Remember last year?

Saturday, October 16, 2021 | Other shit

Um… so there's a new Es­cape-ism record out and the sit­u­a­tion around last year's awk­ward self-can­cel­la­tion of Ian Sveno­n­ius is still murky as fuck.

Quick re­fresh­er: Last year, around the time when it be­came known that the Cal­i­for­nia garage la­bel and record store Burg­er Records had been a hotbed for sex­u­al preda­tors and creeps for years at that point, reig­init­ing the dis­cus­sion around sex­ism and preda­to­ry be­hav­ior in the punk scene (al­so lead­ing Burg­er Records to cease op­er­a­tions soon af­ter), Wash­ing­ton D.C. scene leg­end Ian Sveno­n­ius (of Na­tion of Ulysses, The Make-Up, Weird War, Chain and the Gang, Es­cape-Ism, XYZ…) did a weird kind of self-can­cel­la­tion post on in­sta­gram, ad­mit­ting to preda­to­ry or at least very creepy be­hav­ior to­wards women in the past and apol­o­giz­ing for it, then delet­ing the whole thing soon af­ter.

The re­ac­tions were var­ied. Merge Records seem to have gained some deep­er knowl­edge about the ac­cu­sa­tions and deemed them se­vere enough to sev­er ties with Ian Sveno­n­ius.
Dischord Records, on the oth­er hand, who should al­so know a thing or two, are still work­ing with him, keep­ing his old records in print and in-stock. The new Es­cape-ism record, while not a Dischord re­lease, is be­ing sold via the Dischord Records web­site right now. No clue how to in­ter­pret that com­ing from a la­bel that has been so well known for their strong ethics in the past.

I'm just gonna say, the whole sit­u­a­tion stinks. It's been over a year and we know pret­ty much noth­ing about what was hap­pen­ing around Ian Sveno­n­ius. As a fan, mu­sic blog­ger, we­b­cast­er, i am es­pe­cial­ly con­flict­ed. What kind of per­son am i sup­port­ing if i buy his records? Can i still jus­ti­fy post­ing his stuff? Should i re­move all of his mu­sic from 12XU Ra­dio?

At first, i re­al­ly want­ed to give Ian Sveno­n­ius the ben­e­fit of the doubt. It seemed like he was ac­tu­al­ly feel­ing re­morse for his ac­tions (their sever­i­ty still be­ing un­known) and some dude ac­tu­al­ly apol­o­giz­ing, be­ing hon­est about it and will­ing to work through his shit would have ac­tu­al­ly felt kin­da re­fresh­ing at that point.

In­stead, it looks to me like the punk scene has col­lec­tive­ly agreed to shove the whole thing un­der the rug, not de­mand any an­swers and move on as if noth­ing ac­tu­al­ly ever hap­pened. Once again, every­one gets the si­lence treat­ment. I think that's the worst pos­si­ble way to go about this. This. Sucks. So. Much.

Dear audience, i'm so very, very disappointed of you.

Sunday, April 25, 2021 | Other shit

Yes, this is an in­ter­ven­tion a.k.a. an­oth­er one of these oblig­a­tory read­er bash­ing posts. Be­cause most of you still suck so bad at this. I shouldn't have to be telling you this any­more and you're mak­ing me so very sad. And no, i won't stop nag­ging about it any­time soon.

So here goes… Please, please, pret­ty please, for fuck­ing fuck's sake please stop us­ing these things:

• Face­book
• Twit­ter

Join the fe­di­verse in­stead. As a start­ing point for my fel­low mu­sic lovers: How about get­ting an ac­count at linernotes.club? And when you've done that, tell me about it.

If you're us­ing twit­ter or face­book to pub­lish and/​or cu­rate stuff in a reg­u­lar man­ner, how about start­ing your own blog in­stead? When you've done that, tell me about it.

If you to­tal­ly can't lay off your bad in­ter­net habits for now, at least make your­self fa­mil­iar with the al­ter­na­tives and start us­ing them.

• Google Chrome

You have no fuck­ing ex­cuse. There are sev­er­al equal­ly good al­ter­na­tives out there do­ing ex­act­ly the same thing. Some of them are ba­si­cal­ly just Chrome with all the evil parts re­moved. Fire­fox is way more sexy though.

• Google An­a­lyt­ics

Aaarght! Blog­gers and web­mas­ters, cut that shit out for cry­ing out loud. If you need sta­tis­tics, you might wan­na take a look at Mato­mo. It's free and easy to set up. Al­so look­ing at you, Band­camp!!! I like you, but you're help­ing Google track your users. And you're do­ing it with your em­bed­ded play­er, on every fuck­ing mu­sic blog in the world!!!

• Share- and like-but­tons pro­vid­ed by Face­book or Twit­ter

These are just an­oth­er means of track­ing users. If you can't live with­out that sweet lit­tle dopamine boost every share or like pro­vides… take a look at Shar­iff. Word­Press users: There's a plu­g­in for that.

Every­body, please start do­ing this:

• Use a de­cent ad-block­er plu­g­in in your web brows­er.

This pro­tects you from the bulk of track­ers, all of the ad-in­dus­try brain­fuck and it helps starve out said in­dus­try. If your brows­er doesn't al­low it: Use a dif­fer­ent brows­er! How hard can it be?

Blog­gers and Web­mas­ters take no­tice: Google wants to roll out its FLoC pro­gramme in the near fu­ture to en­able track­ing of Chrome users even in a world where cook­ie-based track­ing be­comes less and less ef­fec­tive. Please do this:

• Learn how to pre­vent the FLoC func­tion­al­i­ty from be­ing en­abled on your web­site (for now at least).
• If your site us­es Word­Press, it's as easy as in­stalling a plu­g­in like this one here.
• Chrome users: Here's an­oth­er rea­son for you to look for a dif­fer­ent brows­er.

Please, folks, please start tak­ing these things se­ri­ous­ly. Please stop suck­ing so hard at every fuck­ing thing in­volv­ing com­put­ers and the in­ter­net. Please stop feed­ing the ma­chine cre­at­ing all these prob­lems. In­stead do the lit­tle things that help make the web more open, de­mo­c­ra­t­ic and less re­liant on ma­jor evil cor­po­ra­tions. How many more crap­py stunts and dirty tricks do Face­book, Google, etc. have to pull on you be­fore you even con­sid­er pulling the plug? Are you a punk? Do a punk thing. Par­tic­i­pate in some punk web shit. Thanx a lot in ad­vance.

Home­work:
Num­ber of days since last Face­book Scan­dal (while i'm writ­ing this: Four days.)
Google’s FLoC Is a Ter­ri­ble Idea.
Clean Up The Web

Introducing the 12XU dumping ground

Sunday, January 17, 2021 | Other shit

Don't ex­pect any­thing huge. It's just a lit­tle ze­ro-ef­fort ex­ten­sion to this blog where i'm post­ing some links, pod­casts, videos i find worth­while, ran­dom brain farts, what films i've been watch­ing and some rather nerdy stuff large­ly un­re­lat­ed to the main blog. Just click on Dump in the menu.

As i'm try­ing to get a bit more in­vest­ed in the fe­di­verse any­way (as well as coax oth­er peo­ple in that di­rec­tion, away from cor­po­rate so­cial me­dia), i've sim­ply made it an­oth­er Pleroma/​Mastodon (etc…) han­dle you can eas­i­ly fol­low on the fe­di­verse.

Be aware though that the stuff on there may oc­ca­sion­al­ly be of a rather per­son­al na­ture or might touch on sub­jects such as (left­ist) pol­i­tics and athe­ism (as am cur­rent­ly still grap­pling with my own de­con­ver­sion from re­li­gion over the past few years). Just in case that kind of stuff is prob­lem­at­ic to you, be warned.

Al­so, as quite a few peo­ple are quit­ting face­book and twit­ter in fa­vor of open and de­cen­tral al­ter­na­tives right now, i wan­na en­cour­age you to do the same and join the de­cen­tral fe­di­verse. I'm not feel­ing con­find­ent enough in main­tain­ing my own plero­ma in­stance to open it up for reg­is­tra­tion just yet - it will stay my own sin­gle-user in­stance at least for the time be­ing. How­ev­er, there are tons of pub­lic in­stances out there open for reg­is­tra­tion. For my fel­low mu­sic nerds, i rec­om­mend tak­ing a look at linernotes.club.

I've finally had it with twitter. Why the fuck are any of us still using this crap?

Sunday, August 23, 2020 | Other shit

A good time to fi­nal­ly delete all ac­counts. Twitter.inc must suf­fer. For that to hap­pen, us and every­body we know needs to GTFO. Same goes for face­book, btw. There have been bet­ter, de­cen­tral, non­com­mer­cial al­ter­na­tives for quite some time now. We just need to start us­ing them.

New shits on the (fediverse) block.

Wednesday, August 5, 2020 | Other shit

Just a quick an­nounce­ment: In­stead of tak­ing care of this blog as i should, i re­cent­ly pro­cras­ti­nat­ed my own mastodon in­stance in­to ex­is­tence. Or more specif­i­cal­ly, it's ac­tu­al­ly a plero­ma in­stance. Or for those who still don't get what the fuck all that gib­ber­ish is sup­posed to mean: Mastodon and Plero­ma are two com­pat­i­ble serv­er im­ple­men­ta­tions of the Ac­tiv­i­ty­Pub pro­to­col, which quite a few de­cen­tral so­cial plat­forms are based on, mastodon be­ing the most pop­u­lar of those at this mo­ment.

Al­so in the works is a Hubzil­la in­stance, which is sup­posed to bridge the gap for me be­tween Mastodon/​ActivityPub and the in­com­pat­i­ble Di­as­po­ra net­work. In the long term, my aim is to go ful­ly in­de­pen­dent of the big com­mer­cial plat­forms. I'd be de­light­ed if a few of you dip their toes in the warm fe­di­verse wa­ters too, sim­ply be­cause the cor­po­rate web sucks so hard at this point any­way and i'd like to ac­cel­er­ate its death a lit­tle bit.

So right now you can find me at these ad­di­tion­al places:
@groschi@elefant.onetwoxu.de
@12xu@elefant.onetwoxu.de

If you want a user ac­count on elefant.onetwoxu.de, just tell me via the con­tact form… but be aware that this piece of shit might not be 100% sta­ble yet, def­i­nite­ly needs a bit of fine tun­ing and you're ba­si­cal­ly be­com­ing my guinea pig if you dare to reg­is­ter. That thing could ex­plode at any mo­ment.
Thus, un­til i have that stuff un­der con­trol, i'd rather rec­om­mend you reg­is­ter an ac­count on the mu­sic-themed linernotes.club in­stance - or any oth­er inc­tance whose user base, themes and poli­cies ap­peal to you. Mastodon al­lows you to move your ac­count some­where else at any point, just in case stuff didn't work out for you.

12XU current state of affairs…

Monday, March 2, 2020 | Other shit

Ar­rived at my new cave, re­tained most of my san­i­ty. Fi­nal­ly able to re­lax. Ass on my couch and music's run­ning again, too. This week i'm plow­ing through all the good noise i've missed in re­cent weeks. Prob­a­bly way to much to post here, so what i don't man­age to get crammed in here will prob­a­bly end up on a new Verspan­nungskas­sette-Mix­tape. The blog ma­chine should be rolling again by next week.

Yet another channel…

Wednesday, November 13, 2019 | Other shit

The old 12XU spo­ti­fy playlist is long dead, so now i'm un­der­tak­ing a sec­ond, more se­ri­ous at­tempt with songs rough­ly di­vid­ed in­to three playlists of new shit, old­er crap and clas­sic di­ar­rhea. Since the spo­ti­fy cat­a­logue ap­pears to im­prove over time - more than half the songs i im­port­ed were avail­able this time, hur­rah! - this might even start to make a bit of sense.

To start with, this is based on an au­to­mat­ic im­port of 12XU Radio's playlists, which i then tried to purge of false match­es. So please be pre­pared for a few du­pli­cates, re­dun­dan­cies and oth­er scary stuff i might have missed.

[di­rect link]

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