Sounds That Have Been made, EP 141: Nate Smith w/ Lalah Hathaway “Automatic” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFyoUEVZNf8 https://zeruch.wordpress.com/2025/06/18/sounds-that-have-been-made-ep-141-nate-smith-w-lalah-hathaway-automatic/

UX Dark Patterns: A Menagerie of Mediocre Weird

Almost all of what I bother to watch on Youtube falls into fairly clear buckets: Domestic and International news and commentary from mostly fairly well established, and low-on-ragebait sources (e.g. The Financial Times of London, RTP, Times Radio, Monocle, DW) and academic/institutional talks (e.g. CSIS, Commonwealth Club, London School of Economics) with the occasional talking head with a functional grasp of reality…

https://zeruch.wordpress.com/2025/06/17/ux-dark-patterns-a-menagerie-of-mediocre-weird/

“The foundational knowledge of the average American is now so low that it has crashed through the floor of “uninformed,” passed “misinformed” on the way down, and is now plummeting to “aggressively wrong.” People don’t just believe dumb things; they actively resist further learning rather than let go of those beliefs. I was not alive in the Middle Ages, so I cannot say it is unprecedented, but within my living memory I’ve never seen anything like it.”
― Thomas M. Nichols, The Death of Expertise

The Double Standards of White and Black Genius

https://www.vulture.com/article/brian-wilson-sly-stone-death-racism-double-standards.html

“I always think of myself not so much as a painter but as a medium for accident and chance.”
- #FrancisBacon

When we throw up our hands and say none of it matters, we're doing the fascists’ work for them. They don't need to hide their corruption if they can convince us it's pointless to look. They don't need to silence truth-tellers if we've already decided truth is meaningless.

https://www.citationneeded.news/it-matters-i-care/

#sketchbook June 2025. #Portuguese author #EçaDeQueiroz , monocle and all. I've already started adding paint, but this is at the stage where it was just ink applied with a kakamori nib pen. #art #drawing

@anildash @jwz having a clear direction with a positive outcome in mind can go arm in arm with a negative one towards things hostile to wellbeing and safety.

I'm not even against the boilerplate ideas of advertising, AI, or crypto, but I'm vehemently against their currently unregulated, mendaciously applied opportunistic carnival barkery, and spitefully so. The LeCarre grade deceit that now permeates every nook of the industry is goddamn infuriating.

New #art. "Disquiet 57 (saved up my useless thoughts)" came by taking bits from three other paintings I had been working on the last couple of months, scanning them, and going maybe a little overboard. Mixed media (analog + digital) Available as prints, as well as the original.

#artshare #abstractart

Trump is a #TACO Bellend.

I have not been an active gamer for many moons; my token semi-regular (a few times a month) is more for banter among a small cadre of folks, on a 15 year old FPS, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

A new #Dune MMORPG from Funcom may change that.

https://www.theverge.com/24112467/dune-awakening-survival-game-preview-xbox-ps5-pc

"The #FBI has confirmed it wants “lawful access” to fully encrypted data, which includes end-to-end encrypted messages and #iPhone and #Android backups...Any solution that works around end-to-end encryption breaks end-to-end #encryption."

How about a big, fat...no.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2025/05/26/fbi-wants-access-to-encrypted-iphone-and-android-data-so-does-europe/

#privacy #policy

"...the idea that one person [#Trump] may redirect the entire resources of the #federal #government based on his personal likes and dislikes is an extraordinary claim of power. "

This is the kind of stuff that in a normal universe would have gotten him a shinkansen to impeachment and prison, and is what we should get back to ASAP.

https://steveinskeep.substack.com/p/trump-threatens-musk-the-same-way

#Musk #AbuseOfPower

FYI: #Cybertrucks look like a low poly dildo for a Decepticon.

Here's an odd but fun show: #MetaFive (a Japanese supergroup that includes DJ Towa Tei of Deee-lite. Yukihiro Takahashi of YMO and Keigo Oyamada of various Ghost in the Shell scores) did a live gig in 2014 that included guests James Iha (Smashing Pumpkins, A Perfect Circle), Harumi Hosono (YMO), Masami Tsuchiya (Ippu-Do, Duran Duran)...a pretty eclectic mix o' stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjjbzIsh4AM

@carnage4life I sit back and watch the eunuch-scorpions in their bottle, laughing uncontrollably to tears.

🍿

NEW: Free, open-source software helped build the internet, and will be key to improving it for all of us, @torproject's @1s4 tells EFF’s Cindy Cohn and @jgkelley on the new episode of “How to Fix the Internet.” https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/podcast-episode-why-three-tors-magic-number

FDA rushed out agency-wide AI tool—it’s not going well - Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/06/fda-rushed-out-agency-wide-ai-tool-its-not-going-well/

#Google, and especially #Youtube, continue to have Product Management outsourced to a creche of sociopathic toddler ferrets.