#the FUCKING WORLD

[amayikes]

So on the 27th DeepSeek R1 dropped (a chinese version of ChatGPT that is open source, free and beats GPT's 200 dollar subscription, using less resources and less money) and the tech market just had a loss of $1,2 Trillion.

Source

[never-quite-buried]

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.

[bixels]

As gen-AI becomes more normalized (Chappell Roan encouraging it, grifters on the rise, young artists using it), I wanna express how I will never turn to it because it fundamentally bores me to my core. There is no reason for me to want to use gen-AI because I will never want to give up my autonomy in creating art. I never want to become reliant on an inhuman object for expression, least of all if that object is created and controlled by tech companies. I draw not because I want a drawing but because I love the process of drawing. So even in a future where everyone’s accepted it, I’m never gonna sway on this.

[itsbansheebitch]

Briana Boston faces terrorism charges and CEOs are getting free therapy

Briana Boston is a 42 year old mother of three from Florida who is under house arrest for expressing her frustration at her insurance (which she PAYS for) who denied her claim. She owns ZERO guns and doesn't have a criminal record.

She was originally held in prison for $100,000 bail. They have not dropped the charges and she is under house arrest even after widespread backlash.

They are trying to charge her with terrorism. They want her to spend 15 years in prison.

They are calling her a Luigi Mangione copycat. As if she killed someone. She made a indirect, not at all credible threat.

Meanwhile...

I want every woman who has ever faced threats online, stalking, etc to bring this Briana Boston up at every opportunity. Every time you were told by police that there was nothing they could do, know that they not only CAN do something, but they WILL do something, just not for you.

[great-and-small]

Turdus aficionados of Costa Rica please know I love your national bird but this is objectively hilarious

[joemuggs]

Fucking Hell, 2024, Fucking Hell

Well it really has been a fucking year hasn’t it.

Even leaving aside the background of Fascism, genocide, climate ruination, idiot oligarchs and enshittification, personally it’s been a tough one. Put it this way: having three bereavements fall within a couple of weeks of me turning 50 was intense, but it didn’t feel out of place for 2024. It was the sort of year when getting my (emphatic) ADHD diagnosis felt like something to celebrate. Life has pretty much continued dropping anvils on me week-in-week out, and so I’ve stumbled from disaster to disaster more or less in a state of concussion, with next to zero chance to take stock or even take a breath and look around. 

Which is why I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated the Christmas break more, and why I’m doing this. I don’t normally do end of year recollection things – I’d usually rather eat a box of pins than interrupt my holiday time, in fact – but I’m abnormally introspective right now, and also, bizarrely given the chaotic year it’s been, abnormally proud of what I’ve done and what I have coming up. Even more bizarrely there seems to have been some coherence to it all. But maybe it’s not so bizarre, maybe it’s because in between all the demands of capital-L LIFE I’ve had to knuckle down, make hard decisions and commit to doing stuff that keeps me sane / engaged / motivated / with eyes on the prize etc… Chasing that dopamine, but also old enough and ugly enough to know what’s irrelevant.

First up, I have kind of become the DJ I wanted to be. I’ve been getting better year by year, but since buying the Midlife Crisis Soundsystem PA rig a couple of years ago, I’ve got to the point where I feel properly confident in my abilities, regardless of the setting… I feel professional, even. I’ve had some really great moments playing far out or very groovy stuff: one weekend in Bristol in particular was gorgeous – an evening in the sweltering basement of Cafe Kino playing deep drones and cosmic vistas to warm up for the live performers at Tudor Acid’s Electro Cafe, followed by next afternoon out on the canalside terrace of Motion playing all sorts of grooves “B2B” with Charlie Stoic for a Balearic Burger party - recorded here. 

Getting to play a dinnertime ambient dub set at Tallinn’s incredible HALL was something else too… but easily the peak moment of the year behind the decks was at We Out Here festival. I kicked off with Sinead O’Connor, went into Monolake, Coltrane (both), Dvořák, Sade, Tunng and eventually dropped Gilli Smyth’s entirely tripped-out radiophonic folk tale “Taleisin”. At which point, two young women appeared at the tent door, nodded appreciatively, did a very good and committed interpretive dance routine for the whole nine-minute duration, bowed flamboyantly to enthusiastic applause from the tent and skipped off into the night while I rubbed my eyes and went “what the fuck?”. From there on in, the dreaminess only intensified, and the rest of the set passed in a sate of slightly hysterical bliss. You can get a hint of the vibe from my ROVR radio shows which have been another point of happy focus this year.

But it’s not just been about the weird and quote-unquote credible gigs. Far from it. Ever since getting the PA rig, I’ve tried to make the money back by doing commercial sets locally out here in the New Forest, and that’s been at worst an education and at best a blast. It’s now picking up to the point I’ve got four gigs over the Xmas holidays, of the three so far only the first was a bit boring and the other two – teenagers giving it loads to Calvin Harris / Chase & Status / Chapel Roan / “Firework” / “I Predict a Riot”, and a cocktail bar very much enjoying Prince, The Meters, Blondie and so on on Christmas eve – have got me very much looking forwards to New Year’s Eve at a hotel down the road. 

And though Christmas discos for hire in a shires town and 4am at We Out Here are definitely a long way apart, they’re not completely separate worlds. There’ve been lots of zones in between the two. Big shouts must go out to my friends Keith and Fiona who’ve been getting their L8R 90s dance parties going locally: their tastes might veer a little further into the reach-for-the-lasers euphoria than mine, but we really found a sweet spot where I can either warm up with my house records (see this set recorded live in a village hall!) or speed them up while Keith slows his trance and hard house down to meet in the middle for a B2B as with the outdoor afternoon party we did in Christchurch in the summer which went OFF. I’ve also got out to do more in Bournemouth, warming up for Justin Robertson at Aural Agenda, and doing a lovely set of lovers’ rock, Depth Charge and suchlike with my friend Patrick for the fantastic Bad Hand Coffee / Eats’n’Beats Christmas market, which – like the primary school food fair where I found the exact sweet spot between Balearic aesthetics and Radio 2 – was the epitome of something I wrote about here back in 2022… 

In my day job, there were a ton of big things. The fabric book coming out this month dominated everything of course – it both buoyed me up during a time of total exhaustion and kept me too busy to think right to the end of the working year. Some other big highlights, though, came courtesy of Disco Pogo – I’ve got two hefty essays in their immense Aphex Twin anthology which came out just a week after the fabric book, and also I did their Sade cover feature earlier in the year, which came out as one of the most satisfying things I’ve written in a while, joining a whole lot of historical dots and even getting the warm approval of members of Sade (though I’m yet to find out of Sade herself has read it). This guide to psychedelic rave for The SHFL was a wonderful rabbit hole to go down too, and I even tied my DJing in by doing this live mix inspired by the writing of it. This profile of PENG Records and Andy Compton was a joy to do too – one of the most under-appreciated musicians in the UK deserves a big showcase like this, and there’s so much incredible music in it.

Yes, it’s notable that those are all pretty much historical / retrospective pieces, but I managed to stay vaguely away from pigeonholing as a “rave boomer” (© Eamonn Forde) with the normal week-in-week out work of reviewing lots and lots of new records for Bandcamp Daily and theartsdesk (and PLEASE NOTE we are trying to keep theartsdesk afloat, it's a hard grind, but if you can help then do), and doing interviews and playlist features for Sound of Life (it kept me talking to interesting people like Juls, and this essay about the Grammys was a fun diversion especially). And somehow, somewhere in among all this, I did indeed manage to find some coherence. Through all the writing and the DJing – and even through the harsh life events of the year – I managed to find connecting threads that were all in some way or another related to community. Whether it’s family funerals or DJing at a 16th birthday party, tracing the spiritual jazz connections of We Out Here festival or observing my own kids’ fandoms around gaming and EDM, reviewing new records or tracing grand narratives, everything kept coming back to the little things that hold us together, and which matter all the more in the face of chaos, darkness and forces that would have us splintered and atomised. These little things aren’t just clicking “like” on the same records or poltical slogans, they’re who we are with and how we interact with them over years.

A lot of things helped to throw this into relief. Doing three lectures for music and music industry students at BIMM Bristol forced me to clarify my thinking on the nature of subculture, the purpose of writing and commentary, the structures of our social networks and suchlike. The long interviews for Bass, Mids, Tops and the Rest have always been about how micro life details accumulate into bigger cultural shapes – Brian’s incredible photographic portraits bringing you closer to the real people involved – and the conversations I had this year all helped, especially with our old mucker Jude Rogers. Re-reading Jude’s The Sound of Being Human then having our conversation about provincial towns and indie clubs was galvanising, as was constant inspiration from the works and social media presence of Elijah Butterz, Emma Warren, Jamz Supernova, Colleen and Adam from The London Loft, Errol & Alex from Touching Bass and John Bawcombe and friends from the Balearic Burger community. 

A huge shout, too, to Craig Hamilton – whose Harkive project recording what people actually listen to and how has long been an inspiration – for listening to me ramble about some ideas on this topic, and by the end of a 20 minute phonecall perfectly condensing it into “OK so you want to do _______, and this will be of value to ______, ______, ______ and ______” – and to Sara Kenny and Ben Bashford who have likewise been constant sounding boards. (Thanks, too, to Craig and his band for the best Wet Leg cover version you will ever hear). Also once, just once, I tried using an AI chat service as a sounding board too, and stone me if it didn’t condense something neat too: when I asked it about my work it said a lot of stuff I knew well because it had harvested from my own self-PR over the years, but it also said this, which is beautifully put and captures a thing that matters.

So yeah, not to self-aggrandise but I did a lot, and best of all, more than ever I feel kind of purposeful going into 2025. It’s a weird position to be in being more uncertain and anxious than ever before, but also feeling like I know what I have to do, both to keep making a living and to face that uncertainty and anxiety head on (hopefully including some new meds!). It’s going to involve more teaching gigs for sure, some fun projects I can’t talk about yet, more opportunities to amplify the people who are doing the work on the ground, a whole lot of spreadsheets, minimal recourse to AI, some decent DJ gigs, and – hopes and prayers for Joe, please – a little bit more rest than in 2024. Because honestly, I am very fucking tired, and doubly so just looking at all this written down. I have no big conclusion or moral to the tale, except to say that even in the darkest of times there can be moments of respite and those little tokens of communal belonging… and when you find them grab them with both hands and don’t let them go.

[technikki]

being a mario rpgs fan is such a wonderful experience its like man what do you mean youre drawing soul-crushing angst of the funny mustache guys that say wahoo yippee. you are having a joke on me

[dykebeckett]

sometimes a video game with a bad story has a good secret story that you can unlock if you pretend the bad parts aren’t there and make up a bunch of stuff

[wordswithkittywitch]

"I don't want to see anyone blaming abstaining voters for this!"

Of course you don't. The entire idea of abstaining was that you could pretend this didn't involve you. Not getting blamed was more important to you than doing any kind of damage control, more important than protecting any of the people you said you wanted to protect. And in this moment, I don't really care what you want. Of course, this isn't entirely your fault. Of course other people made this worse. But if you're going to pretend you had nothing to do with this, forgive me if I ignore you.

[troythecatfish]

[ohposhers]

GIVE THESE BOYS A WEEKEND YAOI FISHING TRIP !! GAT DAMN!! i actually have so many thoughts about Big getting Shadow into fishing istg im gonna make a whole comic on it im in too deep

[oncillabrigade]

Finally read Robins!

I have a lot of thoughts, but I just want to say this panel is the funniest thing I've ever seen:

[cryptocism]

"just as I did, in 1983."

you'd never know my favourite parts of the show are the fucked up insane bits when my first instinct is to draw the cheesiest thing imaginable

[problemnyatic]

"I think this Category of human being is disposable" okay that not only sucks and is fascist but also makes getting you to deem someone to be disposable a simple matter of convincing you they're in The Category regardless of the truth. Also The Category is often misapplied to a vulnerable minority because it makes people like you agree they're disposable.

"Anyone who disagrees with me about The Category of people being disposable is a Category apologist or probably also in The Category themselves" Oh so you're just totally unconcerned with truth or justice or ethics or human rights and just are feeding your bloodlust for the sake of revenge fantasies. got it 👍

[artkaninchenbau]

Crocodile finds a strange stray cat an 11-year old Nico Robin (AU where they met 13 years earlier. Robin's been on the run from the World Government for 3 years. Crocodile's 27 and has not set up base in Alabasta yet)

It seems like I have become possessed. By some sort of demon.

Bonus:

[redvelvetwishtree]