2026-03-06 08:56:00
This isn't a fully-formed thought yet, so bear with me. But I think abandoning the Spotify or Apple Music algorithm-curated playlists for background music and going back to full albums might be a good way to combat AI music.
As I listen to algorithm-curated playlists in the background while working or doing chores, I find myself wondering more and more whether any AI music has snuck its way in, and whether I'd be able to pick it out from a sea of random songs. Listening to a large assortment of random songs is similar to eating ground beef sourced from a large assortment of random cows: your chances of getting something nasty like salmonella are higher.
A couple weeks ago, I had the opposite experience: I heard a song I liked from a band I'd never heard of before. I clicked on the song which took me to the album. I listened to the whole album and loved it. So I checked out the band a little more, looking at their discography, looking them up on Wikipedia, going through their band website and looking at their tour dates. I was just curious about this new band I fell in love with, but later I realized that I also inadvertently vetted them as real, human artists. I never would've done that if I had just "liked" that one song. It took me diving into a full album to do that.
I think because after listening to an album, I'm much more invested and curious about an artist. They produced a whole body of work that I enjoyed, so it's worth learning more about them. I like learning about the human behind the art, listening to them do a podcast or watching them on Hot Ones. If I like someone's work, I tend to look them up. But liking someone's work and "liking" someone's work are different things. In other words, intrinsically enjoying someone's work and clicking the "like" button are different things. One is a more engaged connection to the art, whereas the other is a passive action.
So what does this mean for me? I'm not sure yet. For now, Spotify-curated playlists are still a good way of discovering new artists I likely never would've learned about otherwise. But if I'm not in discovery mode, I feel less and less comfortable putting on an algorithm-curated playlist in the background when I'm not paying attention to it because I'm more vulnerable to be duped into listening to AI music, which I wholeheartedly disagree with and do not want to support through streams. So for background music, I want an album from an artist I've vetted, or a playlist that I or someone I know and trust has curated.
I've always loved and supported the album, ever since I was a kid in the cd era. I think of the album as a book and each song as a chapter. I feel WAY more connected to an artist and the journey or story they're taking me on when I listen to an album, in the order the artist intended, in full. It's only been in the age of streaming where I've grown overly-accustomed to fragmented songs via the playlist. But I feel less connected to art and the human behind it when that's all I listen to, and it's easier for AI garbage to sneak it's way in and rack up streams.
Long live the album!
2026-03-06 04:25:00
Click-baitey title. But at this point in the game it feels like a legitimate question. Money is tight, the stock market is down, “leaders” don’t have to play by any rules, the USA doesn’t stand for anything anymore, and gas prices are back on the rise.
Cool. All our hard work, saving, paying into a social security system that absolutely will not pay you back what you deserve, taxes going to anything and everything so long as it doesn’t actually benefit us.
Does anything matter anymore? YES
My wife and children matter. My friends and family matter. Decent people just trying to get by matter. And we should never stop fighting for what matters.
2026-03-06 00:55:00
March 5, 5:55 AM
55 years lived.
Last 5: 5/5
Next 5: excited.
Life summary in 5 words:
Grateful, happy, and still curious.
2026-03-06 00:05:32
Kodak Vision3 500T AHU / Nikon Coolscan / SmartConvert / Zeiss 50mm EF
2026-03-05 23:54:00
That indigenous people historically "lived in harmony with the land" is a very common claim for indigenous groups the world over. I've previously been sort of suspicious of it in a lofty and high-minded way, treating it like a kind of gentle propaganda circulated by well-meaning liberals with various guilt complexes. Surely the truth is more complicated than that.
I've come around a bit. To see why, here's an analogy: you endeavour to "live in harmony" with your home, yes? You do dishes and laundry (or have another system) to ensure that you have clean bowls and underwear when you need it. When you run low on salt or eat the last of the blueberries, you try to make a note to pick up more from the grocery store. You know where the spare blanket and the ibuprofen is, and you know the guest parking procedures for when your friends visit. You try to live in your home in a way that is well-suited to you and your way of life.
To think of pillaging it for short-term gains or ruining the equilibrium is absurd; you'd only be making more trouble for your future self. You might do so anyways when pressed; leave a tornado of clothing for your future self to clean up when you have to pack last-minute for a trip, for example. But it is you who have to live with the consequences (and if you have roommates they might also get pretty upset at you).
Indigenous groups (and other groups too, occasionally, like Amish farmers) think of the land as their home, and my mistake was taking this in a spiritual sense rather than a literal one. People who live off the land invest a remarkable degree of effort into understanding the specific patch of earth that they find themselves dependent on for survival - where the nicest berry bushes and mushroom colonies are, where to get fresh water and the circumstances that might lead to it being spoiled, the alternate and more annoying source of fresh water one can go to when the primary source is spoiled, the precise conditions and omens that portend good fishing or hunting.
If a group moves, they have to pay a high information cost to figure all this out again for the new place (and also those new areas might already have other people living on them who would not appreciate them barging in), so it makes sense to keep the land that is traditionally yours in the best condition possible; to steward it responsibly. To ruin it is to make trouble for yourself and your children and your clan. So of course you do not do that unless you really need to.
(To clarify, indigenous groups generally do not think of their traditional way of life in the above terms; instead they often have a layer of religious and cultural conventions that inform their ways of living and encode many other values, rich frameworks which are often not reducible to simple cost-benefit analyses.)
If some strange aliens come from far-away lands and give you horses and knives and guns, the equilibrium shifts in both intuitive and unintuitive ways.
If those strange aliens are carrying some disease that you are vulnerable to, such that everywhere they make first contact, within a generation or two, 70%, or 90%, or 99.5% of people in your civilization dies, the equilibrium will collapse, because all of that accumulated knowledge also goes into the dirt.
If your mourning rituals assume some sort of stable equilibrium - for example, if they involve a larger group that is unaffected consoling the smaller group that is, you will not even be able to mourn the collapse. For the sake of your survival and the survival of your children, you may be forced to rapidly familiarize yourself with the strange equilibrium that the aliens have brought with them instead. But even if you do, there’s a very high chance that you die before your time, anyways.
