Oh, they’re trying to project authenticity?!? Have they tried, you know, being authentic?

I love curse words, they’re half my vocabulary. That won’t turn me off. But strong language alone will not move the fucking needle. You’ve got to meet people where they are and really give a shit, not just try stunts.

Oh, he gets butt nekkid.

What is a juggalo?

I would bet good money that when we’re closer to November and one of them drops out we’ll see a bunch of Republican money pouring into the campaign of whichever one is left. They want to split the Dem vote and install a Republican. Failing that, they prefer to work with an establishment Democrat than someone who can prove there’s a better way.

I was planning on a good afternoon of crying anyway.

I saw one where someone said something like “You’re making yourself look like what the crazy left says about you!”

Here’s my unmedicated and completely idiotic take.

I’m glad he’s doing these tests, but it’s pretty obvious in this case. The lyrics are very obviously AI generated, first of all. The overuse of certain words (smoke, boots, multiple song titles with the word dust, shakes, whispers, echos) are a strong indicator. Not every song using those is AI generated, obviously. But it’s like they said “see what words an LLM overuses when trying to write songs and put as many of them in a verse as possible”.

Ok, so maybe they just use it as a songwriting tool because they have no lyrics but they’re great musicians and want to put something out. Even without splitting stems most of it currently feels unnatural. But he makes a great point. Just listening without splitting there’s weird reverb. There are strange vocal artifacts. The guitar transients don’t make sense (which is part of why his splitter tool couldn’t split things properly). For a while everything sounded underwater and there are still traces of that. I see they moved past the country voice that was all over the place for a while. There’s a “shimmer” (I wish I had a better word to describe it) that sounds wrong.

It sounds like they took a human track and put every free plug-in they could find on it and dialed it up past the point of good taste. There’s no dynamic range. There’s too much (or just flat out wrong) reverb. There’s digital artifacts. A lot of that doesn’t matter if you’re listening on a Bluetooth speaker because you’ll never hear it. Vehicle systems hype and mask certain frequencies and may not reveal it. But if you listen on any halfway decent system it’s currently pretty obvious.

The real question: will enough people care? I do. Even if they could perfectly replicate session musicians and if they didn’t sing about whispering to your boots and shadows echoing through the dust but were able to really write in the style of my favorite artists I would care. Because the people making new music, trying new things, and pushing boundaries wouldn’t get the funding. So we would eventually end up with homogenized rehashes of what currently exists. If this had happened when all we had was orchestral music we’d all just be listening to AI rearranging that instead of having rap, rock, blues, metal, EDM, country, and all the other genres and their endless subgenres. We’ll never get to moon stank or whatever the next big iteration of music is. And that’s a loss for humanity because art is important.

I didn’t know it started as a way to keep non whites out. That’s interesting.

I’ve lived in a town where people leave broken down cars under chest high grass. Where toilets with a handful of wildflowers planted in the middle counted as a lawn ornament. Ridiculous shit like that. I prefer that to an HOA.

In Trump’s letter to the Persians, chapter 14 verse 88.

Oh, and I just read your username. We’ve played the White Oak Music Hall if your name is a reference to Houston. Used to play Acadia back when it was open.

Oh trivia is great as well! There are a few other things depending on inclination. Some of the local joints here do paint and sip, line dancing, salsa dancing, wine pairing potlucks, and a bunch of other activities. If you add in breweries or distilleries you can find even more stuff.

But I say that knowing bars aren’t for everyone for a variety of reasons. Not every area has breweries and distilleries.

And yeah, karaoke is a different level of outgoing. I enjoy it in small doses and will fill in as the KDJ if someone needs me to, but doing that every week (or 3 times a week like some of these folks) is a bit much for me, and that’s coming from a dude who has a hobby of playing music in bars.

I do like local live music shows for that if you’re into local music, especially if you hit up the same venue every week for a bit. You’ll meet the other regulars.

A buddy of mine goes to karaoke every week, rain or shine. He moved to a new place a few years ago and within a couple of months he already had a group that he could hang out with elsewhere.

And if you’re lucky it’ll fire out the back at the same speed.

I’m not a DC movie guy (I used to like the comics when I was young) and I’m pretty burned out on superheroes in general, but I’ll watch it both for this and because I tend to like James Gunn.

He went to Greece for the flood.

A big city not in the South. Houston and Dallas are #4 and #9. There’s public transit but it fucking sucks both places.

Same. I used to write articles for an industry mag and that’s how I was taught to do it.

Some word processing apps automatically convert two dashes to an em dash. I’ve got that turned off right now.

My childhood buddy lost half his teeth that way.

It’s 2025 and I can both rope cattle and gun down cybertronic actuated quasi spheroids. But no gun fights for me.

Edit: cattle =/= castle

I’m thinking that’s what he’s doing here. He’s threatening to fracture the furthest right to get what he wants and he’ll spend a pile to do it. I’m convinced this is his play to buy the Republican party.