Deezer says 44% of new music uploads are AI-generated, most streams are fraudulent AI tracks account for a small fraction of Deezer streams, and most are demonetized for fraud.

Welp

arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/d...

Struggling shoe retailer Allbirds makes bizarre pivot from shoes to AI, stock explodes more than 300% Allbirds announced a deal with American Exchange Group to sell its intellectual property and other assets for $39 million in March.

I simply refuse to take the U.S. business community seriously

This is Cathy Rutherford, Glasgow born trade unionist. I love this clip, but even more for knowing that it stems from a core of lifelong political activism

There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel has been bombing Lebanon non-stop since last night. If anything Israel is expanding its war on Lebanon.

You are being lied to

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

Highlighted section of the Copilot ToS which says "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only"

www.microsoft.com/en-us/micros... is it good to build an entire economy and software infrastructure on this

I don't know what SCOTUS will do on birthright citizenship case, it's anybody's guess. But if they endorse Trump's diktat, the only response is defiance. Outright, open defiance by the states. A decision not just erroneous but illegitimate, beyond their power, null and void from the day it's issued.

3000 controllers short is legitimately insane. They’re willing to kill us all to simply not pay people and give them better working conditions.

Delivery Robot Dogpiled on the Streets of Philly One little bot learned the tagline "city of brotherly love" only applies to humans, not food delivery robots.

Welp.

A government of, by, and for unfuckable chuds

2026 is the 50th anniversary of P-Funk landing the Mothership 🛸. Oct. 27, 1976, is when the 1st ever Mothership landing happened at the Municipal Auditorium, New Orleans. The now-closed auditorium still stands, overlooking Congo Square. I’m planning to commemorate this legendary event in some way. 🤘🏾

An official letter from the Kansas Division of Vehicles dated February 23, 2026, with a redacted recipient address. The letter notifies the recipient that due to the enactment of Senate Bill 244, all Kansas driver's licenses and IDs must reflect the holder's sex at birth. It states that the recipient's current credential will become invalid immediately upon the law's publication on February 26, 2026, with no grace period. The recipient is directed to surrender their current ID to receive a new one matching their sex assigned at birth. The document concludes with instructions on how to appeal the notice if received in error, along with contact information for the department.

Kansas is sending letters to trans people telling them that their licenses will be revoked as of tomorrow and that they risk arrest for driving on a suspended license.

This is pure cruelty.

www.erininthemorning.com/p/kansas-sen...

Ohio GOP mayor accused of sniffing underage relative's underwear Butler Mayor Wesley R. Dingus faces two misdemeanor voyeurism charges following a Richland County investigation. The case unfolds as he remains on bond in a separate felony matter.

and republicans still can’t figure out why they’re hemorrhaging young voters tiffinohio.net/posts/ohio-g...

Yesterday, those who teach Intro to Sociology at Florida colleges (as opposed to universities) received a ready-made curriculum from the state and were ordered to teach it.

Yes, you read that correctly. The *state* is enforcing a curriculum on college profs, complete w/ the following restrictions:

"Geo" shared this vid from where he's picking oranges. "Our sacks weigh 60 pounds when full. We start at 11am - after after the dew dries and work to 5. We earn $24 per 900 lb bin. It's hard to pay our bills with this pay and reduced hours because of the morning dew." #WeFeedYou

Ireland’s basic income for the arts scheme becomes permanent When piloted, initiative that provided €325 a week to eligible artists recouped more than its net cost, study shows

Government Shocks Nation With Good Decision

Tenure Will Be Eliminated at Most of Oklahoma’s Public Colleges, Governor Says Gov. J. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, directed the state’s two-dozen regional universities and community colleges to phase out the practice. Existing faculty members will be grandfathered in.

No Tenure for Oklahoma.

Instead, faculty will be on "renewable contracts “tied to teaching effectiveness, student completion, job placement, and economic alignment.”

#academicsky

This desire to decimate the white collar workforce is also driving the billionaire class's efforts to cut, curb, and control higher education. Because academia is the machine that produces the white collar class.

bsky.app/profile/loui...

Now, I say decimate because the goal isn't to destroy white collar work entirely. It's to make those "good jobs" so rare that people will do anything to get and keep them. Including and most especially—working to quell public resistance and bolster billionaires' power.

Underwater Basket Weaving I’d like to apologize up front to all the liberal arts majors reading this, surely flashing back to the most annoying conversations they’ve ever had...

This one was a genuine rabbit hole, very fun to research and write. I did not expect "underwater basket weaving" to connect to basically every social issue of the mid 20th century

part of this is like, conservatives projecting; part of this is conservatives unable to imagine politics without money; and part of this is dudes who are so out of touch with feminized labor that they think children's birthday parties exist as a spontaneous act of parthogenesis

ICE protest songs and chants, Minnesota general strike (January 23) and beyond Transcriptions of singing at ICE protests by faith leaders and protesters. Songs about ICE’s masculinity issues. Other songs about the ICE…

I've written this blogpost on ICE protest chants & songs, w/ a large section of transcriptions of singing at protests by faith leaders and the Singing Resistance. It also includes songs about ICE agents' perceived masculinity issues and new songs protesting ICE. medium.com/@norikomanab...

Hello I’m the ubermensch, my one weakness is whistles

In April 2024, Spotify implemented a new scheme: songs with less than 1k streams per year would no longer receive royalties.

The data for 2025 was just released via Luminate, and 88% of songs have been demonetized.

Read it again: 88% of songs on Spotify have been demonetized.

Time for our annual viewing of the academia-themed Just in Time for Christmas, in which she gets cold called by the “Dean of Yale,” who wants to publish her dissertation because it will be a bestseller and offers a flyout for a job she didn’t apply for, and mystical William Shatner shakes things up.

+1

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

Backing up Spotify We backed up Spotify (metadata and music files). It’s distributed in bulk torrents (~300TB). It’s the world’s first “preservation archive” for music which is fully open (meaning it can easily be mirro...

Somebody scraped & shared every song on Spotify, with metadata — a boon for research into music and algorithms, but also, inevitably, what the training data is going to be for every AI music company in 2026. annas-archive.li/blog/backing...

Someone ought to write about how AI has replaced the labor academic wives used to do (which was really just all of it)

Here’s Milton Friedman thanking his wife for, well, writing Capitalism and Freedom:

#DigitalBlackFace