Robert Dallas Gray

like a border collie is probably the only dog that can look at you with actual disdain

it’s so funny that different dog breeds have characters like horoscope signs but it’s actually true

and this is exactly why husky owners always look like everything they've gone through 😫

it’s the shiny too-tight date rape suit that gets me

every state plus guam, puerto rico, and the district of columbia should have its own jonathan richman. why should massachusetts have all the fun

why do the chuds dress so badly. actually it’s the same reason as everything else isn’t it, they disdain aesthetics of any kind as ‘unmanly’

whippet owners are like ‘I want a dog but it has to stamp its feet at me like a little horse’

(nb I’m carefully leaving it open that rocks are to some degree conscious)

it’s a shame these dickheads need everyone to like their pet rock as much as they do, cos LLMs are genuinely a really interesting experiment in natural language processing. that’s what they are! they’re not oracles, they’re not ‘intelligent’ & they’re certainly not any more ‘conscious’ than rocks

whatever you think about it is really probably a faith position, in the end. I doubt it’s something that can be ‘explained’.

at root, there’s a sense of continuous selfhood that some theories say is illusory; but ultimately it can’t be, because we all have it and it’s really the *only* thing we have. the fact it can be broken down, the fact it’s essentially a fiction created by our brains doesn’t really matter

there are loads of theories about consciousness, some quite old and well-developed; some of them are really interesting, none of them that I’ve encountered offer any really satisfying answers, maybe because what we mean by ‘consciousness’ isn’t really very well defined

go read a book

I’ve read loads about consciousness and loads about AI. both fields are absolutely fascinating. this is the question of an idiot.

you could replace ‘Claude’ with ‘rocks’ or ‘soap’ and this sentence would make precisely the same amount of sense

can that hans reichel record hurry up and come out please

Doing research for next week's episode and learning that Elbit Systems is not just Israel's primary arms manufacturer but one of the largest arms companies in the entire world and thinking about how the British government framed opposition to it as antisemitism against a smol bean Jewish business.

Blue is the Color of My Sun, by Natalie Jane Hill from the album Hopeful Woman

beautiful. hazy and languid in that way cowboy junkies and mazzy star could be https://nataliejanehill.bandcamp.com/track/blue-is-the-color-of-my-sun

also, conservative maga ideologues love to be called ‘Matt Schlap’

again, ‘conservatism’ is not a political tendency. it is an illness and these people should not be allowed anywhere near civil society.

Missals, by Robert Dallas Gray 6 track album

Listening to...

robertdallasgray.bandcamp.com/album/missals

It is no longer Bandcamp Friday, but these remain beautiful physical formats of my new album, designed and manufactured with love and care, and you should treat yourself to one today.

brokenchanter.bandcamp.com/album/this-c...

I am exceptionally proud of the music on them too.

so you have something like twitter, e.g., which was notoriously janky for years and only stabilised when it was handed over to devs who made decisions that favoured scaling and design. a lot of products have those phases, but the devs who work on the first are often the loudest

I think the disconnect arises because quite a bit of highly visible dev work (product work) is more about speed to market, and the devs that work on that stuff often don’t much care about or even *understand* maintainability

honestly find it baffling this even needs to be said. in most mainstream dev work, maintenance is … everything. every architecture decision you make is geared towards making projects maintainable. your development pace depends *entirely* on maintainability.

dog’s pissed off at me for listening to eliane radigue again

if I had to pick one only, the henry threadgill book is incredible

autobios: henry threadgill,
chris stein, jamc, richard hell, richard lloyd, trevor horn

lou reed by will hermes
you’re with stupid by bruce evans
dazzling stranger by colin harper
conform to deform by wesley doyle

(I read a lot of music books 😂)

marc masters’s music book podcast a good source

I’m not gonna celebrate the murder of a violent sex offender by another violent sex offender. Thoughts instead with the families of Holly and Jessica, this will be bringing up a lot of trauma and horrible memories for them.

Over 1000 civilians dead, and we're letting Trump use UK bases to further his war.

Britain should stand firm against Trump's illegal warmongering, and stop these bombers landing on UK soil.