Kevin

Thinking about “ass” versus “arse” usage in Ireland. I’m an ass man (ahem) but I do say “arsewise” and “kick up the arse”.

Imagining an alternative metaphysics of rubbish… a culture where all the waste you generated, the spent packaging and broken goods, was kept in a personalised cache and became your grave goods, sacralised symbols of the life you lived

Anyone have resources to share on organising tech workers? Ideally docs I could not only use but share with other engineers to show there’s a structure behind what we’re doing, covering practicalities like structuring meetings with maybe 100 participants… #askFedi #Union Retweets welcome

The selling point of generative AI is the control of shame: that of a writer in a non-native language or a musician struggling with chord progression, but also that of a CEO firing en masse or a dad not spending time with his kids (Zuckerberg’s famous ChatGPT bedtime stories). Will be interesting to see how humanity remakes its relationship to this fundamental emotion

Giving a coding agent purposely corrupted tools to watch it slowly discover that creating a file deletes another, 1 + 1 = 3, and time is running backwards

The current wave of (junk) AI music software is aimed at those producing songs on computers. But there will come real time sound generation you can jam with. I can imagine an anthropomorphised “Drum Gremlin” or “Beat Monkey” filling a similar role to keyboard backing tracks, but able to adapt to and support your time… or maybe that’s too human/embodied/emotive? Also tricky to get training data

I think the alt right, broadly defined, benefitted the most from late capitalism’s commodification of subculture itself, as a structure, so you have multiple movements that yes, occupy an underground, rebellious, provocative place in society, but which upon digging into reveal only grift and blank emptiness

Without exception, it’s the Christian/Catholic ladies that have the most seductive profilers on Bumble. Must be something in the bible about swimsuits and backless dresses

Just thinking what a great moneyspinner a “food hall” (like with multiple kitchens serving different styles of food over a bar, and a central seating area) is: no waiters, no cleaning tables between customers, and you can cram in more people because half of them are on their feet ordering or looking for a spot. And the kitchens are specialised, more like a food van than a restaurant, prob savings there too

Things that make you grateful to your past self: clear yet relatively secure password hints

Been working on sharp keys for quite a while, a challenge for any jazzer (we prefer flats). A key sequence of E major to C# major to A# major has a mnemonically appealing 3 naturals, then no naturals (all sharps), then 3 double sharps

I see Blindboy will be interviewing Gabor Maté. I’ve time for Blindboy but Maté is overrated. He’s climbed to the apex of the wellness/therapy/trauma thing thanks to 1. A weary yet kindly face 2. A good origin story of intergenerational Jewish pain 3. A take on the neurodivergence diagnosis explosion that boils down to the incredibly controversial “maybe we should all do a bit more therapy” #wellness #celebrity

If, in a dream, you achieve a goal you had in the dream, you dreamt well… would be my tentative summation of what I’ve picked up in my reading about and writing down of dreams

After a few weeks my piano scales are on pause for ten days - physio said my finger joint is prob irritated where it’s adapting to the work. I hope to come back more motivated than ever! (Talking to you future Kev re-reading this)

I wonder do trees need wind. Would they be unhealthy if they never moved?

Again, I’m not an absolutist, I see some utility in the new tools, but this kind of writing makes me close the tab by reflex: “The big finding: Claude Code builds, not buys.” Aggressive time-is-money terseness, ludicrous alliteration, and the tiresome parallelism… get me outta here

If someone has a positive impression of you that you happen to think unfounded - an infatuation, an overestimation of your work contribution, praise of your music skill on a night you didn’t play well - you can hold onto to what you know and still enjoy their nice experience #perspectivism

I need a family crest. What’s Latin for “go hard - gently”?

Journaling’s a lot like walking, the forward motion transforms your mindstate as you go

Rain in Brussels today. Putting on a hoodie felt like the first crack in the edifice of summer

A fact of life I found it hard to reconcile myself to is that potential hiding places for lost objects usually don’t contain the lost object. A pocket in my gym bag for a lost combination lock, for example

The working process is to overdub bass and voice tracks in Reaper. Sometimes some keys. And I program keys and drums and sax, and later it all gets notated in Musescore

Spreading confusion by insisting that “An I for an I” is a well-known rule for balancing the topic of conversation among friends

Some call me a Scrooge but I always thought I was pretty fly for a tight guy

The current song, a ballad, has 3 basses doing bass, chords and lead (in my WIP demo). There’s just about enough notes on my Fender for this to work. The top and bottom of the instrument’s range definitely affect the melodic shapes. Also the top of the neck, after the 12th fret, has a nice octave+ above Ab, the lowest note our soprano saxophonist has

I’m writing material for my band Nightshop

Just realised I was totally reeled in by an ad for a Bonne Maman chocolate spread with no palm oil - an ad with an exceedingly clear subtext, “Nutella has palm oil & a virtuous middle class person would avoid it”… I opened my cupboard today and was surprised that I *hadn’t* bought it, still the same ol’ Nutella

Fridge pressure: when leftovers you’ve had for 2 days already exert an irresistible influence on what’s for dinner

When people see photos of this decade, it’ll be the level of puffer jacket they’ll find hard to believe

I took a day off work to do some #composition

Cardboard packaging is one tech that seems to only get better. Fancy folds for strength and support, easy folding to 2D, “push here” tabs that actually work. It defo wasn’t that good when I was a kid

Delhaize: the Belgian supermarket with the best quality goods and the nastiest, most mistrustful vibe from the moment you pass the anti shoplifting gates. Always some unpleasant stricture for the (I’m sure horribly underpaid and put-upon) staff to convey, whether you’re returning bottles, buying spirits or using the self-service

Kevin to bumblebees he meets: “live long and prosper”

A few words from my journal, 31/08/25 Stalk [technical term from Carlos Castenada, meaning observe and be aware of] fear and distortion of your self... with love! Build and rely on your personal power. Love, continue to love, deeply, your core, your power and essence that is not dependent.

This Luke Vibert snare drum sound (the layered one at 0:40) reminds me of cake: moist dense base, fluffy light structure and powdery top https://youtube.com/watch?v=I2_bZVCd-04

I think the moral of the story is, dress like a pimp https://jacobin.com/2026/03/teddy-boys-fashion-rock-postwar-britain

It's funny, any French-language written text I've seen puts a space before exclamation and question marks, but my French teacher seems to have a blind spot about this and says there's no space or that it doesn't matter.

Maybe some pro-natalist government will subsidise a dating app where, like, everyone has Premium

Of the many types of content trying to get my attention on insta, the “problematising small talk” genre (e.g. “NEVER ask how their weekend was”) stands out for its pointlessness.

I got this 1981 BD cause the cover has all that you need in an illustration - no I don’t mean the pretty woman, rather: a skyline of palm trees in silhouette, craggy rocks, wobbly smoke, chunky 70s line width, a bird, and gratuitous decorative corner elements. Full marks #bande_dessinée #comics #illustration

Does your same-sex sibling always stand for your shadow self in dreams? Because my brother’s cropping up a hell of a lot these days

Was watching a skating clip and something felt utterly disorienting… cuts between multiple cameras!

I’ve yet to see a text editor supporting anticharacters, that is, characters that annihilate normal characters on being placed beside them

My doc is used to me coming in with minor pains that would hardly register for people with harder or busier lives. I appreciate her kind dispensing of reassurance in the form of various pharmaceutical doodads. Today’s was a roll of body tape to tape my fingers. She knows a little ointment or thingummy sends us home happy