Scratch Pad: Radio, AI, “Nang”

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week. These days that mostly means Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others, including Bluesky (disquiet.bsky.social), which remains behind a beta firewall at the moment, and, yes, Threads (threads.net/@dsqt).

▰ I certainly have significant concerns about music streaming services. I also sometimes listen to Elvis Costello’s “Radio, Radio” to be reminded that this “shared culture” that nostalgists long for was “anesthetizing” in its own right. (Understood there are other concerns, too.)

▰ This is what this speech-to-text tool I’m trying out inserted when it heard silence:

[ Silence ]

I like the extra two spaces fluffing out the brackets.

▰ My expectations were low, but I still was surprised that entering “nature sounds, ambient drones, shortwave radio” into one of those text-to-music AI prompt engines still yielded five beat-heavy tracks. Just imagine if I’d actually requested percussion.

▰ “nang” — new-to-me slang, with a sonic etymology (and which I first heard thanks to the solid Australian TV show Deadloch), “a Nitrous oxide bulb, derived from the sound distortion that occurs when one is under the influence of the drug” (via urbandictionary.com)