#artificial go

[dustedmagazine]

Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It)

Dusted found Artificial Go’s debut, Hopscotch Fever, “a lot of fun [and over] far too quickly.” On Musical Chairs, this year’s looser, more celebratory follow-up, the Cincinnati trio bring us six additional minutes and use every second to expand on the “short, sharp post-punk” of the first album. The change of game from one title to the next gives you a sense of the growth. Hopscotch: moving forward deliberately, one or two concrete steps at a time, a little precarious, but necessarily balanced. Musical chairs: a party event, still precarious, still requiring a sense of balance, but played in a whirling, laughing scramble. 

Vocalist Angie Willcutt stands at the center of the festivities, egging everyone on, herself included. It’s a dynamic, antic performance; her vocal styles shift and stretch, often within a single song. On “The World Is My Runway,” the fabulous, off-kilter fourth track, Willcutt sounds like a mellower but no less self-assured Amy Taylor one moment and Nico, caught delighted, the next. And while it’s easier to imagine the former delivering the line “I wear my birthday suit to the fashion show in my kitchen,” the way Willcutt widens her affected accent on “the world is my runway/I go my way” captures something of the latter’s roomy sincerity. “Red Convertible” takes a slightly different angle. Cole Gilfilen and Micah Wu tumble out tilting bass and guitar parts that keep things just on the playful side of queasy while Willcutt lays down a snotty, confident vocal to match the clicky, clapping, rap-inflected beat. Punching in a lyric like “pass me the keys/I’m fiending for a good time,” she stomps towards Uffie’s staccato hipster flow.

Even more agitated is “Late to the Party.” The band finds its stride with topsy turvy bass and listing cymbal crashes, slashed into with gargled strums and slashes of guitar. The aggrieved chant Willcutt marches out over the jerky funk reminds me of Marcel Wave’s Maike Hale-Jones detailing with vigor the bleak signifiers of urban neglect and corruption on last year’s Something Looming. Here, Willcutt’s lyric “left, right, all around” could be a play-by-play of Musical chairs in-progress if she had left out what, exactly, is all around: “All I see is cement/all I see is aluminum/all I see is broken glass/all I see is plastic/all I see is pesticides…all I see is blocking my view.” Stifling? Certainly. But inherent in that last line is an escape route, the chance to snatch your pleasure back from the ruins – “you gotta laugh at the zombie in the front yard,” per Janelle Monáe. Musical Chairs is not a record that wallows; even the disillusion is fun.

If “The World Is My Runway” and “Red Convertible” have the most fun, then “Circles” is a close third. It shows off Artificial Go’s poppiest indie rock chops, straight out of Melbourne or Dunedin. At the center of this exuberant jangling boogie is another list, matching the narrator’s roving, irrepressible psyche with dogs and theirs – “licking skin like a labradoodle/shaking in my boots like a chihuahua.” Willcutt recites the combos with a gleeful, elastic relish, but, characteristic of her range, finds a smooth Dolly Mixture sing-song for the refrain “uh oh/where do I go?/chasing my tail in circles.” While it doesn’t push the band’s sonic boundaries as far as the deep dubby groove of “Sky Burial,” “Circles” is an early hook into the album’s open-air circus. One song-long statement of purpose on an album peppered with them. My favorite of these is from “Lasso,” the rolling rave-up of an opener: “Come and catch me/let’s play hide and seek.” Why not add another game to the mix? The party just started.

Alex Johnson

[thefugitivesaint]

First, I don't know why a singer from Ohio is affecting a fake British accent. Maybe it's just part of the arty, post-punk Artificial Go seems to be aiming for? I don't know. I didn't let it get in the way of enjoying their music. 'Hopscotch Fever' came out last year and, while not every song grabbed me, the totality shows promise.

[wickedwitchoftheweigels]

flyer for upcoming escort mission gig w/ artificial go

[polaroidblog]

“Memoria polaroid” – un blog alla radio S24E05

Bentrovate e bentrovati a una nuova puntata del podcast di “Memoria polaroid – un blog alla radio”, la trasmissione in onda ogni settimana da Bologna sulle frequenze di NEU Radio. Dalla Svezia alla West Coast, da Melbourne a Brooklyn, passando ovviamente per l’Indonesia, e con il prezioso supporto di Benty e della sua rediviva rubrica “Troppa Braga“, ecco a voi la consueta ora di novità indiepop…

[bandcampsnoop]

8/28/24.

Artificial Go (Cincinnati, Ohio) is another band on the always reliable, incredibly prolific label, Feel It Records. While there is punk energy here, it is more minimal than what is found from the "normal" Feel It sound.

There is only one song, "Pay Phone" and it brought to mind Yellow Fever/Deep Time. This also reminds me of Skeet - the most recent reissue from Efficient Space, or Positive Thinking.

[differenthead]

Volume 308

Special guest: Grant Ertl

0:00:00 — "Baltimore" by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks (2008)

0:06:38 — "Nautilus" (Rough State) by Ex Rodeo (2025)

0:11:00 — DJ

0:18:58 — "Dreaming" by Polaroid Fade (2024)

0:22:28 — "Saturday" by Lapdogs (2025)

0:27:23 — "Pay Phone" by Artificial Go (2024)

0:29:15 — "Schizophrenia" by Jukebox the Ghost (2010)

0:32:53 — DJ

0:42:32 — "P.M." by The Umbrellas (2024)

0:46:24 — "Cabin in My Mind" by Grandaddy (2024)

0:49:51 — "Lies" by Mind's Eye (2023)

0:53:56 — "Olivia" by Wolves of Glendale (2022)

0:59:06 — DJ

1:09:09 — "Every Heaven" by Humdrum (2024)

1:10:46 — "Get Dumber" by PUP feat. Jeff Rosenstock (2025)

1:13:22 — "V.M.C." by Deeper (2020)

1:16:19 — "Highway" by Threads Electric (2025)

1:20:04 — DJ

1:29:46 — "Quality Pints" by The Bug Club (2024)

1:32:03 — "God Gets You Back" by Mogwai (2025)

1:38:35 — "Plastic Life" by Die Verlierer (2022)

1:43:31 — "Pyramid of Health" by Viagra Boys (2025)

1:46:46 — DJ

2:00:00 — "New York" by St. Vincent (2017)

Stream

Download

[fortherecordpodcast]

For the Record #235: Artificial Go's "Musical Chairs"

On their second album, Cincinnati-based Artificial Go bring playful, creative energy and a fun, joyful sound. We discuss it in-depth on episode #235 of "For the Record."

Episode link: https://fortherecordpodcast.com/podcasts/media/2025-06-28-ftr-episode-235-artificial-go-musical-chairs.mp3

Subscribe to the podcast by clicking here for iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/for-the-record-with-gg-and-adam/id943710156, or by copying and pasting this XML feed into your favorite podcatcher’s "subscribe" field: http://fortherecordpodcast.com/podcasts/feed.xml

Or tune in to BFF.fm to hear us every other Thursday at 9:30am!

[revilermpls]

Photos: Year 1: A See/Saw Party at Eagles 34

Year 1: A See/Saw Partywith Retail Simps, Judy and the Jerks, Neo Neos, Artificial Go, 208, Abi Ooze and PanelEagles 34, Minneapolis, MNApril 5th, 2025

[dustedmagazine]

The 2025 Dusted Mid-Year Switch: Part 1

Circuit des Yeux

For the twelfth year in a row, Dusted writers have exchanged favorite records from the year’s first half, trusting friends and colleagues with the albums they love and embarking on new listening adventures (rap! metal! extended pipe drones!) recommended by their peers.

The basic format remains unchanged. Everybody picks two top albums. Jenny writes down the picks on slips of paper and randomly assigns them to other writers. No one gets their own picks, anything they already reviewed for Dusted or more than one pick from any single person. We all then have about a month to digest other people’s favorite music and write a paragraph or two about what we think.

It probably only works because we like each other, and honestly, there have been years when it didn’t work all that well. But still, when it does function as hoped, the Mid-Year Switch is one of the most enjoyable events on the Dusted calendar. This is one of the good years (i.e., we don’t think anyone will quit because of disrespect for their picks).

It is not, however, one of the consensus years. In other years, we’ve coalesced around a single record—most notably Heron Oblivion in the third iteration of the switch in 2016—or at least produced clumps of approval in the 3-4 nominations range. This year only Horsegirl’s Phoentics On and On got three picks, and notably, it was not anyone’s #1 or #2 choice.

Five albums got two picks each, including perennial favorites like Circuit des Yeux, Jerry David DeCicca, the Ex and Natural Information Society, as well as newcomer (and Lifeguard offshoot) Sharp Pins. That leaves 99 albums that got picked by only one person, anarchy, sure, but also, if you like exploring lists, a fuck ton of music to explore. Today, we’re running the first half alphabetically, starting with Sophie Agnel and Joke Lanz and going all the way to Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith. We’ll have the back end of the alphabet tomorrow and writer’s lists the following day. Enjoy.

Sophie Agnel & Joke Lanz — Ella (Klanggalerie)

Who recommended it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No.

Justin Cober-Lake’s take:

Ella might be the most unusual record I've heard this year. Sophie Agnel's a free improvisation pianist and, I think, is often working with a prepared piano. Turntablist Joke Lanz makes up the other half of the duo, meaning no matter how weird Agnel gets, there are always more sound coming to push the music to new places. It's hard to make art much more abstracted than this album. There's no easy point of entry here, the artists mostly eschewing melody and rhythm, but it's possible to get lost in a world that's constantly shifting and surprising.

“Sporadic Bursts of Sympathy” sounds quintessential. Lanz feints at grooves, giving the impression that there's structure to come, but these are just the “bursts.” Agnel likewise offers deep rolls and high plucks, hinting at a fractured piece, as if a song's been deconstructed, only there was no construction there to start with. It's a bold statement, and a challenging listen. “21st Century Humans” closes the album with tension that the pair hesitate to release, although the track does build to a bounce (by their standards). A piano motif gives way to a repeated “good morning” before one final squeak sees us out, as if even approaching linearity inevitably leads to silence.

Anika — Abyss (Sacred Bones)

Who picked it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes. Jennifer Kelly wrote: “It’s one of the best albums so far in 2025.”

Alex Johnson’s take:

The last time I heard Anika was the debut album, a stark but charming mix of minimalist post-punk and skeletal girl-group pop. Contrasting it to sunnier indie contemporaries, Dusted wrote: “its beats are too deliberate to be catchy.” “Deliberate,” I think, as in studied, predictable. Not so on the vastly more powerful Abyss, which is plenty deliberate, but as in purposeful, and catches hold early then never lets go. The basslines are bendy and relentless, the guitars squall and grind and pull out perilous arpeggios, wander but never quite break rank, the drumming is unavoidable, undeniable and airtight with a flourish. The band recorded live and quickly and, in the best way, you can tell. These are dance floor dirges; up tempo laments for modern ruins.

To quote Dusted’s review of this album: “what sets [Anika] apart from many contemporary post-punk front people is that she sings really well.” Exactly. Singing or speaking, often embellished with an echo, she’s just as much orator as lead vocalist. The lyrics, too, are sharp and immediate, narrating said modern ruins. The line “the cars are flying” from “Last Song” doesn’t sound like a technological breakthrough but the result of an explosion. There, Anika seems to be heartbroken by the whole of humanity. You could read “the truth is I don’t really like myself/and the truth is I don’t really like anyone else/and the truth is I’d rather be alone than with you” from “Walk Away” in the same light, or interpersonally. Regardless, it’s the best break-up/kiss-off song I’ve heard this year. The moment a brief, surf-y arc of guitar accompanies Anika’s utterly content “so screw you” is especially satisfying. Start to finish, Abyss is furious, gripping not clenching, a storm stirred up and ridden.

Artificial Go — Musical Chairs (Feel It!)

Who Picked it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? Yes, Alex wrote that like its namesake, Musical Chairs is “a party event, still precarious, still requiring a sense of balance, but played in a whirling, laughing scramble.”

Bryon Hayes’ take:

I was surprised yet delighted to hear new music from Artificial Go so soon after their debut Hopscotch Fever. As Alex described in his review, the band has grown quite a bit in the intervening months. Musical Chairs moves beyond snappy post-punk to explore thicker guitar textures, poppier song structures, and a broader vocal palette. Earworms like “Circles,” “The World is My Runway” and “Hallelujah” really showcase this sense of progression, yet they retain the band’s signature whimsical charm, which is refreshing. Album closer “Sky Burial” spins off in an entirely new direction, embracing dub-like echo effects. It was good strategy by Artificial Go to save such a digression until the end; we’ll be thirsty for more of it when album number three rolls around.

Barker — Stochastic Drift (Smalltown Supersound)

Who recommended it? Patrick Masterson

Did we review it? Yes. Andrew Forell wrote, “Within his template of minimal techno, Barker adds billowing ambient passages and intricate drum programming that unfold with the depth of dub and the logic of jazz."

Justin Cober-Lake's take:

Sam Barker does something extremely impressive on this album: he makes a craft out of formalizing ostensibly chaotic movement. There's some jazz influence here, and the sense of an underlying order comes through at times, but the movement of each of these pieces is all Barker. The rhythms start tight and subtly change, altering each track, but without ever jarring; it's truly drift and not madness. Just as the songs move, the album gradually shifts, but always in a way that feels organic and sensible. Barker has elements of jazz, techno, minimalism, ambient, and more, but it never feels like a mishmash or an exercise in juxtaposition. The album's whole progression has a focused fluidity (if such a phrase makes sense). The song can have slow atmospheric passages, but when it winds up in a complex rhythmic stretch, it feels like a natural, if unanticipated, result. That's the genius of the album, and Barker makes it sound so easy, as if it could happen by chance.

Blood Monolith — The Calling of Fire (Profound Lore)

Who nominated it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote “Your reviewer is moderately tempted simply to repeat ‘this rules’ a few hundred times, in place of attempting to describe or understand the music on The Calling of Fire, Blood Monolith’s debut LP. While repeating the clause (foaming at the mouth, clenching fists, roiling in a dank cellar…) would constitute a review of sorts, it’s likely not what folks show up to Dusted to read. Too bad.”

Ray Garraty’s take:

This does rule, no way to deny it. While Blood Monolith has an eye on the past, the band never just simply indulges in Death or Siege or any other grindcore-ish Mastodon worship from the 1990s. Its music corrupts your ears but is not corrupted by the modernizing tendencies which have soured a lot of metal music lately. It never pats you on the back, reassuring you in your soft cushion taste in metal. It just slaps you in the face and gives a nice blow to your skull. Maybe that is why The Calling of Fire angered some metal fans who were asking for… melody? Well, not everything is supposed to be melodic. This isn’t.  

Raven Chacon — Voiceless Mass (New World)

Who picked it? Christian Carey

Did we review it? No

Alex Johnson’s take:

“Voiceless Mass” opens with a chime, followed by a rumble. It’s almost but not quite overwhelming; it swaddles and carries the listener in. For music largely structured around sustained notes, nothing really lingers. The effect for me was of a slideshow of landscapes: each scene displaying then giving way, echoing but not replicating what came before. “Biyán” demands attention in a different way. Grand swaths of terrain swapped for ground-level observation of organisms. Squeaky-door horns and hard-to-place but charismatic scribbles of playing dominate the movements but are tempered (and given emphasis) by the transitional calm of a high violin or a fade to near-silence. Like the chime from “Voiceless Mass,” timpani is a catalyst, signaling another sliding, chirping crescendo or a cue for the squiggling, scraping strings to exit stage left.

Voiceless Mass isn’t quite voiceless. If the title track is a mass due to elemental power, “Owl Song,” the only piece with discernible vocals, is a mass as in teeming. There are chants and short shrieks. A wobbling yet lucid soprano is paired with a burst of jazz drumming. A piano is struck. New voices jump in, up and down the scale, before tagging in an instrument of similar timbre. Strings are plucked, bows grind, vocal notes are, at times, more gnawed than sung. There are whistles and gunshots of timpani. “Owl Song” sounds less like a musical ensemble than a bustling cast of character actors. It completes the album’s journey from the monuments of “Voiceless Mass” and bristling fauna of “Biyán” to the chaotic joys and strains of humanity.

Brighde Chaimbeul — Sunwise (tak:til)

Who nominated it? Ian Mathers

Did we review it? Yes, Ian wrote, “Even more so than on the excellent Carry Them with Us there’s a powerfully ceremonial feeling to this set of songs, aided by the even more minimal instrumental lineup and that frosty, imposing first side.”

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

Brighde Chaimbeul is a master of the Scottish smallpipes, a hand-held wind instrument related to the (somewhat larger and better known) bagpipes. It’s a traditional instrument backed by centuries of lore and practice and Chaimbeul has all that under her belt (she’s won folk piping contests), plus a restless experimental bent that has led her to collaborate with Colin Stetson, Caroline Polachek and others. Sunwise bends archaic resonances towards the shape-shifting forms of modern improvisatory drone. The opener, “Dùsgadh/Waking,” is more or less unadulterated tone, one sustained note that flickers and vibrates uninterrupted for just over nine minutes. If you go with it, which takes some meditative intent, it becomes a portal to stillness, a link to reverberations both within and outside this particular music. It stops you dead, in other words. “A' Chailleach” continues in that vein, but with a bit more frolic in it; to the long murmuring laments, she adds a bit of melodic flourish, which builds and finally culminates in some lovely highland evocative singing. Sunwise is a family enterprise. Chaimbeul’s dad closes “Duan” with some stirring (but inscrutable) Gaelic spoken verse, while her brother Eòsaph sings with her on the closing “The Rain is Wine and the Stones Are Cheese,” the lightest-hearted and most dance-able of these tracks. Music from the stone age might easily turn constraining, especially for younger, female artists, but Chaimbeul is too much of a free spirit for that. She frees it without disrespecting it and uses its forms for her own 21st century ends.

Circuit des Yeux — Halo on the Inside (Matador)

Who Picked it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes, Christian wrote, "Fohr’s songwriting is as strong as ever and her singing voice is singular."

Bryon’s take:

In his Dusted review of -io, Tim Clarke found the album "couches existential terror within ritualistic performance and orchestral musicality, and is often a challenging listen." If you replace "orchestral musicality" with "chilly EBM," he could be describing Halo on the Inside rather aptly. Haley Fohr has travelled deeper into the darkness with this record, wrapping her powerful voice in thick synthetic harmonies torn from the dust of Stranger Things’ parallel world. The music is icy and sinister, but elegant and rhythmic. The melodies and textures tangle with the vast expanse of Fohr’s signature croon to evoke imagery consistent with nocturnal activity. She’s constructed a frigid funk that is at home both on the dance floor and in a good set of headphones. I can imagine Helena Hauff spinning these songs in an abandoned power plant or a sweaty, black-walled basement. I can also see Halo on the Inside as the perfect soundtrack to a midnight stroll. It’s new territory for Fohr stylistically, but this album retains enough of her signature spirit to fit snugly within her overall body of work.

Ezale — Town Taxes (Foreal Foreal)

Who nominated it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? Nope

Jonathan Shaw’s take:

Town Taxes flashes by in 22 minutes of rump-shaking, sunny sounds, lightened even more by Ezale’s slightly nasal, upper-register voice. There’s a winning charm to the record’s sonic textures, which gravitate more toward radio-friendly Earth, Wind, & Fire or late-1970s Gap Band than harder funk or the grit of neo-soul. Those bright surfaces belie some of the more interesting thematics Ezale engages; the release’s high point (sorry…) may be “Ironic,” which suggests the complicated feelings that lurk just under the music’s incessant search for pleasures. It’s a good song. For sure, among the persistent, prevailing concerns of hip hop, Town Taxes is a lot more interested in getting smoked up and chasing girls than it is in stacking cash or flashing gats. But by the time you get to closing track “Make Her Gig,” it’s clear just how much of the ostensibly good time comes at the expense of women (or, inevitably, in the parlance of Town Taxes, “bitches”): Ezale croons, “I bet you I can make her do what I tell her to / I bet you I can make her gig without her wig / Hangin with me instead of watchin her kids.” And it’s there from the jump, as on opening track “Hang Wit Them,” when he happily chirps, “Ain’ no tellin what the bitch’d do / I was all on her face like barbecue.” Swell. It feels like punching down. Seems like there must be other ways to elevate the self, or to get higher.

Hectorine — Arrow of Love (Take a Turn)

Who nominated it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? Yes, Alex called the album, “ornate without being baroque and whimsical without affectation. This is precise and dramatic, yet conjured and dreamy music, delivered with devotion.”

Christian Carey’s take:

Sarah Gagnon is the creative songwriter and vocalist behind Hectorine, and explores a dark Sumerian myth on Arrow of Love, her third full length recording. It is the story of Inanna, an ancient Sumerian warrior goddess who goes to hell and back (literally) in a tale of fratricide, demons, human sacrifice, and a final (sort of) redemption. Gagnon channeled the depths of this dark tale, in part, to exorcise recent losses in her own life, both of a job and a relationship.

Arrow of Love juxtaposes lyrics as desolate as Inanna’s story and her own grief, with music that is (self-described) soft rock that is artful in approach. The overall result is eloquent in its restraint, with co-producer Geoff Saba providing multiple instruments to create a bed of sound, as well as several adroit saxophone solos, to accompany Gagnon’s expressive alto voice. The title tune is an example of the fetching results, with a synth solo appearing prominently and a cocoon of backing vocals from Betsy Gran and Joel Robinow. Ancient Sumerian soft rock? Sure.  

Jenny Hval — Iris Silver Mist (4AD records)

Who nominated it? Tim Clarke

Did we review it? Yes, Tim wrote, “Jenny Hval brings acute intelligence and a conceptual bent to all of her work, infusing her art-pop with depth and intricacy.”

Josh Moss’ take:

Iris Silver Mist, the latest record from Norwegian singer/songwriter Jenny Hval, is centered around her ethereal, ice-clear voice, but the production styles pull from across decades and genres to create a modern, experiential take on art pop. The sounds of the Pure Moods compilation blend with the experimentalism of Björk, early ought’s indie-dance-pop moves meet the hermetic melodicism of Kate Bush. Spoken word elements throughout seem to emphasize the album’s themes of sensory and tactile experience — one that sticks out describes the physical movement of a sound being recorded, and ends with “Happy Birthday,” nearly shouted. Sound being recorded and played back; in other words conceived and born. The album is named after a rare perfume scent and is at least in part inspired by the collision of a budding music career with the grim realities of the COVID pandemic. This could be seen as the loss of one sense, which can force a being to lean harder on another to interact with reality — but in this case Jenny Hval’s quarantine-era obsession with scent led her back around to music, resulting in Iris Silver Mist.

Vijay Iyer & Wadada Leo Smith — Defiant Life (ECM)

Who picked it? Justin Cober-Lake

Did we review it? No

Bill Meyer’s take:

Dusted may not have reviewed this record, but I covered it for the Wire a few months ago. Then and now, I am taken by the music’s grave dignity, which is very much in tune with the tragedy of our time and aware of its sturdy links to the crimes of earlier ones. Now well into his 80s, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith sounds unreasonably great on a horn not known for its kindness to age. Vijay Iyer makes spacious, sympathetic frameworks for Smith from rumbling piano and muted electric keyboard textures; I can't think of a better setting in which to hear him. The only way in which this record has dimmed since I heard it is that, having attended one of the duo’s concerts, I know that they’re even more compelling in person.

[aroaceleovaldez]

i have suddenly become obsessed with a theme that HoO established but never proceeded to extrapolate on, which is:

You are Percy Jackson, and you have been swapped with a boy who was allegedly everyone's favorite person, but they have decided to replace him with you. They just met you. You stand next to his best friend and the people he's known his entire life. In his home. In his cloak. In his place. They stopped looking for him.

You are Jason Grace, and you have just found out you have a long lost sister who completely replaced you in her life with this girl you just met. Your lives and personalities are mirrors. She is you, living the life you were robbed of.

You are Annabeth Chase, and you have just become starkly aware that you have been inhabiting the void left behind by your best friend's long lost brother. You and Luke were just replacements for him. Now you have to look him in the eyes when he has nothing and know you took that life from him.

You are Piper McLean, and you have just found out your relationship is fake and built entirely on the memories of Annabeth Chase. You have been given a boyfriend when hers has been taken away. You have no idea how much of it is real or not but regardless you feel like if your relationship isn't exactly in their image that you have failed.

You are Leo Valdez, and you have just learned that you are the echo of your great-grandfather. You are not your own person. You just exist to be a mirror of him. A doppelganger. An actor and stunt double facing all the danger he never had to but wearing his face. To be there for his best friend decades later simply because he couldn't. You are playing a role. A seventh wheel and a pawn for a goddess who carefully sculpted your entire life for her own purposes.

You are Hazel Levesque, and the only reason you are alive is because your brother couldn't save your his sister. You are a consolation prize. An apology. Your existence here is misplaced in every way but you inhabit it anyways.

You are Frank Zhang, and you are a shapeshifter. Inhabiting your own body feels strange and clumsy when you could be literally anything at any time. You are anything and everything and live your life with the simple certainty of knowing exactly how you will die.

[desultorydenouement]

murderbot is peak queer rep because it’s about living as an inherently transgressive form of being, it’s about the complexity of passing, or the complexity of hiding, or the nuance of never fitting binaries and not wanting to even when fitting those binaries is seen as “better”, and it’s about making people uncomfortable just by existing, it’s about measuring forms of freedom and having to decide which you’ll save and which you’ll sacrifice. but most importantly it’s peak queer rep because murderbot is free for like five minutes and it immediately attracts the nearest supposedly-rare transgressive-illegal-superbot (ART) in a hundred light year radius to be its best friend, and what’s that if not your classic Queer On Queer Magnetism

[reasonsforhope]

"In the 1750s, an Italian farmer digging a well stumbled upon a lavish villa in the ruins of Herculaneum. Inside was a sprawling library with hundreds of scrolls, untouched since Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 C.E. Some of them were still neatly tucked away on the shelves.

This staggering discovery was the only complete library from antiquity ever found. But when 18th-century scholars tried to unroll the charred papyrus, the scrolls crumbled to pieces. They became resigned to the fact that the text hidden inside wouldn’t be revealed during their lifetimes.

In recent years, however, researchers realized that they were living in the generation that would finally solve the puzzle. Using artificial intelligence, they’ve developed methods to peer inside the Herculaneum scrolls without damaging them, revealing short passages of ancient text.

This month, researchers announced a new breakthrough. While analyzing a scroll known as PHerc. 172, they determined its title: On Vices. Based on other works, they think the full title is On Vices and Their Opposite Virtues and in Whom They Are and About What.

“We are thrilled to share that the written title of this scroll has been recovered from deep inside its carbonized folds of papyrus,” the Vesuvius Challenge, which is leading efforts to decipher the scrolls, says in a statement. “This is the first time the title of a still-rolled Herculaneum scroll has ever been recovered noninvasively.”

On Vices was written by Philodemus, a Greek philosopher who lived in Herculaneum more than a century before Vesuvius’ eruption. Born around 110 B.C.E., Philodemus studied at a school in Athens founded several centuries earlier by the influential philosopher Epicurus, who believed in achieving happiness by pursuing certain specific forms of pleasure.

“This will be a great opportunity to learn more about Philodemus’ ethical views and to get a better view of the On Vices as a whole,” Michael McOsker, a papyrologist at University College London who is working with the Vesuvius Challenge, tells CNN’s Catherine Nicholls.

When it launched in 2023, the Vesuvius Challenge offered more than $1 million in prize money to citizen scientists around the world who could use A.I. to help decipher scans of the Herculaneum scrolls. 

Spearheaded by Brent Seales, a computer scientist at the University of Kentucky, the team scanned several of the scrolls and uploaded the data for anyone to use. To earn the prize money, participants competed to be the first to reach a series of milestones.

Reading the papyrus involves solving several difficult problems. After the rolled-up scrolls are scanned, their many layers need to be separated out and flattened into two-dimensional segments. At that point, the carbon-based ink usually isn’t visible in the scans, so machine-learning models are necessary to identify the inked sections.

In late 2023, a computer science student revealed the first word on an unopened scroll: “porphyras,” an ancient Greek term for “purple.” Months later, participants worked out 2,000 characters of text, which discussed pleasures such as music and food.

But PHerc. 172 is different from these earlier scrolls. When researchers scanned it last summer, they realized that some of the ink was visible in the images. They aren’t sure why this scroll is so much more legible, though they hypothesize it’s because the ink contains a denser contaminant such as lead, according to the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, which houses the scroll.

In early May, the Vesuvius Challenge announced that contestants Marcel Roth and Micha Nowak, computer scientists at Germany’s University of Würzburg, would receive $60,000 for deciphering the title. Sean Johnson, a researcher with the Vesuvius Challenge, had independently identified the title around the same time.

Researchers are anticipating many more breakthroughs on the horizon. In the past three months alone, they’ve already scanned dozens of new scrolls.

“The pace is ramping up very quickly,” McOsker tells the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “All of the technological progress that’s been made on this has been in the last three to five years—and on the timescales of classicists, that’s unbelievable.”"

-via Smithsonian, May 16, 2025

[polaroidblog]

“Memoria polaroid” – un blog alla radio S24E31

“Kiss kiss kiss” suggeriscono i californiani Softie nella canzone che apre la scaletta di questa sera e, in questa puntata quasi festiva, sembra un bell’invito da sostenere e incoraggiare. Per farlo nel migliore dei modi, predisponetevi all’ascolto dei prossimi sessanta minuti, pieni di novità indiepop e indie rock, con l’accompagnamento degli immancabili brindisi, nella nuova puntata del podcast di “Memoria polaroid – un blog alla radio”, la trasmissione in onda ogni settimana da Bologna, sulle frequenze di NEU Radio, a cura di Enzo Baruffaldi. Questa la playlist della serata:

Softie – Kiss Kiss Kiss Oscar Twins – Kiki Artificial Go – Circles Hot Lava – Weird+Nice Darlivie – Bittersweet The Cottons – Lentera Barbados – Ordinary Youth Paloma 004 – Heiteres Slack Times – Swing the Dial Josie – Still Time The Ian Fays – Our Nature (Yuppie Flu cover)

Ascolta: https://linktr.ee/polaroidblogpodcast

[chaoticats3]

Been working my way through tmbd and just finished artificial condition. I would kill and die for ART. Also crying everytime Murderbot starts Experiencing Emotions (trauma) and just is like. "Huh. This is illogical and dumb. I should not be doing this. The danger that I am making up in my mind is not real" like babygirl you are having a panic attack, you can't LOGIC your way out of emotions. and also stop acting like me I am being called out in every chapter.