Benjamin Tausig

Thanks for saying this. Whenever there’s a moment of protest, I get interviewed a bunch about “but where are the protest songs?” and my response has been that anti-ICE whistles are the current US protest music. They’re the sonic communicative thing expressing dissent and bringing people together.

There’s always room for different layers of dissent in the same movement, some referential and drawing on powerful, recognizable symbols (as Guthrie has provided in this moment and others), and some pragmatically responsive to the material needs of the current situation. That’s whistles now.

My perspective is that /this/ moment is a little more folk/protest music throwback, but that might just be my bias. Regardless, there's always been musical responses to crisis.

Sound and Movement: Vernaculars of Sonic Dissent As a global financial crisis rippled through the late 2000s and early 2010s, with mass political movements rising in its wake, many journalists and critics in the English-language press asked an anxio...

I’ve published on this and I stand by it.
Protest music doesn’t always sound like Woody Guthrie.

read.dukeupress.edu/social-text/...

Thanks for saying this. Whenever there’s a moment of protest, I get interviewed a bunch about “but where are the protest songs?” and my response has been that anti-ICE whistles are the current US protest music. They’re the sonic communicative thing expressing dissent and bringing people together.

YouTube video by Sun Ra - Topic Space Is The Place / Over The Rainbow - Medley

Super fascinated by the fact that Sun Ra really loved “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” and this solo version sounds like it could be on Mr Rogers which is from a concert that the mighty mighty Bill Lupoletti had a hand in making happen

youtu.be/2B7qbxWXgWA

Recently had “the talk” with my kids (about how Siamese Dream is good but Billy Corgan is really, really, really stupid). They took it well.

Writing about LLMs with the aid of LLMs was a stale gimmick the very first time it was used. I don’t understand the rhetorical move there, especially in 2026.

I’m honestly not sure what accounts for the overeager buy-in! Fear of being uncool?

Scratch the surface, and it's another "this is just over the horizon!"

I'm also genuinely perplexed by the arguments that the flow should now be "great idea" --> claude does everything --> scientific singularity. The great ideas *come from* the artisanal work of doing the actual work.

AI absolutely might put us out of work, but not because it can replicate the quality of what humans currently do. Like any disruptive capitalist “innovation,” it’s a simulacrum that’s far cheaper and just barely convincing enough. Let’s not mistake it for being an actual substitute.

Some social scientists are ethnographers. What is the AI answer to ethnography?

Shocking, I know, but AI in academic writing is premised on a denial of — if not an attack on — black feminist scholarship that asks researchers to always tell us where they stand in their research.

AI cannot be reflexive, and in fact it undermines reflexivity, yet another reason to avoid it.

The amount of pacifism-shaming in the newspaper, suggesting that anyone who questions war lacks guts or doesn't understand that bad guys need to get dealt with, is ... exactly what happens at the beginning of every war.

But don't worry, war-dead, they'll acknowledge the complexities later!

And then the second.

The amount of pacifism-shaming in the newspaper, suggesting that anyone who questions war lacks guts or doesn't understand that bad guys need to get dealt with, is ... exactly what happens at the beginning of every war.

But don't worry, war-dead, they'll acknowledge the complexities later!

War, the famously efficient activity that never harms innocents. How are we doing that discourse again!

The new These Puzzles Fund Abortion puzzle pack is on pre-sale now. I edited a lovely puzzle for it, and the constructor lineup is stellar as always. Solve some top-tier crosswords and help super reproductive rights won’t ya

fund.nnaf.org/campaign/the...

I’ll bite on those dining recommendations

I also saw two Secret Service guys on bikes whose patrol routes were just two adjacent, ten-foot circles. Seemed dizzying and was simply primo security theater

The gangs of like twelve National Guardsmen patrolling empty DC Metro Stations, armed to the teeth and absent mindedly gnawing on Chick-Fil-a while doing a word search on their phone, make the government's concern with budget efficiency very funny

They really are fantastic puzzles btw — one of the great things that happens in crosswords is that the absolute, unmatched best people in the business will write free for activist puzzle packs. It rules.

The new These Puzzles Fund Abortion puzzle pack is on pre-sale now. I edited a lovely puzzle for it, and the constructor lineup is stellar as always. Solve some top-tier crosswords and help super reproductive rights won’t ya

fund.nnaf.org/campaign/the...

Moving to North Korea so I can live in a country with more global allies

We’re sort of at war with everyone now, aren’t we

It’s super low hanging fruit for trolling humorless security guys who’ll never catch on in this town right now. You can basically host your own personal episode of TV Nation whenever you want

Enjoying approaching the clownishly large throngs of National Guard guys in DC and asking them how the terrorists were able to knock down the East Wing of the White House

I am unashamedly showing young parents pictures of my own kids when they were that age years old

Crossword clue reading “”Feliz ___ nuevo!” (Spanish "happy new anus!")”

We at AVCX crosswords believe that N and Ñ are different letters

MEAT SWEATS 2026 graffiti

This is the year!