If LLMs make us stupid because you can just pay them to do stuff without thinking, does that mean rich people have always been stupid
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Alex McLean
@yaxu@post.lurk.org
hometown 4.6.8+hometown-1.3.0Non-academic #UKRIFLF research fellow at non-profit org @thentrythis@mastodon.thentrythis.org, working on algorithmic patterns (@alpaca@mastodon.thentrythis.org).
Instigator of @tidalcycles@post.lurk.org, and co-founder of @algorave@post.lurk.org, @toplap@assemblag.es, algomech festival, etc
I tend to post live coding related things as @yaxu@social.toplap.org
he/him
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Joined April 15, 2018
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@MaddieM4@raphus.social That's super interesting thanks! You'd expect LLMs to make org charts shallower, right? At least I guess they're marketed that way.
My general feeling at the moment is that forums / social networks / messaging systems with open signup is becoming impossible to manage post-AI, and we'll have to give up on them soon.
Lyon knows how to algorave
TOPLAP is the *Temporary* Organisation for Live Algorithm Programming, but is 22 years old and still going. I think it was actually disbanded at some point over 10 years ago but it carried on by mistake. The problem with vaguely anti-hierarchical and distributed organisations is that they're quite difficult to disband.
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The dynamicland approach to open source really went against the grain, but hits differently in 2026
https://dynamicland.org/2024/Is_Realtalk_open_source/
As far as I can tell mainstream open source, github-native culture is now completely horrible, co-opted by Microsoft, and destroyed by Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. The free/open source projects I'm involved with are constantly ripped off by vibe-coded interfaces that ignore the license, and when I point this out I get abuse. I just got told by a reddit user "thank you for your work but it doesn't matter much any more". Only #pastagang can save us.
This from Stockhausen is remarkable in a couple of ways.. First it closes his book and clearly he felt it was important, but as far as I know 'social dancing' is completely absent from computer music/electroacoustic education institutions that otherwise laud Stockhausen. Secondly for the subtle dogwhistling - e.g. dance music from African continent and diaspora is first slated and then ignored.
https://archive.org/details/stockhausenonmus0000stoc/page/170/mode/2up
Richard Dawkins has again jumped the shark with his bonkers drivel about Claude, on top of his racist, transphobic, sexist rants. He's become a caricature of sozzled oxbridge self-obsessed 'genius'.
As a life-long atheist myself I would love it if more people embraced humanism and believed in our ability to achieve astonishing, good things outside of the hierarchical, dark structures of religion. In general I feel it's just not something I can even talk about without being associated with his angryman brand of 'new atheism' though.
One of the great things about the Lyon Algorave was the huge diversity of live coding languages and systems being used, all kinds of strange experiments making weird noises.. with hundreds of ravers dancing to them
Tour done ! Our final epiploke tour date in Lyon was probably the most banging. Grnnnd Zero Lyon was a dream !
https://www.youtube.com/live/414h7Vqk2r8?t=20620s
Happy to have a paper, a performance and an 'alt.nime' contribution accepted to NIME (new interfaces for musical express) conference London !
The paper is a collaborative one, about Uzu languages, the draft is here https://codeberg.org/uzu/nime2026/src/branch/main/uzu.pdf , we'll work on it some more so feedback very welcome (although already have a lot of feedback about the typos etc)
The 'alt nime' thingie is this fun paper with @danstowell@mastodon.social , about learning the pyramid tala:
https://codeberg.org/Algopaca/pyramid-paper/src/branch/main/pyramid-paper.pdf
The performance will be a collaboration with top drummer Matt Davies, also exploring the pyramid tala.
Anyone else going to nime?
https://nime2026.org/
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@dresstokilt@mastodon.social @amydiehl@mstdn.social Eh, @grimalkina@mastodon.social didn't assume bad faith, they just pointed out that you misunderstood the article (not surprising, as you didn't read it), in a super generous reply carefully answering your questions.
Epiploke merch + tour ! Lucy (heavy lifting) + I (yaxu) will be infecting algoraves and toplap nodes with our from-scratch live coded bangers in
27 April - Folklore London
28 April - Lambdasonic Ghent algorave
29 April - Koproductions Labor Dortmund (with @flordefuego@post.lurk.org)
30 April - TOPLAP Karlsruhe
2 May - Lyon algorave
To celebrate we are making epiploke tshirts and livecode sticker sheets:
https://epiploke.bandcamp.com/
If you will be at one of the above places then please reserve your stickers/shirts by emailing us instead and we will bring them to you and save postage+bandcamp fees :) Email lucy@heavy-lifting.org to reserve your merch.
For latest info see: https://epiploke.lurk.org/shows/
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@TodePond@mas.to at least we managed to kill algorave in 2013 https://slab.org/2013/07/12/deathofalgorave/
Loving the machine - Sarah Angliss and Caroline Radcliffe on the relationship between Lancashire Clog Dance, Kraftwerk and early Detroit Techno https://www.sarahangliss.com/lovingthemachinenotes/
Heh I've seen this a lot, people posting to their 1000s of followers on mastodon (I haven't seen this happen on other social media) and then bitterly complaining about replies, usually quite far outside the context of 'reply guy' type toxicity, just people trying to be helpful or adding some perspective which the poster didn't want for some reason. I find this bizarre.
Another lovely piece for the FoAM anarchives by @jcalpickard@assemblag.es, this one on community and coalition building, with me as one of the interviewees https://anarchive.fo.am/silver/community_and_coalition_building/
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@hellocatfood Maybe the problem is the lack of people thinking anything.. or at least making things with zero prior community engagement and then getting super annoyed when what they have made doesn't gel with people
Stupid question: why do we call a grid of numbers or colours two dimensional? Don't the values in the cells make it three dimensional?
I am trying out sleep restriction to get a healthier sleep pattern. Apologies for any grumpiness
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@lizziewlsn@assemblag.es heh yep he's definitely delusional! he's 6 years older than donald trump so I guess we should cut him some slack
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@schmudde I haven't heard of any but he's so massively over-referenced I usually look for less well-charted sources of inspiration ;)
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@alyn Wagamama is probably the best you can do around there unfortunately. If you do go there, it's worth trying to book asap if it's a big event.
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@fehrtrade@toot.community I recommend Sanquhar and Dales style knitting as well in case you haven't seen it :)
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@jyrgenn Yes agreed - codeberg is great, sustainable, ethical and I've moved all my active projects there. Unfortunately there's nothing to stop vibe coders forking them back to microsoft github, or creating derivative works there.
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@svavar@masto.svavar.com maybe in some cases but tbh in the cases I see on mastodon it's probably more just people being a bit grumpy !
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@reckter If it's interesting to think about it as an uzu, then it's an uzu ;) I think the main outcome of the paper for me though is defining uzus enough to be able to think about the possible related non-uzu languages more clearly in opposition !
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@mathr I'm thinking about weaving drafts in particular, which are binary grids representing discrete height in a discrete ordered space
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@TodePond@mas.to like I say this is outside of that context, it's men complaining about people talking to them
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@fehrtrade@toot.community Nice! Have you seen Felicity Ford's colourwork stuff https://www.knitsonik.com/knitsonik-books/knitsonik-stranded-colourwork-sourcebook/