Belle (2021) - Anime scifi-musical directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Incredible visuals and a touching story about a grieving high school girl who becomes an overnight global pop sensation – but only on the internet. Accurate depictions of online culture and a unique take on the Beauty and the Beast story.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell…
This talk by journalist/author Ed Yong from the 2024 XOXO Festival – Ed Yong wrote long-form stories about the pandemic for the Atlantic and won a Pulitzer for it. He also gave a voice to people suffering from long COVID, as well as health workers who were being gaslit for doing their jobs, and emphasized that public health is a collective responsibility.
www.youtube.com/watch
Magical/Realism: Essays on music, memory, fantasy, and borders – Book of essays by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, a latina writer who talks about her experience as an immigrant to Texas and the role of fantasy franchises like Game of Thrones, Baldur’s Gate, and The Witcher in her self-discovery.
www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/704…
An Ojibwe-language dubbed Star Wars film has been made, premiering in Winnipeg. Seems like a huge win for Indigenous language preservation/reconciliation. More, please!
Here’s a guide from neurodivergent psychologist Megan A Neff on finding just the right amount of stimulation. A topic I’ve been thinking about as I create a new studio space.
How to Find Your Sensory Goldilocks: Achieving the “Just Right” Fit
“Deep listening, for me, is learning to expand perception of sounds to include the whole space-time continuum of sound, encountering the vastness and complexities as much as possible. […] My practice is to listen to everything all the time, and remind myself when I am not listening.” – Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016)
♿️ This is the most interesting accessibility tool I’ve ever seen on Al Gore’s Internet. Click the icon at bottom right, and it lets you change how the page is displayed with things like text size, colour contrast, and focus modes. Taking note for my local accessibility work. visitbend.com
From Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine:
“so much of the promise of generative AI as it is currently constituted, is driven by rote entitlement.** I want something and I want it produced, for me, personally, with the least amount of friction possible;** I want to see words arranged on the screen without my having to take the time to write them, I want to see images assembled before me without learning how to draw them. I want to solve the world’s biggest problems, without bothering with politics — I have the data, I have trained the model, I should be able to! We have advanced technology to new heights, we are entitled to its fruits, regardless of the blowback or the laws or the people whose jobs we might threaten.
I’ve tried to build a home on the web many times since ~1999-2000 as a teen, when I tinkered with HTML coding and published a collection of short mp3s I found hilarious – mostly from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Star Wars.
Here’s a good piece with lots of helpful links about making a web home today.
Wow, this book surprised me. It’s a story very well told, and I learned a lot about the Luddite rebellion of the 1810s in England. Workers resisting their replacement by automation technology and their mistreatment in factories. “General Ludd” became a Robin Hood-like legend in Nottingham and surroundings.
Also:
Dickens' Oliver Twist is said to be based on or influenced by stories of child labour from this period.
I didn’t know Lord Byron – poet, parliamentarian, philanderer – was such a celebrity. His speech to Parliament about the Luddite cause is one of the best records we have, since so much organizing was done in secret.
Also he got together with a few friends in Geneva ~1816 at a retreat where both Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) and Dracula were written. Frankenstein, especially, being influenced by Luddism.
If I was a diver, I’d go see the Underwater Sculpture Park in Grenada. Currently feeling some affinity with The Lost Correspondent. www.puregrenada.com/underwate…
Wow, I did not expect to read George Monbiot explain via The Guardian what ME/CFS patients have been saying for ages about a medical system that doesn’t listen to us, but I doff my cap to you, sir. 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Just watched the biopic on Hideo Kojima. I find it inspiring to learn a little about what drives other artists. It reaffirms my weird obsessions. This one also makes me want to try Death Stranding. 🕹️
The best thing I did for myself this week was to make a text message notification sound from a recording of my cat’s collar + purr. The beeps and dings that come with our devices tend to be way louder than I need them to be, so why not make something pleasant and less… activating?
This article about temporal accessibility resonated, and it is a reason why I do not schedule myself live music gigs very often anymore. It costs too much. By Alex Haagaard. alexhaagaard.medium.com/notes-on-…
Learning a bit about the Hidden Disabilities sunflower. Started in 2016, aiming to bring some understanding and inclusivity for people with invisible illnesses. There’s a travel component too - airports have adopted it. hdsunflower.com/ca/
I’m doing a close reading of a new book called Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew. And I’m keeping my notes in a longer, live-read blog post on this very site.
One of the core ideas that keeps coming up is that “Disability is inherent in the human condition.” It’s a thought that helps me re-frame what disability actually means as I do a little volunteer work on a local accessibility committee.
Sometimes disability is a technical or medical challenge. But the ways disabled people suffer needlessly also have a lot to do with the social problem: the world is set up to exclude them.
Also, the quote of the day is from Chapter 4. “Technology cannot transcend the meatsack.”
Just read an email that told me “AI can see, hear, and talk.”
Here’s a friendly reminder that no, it can’t!
At best, AI is software imitating those things. As AI claims get increasingly far-fetched, it isn’t helpful to anthropomorphize and ascribe consciousness to computer programs. It only feeds the hype.
Cross-posting this from my music/professional blog. I was interviewed about an audio installation I have running at the Haida Gwaii Museum alongside the work of visual artist Benedicte Hansen. It’s from my album called We Have All the Time on Earth.
