From Quartz:

Of the 69 scripted television dramas that aired on the big four US broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC) in the last year-and-a-half, 35 were about law enforcement, according to a Quartz analysis. CBS was responsible for 16 of those on its own. About 70% of the network’s dramatic programming from 2019-2020 were about cops.

The few ongoing cop comedies, like NBC’s Brooklyn Nine-Nine, were not included. Neither were reality shows, such as Cops or Live PD.

Even many of the non-cop dramas on these channels are so cop-adjacent that one could reasonably argue they are also about law enforcement.

Or the military, which they exclude from consideration.

Numerous academic studies over many years have showed that viewing cop shows can leaded to warped views of the criminal justice system and policing. A 2015 study by St. John Fisher College found viewers of these shows are more likely to believe police departments are much more effective in solving crimes than they are in reality. The same study also found that viewers were more likely to believe police misconduct is not a problem, and that officers only use force when necessary.

.......... “LAW AND ORDER!!!!!”

Here’s the whole article about this fucking wild, simply-air fact of our cultural-industrial complex. The carcinogenic particles of the carceral state of mind.

Just think directly about that for a minute, 14 years into the iPhone era, from the company which pioneered the destruction of purchased music as a viable product for musicians. As pundits celebrate the addition of tiny cosmetic adjustments to the home screen, and as the Mac’s usefulness is eroded further in the direction of iOS. As Apple rejects and shapes what developers are allowed to do with legitimate applications, and that people are allowed to install. Bandcamp has to include a note like this right after you buy music nearly-directly from a band.

Just struck me anew how bad some of the foundational assumptions of (some instances of) modern computing are.

I backed this game years ago on Kickstarter. 2012, 2013? It's been on a long, long journey, but apparently it's in the last few months of polish. There's stuff they've shown on kickstarter that isn't in the trailer, and it has continued to look wild as hell the whole time.

I'm trying to imagine working on the same thing for that whole time. I aspire to that energy and dedication.

Wishlist it on Steam, or go ahead and buy it on itch, why doncha?

From this hilarious and insightful interview with Kool Keith / Dr Octagon / etc:

But it’s a catch-22. Some people will pay you a lot to do something easy, and some people will pay less to do something harder, but it’s been the way of my life. There’s people that will let you be free and do what you like to do. You can do a track with a person and they just say, “Yo, do what you do, I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck. I’m rapping about Pizza Hut on my version and you can rap about the fucking garbage truck. I like that.” Then you got some people that want to be more precision. They got to be like, “Okay, this album is about a pit bull—we’re going to talk about his ass, tail, legs, and his head, the wrinkles on his body, or whatever. The dog, we got to talk about him for the whole record.” It’s all cool.

FUCK, THAT'S FUNNY

A lot of rappers, they have dope rhymes and stuff, but they didn’t have the beats to really make it sound good. It should be like a soundtrack, like when James Brown did Black Caesar or when Curtis Mayfield did Super Fly. The soundtrack matched the movie so well. Now you got movies, the soundtrack don’t match. These guys now, they do a scene—a shark is coming, but that shit be playing some elevator music or something. It don’t even match the movie screen. So I wanted my beats to match the lyrics.

I get on all kinds of beats. There’s so much new music out there that it’s just too much for the average antique person. It’s like when the new Dodge Magnum with the magnifying sunroof come out, they can’t look at it. They still riding in the old shit. So they’re mad—it’s the same with music, with beats. The beats are too new and they can’t adjust and get on them. It’s like you sitting in the new Bugatti but you don’t know shit about it. You don’t know how to turn it on; you don’t know how to roll the windows down. You so used to driving that 1991 Buick. You on some ’91 Corolla beats. These motherfuckers don’t wanna adjust to the new shit, so they get mad and say, “That’s not the real shit.” That is the real shit. You pull your ’91 car up to the 2021 shit and it’s parked right next to you. But the old cats is mad because they can’t decipher it.

"The average antique person." God damn. I don't want to be an antique person!

I've been a pretty bad friend, colleague, and overall communicator. For a long time, particularly since the end of last year. I've posted here about doing "better," and I think I am, but in very specific ways. Other things have gotten more difficult; specifically, I have felt an uncharacteristic amount of shame around letting people down, and not being able to apologize or even reach out. I haven't talked to very many people since January; and it's not feeling any easier to reach out and repair my damaged and neglected friendships. I'm not sure why I can recognize it as a problem and yet not do anything directly about it. I'm already at maximum anxiety and discomfort most of the time; adding a phone call where I know I deserve to be chastised causes a peak and then slides away from me as impossible.

To one stupid end, I have fully blocked my access to social media. It's addicting and primarily destructive to me. If you need me, please email me, nick at this domain. Or text me, or better yet, call me; even if you want to yell at me, you can call me. It's easier for me to answer than to dial.

I can feel something unclenching, after just a few days without twitter. There is enormous guilt about not "keeping up" with the cavalcade of horrors, but I'm still reading the news; just less frequently, by way of rss subscriptions, which are significantly less-compelling by virtue of their length. Surely, on my deathbed, I will look back on the amount of time I spent fussing over the precise ways in which I want to be scoured by chaotic information as a shameful waste of finite materiality. Yet here, unfortunately, we are.

lovedrug — castling

The first step toward the management of disease was replacement of demon theories and humours theories by the germ theory. That very step, the beginning of hope, in itself dashed all hopes of magical solutions. It told workers the progress would be made stepwise, at great effort, and that a persistent, unremitting care would have to be paid to a discipline of cleanliness. So it is with software engineering today.

— Fred Brooks, No Silver Bullet

lovedrug — bleed together

this song sounds so cool. I don't identify with its lyrics; I like a lot of Lovedrug's songs because they are strange stories, mythic or fictive, little horror-story vignettes clawing out of the speakers

Thinking about motivation. Yesterday my brother said he wished I could get as excited about our project as I do about Fortnite's new season (extremely good) or finally watching the 2nd and into the 3rd season of Avatar: the Last Airbender (basically perfect). I am excited about it, but every day I wake up like I'm coming out of a deep freeze, reminding myself what I do, gradually overriding the sense that effort is futile and that I need escape in something meaningless.

There were a lot of years, I'm sorry to report, where that sentiment was effectively true.

It's funny to be able to remember when I didn't have this problem. Really, up until I was 21 or 22, I had a deep well of internal motivation; I wrote hundreds of songs as a teenager, drew pictures or wrote stories long into the night, like my life depended on it — no, like it was the only thing I wanted to do. There's a difference. Because now my life does depend on a subset of my creative work, and fuck me if it didn't come long after the wave had crested and broken. But it's here, so I try to pair present circumstances with energy that only arrives intermittently. Like... exhumed.

Trying not to think too hard about the strange fact of someone buying a copy of the album I released in 2007, with a nice little note, and that it’s the 2nd copy anybody ever bought in 13 years 🙃 Or is that true? Maybe somebody bought it from me when I released it and then abruptly stopped trying to perform or promote it. I'm wired wrong from the start; I've gotten so many projects to the point of transcription or initial completion and then fallen off the motivational cliff. Everything scraped in under the professor's locked door.

I assume they bought it after I mentioned it here a few days ago. If so, thank you for the kind note. Received.

Which album from 2004 that I really enjoyed have I completely forgotten about? What lives only on a burned disc spindle that used to get sticky in my accord?

Self-involved meanderings. Pardon our regress.

...

Looked at Spotify's recommended new releases. New songs by The Velvet Teen, The Juliana Theory, Foxy Shazam.... even Poe? Ancient voices stir.

What I'm trying to say is: I'm trying to create the new era, in the death of the old, against massive gravity, and my own density. I want to channel who I once was, or become a new version that works. It's been a real ride, the whole time, but especially the last year. A year ago this time, I was at a record low. In perfect solo ellipsis isolation, I could almost believe things were all right. I'm self-centered, but I'm outward-facing. Nerves connected more to the skin than the spine; too many endings in the eyes. Events carry current; shock collar deterrent.

...

Correction: it's a different Poe.

...

But the only Velvet Teen.

"a mean mind in the way of seeing or receiving the warm summer rays"

These are disconnected snippets from my mean mind. I'll take some deep breaths, and begin again.

really great ways to begin and end an album. first:

and finally:

I probably wrote 3 dozen songs trying to sound like "paper scars" when I was 20. now extinct