Month: March 2025

beware the Ideas of March

The bid we got from the first contractor was half of the other guy’s. We’re going with that. It leaves more room in the budget to fix the increasingly scary backyard deck.

I could, I have no doubt, demolish the deck myself. It would take some number of days, I would need frequent breaks (involving walking around to the front of the house and up the steps). And then I’d still have to hire someone to haul away the debris, build a fence and, and concrete steps up to the back door.

We’ve been in the habit of just opening the back door and letting the dogs do their business in the backyard. This is going to be an issue during the deck/stairs process; neither of them is that happy about leashes, especially the little guy. So the faster that job gets done, the less of a pain in the ass it will be for everyone involved.

Mark Zuckerberg (spits) wore a t-shirt recently that said “AUT ZUCK AUT NIHIL”, which was a play on “AUT CAESER AUT NIHIL” (Caesar or nothing). So Jay Graber, the CEO of BlueSky, responded with her own t-shirt in a similar style: “MUNDUS SINE CAESERIBUS” (a world without Caesars). Naturally it has gone viral and copycat shirts were available within hours.

I find this exchange especially amusing, given that a few days from now is the 2069th anniversary of Caesar getting stabbed 23 times by the senators who’d finally had enough of his shit. I am not a bloodthirsty person, I am a… let’s call it a pacifist tempered by practical considerations. But there are a handful of billionaires and politics whose ironic demise I could only celebrate.

Speaking of the march of ideas..

On And Yet… I got into a certain holding pattern with techniques and gear, and stuck tightly to it. That wound up meaning very few software synths and no bass guitar. Nothing wrong with that!

But for the next project, I’ve decided to adopt some creative constraints as a sort of game. Here are the rules:

  • Record tracks from start to end sequentially as they appear on the album, and have them transition into each other smoothly and continuously.
  • The album title must begin with an E (because I want to eventually fill in the alphabet)
  • The first and last notes of the album should be E. (As defined by A440 and 12TET; this doesn’t otherwise constraint tuning/scale.)
  • Odd-numbered tracks use only bass guitar for a sound source, processed and layered however I like. (Other oscillators are allowed for modulation purposes.)
  • Even-numbered tracks must begin with DecadeBridge Sn, and end with Arturia Easel V. Other sound sources are also permitted.

Seems like this should be pretty fun. 🙂

Reddit, or at least the cluster of nonbinary subreddits I follow, is really starting to lose its shine. I mean, I never really liked it as a platform, but it’s increasingly clear that it doesn’t really foster community, the way a forum or even Discord does. It was helpful to me for a brief while for a step on my journey, but it’s very quickly gotten less so. And it’s frustrating to try to stand against the endless tide and respond with helpful advice and encouragement.

I think this is why I was never into the idea of Twitter. Give me forums and proper blogs!

Sacred Gender continues to be quite good. One thought-provoking exercise was: describe your gender while avoiding words like masculine/feminine, male/female, man/woman, etc. The author says almost everyone has trouble with this and that nonbinary folks mainly tend to be weirdly poetic about it.

“Of borders” is the phrase that keeps coming to me. A rock, just off shore, jutting out from the waves, and the waves crashing over it. Tree roots spreading through soil, wood and earth interlaced and holding onto each other. Air blowing over a textured metal surface, vibrating it, droning.

(Counting Chinese elements, I see I have earth twice and no fire, despite the whole “star” thing and personally feeling more of an affinity for water and air. Hmm.)

Some people describe their gender as if it’s directly, almost literally related to something like outer space, forests, etc. That’s really not what I’m thinking with this imagery. But I think, having done the exercise, I understand that kind of thinking just a little bit better now.

Shaka, after the walls fell

I’ve been dealing with wall repair estimates…

The first one: the guy didn’t respond at all to his own web form. He did answer his phone right away and set up an appointment to look at it and make an estimate the next morning. But then he didn’t show, didn’t call and didn’t answer the voice mail I left.

The second one: responded to a Yelp estimate request in less than an hour, set up an appointment for the next afternoon. He said that the middle and top walls weren’t long for this world either and it made the most sense to replace it all in one fell swoop. Within a couple of days he had sent me the estimates for replacing the three walls, as well as a single tall wall (but we don’t like that idea as much as the tiers). And… ooof, pricey.

Then the first contractor sent me a text — he apologized but he’d gotten a really bad stomach bug that put him in the hospital, and he could come out today (Sunday!) to take a look. And I was impressed — not with technical stuff like the first guy explained, but with design ideas for improving things while also reducing the cost. And he was super enthusiastic about trees too, so I know he’ll take good care of the cherry tree that’s on the top tier. I look forward to seeing his estimate because I think it’s going to come in well below the other one.

About those albums I picked up on Bandcamp Friday:

Albums centered around the Buchla Music Easel tend to share certain things in common. This one is a bit unusual in its lushness; while there are absolutely some moments and some aspects that are very “Easel-ish” — the pings and beeps and bloops are not missing — there are also lush layers, and meta approaches to composition. It’s an Easel album that doesn’t come off as minimalist. Nice.

While writing this post I accidentally had started playing a track on the Bandcamp website as well the one I already had going in MusicBee, and… it worked 😉

This is ambient and experimental music written for the dance piece “Last Work” as well as some other recordings that the composer had made at that same time. Some of it involves cello and choral sounds, plucks and sampled instruments and noises, and some of it is more purely synthetic. Overall I feel like it’s deep. As if the composer had really studied the dance piece, absorbed it, and then reinterpreted it both musically and in visual art (the physical release comes with silkscreen prints), with some prototyping and experiments along the way. It’s the best kind of ambient music, where one can just put it on in the background and let it tease the subconscious, but can also listen more intently and find that it’s definitely not just mindless filler.

I find this release a bit odd, and not in the usual way that most of the music I like is odd. 🙂 At the start it’s really beautiful and immersive but not afraid to growl and howl. But by the time we’ve reached the end of the shortish album it’s moved through so many moods and aesthetics it makes one feel lost (as the title might suggest). There are moments of genuine funk, in what is otherwise an ambient work. It’s actually disorienting.

POB is the “Ambassador to the Stars” for Noise Engineering, and here he is with a live set at Buchla & Friends (a synth convention) with a mostly-NE Eurorack setup, doing live improvised techno with the sort of industrial flair you’d expect. Even if I didn’t know who POB was, I would hear this and think “wow, this person really likes Noise Engineering oscillators.” Lots of FM percussive voices sometimes pushed into noise, grindy wavefolding and distortion, big solid underlying bass drones, hard kicks, and delay/reverb gone a little bit mad. Yes.

Following that up with more badass industrial-flavored techno. A nonbinary DJ/producer and game developer from Chicago. I definitely need to pick up more of their stuff (listening to other albums, it goes well beyond techno).

Trovarsi is fairly well known in the modular synth world, for having founded (with Space Racer and Earth-626) the SoCal Synth Society and Frequency Shift (a streaming festival featuring female and nonbinary musicians), and working with Corry Banks’ ModBap Modular. She makes great techno and seems to be a neat person, though I only saw her in passing at Knobcon.

I don’t know if both literal and figurative meanings of “at sea” were intended in Moonminpapa At Sea (since the author was Finnish), but that feels right. Anyway, yes, he did continue to be kind of obnoxious, faking competence and confidence when both were increasingly shaky. His wife kind of just went along with things for the most part, but then also kind of disassociated, while also discovering her artistic talents. Their son fell madly in love with a seahorse (who in this world apparently is a magical horse (with four hooves, horseshoes etc.) that lives in the sea) who did not love him back or respect him at all, a very Faerie sort of vibe. There was quite a bit of supernatural oddity going on. I was really expecting the story to come to a point where everyone finally admits they really want to go back to Moominvalley and that none of them actually like the sea or wanted to move in the first place.

Eh.

I started reading Sacred Gender and it’s better than I had feared. The book is sort of dual purpose: affirming one’s gender through pagan practice, and making pagan groups/spaces more welcoming and inclusive for trans and nonbinary folks. So there’s a bit of a Trans/Nonbinary 101 guide at the start and it’s really well done.

A lot of binary trans people don’t quite seem to get nonbinary folks, but it’s very clear that the author does. One metaphor the author likes, which struck me: “a platypus is not a beaver-duck.” Nonbinary people are not (necessarily) an awkward masculine/feminine blend. It’s just that our culture is so fixated on its model of gender that, when trying to describe someone for whom that model fails, it’s still done in terms of the failing model. (I’ve seen people say the word “nonbinary” is a bit unfortunate because it tries to define us by what we are not, but it’s difficult to come up with another way of thinking about it.)

Another fun one: in a hypothetical society with 12 genders, if there are more than 12 people then someone probably doesn’t fit neatly within the gender 12-arity.

The next part talked about the flaws in Paganism (e.g. Wicca and Wicca-adjacent, 20th century white people Paganism — something I was never a part of but had read about and knew a few folks in it). A lot of its feminist emphasis grew from 60s-80s second wave feminism, aka TERFs. Gender esentialism was baked right in, with strict gendered roles based on reproductive biological functions. This of course is not very welcoming to trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming or even “regular” queer people, and honestly is more limiting to cis people than it should be. Aside from that, there was a lot of ahistorical gunk adopted as almost dogma, and precious little attention paid to non-white, indigenous and folk spiritual practices. The book points out it really does not have to be this way.

The next part is about ancestor veneration — something largely neglected in the aforementioned style of paganism, but almost universal in most indigenous practices and folk religion. Honestly, the chapter could almost have come right out of Kemetic Orthodoxy, so it was all very familiar. This is an area where I also have been a little too white, so to speak, but I’ve been getting nudges about getting better with it and this chapter was timely for me.

I look forward to the rest of the book, it’s been pleasantly good so far.

ketchup

It’s Bandcamp Friday, which I almost forgot. (This just means Bandcamp doesn’t take their usual percentage out of sales, so some people wait for this day to do their buying to maximize what artists get. Or in the case of And Yet…, maximizing what Lambda Legal will get.) I picked up a few things which I will review later.

I finished reading Body Neutral a few days ago. Or rather, I got most of the way through and stopped. I don’t actually have the sorts of body issues that the book addresses — dislike of some aspects of one’s body is totally normal!

The book is about people whose subconscious minds have created these body image issues as a response to trauma, abuse, fear etc. The author says that after years of treating people they found almost all their patients match with one or more of four “avatars” — ways that the subconscious views the body as the cause and/or solution of a problem.

Still, reading the book did have me considering my own thoughts about my body, and also some struggles I’ve had in the past (e.g. when I was a kid and paranoid about other kids bullying me) and how I dealt with them (mostly poorly). It was worth the read. I’ll keep those personal details to myself though.

In other books, Tales from Moominvalley worked better than some of the other books because each chapter was a little self-contained short story that primarily featured a specific character. Many of these characters are really quite neurotic, and the stories much more melancholy than you’d see in typical American children’s stories, but some of them are great in a sort of uniquely gothy emo way.

I am really not liking Moominpapa in Moominpapa At Sea though. He’s having a sort of crisis about his usefulness (or lack thereof) as a masculine protector figure, when things are generally fine and his family is capable of taking care of themselves. He ends up hauling the whole family on an adventure that they don’t seem to be particularly into (but they’re also not objecting, which… I think is bothering me more). Maybe things will shift a bit as the story continues, but so far it’s a bit ugh.

The “Tendan Old Temple Meiko Spicy Sandalwood Incense” is absolutely not the same as the old “Tendan Sandalwood” that I liked so much. It’s not unpleasant, but it smells kind of like… baby powder? I think the problem is the benzoin is stronger than the sandalwood and cinnamon (I don’t know what spikenard smells like). Anyway, it’s the wrong vibe. Maybe for general “make your house smell nice” purposes it’s okay.

The Kobunboku incense by Baiedo is also not particularly my jam. It’s apparently super popular but there are about a dozen different Nippon Kodo incense options that I like more. Ah well.

Speaking of things that smell nice, I have an order of soap and stuff from Native on the way. They kept getting recommended wherever I’d see people asking about gender-neutral soap. The body wash is actually a tie-in with Jarritos Mexican soda, and is watermelon scented. Hey, it makes as much sense as the “Stone” scented body wash I’m currently using.

A few weeks ago one of my donations was to an organization called Private Citizen. I now regret this.

While some of what they were talking about at that particular moment resonated with me… they have an awful lot of conservative buzzwords on their website. I get the feeling their idea of “government overreach” does not include any of the authoritarian, unconstitutional, unauthorized shit Trump has been up to.

They have something called the “Pardon Project” but their success stories are three people who were pardoned by Trump’s first administration — there is zero mention of anyone Biden pardoned, including Leonard Peltier, nor of the frankly embarrassing pardons that Trump handed out to the Jan 6 insurrectionists this time around. And looking at their board of directors: yep, they are conservatives. Well. Poop.

I have opinions.

I do not care about sports very much. But when supposed progressives like Gavin Newsom declare their opposition to trans people in sports… that’s not really about sports, nor is it about fairness or protecting women.

It’s a wedge, a slippery slope. If you claim that a trans woman isn’t a woman, in the specific context of sports, it’s not many steps from there to the Texan attempt to pass a law declaring that all trans people are inherently committing fraud with their bodies and identities at all times. (This has no chance of passing, but it does reveal the thought process behind transphobia and politician’s open willingness to attack trans rights.)

Everyone seems to assume that trans women have a huge advantage over AFAB women in basically every single sport. (I’m not going to say “biological women” because if you have been taking female hormones for several years, and it’s changed your body, it should be self-evident that this is biological.) There is no science or statistics that actually bears this out.

Testosterone during puberty does affect things such as hand size and other factors. Someone who completes puberty and then transitions, will be physiologically different — on average — than someone who transitions first, or a cisgender person. Going on E doesn’t shrink what has already grown. But yes, let’s look at hand size here; assume we’re talking about a sport where that matters (perhaps basketball). Here are the issues:

  • All trans women are being discriminated against in the same way here: those who have socially transitioned and aren’t on hormones at all; those who transitioned later after puberty, and those who transitioned before puberty.
  • Average hand sizes vary more with ethnicity than with gender. An average Filipino’s hand is 41% larger than an average Bangladeshi man’s hand. But within each ethnicity the average man’s hand is only 20% larger than the average woman’s. Would you support banning Filipino, Czech, Iranian, Jordanian, Turkish, and German cis women from womens’ basketball because of their unfair advantage…?
  • If the unfair advantage comes from hand size, why is biological sex at birth the criteria instead of actual hand size?
  • Testosterone levels (in both cis males and cis females) also vary a lot… and vary a lot by ethnicity. A lot of accusations against cis women with high T as “actually men” have been quite racist.

Hormone replacement therapy does change aerobic capacity, body composition, muscular strength and endurance. How much it changes them varies on a case-by-case basis.

Studies of military fitness tests have shown that in many respects, trans women perform more like cis women than cis men, and trans men perform more like cis men than cis women. Trans women did generally have faster 1.5 mile run times than cis women — but worse than cis men — and trans women were worse at vertical jump height, pushups, and aerobic capacity than cis women. (These were not long-term studies and some portions of the studies had fewer participants than one would ideally want, but still.) There’s also Lia Thomas, who was a star swimmer… whose times got 15 seconds worse within a year or two of transitioning.

In terms of sports statistics? There are no credible statistics claiming trans women have an advantage in sports. The Canadian Center for Ethics in Sport released a report saying as much. There are really very few trans athletes (one piece of data I saw said “less than 20 in international competition” and another claimed “0.04% of female athletes are trans women”). A group whose sole purpose is advocating anti-trans sports bans could only find five trans kids in K-12 sports in the entire nation. The NCAA says there are only ten trans athletes in college sports. Their presence has done nothing to disrupt opportunities for cis women to excel. In fact… in states that have anti-trans sports laws, there are fewer cis kids participating in sports.

It is well-known that most people who vehemently oppose trans women in women’s sports don‘t actually support women’s sports in the first place. Not as participants, not as parents, not as supporters of equal pay, not as supporters of racial justice in women’s sports, not as supporters of preventing actual harassment in women’s sports. In fact many of them advocate for humiliating tests to be carried out on all women in sports to prove they’re not trans.

Youth sports are not about performance, they’re about socialization and well-being. The American Medical Association says that the only effect of banning trans kids from sports is harming trans kids’ mental health.

fresh

Whenever I release an album, I experience a sort of sadness. In some sense it’s disappointment in the lack of attention — even knowing rationally that I make weird soundscapey ambientish drone music and I do zero actual marketing. I also know that the person who cares the most about a piece of music/art is nearly always the person who actually made it. And every time, any insecurity I might feel about it is immediately shut down when I remind myself, I like it and know it’s good, at least to someone with my particular tastes; I’d truly rather listen to my own releases than most of what’s on the radio.

This time I was a bit extra worried, since I kept it at the recommended minimum price instead of setting it to $0, and it had the trans rights message. But I’ve sold a few copies (including some that don’t show up as “supported” on Bandcamp, presumably because of users’ privacy settings) and every comment I’ve gotten on both the music and the message has been great. So overall I’m pretty pleased.

I think for my next project I am going to feature the bass guitar. I’m not a great player by any means, but I can noodle a bit and can certainly process the sound, using the strings as oscillators in a weird hybrid modular synth. Since I’ve featured other kinds of gear in the past, why not this too?

Bitwig 5.3, long in beta, was released while I was finishing the last couple of tracks of the album, and I didn’t want to install it and disrupt things.

Now that the way is clear, I went for it and played with the new features. This is the “Nice Drums!” update but I’m indifferent to the new drums.

There’s also a new master recorder, which just records everything live to a file independently of the transport, which is (theoretically) right up my alley. I’ve been using a goofy workaround to record live audio. I think there may be a slight UI bug if you don’t have the browser panel already open when you start recording, but I figured out workarounds.

The really cool things though are three new Grid modules: Freq Shift+, Pitch Shift, and Dome Filter (plus a Freq Shift+ device outside the grid). A frequency shifter is inharmonic, creating ringy new textures and behaving similarly to a ring modulator (this is what Xaoc Koszalin does). The pitch shifter here is granular and can be MIDI-controlled, making it trivial to create the EXACT thing I was wishing for the other day: a software synth that can take an audio signal and polyphonically repitch it in real time.

In this example I’m letting Braids drone in VCV Rack, using Poly Grid to split MPE notes to as many voices as I like, pitch shifting each and using the pressure to control a VCA. There’s no reason I couldn’t route a hardware sound source to it instead though. Also, the Voice Stacking feature works, so I can layer multiple Pitch Shift instances using different grain rates for instance. It’s pretty magical, and a distinctly different sort of modular patching than Eurorack. It absolutely does color the sound a lot, but it’s pretty interesting nonetheless.

The dome filter (or Hilbert Transform) is an odd one. The math is well beyond me, but somehow it splits an audio signal into real and imaginary number versions of itself, along with (in this case) amplitude and phase signals. All I know is, I can mess with the phase signal, then multiply it back with the amplitude signal and get some kind of waveshaping as a result. Or use the phase signal to modulate another filter or something.

I’d be writing about that Nearness module I ordered too, except the day after it arrived in St. Louis, it got sent off to Los Angeles instead of my neighborhood post office. Typical USPS incompetence.