MUSIC IN PHASE SPACE

  • The Drift

    Long ago, on the shores of a storm-tossed sea, there lived two brothers: Li, the elder, steady as ancient stone, and Wei, the younger, restless as the gulls. Their father, Lao, a weathered fisherman, had taught them to read the tides, but the brothers’ hearts sailed different currents. Li anchored his small boat each dawn…

  • The Analogy-Industrial Complex

    Good evening, my fellow citizens. Three decades ago, the creators of content were few and proud, toiling under the noble constraints of gatekeepers, editors, and that most ancient of traditions—actually needing to prove one’s worth. But today, my friends, we find ourselves at the mercy of a new and insidious force: the Analogy-Industrial Complex, a…

  • Nosferatu

    In the twilight of late-stage capitalism, where the gig economy thrives on precarious labor and ephemeral rewards, the vampire emerged as a cultural icon, embodying the dark allure of a crumbling empire. These vampires were not mere monsters; they were avatars of a seductive decay, haunting neon-drenched cities where ambition and exploitation intertwined. They whispered…

  • Diary of a Liberal

    To the Editor of The New York Times, It has come to my attention that some of the policies championed by liberals—those of us who have tirelessly upheld reason, civility, and, I dare say, the very fabric of modern society—have been blamed for the post-2008 economic crisis and, more alarmingly, for the rise of Trump…

  • The System Was Always Failing—You Just Chose Not to See It

    The first 45 days of President Donald Trump’s second term have been a bloodshot fever dream—wild, erratic, and laced with the kind of incoherent bravado that only a man utterly convinced of his own infallibility can summon. The air reeks of bad decisions and cheap cologne, as if the entire White House has been transformed…

  • Butler

    You wake up. Reach for the phone. Thumb scrolls before brain boots. Load me up, Jack. Infinite feeds, infinite loops. A dopamine drip straight to the veins, a carnival of blinking lights. You don’t even know what’re looking at. Doesn’t matter. The Machine knows. The Machine feeds.   And the screen hums like a cicada…

  • The Efficiency Con

    A scam with a side of grift-hustle, wrapped in a con stuffed inside a Ponzi-tier pyramid of multi-level marketing—served with a garnish of oligarch delusion. A bureaucracy exists to track things until the act of tracking becomes its own justification. Enter Elon Musk, who takes this dysfunction to the next level: tracking how you track…

  • Personality

    Employer: Well, everything seems to be in order. You certainly look like a 10x engineer to us. We just need to do some due diligence and comb through your social media feeds for any signs of personality. Candidate: Uh, signs of personality? Employer: Yes, you know, just making sure you don’t have too much of…

  • Permaservism

    You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.” The Eagles’ Hotel California was once just a cryptic allegory—rock-star excess, American decadence, or some vague sense of spiritual entrapment. But these days, it feels more like a business model. A system that isn’t quite capitalism, isn’t quite socialism, and isn’t quite…

  • Symbolic Warfare

    “Trout Mask Replica” stands as one of the most radical deconstructions of American music ever recorded. Released in 1969 on Frank Zappa’s Straight Records label, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band created a sonic landscape that defied every conventional notion of rhythm, harmony, and structure. Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) orchestrated a work that simultaneously…

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