Scratch Pad: Noise, Stars, Abandonware

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ You think it’s a really quiet day in the park and then you recognize that your earbuds have been in noise cancellation mode for a couple hours and it’s actually really loud in the park

▰ There is light construction going on a few buildings away and rather than be annoyed by the intermittent metallic hammering, I’m imagining a behemoth Transformers woodpecker at work

▰ Weirdest thing about the heat spell is how walking around your neighborhood doesn’t feel like your neighborhood. Not just the heat but the air is alien. Walking home from dinner out, I saw more stars than I’m used to. I’ve been through blackouts, neighborhood and city-wide, with fewer visible stars.

▰ The Vivaldi browser just added UI auto-hide and it is quite nice. I feel like I spend 90% of my worktime in Vivaldi and Obsidian.

▰ We live in the golden age of future abandonware.

Peter Kirn replied: That was a Star Trek episode title, no? “All Our Updates Are Tomorrow’s Yesterdays.”

And I, in turn: “For the Ethos Is Hollow and I Have Touched AI”

▰ It’s a nice touch in the first episode of the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that Mari Yamamoto’s character, a 1950s scientist who ends up in our time, uses Arthur C. Clarke’s original term, “artificial satellites,” when first encountering modern satellite data.

▰ Read a lot, finished nothing. Sorta like life.

On the Corner

In the video game Resident Evil Requiem

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

When I travel, I’m more likely to stay in one place for an extended period of time than to go from place to place. You still travel in one place, because the world passes by you, instead of the other way around. A lot of video game ASMR channels — that is, footage collections that highlight the diegetic, which is to say in-scene, sound of a given game — tend toward the latter, wandering through towns, touring amid landscapes, meandering the depths of dank tunnels. But some do take a chance at just plopping the virtual camera on a corner and seeing (and, more to the point, listening to) what happens past.

This is a tricky mode, because video games don’t match either the pixel density or the chaotic complexity of reality. Stand at an intersection of Cyberpunk 2077 for long, and you’ll see variants of the same characters, and hear the same sounds. The YouTube account Video Game Weather ASMR explores the potential of static recording in a recent video from Resident Evil Requiem, much as the Atmospheric Gaming channel did earlier this month in the same game, albeit in a hallway; this newer one is shot outside. Cars and pedestrians make their way by, while rain soaks everything. Inevitably, you do see the same faces, the same outfits. At least once I could swear a pair of the same character nearly collided on the sidewalk. Likewise, little disturbs the monotony of the weather, though as background white noise, it works well. Per the channel’s description, “Due to the nature of ASMR, any comments or narration will be minimized. The idea is to offer viewers and listeners a calm, relaxing atmosphere.” Pull up a stool and pay attention to the world, and to the attempts to simulate a world, as it goes by.

Disquiet Junto Project 0742: Sensitive Math

The Assignment: An exercise in genre speculation

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Image

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0742: Sensitive Math
The Assignment: An exercise in genre speculation.

Step 1: This is an exercise in genre, pondering what an imaginary genre might consist of. Consider the speculative genre called “sensitive math.” You know nothing about it except its name.

Step 2: Record a piece of music that exemplifies the “sensitive math” genre. When posting the resulting track, describe to some degree what you have come to think of as the characteristics of this genre.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0742” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0742-sensitive-math/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Does speculative math have an inherent length?

Deadline: Monday, March 23, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 742nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Sensitive Math — The Assignment: An exercise in genre speculation — at https://disquiet.com/0742/