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Erich Hartmann • I Love Mary Jane, USA, 1976

Channeling the mood right before sunset.

Rembrandt - "Philosopher Reading" (1631)

Another fraud to scam musicians is exposed—but by Brazilian police, not Spotify (they don’t seem to care). Scammers stole tracks shared online by local musicians, and put them online with attributions to fake artists. They then earned royalties by generating 28 million

I’ll support AI art when it stops robbing and plagiarizing human artists.

One nice thing about a change like the 2018 to 2025 one is that you find out who had principles all along and who was just mouthing them when convenient. Not all that many organizations came out looking good, but Substack does.

Perhaps the best definition of “masculinity” I’ve ever read. (via Ted Gioia)

I'm reading a book by the great Heideggerian philosopher Hubert Dreyfus, and was surprised to see one of my favorite filmmakers in the acknowledgements. I'd forgotten that Terrence Malick studied philosophy at Oxford—specializing in Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein—and

Nothing to see here—just a new novel from Thomas Pynchon (who is still alive at age 87).

Poet Ceci Miller made this graphic—and I'm sharing it with you.

It's been a big day for me. I got featured in an article in The Atlantic (published 4 hours ago), and I just learned that I've won the Robert Palmer-Helen Oakley Dance Award for Excellence in Writing. Let me offer my deepest thanks to all the members of the Jazz Journalists

People have written about me before—but never with an opening this ominous. I feel like a Bond villain today.

Last year, Spencer Kornhaber visited the music historian Ted Gioia to talk about civilization’s death. “Music is turning into a rights-management business,” he told Kornhaber—and it’s destroying true artistry. Has America’s creative energy really been sapped? theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

The writer in The Atlantic mentioned that I laid out more than 40 books for him on cultural decline and collapse. People are demanding a list. I will probably need to write about this in the future.

New pod: The rise of "dopamine culture" and the decline of pop culture in America First, I discuss the Ted Gioa's argument that pop culture is being turned into a virtual casino of the mind that is better at producing reward-seeking behavior than quality art. Then, I talk to

Can anyone explain to me how the same copyrighted video clips show up on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, etc.—seemingly uploaded by people who aren't the copyright holder? I'm talking about movie scenes, TV clips, sports highlights, comedy routines, etc. These video clips

Potato chip companies engineer their food to be addictive. You eat it, get a rush of flavor, have that flavor die, and immediately feel compelled to reach for the next one. Makes us binge eat. Social media is basically the same. That's why people are so addicted to distraction.

All this is happening at the same time. Is that just coincidence?