I’m blowing up ships in international waters, breaking domestic and international laws, invading other countries, asking people for their papers on the street and rounding them up based on inherent traits, and participating in genocide. Who am I?
The Independent Variable
Latest Posts
🎧 Streaming music is the lie we tell each other
musicI’ve come to the conclusion that streaming music platforms are a shared lie we all agree to that suggests we’re paying for music when we’re actually may as well be pirating it, we just pay $10 a month to keep the cops away.
It’s been fun to see Matt’s evolution of thought here, going from not thinking Spotify’s rates are an issue, To realizing all music streaming is a bit of a sham… I think the one point that keeps getting glossed over is it’s Spotify’s choice to do free ad-supported
🤖 Anthropic Exec Forces AI Chatbot on Gay Discord Community, Members Flee
aiUsers voted to restrict Anthropic’s Claude to its own channel, but Jason Clinton, Anthropic’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a moderator in the Discord, overrode them.
The word of the year might be Slop, but the theme of the year is companies forcing things on their users that they didn’t ask for and do not want.
🌐 Hypertext theme
designNew theme fo the Blot CMS I use learned about via their newsletter. It’s styled after Obsidian Publish and looks terrific. Making me think I should give a digital garden another go…
😡 Megyn Kelly Fumes Over Charlie Kirk Not Being Named Time’s Person of the Year: ‘A Thumb in the Eye’
politicsThis might come across as insensitive… but what on earth did Charlie Kirk do in 2025 to deserve Person of the Year? Besides getting shot… If getting assasinated is the requirement, I’d like to nominate Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman, and their spouses, Mark and Yvette.
🦎 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Respond to Spotify Impersonator: “We Are Truly Doomed”
musicKing Gizzard frontperson Stu Mackenzie said in a statement to the Music that he was “trying to see the irony in this situation.” He added, “But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.”
Continuing the conversation about “ethical streaming services…” I’m not going to say this wouldn’t ever happen on Apple Music (just look at their spotty App Store track record), but these types of stories of AI music making it to Spotify—and being promoted on the platform—seem to happen quite a bit. Again, the music loving ethos that brought Apple back from the dead with
