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The Independent Variable

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🎧 Streaming music is the lie we tell each other

Birchtree

I’ve come to the conclusion that streaming music platforms are a shared lie we all agree to that suggests we’re paying for music when we’re actually may as well be pirating it, we just pay $10 a month to keep the cops away.

It’s been fun to see Matt’s evolution of thought here, going from not thinking Spotify’s rates are an issue, To realizing all music streaming is a bit of a sham… I think the one point that keeps getting glossed over is it’s Spotify’s choice to do free ad-supported

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🤖 Anthropic Exec Forces AI Chatbot on Gay Discord Community, Members Flee

404 Media

Users voted to restrict Anthropic’s Claude to its own channel, but Jason Clinton, Anthropic’s Deputy Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a moderator in the Discord, overrode them.

The word of the year might be Slop, but the theme of the year is companies forcing things on their users that they didn’t ask for and do not want.

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😡 Megyn Kelly Fumes Over Charlie Kirk Not Being Named Time’s Person of the Year: ‘A Thumb in the Eye’

TheWrap

This might come across as insensitive… but what on earth did Charlie Kirk do in 2025 to deserve Person of the Year? Besides getting shot… If getting assasinated is the requirement, I’d like to nominate Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman, and their spouses, Mark and Yvette.

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🦎 King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Respond to Spotify Impersonator: “We Are Truly Doomed”

Pitchfork

King Gizzard frontperson Stu Mackenzie said in a statement to the Music that he was “trying to see the irony in this situation.” He added, “But seriously wtf we are truly doomed.”

Continuing the conversation about “ethical streaming services…” I’m not going to say this wouldn’t ever happen on Apple Music (just look at their spotty App Store track record), but these types of stories of AI music making it to Spotify—and being promoted on the platform—seem to happen quite a bit. Again, the music loving ethos that brought Apple back from the dead with

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🎞️ What Can Fashion Learn From A24?

Vogue

But this strangeness is always a stylish statement, unlike, say, Supreme’s infamous brick. “A24 chooses objects and ideas that are too strange or too narrow for a normal marketing department, and turns them into talismans,” says Martin Mangez-Casey, previously global director of digital communications at Louis Vuitton and an admirer of A24’s approach. “A24 dances to the off-rhythm beat of its own drum and it’s been consistent since it first gained popularity,” echoes Luz Corona, editor of Campaign US.

The way A24 world-builds around their movies and does fun logo iterations has been an enormous inspiration

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