Tag Archives: synth

href weekly | August 11–17, 2025

Bits

“In practice, the scaling laws worked until they didn’t. The whole enterprise of teaching computers to think remains mysterious. We should proceed with less hubris and more care.” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/what-if-ai-doesnt-get-much-better-than-this

“For the Torment Nexus to get built it needs to convince you that your only option for survival is to build the Torment Nexus, much like an AI company telling us that the only path to solving the climate crisis is to use what’s left of Earth’s resources to power its AI in the hope that it will come up with a solution to the climate crisis.” https://buttondown.com/monteiro/archive/how-to-not-build-the-torment-nexus

“Bellingcat’s Auto Archiver is a tool aimed at preserving online digital content before it can be modified, deleted or taken down.” https://github.com/bellingcat/auto-archiver

Sound & Music

A platform for synthesis and algorithmic composition, used by musicians, artists and researchers working with sound. #synth https://supercollider.github.io

“a friendly yet powerful creative coding platform that lets you and your friends and even AI agents jam together in real time by writing code that drives sound, visuals and a wide variety of connected devices such as MIDI synths – all staying perfectly in sync.” https://tau5.live/

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/