Hi Crowd!

Sorry it's been a while since the last note, things have been.. well yeah. Things. You already know. Especially if you already joined The Crowd Telegram group where at the very least I've been posting some links and memes and having a few discussions along the way. It's still new and the discussion side is still small but if you are hanging out in Telegram already maybe it's worth checking out too. Just to be clear it's not a change america groupchat or a war plans group chat, or even necessarily a group chat at all if you don't want it to be, just links and things as I find them.

A few of the stories that I've linked there which you may or may not find interesting...

So many AI things happening. This AI support bot made up policies to justify bugs and caused a bunch of drama. Benn Jordon is poison-pilling AI music with is new tracks and working on a system to let you do it too. BMW is going to have Chinese AI Deepseek onboard ASAP. Reddit users were the most recent unwilling test subjects of AI persuasion capabilities. And why/how AI Art is winning over the next generation of art collectors. What does all this mean? Well if you've been following my ongoing stream of consciousness rambling about all this it means what I've been saying, being "for" or "against" AI is kind of stupid. Love it. Hate it. Whatever. AI exists, it's here, it's everywhere, it's going to be even more everywhere tomorrow - so the thing to do is understand it, understand how it's impacting your life (or is likely to) and figure out where it will help and where it will hurt and act accordingly. No matter how you feel about it, learning about it is going to be better for you than thinking you can hide from it. You can also play along with my new favorite game - collecting videos of people saying that AI is going to replace everything and everyone except for the one ultra specific thing they do that no way can AI ever copy.

Like me you are probably sick of action-less talk by politicians grandstanding and patting themselves on the back, so it's much more interesting to read artists thoughts about Trump's first 100 days in office, what they are seeing and how they are responding to it. I've also seen a number of 'gosh I thought this time would be different, how could I have been so wrong' pieces coming out from previously vocal Trump supporters, which you might also be sick of or might feel is too little too late or rightly observe that many of these people were fully in favor of things when they thought they would only impact other people and are only now second guessing their positions because they are getting stung too. Speaking of getting stung too, turns out the font in the famous "you wouldn't download a..." anti-piracy campaign was pirated.

I may have mentioned Dan McClellan in the past, I love his instagram feed and his "data over dogma" approach to Biblical literacy/scholarship and his new book The Bible Says So just landed on my doorstep. And in a similar but different theme, I was delighted to see my old friend Douglas Rushkoff interview Mitch Horowitz for his Team Human podcast. Speaking of fiction an fantasy and the fantastical and podcasts, if you aren't clued into Wil Wheaton's new Storytime podcast you are missing out. Each week Wil reads a new story and he's been picking out some incredible authors and works to introduce to people and around our house we're loving it and looking forward to it every week.

Speaking of stories, how the absolute fuck does Taylor Sheridan have time to write all these bangers?

I've been heads down cranking to finish up PUNKS: NOT DED which is my unofficial addendum to CRYPTOPUNKS: FREE TO CLAIM which I co-authored and co-edited and is available all over the place now. FTC is over 800 pages and ND is shaping up to be 150 pages. I sent off the latest and hopefully last test version to the printer this morning, so in 2 weeks I'll be holding what, with minor text edits, will be the final version. I really can't believe how much of my life I've spent writing about CryptoPunks in the last few years, and I say that as a good thing. If you didn't see it before here's an excerpt from the new introduction.

I also broke my almost 5 year dry spell and recorded/published a new noise track. Longtime followers will recall //delay(5000) which was my ambient/atmospheric project that I spent a lot of time developing in LA and Tokyo and as that progressed (especially getting into COVID era) it started getting much more chaotic and noisy which I really liked but also wrestled with if it fit with the idea or not. At some point in the last few years I decided that if D5K continues (and no reason it shouldn't) it would make sense for it to swing back to the more lush and dare I say comfortable direction and I should make a hard break for the much noisier and chaotic work and DRØNEWAR INDUSTRIES was born. The first DRØNEWAR track is up now on bandcamp and spotify and everywhere else. I know noise isn't for everyone, but if it's for you then I hope you enjoy it. I'm looking forward to Benn Jordon's tools so I can make AI think my tracks are dance-club friendly.

On some level I admit that focusing on finishing and shipping these things, even if literally only a dozen people will ever notice, is a form of being in the moment self care. The world is so chaotic right now and looking at all of it is overwhelming and it's easy to feel lost and helpless - I do all all day long, and probably have for months - so committing to just making something that didn't exist before and releasing it is a small and actionable task that is doable. So that's what I'm doing. Making stuff. Putting it out there. We'll see what happens next.

xoxo
-s