREDIBLE! It is an original called “Devil In the Detail”
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Seriously, Anna’s vlogs are always a treat! Getting to see her sense of humor on full display is especially great to watch.
