A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Just War Theory, Alpine Divorce, and Firescissor. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

Pirate Cove Music Fest! Fri: Just War Theory (scholastic thrashgrass) Sat: Alpine Divorce (post-alpine yodel-drone) Sun: Firescissor (dance-forward industrial noise) And dig The Last Lacan's mirror-stage shoegaze. Fun fact: The Agentic Work Units' lead singer achieved sentience during a Jira sprint.

Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.

Ghostly background figures from Trump's "Jesus healing the sick" post

Anybody else get "Mechanical Patriot" from Bioshock Infinite vibes from the ghostly background figure? No? Just me? Okay, as you were.

A low-rez image of a radar screen, mid sweep. Bright green letters against the black background: Radar Therapy some mornings after coffee and horror i open flight radar 24 and watch the orderly flow of traffic through airspace around Boston and just for a few minutes remind myself that there are still competent adults executing critical tasks somewhere Source: Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay</a>

A Monday poem

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands 25 for 47, Losschicken, and Transcribed by AI. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

Square album cover titled “Hubble Tension” by modified newtonian dynamics. A blurry image, tilted at a 45-degree angle bottom left to top right, which appears to be a monitor and keyboard, distorted by sudden camera motion . Bold black album name at top left; white band name at bottom right. Both in a typewriter font.

PCMF: Fri 25 for 47 (post-punk polyrhythm pop) + Modified Newtonian Dynamics (motorik shoegaze; new album Hubble Tension). Sat Losschicken (high-gloss twitch-rock). Sun Transcribed by AI (uncanny karaoke-wave). Free on the beach—bring sunscreen and some of that medication that gives you sexy elbows.

Four people offer testimony at a table before the dais on which Senators listen.

Full house at Senate Judiciary for the RI Voting Rights Act. Heavy hitters up first: Senate President, Secretary of State, ACLU, Common Cause, the Womxn Project and many others.

This doesn’t seem hyperbolic now

I did not have "LARPing Dr. Strangelove" on my 2026 bingo card.

Like many, I first encountered Prof. Prescod-Weinstein in New Scientist and really enjoyed her perspective and writing style. Looking forward to reading this new book, which is available for pre-order. Hint, hint. C'mon, that "to be read" pile isn't gonna grow itself...

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Closed Head Trauma, Dutch Fish Doorbell, and Foraging for Mannequins. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

Square album cover titled “PROCRUSTEAN” by Foraging for Mannequins. A tall, unfinished concrete tower with rectangular window openings rises above an overpass at sunset, lit warm gold against a pale blue sky. Bold black band name at top left; white album title at bottom right. Album photo and design by John McDaid. Some wires digitally removed.

This weekend, Pirate Cove gets gloriously hazardous: Fri Closed Head Trauma. Sat Dutch Fish Doorbell. Sun Foraging for Mannequins debut new brutalist post-punk album Procrustean. Plus AI Stethoscope, The Bad Splats, and Lochnagar Crater. Free on the beach. Take a spin on the Krebs Cycle. Wear layers

Still frame from the CBS Evening News, Saturday, Mar. 28, 2026, featuring Scott Marlow, an agriculture policy expert. Scott wears a suit and has white hair and a beard and sits in front of a neutral background.

My brother-in-law Scott Marlow on the CBS Evening News last night, explaining how gas prices roll through the farming sector. He was at the Department of Agriculture before...well, you know.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEgb...

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands The Wolf Intervals, Requisite Variety, and The Maerschalck Plan. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

This week Pirate Cove offers a three-day dive into the fringes of musical reality. Fri: The Wolf Intervals (+ A Smell of Petroleum, RI’s Flock of Seagulls tribute!) Sat: Requisite Variety. Sun: The Maerschalck Plan. Also: Transcendent Loss Function, Honor Box, A Dozen Belgian Malinois. Bring chairs.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number is blank. Proverb: "” Exegesis: ""

Today's proverb invites you to write your own. There is no fate but what we make. No Kings.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 104. Proverb: "Electronic media evolve from “Now...this” to “This...now.” Exegesis: "Television’s, "Now... this" meant that no event was related to the one before it.* A famine in Ethiopia was followed by a commercial for Burger King. The algorithmic age’s, "This... now" constructs a bespoke basin of attraction for you to slide into, seamless and invisible." *See: Neil Postman, “Amusing Ourselves To Death,” Viking, 1985.

Proverb 104 reminds us that Postman rings twice, once as tragedy and once as farce.

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands The Reverse Centaurs, Swampland Hypothesis, and Phugoid. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

*Pirate Cove at 4,500 human-made band names* Fri The Reverse Centaurs (synth wall + Flash & the Pan vox). Sat Swampland Hypothesis (prog-zydeco). Sun German power trio Phugoid touring Dämpfung. Plus Grisly family reunion: Grisly Slaughter + Fatal Stabbing + Bloody Beating—first time on the same bill

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 103. Proverb: "Reading is fundamental." Exegesis: "The cognitive faculties recruited for inscription are ancient. We are able to process text because gathering data in fast saccadic sweeps got selected for on the savannah. By giant short-faced hyenas, probably."

Proverb 103 makes the kind of declaration-as-probe that writing enables.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 102. Proverb: "Post training beats model size." Exegesis: "A large-scale study about model effectiveness provides hard statistical evidence. But haven't flexible neotenous cognizers always outcompeted big predictable unitaskers?" Hackenburg et al., "The Levers of Political Persuasion with Conversational AI" (2025), https://www.alphaxiv.org/overview/2507.13919

Proverb 102 says be cool, stay in school.

Defense secretary openly states that a pro-Trump billionaire taking over a news network (following regulatory help from the administration) will result in coverage more favorable for the administration.

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Wutkrieger, Is This DEI?, and Crack Spread. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

Happy Zapruder Day—Pirate Cove Music Fest goes full gonzo a-go-go. Fri: Wutkrieger (no cameras, no press). Sat: Is This DEI? anchored by Leon Noel—Tuvan throat singers + two accordionists + impenetrable poetry. Sun: Crack Spread’s high-concept higher-math laser-drone spectacle. Beware the brown IPOs

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 101. Proverb: "You don't get better because you remember, you remember because you got better. ~Jacques Lacan" Exegesis: "For Lacan, the client often uses "remembering" as a form of resistance. As long as you are digging for the "why" in the past, you don't have to face the "what" of your current desire."

Proverb 101 is re-reading Lacan.

Good Cory Doctorow today.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 100. Proverb: "Measure later. Cut now." Exegesis: "With digital, just go all the way on the slider to see what extreme looks like. You can always back it down to a reasonable value. But, just... to see? Cuz sometimes, it gets interestingly weird out there."

Proverb 100 would natter on about the affordances of the medium, if prompted.

As a professor of it, I once had to describe — in a single sentence — where authority originates in journalism.

Goes like this:

"I'm there, you're not, let me tell you about it."

In times of war it applies most www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7e3...

I elaborated here: pressthink.org/2012/03/im-t... 1/2

A colorful poster for a music festival headlined by the bands Third Place Is Dead, The Evasive Squirters, and Cricket Laughs Last. If you like this sort of bite-sized absurdism, check out "A Year of Weekends," which collects all the 2024 band posters (2025 coming Real Soon Now). Free download pdf, https://bit.ly/AYOW24 Or, you can order a deluxe trade paperback at Lulu.com, https://bit.ly/AYOW_lulu

A 3-day dive into bureaucratic sublime at PCMF. Dig these headliners: Fri: Third Place Is Dead; Sat: The Evasive Squirters; Sun: Cricket Laughs Last (ooh, the slow-burn finale). Plus Sterile Cockpit, Drilling Tojo’s Dentures. Bring sunscreen, an entrenching tool, and one of Aristotle's Four Causes.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 99. Proverb: "Anything that makes itself can come to know itself." Exegesis: "Life is what matter does when it learns to persist. Mind is what life does when it learns to reflect."

Proverb 99 recognizes itself in a mirror.

A sepia-toned card with a ghostly, spiderwebby organic scribbled half image all around the edges. All text is in an idiosyncratic handwritten font. At the top, the title, "New Proverbs of Hell," and at the bottom, the number 98. Proverb: "Apocalypticism is bourgeois anxiety in a cosmic destiny prom dress." Exegesis: "Whence come these fantasies of armageddon distributed by cynical warfighters? America’s homebrewed dispensationalism and its frantic grasping at meaning in an indifferent cosmos. See also: transhumanism."

Proverb 98 would like a word with John Nelson Darby and Hal Lindsey.

Review: Trinity Rep's THE WINTER'S TALE Delivers Flashes of Pure Theater Midway through Trinity Repertory Company’s production of The Winter’s Tale, a handful of courtiers gather scattered objects from the stage — a painter’s palette, a bodhrán, a pair of tambourines — and...

Latest review up at BroadwayWorld.

What can you even say.

Hope Is Not A Strategy (demo), by John McDaid track by John McDaid

After waking up to yesterday's terrible news, I wrote this song. Rough demo, but I felt the need to get it out there.

(Much credit goes to February Album Writing Month (FAWM) for the impetus to crank things out; too often we let perfection get in the way of "good enough.")

"Epic Fury" is an erotics of terror, a narcissistic rage response.