Matthew

Yeah, this

Feel like the page also had a bunch of suggested band names like "Severe Lunch Duty"?

Police presence at Tai Po MTR seems much higher. Feels like during 2019.

Massive Tai Po Building fire...

(3) fails to see the Streisand effect that may arise from the inevitable stories about (2).

Kind of sad about this. I always liked that these were not for sale, it kept the art making at the forefront. It was art for the doing, like yoga, not art for audiences, like ballet. Now I see a few have sold, although I guess they are bought as remembrances of his personality, not art?

I set iTunes (yes, more than a decade ago) on an old laptop to automatically import any inserted CD, set it at "Apple Lossless" and kept a stack of CDs. Just put another in when I walked past. Did 700+ this way. It was pretty painless, actually.

I had a phase where I was finding older CDs at yard sales—reissues were so heavily mastered for loudness and the older "pressings" of CDs were really different. I ripped them lossless and I'm glad I have them.

It's not an integrity issue if you have no integrity.

Hard without the Thanksgiving buffer the US has... which itself is semi-porous but holds back a lot.

Fire in the hills near Tsz Shan Monastery on morning of 4 November 2025.

Glad for the rain, hopefully will help end the hill fire near Tsz Shan Monastery (took this morning of 4 Nov 2025).

A bizarre demand for cookies in exchange to see a faculty information page. A bridge too far, one might say, or some cookies too many?

Yes, we're happy to show you that faculty page, but it will cost you some cookies, some for essential uses, some for non-essential uses. You know, but for sure you're gonna love the page—and the 🍪

I expect to constantly need to login to @newyorker.com, but got seasick trying to read this (needed to export as PDF). Feels like a 1997 Geocities plugin is running the site...

I know a few researchers who contemplated a move to the UK, even going as far as a campus visit. All backed off due to costs+ low salary. And I know UK researchers who are happy there, too...

The inescapability of AI... it's actually the title of the piece (This is the Internet now)—these ads prove the point.

Educators: The "craft" mindset vs. the tech mindset celebrating frictionless "slop". Your students feel this—it's great to have a reasoned take so you can discuss why slop bothers them a lot, in a deep way, in the face of trying to learn to do things.

AI’s Invasive Species The slop is winning.

Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.

Finger about to mash a "music" button on a panel of switches for music or light.

Saw this button out in the world, wished Jonathan Sterne were still here so I could email it to him. Let there be music!

Bin of hair ties, with sign on it "NO TRYING"

Seen in Hong Kong recently

I think NEC published the Tick, and didn't it have one of those first printings that was very valuable and then counterfeited?

YouTube video by NPR Music Bad Bunny: Tiny Desk Concert

Glad he got in his astounding Tiny Desk. Musically wonderful and with a political punch and PR pride. youtu.be/ouuPSxE1hK4?...

Taxi driver with tablet emulating 4 mobile phones as a bus approaches, will they survive? Tune in next time.

Does a tablet emulating four phones count as one?

Did to Denton, TX to Tallahassee, FL ~1995, 21 hours I think? But that included a long stop where they took off a kilo of cocaine being smuggled by an abuela drug mule (she was at least 85, poor woman).

Lots of mainland tourists with Cyrillic inscriptions on t-shirts, too.

i feel like the social sciences are the gen x of academia

And away we go—I mean, here we cum.

Great visualization!

Image of article "The Year in Music" by Jon Philip Sousa

1906: John Philip Sousa wrote a satirical takedown of a mechanical musical future filled with phonograph conservatories & children labelled musical prodigies for "playing" player pianos, where "automatic action proves the uselessness of eyes and hands and soul."

YouTube video by Karr Tunes Karr/Lewis perform Eccles, Gershwin, Ravel, Bottesini, Swan, Van Goens, Paganini and encores

Sad to hear of the passing of Gary Karr. I had the pleasure of playing for him at a masterclass at UGA back in the 1990s—a true virtuoso who was also kind and funny. Can't find his debut album, the closest I came is this recital. Listen to this Ravel! youtu.be/Y9wf5l1U5qY?...

Hong Kong's version of Trump vs. Harvard... 👇