Hi Crowd!
If you follow the universal scifi calendar as I know many of you do, today is the day that back in 1997 Skynet became self aware. I was entirely disappointed that OpenAI didn't do anything to mark the occasion.
Earlier this month Tara asked me "what's up with all this demure stuff?" to which I astutely replied "what the hell are you talking about?" She gave me the gist and over the following 24 hours I started seeing it everywhere. Demure was very much the world of the summer it seemed. Everything was Demure. I even talked to a brand that was considering a last minute change to a line of merch they had just sent off to include it. But the flame that burns twice as bright also burns twice as fast, and it was only a few days before I started seeing the anti-demurists showing up. "Sorry if I'm ruining your demure vibes but.." and all that. And then, just as quickly, it was over. If you try using demure today, you might as well be saying groovy or tubular.
Conversely, the classics never go out of style. I somehow missed that Thou & The Body covered Shellac's Prayer To God. Especially concerning as this cover appears on Thou's 2020 album A Primer of Holy Words which I thought I'd heard but apparently I hadn't because there's a bunch of other fantastic covers on there (Minor Threat?!) which I'd certainly remember had I heard, and so of course I've been listening to them all week. Thou's latest Umbilical is fantastic. Here's Thou & The Body doing Prayer To God live in 2018:
Music was so much easier to keep up with there were only 3 records coming out each week and you knew which ones they were because you were at the record store when they opened the box with them in there. Every single week. Because that was your entire life. Jesus Christ I can't believe the shit I get nostalgic over these days.
In addition to revisiting Thou's extensive discography this week to figure out what else I missed, I stumbled on Pad Chennington's video from a few years ago about Merzbow's 1996 album Pulse Demon which is positioned more as a history of Noise, which it kind of is, but really with the focus on this one album and the impact it had on the genre.
I really enjoyed this take on it, and went back to Pulse Demon to relisten to it with some of this thinking in mind. I recognize this is not for everyone, but this has definitely turned into a Pulse Demon week and I've been listening to it on repeat. The follow up video on Hanatarash is fantastic as well.
Dear reader, I know that when you get these letters you think "Damn Sean is so cool and knowledgable about everything and always has the best opinions" and let me just tell you that you are only partially right. While I objectively do always have the best opinions and my coolness goes without saying, I'm almost never the most knowledgable and always excited to learn something new. Even when it stings. For example this little bit on Japanese Noise. I learned about Merzbow in the early 90's and had a few records, but I confess to putting them on for a few seconds and saying "whoah, that's some intense shit!" and then putting them back on the shelf just as quick. I couldn't really tell one from the other, and I'd buy one here or there based on what it looked like, but would trade it later for something else. And like Boredoms (founded by Yamantaka Eye from Hanatarash) I understood the importance of the bands and their place in the overall story, but I hadn't really spent quality time with the work. I had a copy of Pop Tatari which I'd listened to in bits and pieces just to know what it was, but I don't know that I'd ever listened to the whole thing, front to back, in one sitting.
So this last week really diving into Merzbow (and Hanatarash, and related) I gained a much more refined(?) appreciation. I learned something, which is always exciting. But at the same time, I'm kicking myself because this would have been much better to wrap my head around when I was living in Tokyo, because just down the street (any number of streets) were certainly record stores entrenched and filled with this history. I know that, because when I saw there I saw them, nodded in a kind of general recognition, and then just walked right past. If I was there today I wouldn't be writing this, I'd be over there digging through crates. I'm sure there's a word for this in some much more nuanced language to describe simultaneously being glad and excited to learn something but also sad and disappointed you didn't learn it sooner. Thinking about the opportunities I missed is painful. Especially if I rewind it all the way back to those days in the mid 90's when I helped my friend Dwid with some design bits for his side band Psywarfare. So I know these bread crumbs were right in front of me and while I picked them up and mulled them over, I never followed them. And now I wish I had, what exciting thing would I be learning about today if I'd learned about these exciting things 25 years ago?
So next time you are sitting around with a large group of people all talking about how smart I am and how I know everything, just know that I don't know it all, but when I learn something cool I try to share it with everyone else just in case it's their first encounter with it and give them the opportunities to not make the same mistakes I did. Any opportunity to not be disappointed in yourself is worth spending a few minutes on.
Which reminds me of this quote: “The thing about people is, they will always find new and exciting ways to disappoint you.” A friend, who I probably went on to later disappoint, said that to me many years ago in passing. As an observer of whatever all this is, I’ve thought about it often, probably way more than he ever intended. I’m regularly presented with situations where it rings true, which is strangely reassuring - in a world filled with nonstop chaos this is a dependable constant. It also makes the rare exceptions that much more delightful.
The Crowd episode 262 was one of the most personal things I’ve written in years including things I've never really spoken about publicly (though not a secret to friends and family). I didn’t set out to do that specifically, it just kind of ended up being that way. I’ve said before that this newsletter (and my blog previously) are more for me than you, writing helps me clear my head and process things - so I never expect people to respond (or even read them tbh) though it’s always nice when they do. Sometimes I get lots of replies, other I get none. The last one got a few, though quite the spectrum. A few people confided that they had similar experiences as kids and it was helpful to know they weren't alone, even now all these years later. A few others agreed or disagreed with my assessment of US campaign politics. One person ignored everything I wrote and the referenced links, taking issue with one sentence and called me an idiot. So it’s a mixed bag for sure.
I encourage everyone to avoid falling into the trap of general recognition, nodding and walking past things that are uncomfortable or painful. Sit with them for a minute. Pick up those bread crumbs and follow them. It's a bummer to realize 30 years after the fact that a fascinating thing was happening right in front of you and you missed it. Bummer doesn't even begin to describe how it will feel to realize 30 years after the fact that a genocide was happening right in front of you and you ignored it.
The New Yorker just published leaked photos of the 2005 Haditha Massacre, hidden from the public at the time because of fear over how people would react when learning that US Marines were murdering children. So while people heard things were going on, they didn't know. We don't have that same luxury today. New reports are published every day detailing new atrocities. I watched every minute of the DNC hoping to see some courage, I read the pleas for shared time, the speech that was refused, and remain so disappointed. Harris could easily win this thing, people want her to win this thing, but talking about "the most lethal army army in the world" and building more border walls isn't it. Where is the Harris that will fight for Medicare and tuition free college? Can we get her back?
People want a way forward, not a way for war. Trying to out Trump Trump is a losing strategy. It's not too late, polls continue to show that the vast majority of Americas don't want their tax dollars spent blowing up children and families and everything else, and most support an immediate halt of arms shipments to Israel and I'm encouraged to see people continuing to speak up and demand that the Dems recognize this. It's their election to lose with inaction, or win by doing the right thing.
Somewhat related, one of the recent Supreme Court decisions which has sent panic through circles of anyone who gives a shit was the overturning of Chevron. In case you missed it, this ruling which has been in place for 40 years deferred explanations of vague laws to experts. For example, if a law said a company needed to implement a “pollution filtration system” one might understandably ask what the hell that means? What Chevron said was in such cases, an agency with expertise in this field should advise on what a classifies as a “pollution filtration system” and what doesn’t, which could lead to clearer definitions like saying that a pollution filtration system must filter X% of a contaminant out of the air/water/whatever or what a cut off level might be between calling something clean or polluted. The new ruling takes the experts out, and lets the judges decide what they think a pollution filtration system is, regardless of their knowledge of the industry or field in question. This is obviously bad, but immediately recognizable how bad in that the Supreme Court in its own ruling mixed up nitrous oxide (laughing gas) and nitrogen oxides (regulated pollutants). There have been many opinions written discussing the hows/whys of this and its implications, most of which say much of the same thing. I was excited to see my friend Astra make a much less discussed critique. In Vox, she writes:
“For decades, animal industries, including meat, dairy, and commercial fishing, have been working successfully to undermine democracy and government oversight in order to boost their bottom lines. The US government, meanwhile, at the behest of corporate influence, has spent the last three decades tarnishing animal activists fighting these industries as domestic terrorists, not because they pose a threat to people’s lives (no humans have ever been killed as a result of animal activism) but because of the threat they pose to profits.”
She’s argues (quite well I might add) in this pieces that if progressives are serious about much of what they’ve been saying publicly, they are going to need to stop ignoring animals and the industries using them, and how policies designed to protect those companies spill over and tarnish everything else. This piece was part of a week long series of articles about animal rights, activism, and politics and where those things all bang into each other and they are all worth reading.
I know Astra from my time as a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow, which is also where I met Esra’a who last week launched Surveillance Watch - a project detailing and mapping the global surveillance industry, where they are working, who they are watching and what they are building - and for who. This work is incredibly important and I’m glad to see it being done, and proud of my friends stepping into the line of fire to do it.
This kind of brings me to something else I’ve been thinking a lot about recently (who am I kidding that I’ve been thinking about for years). I’ve long had a contentious relationship with social media. Last year I wrote about the end of social media and sadly I think things have only gotten worse since then. It’s weird to talk about this because turns out there’s a bunch of social media apologists who jump out of the woodwork to defend any criticism, making accusations of sour grapes and irrelevance to deflect from the conversation of what’s actually going on.
There’s a lot of questions to unpack - Who are we talking to, who sees what we post, what do we want to see, what do the platforms get out of us being there, and why are we even there to begin with?
I’ll address the last one first because I think that informs all the others. I think the reason we’re all using these platforms and have been for so long is because we’re lonely. I don’t think anyone wants to admit it, it certainly took me a very long time to move from insisting it was just the digital space where I hang out with friends to the realization that it’s the longing for connection and interaction that keeps me going back.
I turn 50 next year, and I’m 2 years away from my 20th anniversary of sending an sms to sign up for twttr which of course became Twitter and has now morphed into X. 2/5th of my life has been spent somehow thinking about this app. For what? And of course that wasn’t the beginning of it, and if you trace back every account I’ve had on “social” platforms we’re firmly into 50% territory. Looking from this direction, it’s a bit disappointing.
14 years ago I wrote about Facebook making me feel bad, and asked some hard questions about the relationships I was maintaining by being there, or rather that I was using the site as a crutch to maintain. I wondered how many of those “friends” I’d keep up with if I didn’t have the site to do all the work for me, and what that said about me (and others). I publicly quit it 2 years later because I couldn’t justify being there any longer. I’ve talked about leaving Twitter many times since then, but for one reason or another I keep going back. I think the reason is that after almost 20 years of using it as a primary way to interact with people every day, I don’t know what I would do without it? And I don’t like that at all.
So I started to wonder what life would look like without scratching this social itch all day long? I miss reading books. I miss writing letters. So I think I’d do (more of ) that. In a way it’s consciously deciding to forego lots of low quality interactions for fewer high quality ones. There’s a time where I would have scoffed at that, but these days that transition sounds really appealing.
I don't yet know what my next step will be, but rest assured I'll continue to mull it over with you.
Thanks for not unsubscribing yet,
-s
