Jeffrey Anthony
@musefoundry.bsky.social
Founder of Muse Foundry, developing the Certificate of Embodied Production (CEP), a framework that verifies human, ungridified music. Former Pandora Music Analyst
https://www.musefoundry.studio/ | https://medium.com/@WeWillNotBeFlattened
https://www.musefoundry.studio/ | https://medium.com/@WeWillNotBeFlattened
Pinned
Jeffrey Anthony
@musefoundry.bsky.social
· Oct 21
Does ‘Perfect’ Music Make Us Worse at Democracy?
How the gridification of music from Taylor Swift to everyone else trains us out of mutual recognition
medium.com
We've been trained by perfect music to expect perfect synchronization from humans.
Democracy requires coordination across difference.
Taylor Swift’s Opalite vs. Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams shows how our loss of rhythmic tolerance mirrors our political one.
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
Democracy requires coordination across difference.
Taylor Swift’s Opalite vs. Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams shows how our loss of rhythmic tolerance mirrors our political one.
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
Op-ed: @jagjaguwar.bsky.social founder Darius Van Arman on the challenges facing independent artists and labels in today's music industry and how regulators can help
Op-Ed: The Struggle For Independence In The Modern Age
Jagjaguwar's Darius Van Arman on our shared fight against market concentration and for art, culture, and access.
stereogum.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:06 PM
Op-ed: @jagjaguwar.bsky.social founder Darius Van Arman on the challenges facing independent artists and labels in today's music industry and how regulators can help
Oriana's point about ad agencies adopting synthetic humans ltracks with what I’ve been calling the rise of ‘taxidermy chic’ in marketing & platform imagery. This aesthetic is preparing us to accept embalmed, frictionless human substitutes.
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
November 18, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Oriana's point about ad agencies adopting synthetic humans ltracks with what I’ve been calling the rise of ‘taxidermy chic’ in marketing & platform imagery. This aesthetic is preparing us to accept embalmed, frictionless human substitutes.
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
Feels like a paint-by-numbers arrangement. Everything lands exactly where the template says it should.
youtu.be/ss9fRdpYdyI?...
youtu.be/ss9fRdpYdyI?...
KNEECAP feat. SUB FOCUS - NO COMMENT (OFFICIAL VISUALIZER)
YouTube video by KNEECAP
youtu.be
November 18, 2025 at 10:04 PM
Feels like a paint-by-numbers arrangement. Everything lands exactly where the template says it should.
youtu.be/ss9fRdpYdyI?...
youtu.be/ss9fRdpYdyI?...
Delicious moment when Patti Smith tells Ezra Klein his politics of abundance is bullshit.
I'm sure Klein was thinking 'sure, but do I have survey that will knocks your socks off.'
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/o...
I'm sure Klein was thinking 'sure, but do I have survey that will knocks your socks off.'
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/o...
Opinion | Patti Smith on the One Desire That Lasts Forever
www.nytimes.com
November 18, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Delicious moment when Patti Smith tells Ezra Klein his politics of abundance is bullshit.
I'm sure Klein was thinking 'sure, but do I have survey that will knocks your socks off.'
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/o...
I'm sure Klein was thinking 'sure, but do I have survey that will knocks your socks off.'
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/o...
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
New from 404 Media: IRS accessed a massive database of Americans flights without a warrant. Shows where and when someone flew, the credit card used. Hundreds of millions records; the airlines sell this data to the government through a broker they own
www.404media.co/irs-accessed...
www.404media.co/irs-accessed...
IRS Accessed Massive Database of Americans Flights Without a Warrant
A bipartisan letter reveals the IRS searched a database of hundreds of millions of travel records without first conducting a legal review. Airlines like Delta, United, American, and Southwest are sell...
www.404media.co
November 18, 2025 at 4:07 PM
New from 404 Media: IRS accessed a massive database of Americans flights without a warrant. Shows where and when someone flew, the credit card used. Hundreds of millions records; the airlines sell this data to the government through a broker they own
www.404media.co/irs-accessed...
www.404media.co/irs-accessed...
Man, the world sucks.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world still sucks.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world really sucks.
Sample population, rely on the CLT, and pretend that’s insight.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world still sucks.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world really sucks.
Sample population, rely on the CLT, and pretend that’s insight.
November 18, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Man, the world sucks.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world still sucks.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world really sucks.
Sample population, rely on the CLT, and pretend that’s insight.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world still sucks.
Sample population, rely on CLT, extract a policy agenda, implement agenda.
Man, the world really sucks.
Sample population, rely on the CLT, and pretend that’s insight.
What a muddled piece of moralizing. Spencer Jakab forces a narrative of historical necessity onto contingent market behavior and then treats those cycles as if they deliver built-in moral lessons. The 2008 crash was good because it was 'therapeutic.'
www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...
www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...
Why We Could Use a Good, Long Bear Market
Stocks have experienced only brief downturns over the past 16 years, creating dangerous complacency.
www.wsj.com
November 17, 2025 at 2:41 PM
What a muddled piece of moralizing. Spencer Jakab forces a narrative of historical necessity onto contingent market behavior and then treats those cycles as if they deliver built-in moral lessons. The 2008 crash was good because it was 'therapeutic.'
www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...
www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...
Walking the dog at first light this morning and noticed what appears to be the remnants of a rocket launch over Tucson.
November 17, 2025 at 1:33 PM
Walking the dog at first light this morning and noticed what appears to be the remnants of a rocket launch over Tucson.
AI isn’t cognition, sure. But these de-temporalized pattern engines still reshape our world because they’re ontologically tethered to *us*. They remix patterns and categories feeding those outputs back into our semiotic field thereby necessarily altering our cognitive horizon.
I’m gonna disagree with this one.
What we’re calling “AI” doesn’t replace cognition. It replaces pattern matching, but on its own has no idea which patterns are important or why.
We are nowhere close to an actual thinking machine.
What we’re calling “AI” doesn’t replace cognition. It replaces pattern matching, but on its own has no idea which patterns are important or why.
We are nowhere close to an actual thinking machine.
The plow, the steam engine, electricity — all replaced muscle. AI replaces cognition. If you spend your day “reading lots of stuff and turning it into straight English,” well… so does the machine. The goal now is to learn from history and cushion the blow better than last time.
November 17, 2025 at 2:29 AM
AI isn’t cognition, sure. But these de-temporalized pattern engines still reshape our world because they’re ontologically tethered to *us*. They remix patterns and categories feeding those outputs back into our semiotic field thereby necessarily altering our cognitive horizon.
Does it make sense to understand AI outputs as belonging to a non-semiotic domain of pattern production, one that sits outside the Peircean triadic structure of icon, index & symbol? In other words, a fourth domain of atemporal non-experiential pattern interpolation that generates symbol-like forms
November 16, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Does it make sense to understand AI outputs as belonging to a non-semiotic domain of pattern production, one that sits outside the Peircean triadic structure of icon, index & symbol? In other words, a fourth domain of atemporal non-experiential pattern interpolation that generates symbol-like forms
Deezer ran a study with 9,000 listeners and found that only 3 percent could tell the difference between a fully AI-generated song and a human-made one.
I dig into the implications here:
medium.com/the-riff/dee...
I dig into the implications here:
medium.com/the-riff/dee...
Deezer Reports Only 3% of Users Can Accurately Identify AI-Generated Tracks
130 days' worth of AI “music” floods the platform every day
medium.com
November 14, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Deezer ran a study with 9,000 listeners and found that only 3 percent could tell the difference between a fully AI-generated song and a human-made one.
I dig into the implications here:
medium.com/the-riff/dee...
I dig into the implications here:
medium.com/the-riff/dee...
We’re being trained to accept our own obsolescence, the same way those embalmed images sliding across our screens normalize the erasure of embodied presence.
I just published a piece on the aesthetic logic behind that shift and what’s at stake:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
I just published a piece on the aesthetic logic behind that shift and what’s at stake:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
November 11, 2025 at 10:53 PM
We’re being trained to accept our own obsolescence, the same way those embalmed images sliding across our screens normalize the erasure of embodied presence.
I just published a piece on the aesthetic logic behind that shift and what’s at stake:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
I just published a piece on the aesthetic logic behind that shift and what’s at stake:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
a few months ago I said "having generative AI handle absolutely anything with regards to healthcare is a nightmare and should be banned" and a bunch of people made fun of me and called me stupid. anyways,
November 10, 2025 at 4:00 PM
a few months ago I said "having generative AI handle absolutely anything with regards to healthcare is a nightmare and should be banned" and a bunch of people made fun of me and called me stupid. anyways,
Why do all these promo shots for modern TV shows look embalmed?
I am calling this new aesthetic gesture Taxidermy Chic: what happens when an entire culture begins embalming itself in real time.
We're being conditioned to see our own obsolescence as natural:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
I am calling this new aesthetic gesture Taxidermy Chic: what happens when an entire culture begins embalming itself in real time.
We're being conditioned to see our own obsolescence as natural:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
Taxidermy Chic: Why Everything Looks Dead Now
How streaming platforms are training us to accept our own obsolescence
medium.com
November 10, 2025 at 12:47 PM
Why do all these promo shots for modern TV shows look embalmed?
I am calling this new aesthetic gesture Taxidermy Chic: what happens when an entire culture begins embalming itself in real time.
We're being conditioned to see our own obsolescence as natural:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
I am calling this new aesthetic gesture Taxidermy Chic: what happens when an entire culture begins embalming itself in real time.
We're being conditioned to see our own obsolescence as natural:
medium.com/@WeWillNotBe...
I find Radiohead’s stage setup perplexing. Each member is in their own bubble with their back to the others. As a musician, performing live, the visual is just as important as the aural. I guess this is mirror of how culture works now.
youtu.be/4RRauFAavL0?...
youtu.be/4RRauFAavL0?...
Radiohead - Just - live Madrid 2025-11-07 night 3
YouTube video by Javi Dieguez
youtu.be
November 9, 2025 at 4:47 PM
I find Radiohead’s stage setup perplexing. Each member is in their own bubble with their back to the others. As a musician, performing live, the visual is just as important as the aural. I guess this is mirror of how culture works now.
youtu.be/4RRauFAavL0?...
youtu.be/4RRauFAavL0?...
This is the Democratic Party behaving like a statistical organism which is trapped inside a self-normalizing distribution, incapable of singular, haecceitic action.
It is this form of governance that people intuitively vote against.
It is this form of governance that people intuitively vote against.
SCOOP: Schumer was more involved than reported with the attempted cave on the government shutdown. The Gang of 8 Senate Dems had his approval & he was getting daily updates.
In Thursday's caucus meeting, the Gang claimed they had 10 votes to cave. The caucus went nuts, leading to the new proposal.
In Thursday's caucus meeting, the Gang claimed they had 10 votes to cave. The caucus went nuts, leading to the new proposal.
Why Does Schumer Keep Trying to Cave? - The American Prospect
Most commentators, including me, concluded that the Tuesday election victory saved Democrats from capitulating to Republican demands to pass a simple continuing resolution to re-open the government, i...
prospect.org
November 9, 2025 at 4:23 PM
This is the Democratic Party behaving like a statistical organism which is trapped inside a self-normalizing distribution, incapable of singular, haecceitic action.
It is this form of governance that people intuitively vote against.
It is this form of governance that people intuitively vote against.
Ezra Klein is a walking Central Limit Theorem in taxidermic bodily form.
November 8, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Ezra Klein is a walking Central Limit Theorem in taxidermic bodily form.
From a piece I published on Medium about the stakes of generative AI music:
November 5, 2025 at 6:56 PM
From a piece I published on Medium about the stakes of generative AI music:
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
‘This habit of hearing only flawless synchronization conditions us to experience other humans as sources of disagreement and delay. The aesthetic normalization of perfect time translates directly into diminished tolerance for the temporal and affective plurality on which democracy depends.’
Yes & this has been going on in music for decades. The gridification of performances- using algorithms to make performances 'perfect'- teaches us to reject difference & unlearn how to move together in time, making democratic coordination much more difficult.
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
October 31, 2025 at 5:12 PM
‘This habit of hearing only flawless synchronization conditions us to experience other humans as sources of disagreement and delay. The aesthetic normalization of perfect time translates directly into diminished tolerance for the temporal and affective plurality on which democracy depends.’
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
wow, this is fascinating. it reminds me of two things:
1. Heart Rate Variance - it is healthier to have minute variations in the time between each heartbeat, because that means your body is actually responding to tiny changes in your system. 'Perfect' in-time beats aren't so good as responsiveness
1. Heart Rate Variance - it is healthier to have minute variations in the time between each heartbeat, because that means your body is actually responding to tiny changes in your system. 'Perfect' in-time beats aren't so good as responsiveness
Yes & this has been going on in music for decades. The gridification of performances- using algorithms to make performances 'perfect'- teaches us to reject difference & unlearn how to move together in time, making democratic coordination much more difficult.
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
October 31, 2025 at 2:54 PM
wow, this is fascinating. it reminds me of two things:
1. Heart Rate Variance - it is healthier to have minute variations in the time between each heartbeat, because that means your body is actually responding to tiny changes in your system. 'Perfect' in-time beats aren't so good as responsiveness
1. Heart Rate Variance - it is healthier to have minute variations in the time between each heartbeat, because that means your body is actually responding to tiny changes in your system. 'Perfect' in-time beats aren't so good as responsiveness
Yes & this has been going on in music for decades. The gridification of performances- using algorithms to make performances 'perfect'- teaches us to reject difference & unlearn how to move together in time, making democratic coordination much more difficult.
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
October 31, 2025 at 1:24 PM
Yes & this has been going on in music for decades. The gridification of performances- using algorithms to make performances 'perfect'- teaches us to reject difference & unlearn how to move together in time, making democratic coordination much more difficult.
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
medium.com/the-riff/doe...
Reposted by Jeffrey Anthony
Incredibly accurate take on PhD programs.
"You encounter a strange, cult-like group that lives in almost total isolation from the outside world. They jealously guard their arcane knowledge and practice some exceedingly cruel rituals."
Critically Acclaimed Horror Film of the 2010s or Your PhD Program?
1. You encounter a strange, cult-like group that lives in almost total isolation from the outside world. They jealously guard their arcane knowledg...
buff.ly
October 28, 2025 at 2:57 AM
Incredibly accurate take on PhD programs.
The Mixtape We Never Got to Play For Jack DeJohnette
Remembering Jack, and how to live inside time
medium.com
October 29, 2025 at 12:55 PM