November 6, 2023

📡 – 2023-11-06

Once more, this time with feeling…

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Body Void’s Bulldozing Doom Isn’t Just A Sound. It’s A Philosophy.

Atrocity Machine’s heaviness isn’t limited to the sound. Body Void have long been a vocally political band, and they’re not afraid to take on tough subjects in their lyrics. The earliest Body Void material focused on Ryan’s queer identity, but they’ve since set autobiography aside in favor of a more outward-looking approach. Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth tackled environmental destruction, and the title of last year’s Burn the Homes of Those Who Seek to Control Our Bodies speaks for itself. On Atrocity Machine, Ryan looks at issues like police brutality, the prison industrial complex, and the endless grind of late capitalism with the withering gaze of a satirist. “Human Greenhouse” and “Flesh Market” cast our bodies as literal commodities to be exploited, while “Cop Show” puts a surrealist spin on the spectacle of policing-as-entertainment. The venomous title track imagines our compartmentalization of mankind’s inhumanity as a game show: “Spin the wheel/ …Win a prize/ Die to see a gleeful idol/ Live to watch the news.”

Spotify announces it won't pay royalties on tracks streamed less than 1000 times annually

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/spotify-announces-it-wont-pay-royalties-on-tracks-streamed-less-than-1000-times-annually/ar-AA1jtcds

According to Spotify's figures, 37.5 million tracks have topped 1000 streams (1000 as an all-time total, not annually) in the history of the platform, out of the entire catalogue of over 100 million tracks. This means that more than two-thirds of all the music on Spotify has yet to reach the 1000-stream threshold and won't be generating any royalties under the platform's new rules. 

Does New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Have a Bank Account?

Does New Speaker of the House Mike Johnson Have a Bank Account?

Speaker Mike Johnson has never listed a bank account on his financial disclosure. In fact, on his newest disclosure he doesn’t list a single asset at all.

Newly minted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson doesn’t have a bank account, but him and his son DO monitor each other’s porn intake … so that’s a normal thing! Super normal, good people running this country, huh? Very regular and standard!

Eye-related issues affected attendees at Yuga Labs' ApeFest NFT event

Eye-related issues affected attendees at Yuga Labs' ApeFest NFT event | The Block

Several attendees of Yuga Labs’ ApeFest reported eye problems, raising questions about the NFT event’s safety and lighting used.

Among those affected was crypto trader Adrian Zduńczyk, who shared his diagnosis of photokeratitis, a condition resulting from excessive exposure to ultraviolet light. Zduńczyk thanked the event organizers for an incredible event but posted yesterday, “Still, as dozens of others, I’ve almost lost sight this night,” urging attendees with similar symptoms to seek medical help and Yuga Labs to put out an official statement with recommendations for those affected.

HBO Bosses Used ‘Secret’ Fake Accounts to Troll TV Critics

HBO Bosses Used ‘Secret’ Fake Accounts to Troll TV Critics

Casey Bloys ordered staffers to create fake accounts to fire back at critics, according to texts reviewed by Rolling Stone as part of a new lawsuit.

Bloys was annoyed, according to text messages reviewed by Rolling Stone, and sent VanArendonk’s tweet to Kathleen McCaffrey, HBO’s senior vice president of drama programming. “Maybe a Twitter user should tweet that that’s a pretty blithe response to what soldiers legitimately go through on [the] battlefield,” he texted. “Do you have a secret handle? Couldn’t we say especially given that it’s D-Day to dismiss a soldier’s experience like that seems pretty disrespectful … this must be answered!” 

Bloys was serious. “Who can go on a mission,” he asked McCaffrey, according to the messages, adding that they needed to find a “mole” at “arms length” from the HBO executive team. “We just need a random to make the point and make her feel bad.” 

The ‘Crispy R’ and Why R Is the Weirdest Letter

The ‘Crispy R’ and Why R Is the Weirdest Letter - Atlas Obscura

I made a bunch of linguists listen to this social media phenomenon and tell me what’s going on.

The crispy R is a phenomenon that some linguists had noticed, but which had gone largely unstudied—until the phrase “crispy R” was bestowed on it by Brian Michael Firkus, better known as Trixie Mattel, the winner of the third season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, and later popularized via TikTok. The sound is easier to point out than it is to either describe or reproduce. Some of the most frequent users of this unusual-sounding R include Kourtney Kardashian, Max Greenfield of New Girl fame, Stassi from Vanderpump Rules, and Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend. It sounds, to me at least, like a sort of elongated, curled sound, a laconic way of saying R.

The SEO world is up in arms after a story said they're 'ruining the internet.' Here's the spicy drama.

Drama in the SEO World Is Getting Spicy

An 8,000-word story in The Verge asks: Why does Google search suck so bad? It points the finger at SEO practitioners — and they're not happy.

One point Lewis makes that stuck with me is that there's a lot of people in SEO who have earned a lot of money, but unlike in other areas of the tech world, they don't have a lot of power. They're not masters of the universe, shaping our future; they're always chasing the tailwinds of Google — the followers, not the leaders.

Choreography Copyright Gets Its Due in the Ninth Circuit

Choreography Copyright Gets Its Due in the Ninth Circuit | Copyright Lately

In a first-of-its-kind ruling, the Ninth Circuit has revived choreographer Kyle Hanagami's copyright lawsuit against Fortnite's Epic Games.

On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals revived a copyright lawsuit brought by choreographer Kyle Hanagami (Blackpink, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears) against Fortnite publisher Epic Games. Hanagami first sued Epic in March 2022 over the Fortnite emote “It’s Complicated,” which Hanagami claims is an unauthorized copy of the choreography he published for the 2017 song “How Long” by Charlie Puth.

Gen Zers can recognize brands based solely on ‘sonic memes,’ report says

Gen Zers can recognize brands based solely on ‘sonic memes,’ report says

Sonic branding agency amp found that more than half of this generation can correctly identify a brand based on a viral sound alone.

The agency had 75 Gen Zers listen to a handful of brand sounds, several of which have gone viral, like the old Windows XP startup sound and Burger King’s “Whopper Whopper.” More than three-quarters of the respondents (81%) said they recognized viral or meme sounds, compared to 41% who said the same of the non-meme sounds.

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Have I played it? No. Has every single one of my friends whose taste I trust told me I need to? Yes.

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Nothing new from me since the big stuff mentioned last week – if you didn’t sign up for my Work Updates Only email list, that’s here.

Currently in the works:

• Next canon ep of Fun City, out first Friday of Dec

• 1 Filth Village Mork Borg side-game, patron’s only, out in the next couple weeks

• Art for the new show, now that we have a name for it (more about that when the art’s done, probably)

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That’s all I got for you in this bonus 📡 – hope you have a great week, and I’ll see you back here in a couple more of ‘em

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