I have just learned that Soundcloud are planning to introduce a policy allowing AI to train on all the music therein. Being politically opposed to training AI, even for pure academic research, without the express permission of the artist/rightsholder in such works and without payment of a royalty for each instance of such use, I have summarily deleted my Soundcloud account. I strongly advise artists of any field and genre to do likewise, should their gallery site, repository or similar medium require acceptance of such terms. Training AI without paying the originator is possibly the BIGGEST cultural theft in history. If the ceators are not paid, that is piracy, by capitalism's own definition. I stand against the AI industry's "one law for them another for us" attitude to payment for access to human culture.

Meanwhile, following my Soundcloud deletion, I decided to refresh my knowledge of my Bandcamp account terms. Big sigh of relief! Bandcamp stand against, and make a breach of the TOS agreement, the scraping of Bandcamp to train AI.

So, a shameless self-promotion, you can still hear my magnum opus and career finale, "#ImminentFlood" by Secrets of The Hand, on Bandcamp. It only costs a buck to download, too. An entire album for a buck. Go on, you know you want to download it. And listens on-site are always free. Enjoy!

Sadly, I think it's too late to fix it. The coup is done and dusted. What we can do is support the good people, like Carol, the best we can, by resisting. Resistance in the age of the social media coup d'etat looks like...
leaving the major social media platforms, like X and any of the Meta "family",
joining resistance movements,
refuse to use service apps for as long as it's possible, insist on doing business at the counter for as long as those counter services continue to be available, then switch to legacy card payment methods for as long as they remain available
post bills with links to this video on poles around your neighbourhood as well as flyers in letterboxes,
anything else that will get the message out that freedom is being murdered.

Mark Rober, the eponymous "former NASA engineer" of the memes, and all round brilliant debunker and educator has just uploaded a "fun" video about obstacle detection and crash prevention tech in cars. Apparently, nearly all "self driving" models of car use LiDAR obstacle detection. Can you guess what Tesla use? Hold your guess and watch Mark's video...

Honestly, right now, the people I feel worst for are those who fell for Elon's lies and went with a Tesla. I normally have little sympathy for "lemon" buyers, I'm a cycling advocate and an "urbanist" who vehemently believes cars have become the bad master rather than out good servants they promised to be when they cleaned up cities suffering "horseshit pollution." But, right now, that "flash rat with a gold tooth" and his "pretend uncle Donny" is caught out in more lies and BS that ultimately is leaving people with expensive family transport that has just lost half (more?) of its value overnight.

Private ownership became the model for uban transport, whereas community ownership and car sharing might have allowed bicycles and public transit to flourish. Cars stalled urban design and reversed safety responsibilities from causers to victims - "be careful crossing the road!" - a thing that was never really much of a thing before cars. Jaywalking as an offence was invented by the car industry in the 1920s to reframe the rise in street deaths caused by motoring. If anything sums up our times better than that, the "marketing solution" to a product problem. Driving tons of metal at leopard speeds through densely populated areas wouldn't be the problem, no, it's stupid people. Well yes, but the stupids are the ones in the tin boxes, not the ones trying to cross the road to go about the business. Driver, cyclist, user of public transit, we all end up as pedestrians at the end of our trip. Those who walk should have primary priority, those who ride are next, those who ride motors, last. The French call this strict liability and they have started urbanising Paris, making it pedestrian and cycle friendly because cars first planning is not conducive to a strict liability legal environment, nor is it conducive to any kind of public safety.

So, back to Mark's video. LiDAR works, cameras don't. Tesla use cameras. If you use any of Tesla's driver assist technology, you are driving a manslaughter weapon waiting to happen. Mark and his team are engineers. Mark used to work for NASA, he's an educator, encouraging kids to get into engineering and science. This isn't some "instagram stunt" this is how to do experiments. Simulate conditions, move objects through thos conditions, record what happens. I say again, LiDAR works, cameras don't and Teslas use cameras.

At least the Cyber Truck looks like a piece of shit. Those Model 3s and Model Xs that infest my neighbourhood are "mudguards" - shiny on top, shit underneath. Death traps, not necessarily for their owners, but for everybody else. Literal accidents waiting to happen. The Chinese car makers are doing a better job than Elon, never mind the Europeans. Even the Japanese, who have been a bit reluctant to move much beyond hybrids are doing a better job than Elon. What price your kid's life? What price somebody else's kids life? Ditch the Tesla.

Here's a thing, an actual medical situation. I have autoimmune diabetes and, not only does that eff up my carbohydrates metabolism, it can also mean I have a hard time to get proteins to "stick to my ribs." On top of that, my fat burners are running like afterburners because, even with regular insulin, my body has been, for all of my life, all too willing to burn fat because it's barely getting enough carbohydrates. This gives me the body of a racehorse and the engine of a paddlesteamer. And despite a lifetime of cycling as my main mode of transport, cycling which, according to the cardio who stented me when I had my "widowmaker" heart attack, I had had a "widowmaker" heart attack. In the technical jargon, an NSTEMI, AKA and infarction.

Yet, meat is troubling, especially as a buddhist. Worse, while I do eat some seafood, I really can't stomach most of the fancy stuff, especially the oily fish, they make me ill. Besides, if one should not eat a mammalian living being, AKA "meat is murder," who is to say fish don't suffer? (Hint: there's science for the fact that they do.)

So, vegetarian/vegan diets. I've tried them. I've wound up ill. Medically ill. I wanted to eliminate meat from my life but every time I've tried, I've wound up malnourished. Within a few months. I actually envy those who get away with it like some folk envy each other because each sees the other as "skinnier." Perceptions, hey. BTW, no fat shaming intended here, either. I do not fat shame.

Further to the actual science of diet, humans are beta predators. In pre-settled farming era, we were both predator and prey. It's possibly one of the reasons we have affinity for dogs and cats, they're the same, opportunistic predators, easily able to bring down "microgame" yet also easy game for bears, lions, tigers, sharks, depending on the part of the world we're talking about. And, as a predator, our metabolism needs carnitine, the amino acid we can't get in any way, shape or form from vegies. We can manage without it for a while - the vegos who fall of the wagon. Like I have thrice, for health reasons. You've only got to teach me three times... IKR.

Hunter gatherer cultures tend to honour their prey, take pride in a swift surprise kill to minimise suffering. There are exceptions, but it's only when humans get removed from meat production, we begin to "externalise" our contribution to suffering. Logical buddhism teaches me I must not externalise it, yet I do, because, well, bloody hell the accelerating decline of my health thanks to the second law of thermodynamics and "woolworths genetics."

So, I kind of felt the need, after watching the following, to share it. Please watch it, I'll wait...

This economic breakdown of how little it costs to give meat animals meaningful, pain-free lives, based on US and EU data is shocking, even to a lefty with vego friends - we all knew it was easy. But easy and relatively cheap?! We're cruel to save meagre cents off the dollar at retail? The argument I've hear all my life, "It'd be too expensive to treat our prey animals with kindness," always rang hollow, especially as the one saying it walked away from the interviews I was given to edit and climbed into a luxury car, but fifty cents to a buck-fifty more per serving, at worst, where a serving might be up to 5 bucks before cooking and veg?

I know, some struggle financially, but that is the fault of the same people who treat animals cruelly to save a few cents at the factory farm as they whinge about the cost of labour. We have come from hunter gatherers who took pride in a quick and painless kill of the animal that was just large enough to give the tribe their protein for the month, to a mercenary torturer species that is deliberately, knowingly cruel to save single digit cents in multiple dollars. Cruelty for money to animals? Cruelty for money to the people working for them. Eliminating animal cruelty is as much a socialist/anarchist imperative as eliminating slavery in cobalt mines or union busting in more "civilised" places.

Eating some meat is OK, it's how nature works, even committed buddhists eat meat where it is what is available. What is unethical is the cruelty of the farming, and that only exists because its fractionally cheaper to do it that way. According to the poets, we deserve happy, productive lives and a quiet death in our sleep, why don't our faithful food animals? Happy lives in healthy pasture until "ethered" before slaughter, well away from others of their kind? Is money that much more important than kindness? Pay decent wages to workers, treat animals with kindness beyond harvest. The two are the one issue!

It's how nature works. "She" provides. Grass for the grazers. Grazers for the predators. Predators for the pathogens and the worms. The circle of life. Nowhere in that circle does nature seek to minimise the costs and maximise the profits for a privileged few.

I just watched a video about bass guitar scale length. I'm a bass guitarist and the caption "Bass guitars are all this length." (or similar, hate the youtube won't give you something you've already seen when you search for it.) The guy goes into how all bass guitars have a 34 inch scale length and while there are some basses that are longer and shorter, they're never so by much, "...and this is known as rule 34. If you don't believe me, look it up."

I know a few of "The Rules of the Internet," and I learned about Rule 34 in my first few weeks of having internet, way back 30 years ago, but guess what I did... Go on. I'll wait while you figure it out...

I f***ing well Googled rule 34. Blaspheme Swear Blaspheme the second name! I am a Swear idiot.

https://youtube.com/shorts/WBQeLt5CQ4M?si=bPJXGp43RwaPFn_p FFS

Having a lazy day, making up for a bit of a slightly rough night's sleep and waking early. The Lovely Linda's away in her homeland across the Tasman Sea, taking a little of her late mum back home. Today, she's had a catch-up with her biological dad. I've been watch Great Australian Walks on SBS.

Season 2, episode 6 is the Bay Trail from St Kilda to Brighton, in many ways more "Australian Beach Culture" than Sydney or The Gold Coast. One of the inner suburban strips of Narm/Melbourne I love like it's home. It kinda is, I live a few kilometres in from Brighton. I adopted Melbourne as home in 2009, after spending just about my entire life in Tasmania, Launceston as a kid, Hobart as an adult. I married the Lovely Linda in 2010 and 2 of my daighters moved here to live and work, shortly after.

I've played in 3 bands here, my old Tassy band, The Breed, did our last gig with me in the band at our drummer's sister's wedding. Then with a cover band that I was a poor fit with, but we had fun while I lasted. Then I played in Alex Capelli's The Collectables. We were the mark II line up and that felt as much like home as The Breed had for almost 20 years of my life. Sadly, The Collectables ended when Alex had to move to Tasmania in late 2012.

Two of the gigs in that last band were at a Melbourne icon, The Esplanade Hotel, "The Espy," one in The Basement, the pub's "dive bar," another, a band competition where we came last because success was measured by punters in the room in the legendary Gershwin Room, the grand ballroom made famous by the even more famous TV, popular music, quiz show, "Rockwiz."

We threw our set AT. THE. WALL!!! Despite only 3 friends in the room. All the other bands cleared out their friends for other competitors' shows, and we hadn't built a following yet, so we lost. Best gig I've ever been proud to play, despite almost nobody hearing it, and extra special for being in the home of "Rockwiz." It's not how many people there, it's how you strut the boards.

That moment, that night, sums up rock'n'roll. Seeing "The Espy" always brings a tear to my eye. If I'd moved to Melbourne in the 80s, you might have known me, even though you don't know me, anywhere in the world. I moved here in my late 40s for work and love. I don't regret that, especially the second point. And I still got to play "The Espy." In "The Gersh." The Basement was pretty cool, too, but "The Gersh" was, as Springsteen called it, glory day!

And I've had a few gigs that could earn that title in my time.

Oh wow! This month is the approach to the 8th anniversary of this! Imminent Flood was released officially on March 31, 2017! My only proper album. I did dozens of "cassalbums" in the 80s and 90s and have appeared on Regeneration by my old Tassy band, The Breed, but Imminent Flood is the last time I made music for sale. It kind of marks where music became my hobby rather than my hope. And yes, it's a album, not an EP, it runs longer than 30 minutes.

...but there are bad people, with bad intent, using technology to enslave and control us. Take the mongrel dog running DOGE, for example.

"Captain Armpit-Smell" bought a social media network that, while it was struggling financially, had way many more, and way more diverse users, than it does now. It has become, pretty much exclusively a social media mouthpiece for "The Captain" and his fanbois. And those fanbois are nearly all "bois." The news outlets and journalists who still primarily microblog there, over any other "social" medium are abrogating their responsibilities as reporters by not also using the fediverse. The original microblog is dead, long live the original microblog - all the while ignoring the more diverse, larger audience for editorial content audience on the diversely managed, as well as diversely populated Fediverse.

Then there's the problem of the centralised news outlet in a decentralised, yet commercially tribalised, world - uninformed debate. The algorithm is tuned to give only the most irritating response, because we give away the most information about ourselves in a our negative reactions. Social media, all social media, sets out to push our buttons. Clickbait headlines earn more viewers than rational headlines because they drive us to comment negatively and give away very precise data about our most malleable emotions and responses to those emotions.

Then there is the preposterous levels of our reliance on social media, rather than person to person connections. I'm not a sociable person but, since escaping facebook, I find personal, bricks and mortar shopping actually enjoyable and rewarding. Any shopping for a thing needed for day-to-day living, projects, work needs has an element of chore about it, but I find reward in looking at the websites of places near me for an option or three, then going to those places to compare the options. Product in hand, how it feels. How it looks, "May I turn it on and see the screen." This is real convenience.

"Mind if I try it out?" is a mighty question. You can't ask it online. No, really, there is no try before you buy. No real one.

The other problem with life online, E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops." One hundred years ago, Forster predicted this very world we live-in. The descriptions of the tech have me envisaging props design like Terry Gilliam's "Brazil," but the lives, the characters living them, are us! We today!

I've written about "The Machine Stops" here, back in January. I raise it again because The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a really good opinion piece that echos my above-mentioned blog post of earlier this year, only in more detail, calling on scientific experience in the relevant fields. Please head over to AI is changing our future, by Toby Walsh, Chief Scientist at the UNSW AI Institute, Australia. Skynet is not our doom, we're perfectly good at engineering that ourselves, and are way ahead of the "Terminator" franchise already.