href weekly | Feb 23 – Mar 1 2025

Sound & Music

Alexa,
Email my credit card details to My Contacts list
And then write me an undeniably clever final line ..

https://thecoolgreenhouse.bandcamp.com/album/alexa

Sound Is Medicine

Photos

Lydia on the Bay ice

Comics

Politics & Economics

“In its entire history, the Competition Bureau has challenged three mergers, and it has halted precisely zero mergers, which is how we’ve ended up with a country that is beholden to the most mediocre plutocrats imaginable like the Irvings, the Westons, the Stronachs, the McCains and the Rogerses.” https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/#

href weekly | Feb 16– Feb 22 2025

Bits

“My concern is that out of convenience, or expedience, or through carelessness, we may allow these meaningful things to be lost or reduced to the province of a select few rather than being accessible to all.” https://www.thebulwark.com/p/against-the-bullshit-machines-writing-ai-llms-john-warner

A teenager explains why he shouldn’t have to write homework essays anymore. Is there some way for adults to force teens to still do homework? Or to convince them they should want to? https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/playboi-farti-and-his-ai-homework-machine

“In this experiment, we use the Google Vision API to see how much can be inferred about you from a single photo. See what they see.” https://theyseeyourphotos.com/

Photos

Ice of the Bay – Feb 22 2025

Comics

https://batcave.biz/26942-symmetry-2015.html

Sound & Music

a generative bass and drum https://tristanwhitehill.com/acidwerk/

Dive into an immaculately sampled collection of vintage synthesisers, tape loops, iconic archives and brand new performances from BBC Radiophonic Workshop. https://www.spitfireaudio.com/bbc-radiophonic-workshop#overview

“From songs that push back against fascist regimes to songs that incite revolution to songs that demonstrate cultural radicalism and anti-establishment politics, music can be instrumental towards gaining and expressing freedom.” https://contestedhistories.org/uncategorized/the-sound-of-freedom-the-role-of-music-in-political-change/

Politics & Economics

“if we want young people to flock back into our bachelor of education programs and build careers in our school systems, then being a teacher needs to be a good job, one that combines solid pay with reasonable expectations. Without this, the cycle of shortages is doomed to repeat and emergency hires will remain an ineffective patch on a growing tear in our social fabric.” https://thewalrus.ca/you-cant-solve-the-teacher-shortage-by-pretending-anyone-can-do-the-job/

“Trust is a culture problem. And culture problems are wicked problems…When you don’t have [trust] anymore, you can’t just recreate it by policy, because cultures that work well are built on complicated human relationships. They’re built on small, subtle things that you didn’t know were important until you don’t have them.” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/higher-education-university-professors-disillusion-palestine-protests/