SHAPE Missive 04/08/2024

It’s eclipse day, and New England’s weather is really going all out. A balmy 66° after snowing last week, and not a cloud in the sky on the walk to school this morning. I’m going to pick up our kid and take the bus into Harvard to try to meet up with Kari at 3:30. Hope your co-workers don’t have you tied to a zoom call.

Definitely don’t look at these links during the eclipse.

Part content-creator, part AI—the near future’s going to get really weird, really quick. But hey, you can mash up the cuisine of two cultures using AI, so we’ve got that going for us. I like the images they’re generating for these recipes. Makes me wish they made up a nonsense story about how the recipe reminds them of their childhood.

More into sound? Google’s got you covered there, too—turn a drawing into music. Though Suno really takes the cake, when it comes to impressive AI. Here, I just generated you a song to listen to while you skim through the rest of these links.

It took me longer to figure out how to format that pull quote than it took Suno to generate the song. Pretty nuts.

Some sounds actually made by real people: an alt music video from Vampire Weekend.

Thanks to those that replied to my last email with fun links. Jason shared this awesome collection of punk fliers digitally available via Cornell’s archives. Reminded me of the collection of punk zines at Emory University. Love archivists.

Long Read

I didn’t know much about Bubba Copeland, the Alabama pastor who committed suicide after a website posted pictures of him wearing women’s clothing and writing erotic fiction. This story about him is sensitively done, and very sad. Right-Wing Media and the Death of an Alabama Pastor: An American Tragedy. Via Roxanne Gay.

——

That’s it for today. Get out there this afternoon.

✌️ Dave