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Latest — 20 May 2026

Barbara Powers and the Custody of East River Pipe

Two paragraphs in an Instagram story: a snapshot of the liner notes from the reissue of East River Pipe’s Mel. Presumably Barbara Powers, recounting the tale of copying cassettes at home and eventually carrying small batches of 7-inches into indie record stores on consignment. I had to read the

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The Artifact Is Not True Until It Runs

A Field Note on AI-Augmented Engineering, Validation, and the Work Between Specification and Reality An AI model can generate code. What recently felt like a novelty in software engineering is quickly becoming an accepted, even mundane norm. The more interesting—and still overlooked—questions happen before and after the code

The Inevitable Plastique Explosion

A Brutal & Kunnin' Night at the Waaghtory · Four Musicians · One Chanteuse · One Soup Can DA BAND Four Ork musicians and a Chanteuse, performing one night at Big Boss Waaghol's Waaghtory. Waaghol does not play. He watches. He holds a soup can. His silence is worse than

The Rover Takes Over

A TiGGR Scenario About Automation, Indifference, and the System That Doesn't Need You Players: 2–5 | Playtime: 30–45 minutes | Components: 2d6, pencil, paper | Requires the TiGGR core rules THE PREMISE Number 2 is gone. Helicoptered out this morning, mid-sentence, mid-tea. No announcement. No replacement. The Green Dome

The Imaginary Friend

Earlier this month, Nancy went on the road with Dusty Reske's Rocketship, playing (on a broken foot in a walking boot, but that's a whole 'nother tale) five dates in California, Washington, and Oregon for the 30th anniversary of the Slumberland release 'A Certain

The Ones Who Stayed Buried: The Pretty Things

Not every zombie process gets its reactivation event. Consider S.F. Sorrow. The Pretty Things recorded their concept album at Abbey Road across 1967 and 1968, overlapping with the same sessions that produced Sgt. Pepper's, Piper, and Odessey and Oracle. S.F. Sorrow has a legitimate claim to

Semtex in Every Pot

“Semtex in every pot, a 3D printer in every garage.” It lands as a joke because it sounds like a mutation of an older promise—a chicken in every pot—but something in it feels less like satire and more like recognition. Not a policy. Not even a warning. A

Born to Be Waaagh!

A Brutal & Kunnin' Road Trip · Three Boyz · One Road · No Plan DA BOYZ Three Ork Speed Freeks on their way to a Waaagh. They are not friends. They are just going the same direction. The fact that they keep choosing to go the same direction is not discussed.

The Posse of the Chip

A scenario for TiGGR: Tiny Game for Generalized Roleplaying Touchstone: Middle-Earth x Sergio Leone = The Good, The Bad, and The Gollum... except there's no Gollum here Players: 2–5 (1 GM, 1–4 players) Playtime: 60–90 minutes (three scenes, longer beats encouraged) THE WORLD A dust-choked frontier

The Beatbox and the Sampler

The Funky Drummer As Late Capitalism's Everyman A disclosure, before we begin: this essay was written with the assistance of multiple large language models — systems trained, in part, on the work of writers who were not consulted and will not be compensated. The irony is not incidental. It