Sam Howard-Spink

A love letter to the rhythm game communities that helped me find myself It was in the arcade around DDR machines that I first met people like me — kids picked on for being "weirdos," for being neurodivergent, for being queer.

this essay about the importance of in-person gaming communities (DDR specifically, but it pertains to a lot of similar fandoms) is really lovely imo www.mothership.blog/love-letter-...

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I know I’m fixating, but “shooting down party balloons and using it as a pretext for war” is literally the “99 Luftballons” story arc. 🎈🤯 (Even “Miami 2017” didn’t map this closely.)

My citibike stats for comparison: 59 lifetime points, and in 2025 clocked 408 miles over 181 rides.

Disturbingly detailed analysis of my first rewatch incoming

Snow is nature's urban planner: It can show us what parts of the roadway drivers don't use — and what can be reclaimed for pedestrians.

Post your photos and videos of all the #sneckdowns you see and tag us and @mayor.nyc.gov so today's winter wonderland can inspire better streets year-round!

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.

As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.

Here's what happened:

Bandcamp Bans AI Music AI music has become a big problem on streaming services. Remember the Velvet Sundown, the AI-generated psych-rock band from last year with hundreds of thousands of Spotify streams? Remember bands gett...

Bandcamp bans AI music

Sahara Desert dunes at dawn, with moon visible. Taken January 9, 2026.

Sahara Desert at dawn.

Woody Guthrie's New Year's Resolutions, 1942. I particularly like Nos. 19, 25, and 31. Happy New Year!

26 years ago I was sent to a London pub by a newspaper to interview and drink whisky with Lemmy, who was in the band Motorhead and, before that, slightly less famously, Hawkwind and, before that, much less famously, Sam Gopal. We had a good chat: about being from the part of the Midlands north of the River Trent, about books, and about roadying for Hendrix in the mid-60s (him, not me; I was minus nine at the time). When the record company PR sidled over to tell me my time was up, Lemmy waved him away. “No, no, I’m enjoying this,” he said, commandingly. I realised at this point that I had another question I’d been meaning to ask but hadn’t. “Are you scared of anything?” I said to Lemmy. “Nothing,” he replied. Then he paused and frowned for a moment, as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him. “Oh, maybe snakes,” he said. “It’s because they’ve got no shoulders.”

I remember all too little of the interviews I did with rock stars when I was briefly employed as the music critic for a national newspaper, but there is this.

YouTube video by Varietopia with Paul F. Tompkins Krampus Live!

I have watched @pftompkins.bsky.social perform as Krampus many times and it is a great joy to behold! Now YOU can enjoy Krampus without even venturing to the Cape Cod Melody Tent! It’s a Christmas miracle!!!

It is EXHAUSTING not only being made responsible for coming up with new kinds of assignments for our students; it's also tedious reading op-eds that suggest the core problem is a crisis in teaching. But, as Chris and I lay out here, this isn't a crisis in teaching; it's an attack on learning.

Bon dia!

youtu.be/dsqC6HRS8Lc?...

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan…

* Vehicle traffic: -11%
* Foot traffic: +3.4%
* Storefront vacancy: -0.9%
* Pollution: -22%
* Revenue for mass transit: $548M

So YES this has been a huge success.

'They can be pure ZZ Top-meets-Can charging down a freeway yelling their brains out, they can be halfway to a friendly hoedown if you squint perhaps, and they can be halfway to Mars too'

Butthole Surfers - Live At The Leather Fly is No 13 in tQ’s Reissues Etc. of the Year 2025

buff.ly/PFJb866

Where Did These Famous Hip Hop Screeches Come From? Two of the most famous screeches in music history are from House of Pain’s Jump Around and Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain — you likely heard both of them in your mind just reading the names of the songs. This short

Two of the most famous screeches in music history are from House of Pain’s Jump Around and Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain. Which one of them was sampled from a horse (and not Prince)? [kottke.org]

Culture caught in crossfire as Japan and China rift escalates Beijing’s restrictions on Japanese entertainment have canceled concerts and postponed film releases, leaving artists and fans in limbo.

Japan’s anime, films and pop stars are feeling the freeze in China as canceled shows, postponed movie releases and uncertainty loom.

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

i agree with this not just because of course i would, but because it is increasingly obvious to me that the generational shifts that happened with jazz, rock, and hip hop/electronic is now taking place with international music. yes, that's too diffuse a term to mean anything. so were the others.

Word.

"I've always thought that plagiarism is creative": How The Orb's Little Fluffy Clouds showed the world that sampling could be an art form The story of the blissfully psychedelic bricolage that launched The Orb's career, introduced ambient house to the masses and even prompted a lawsuit from Rickie Lee Jones

"One widely beloved and blissfully psychedelic track stands tall, symbolizing the alchemical magic of sampling’s ability to collide disparate sounds from different worlds together to create something thrillingly new: The Orb’s 'Little Fluffy Clouds'."

Look at this absolute professional just doing his job.

Shouting an obscenity at an uncle, a drunk game of cards after dinner, long winded tales of a relative's youthful indiscretions at university... (etc...)

Honestly I fucking loathe the whole idea of "EdTech"

Pushers of technology into education couldn't give a flying fuck about students, educators, education itself, or any of their other so-called "use cases".

They care ONLY about profits. I really wish our execs could perceive this blinding light 😡

Beck released 'Midnite Vultures' 26 years ago on November 23, 1999 | Discover where it ranks in our readers' poll here: album.ink/BeckPoll

Deus é um DJ.

All three major label groups have now signed a deal to license their catalogs to the AI music startup Klay

stereogum.com/2480239/majo...

cinema_nasties 1d Al defenders are so embarrassing j.paulmonter 2h All you are saying is that you want to gatekeep creativity. That's not good. drachelbarr & 20h • •• Neuroscientist here... creativity is a process. A process. A FUCKING PROCESS. Not an output. Nobody is gatekeeping the process - Al simply invites you to skip to the end, to the output. Which, as mentioned, is not creativity. Nobody cares if the output is aesthetically pleasing, because the process, the act itself, the limitation of a single human mind and the resulting creations that capture that one single inimitable human experience... is what makes a creation worth paying attention

Well put by @drrachelbarr.bsky.social

A quote from Alan Moore that reads ""I believe that magic is art, and that art, whether that be music, writing, sculpture, or any other form, is literally magic. Art is, like magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness ... Indeed to cast a spell is simply to spell, to manipulate words, to change people's consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman."

Many happy returns to Alan Moore - writer, artist and magician - 72 today.