Tone Value

References: tv party [black flag], anarchy in the uk [sex pistols], sugar pie honey bunch [the four tops], it's catching up [nomeansno]

agent provocateur

Morals slacking, tentacles tingling, old habit octopi arms, jumped the gun. Maxwell's silver hammer wasn't as cool for the Beatles, just a fact of life. The shock of acid shuffled all limbic connection, new logic of narcosis gave order, could be integrated into moneyed lives, for a while. Eventually one must wake from the white night, give way to the black coffee day. To fail to reject that order, and fail to die, requires extra-judicial killing by fanatic, citizen of the welfare cosmos cancelled. Or citizen of the marmalade skies. Yeah, that one. Cut me some slack, I haven't done this writing thing in a while, hardly. It's all for some purpose that'll be revealed. It's part of the Q plan, and I don't mean Qanon, I mean Q from Star Trek, it's Q continuum shit.

Billions to be made from a music catalog, still. As it happened, the billionaires became trillionaires, and Tesla stock spiked up to 880.02 USD +63.98 (7.84%) [Closed: Jan. 8, 7:59 p.m. EST], and Season 5 of The Expanse came out, and it's a fucking banger, got that Star Trek Discovery Season 2 energy, and people like me watched it, and regained a glimpse of being a starry-eyed dreamer, while still being a doomer, hedging those bets, keeping money in a GIC, keeping the market at arms-length, as if I really could, any more than I could friend-zone my vacuum suit. At least a space dystopia implies we hung on and made it to space, and there's beauty in Luna hotel rooms, if you can appreciate the modern gothic ring-gate revival style. Maybe Bezos will bring about something like this. I'm being thoroughly provoked by the temptation to root for the Belters, even after they killed millions of Inners with asteroids, am I being revealed as a hollow extremist, lusting for blood I'd never stomach in reality? Well that's the point, I'd never stomach it in reality. I guess in the end, I'm a good citizen, inconsequential, I'm part English, I know how to queue. If there was such a thing as a leftist maga movement, at the last minute I'd preserve institutions, if I was forced by some embarrassment of living history to say the false equivalency is in fact equal. This is purely academic.

We all gotta be so careful not to get culted now, the greatest trick the AI pulled was convincing us it didn't exist, making us think we out-witted ads. I'm worried the war I kinda want til it happens will be stopped by the middle I'd probably be if it came down to it. That's the Expanse bet, borrowing against the lithium ore I mine in the meanwhile by thinking a space colony will be available before the landmass floods. By shortwave virtue-signal of valuing technocracy, I'll get my vaccine and then I'll get a shuttle. A corrupt meritocracy is the only alternative to Hell System, let's say, to the preservation of any joy anywhere, Epic Bacon Fucking Science is the only way, hook your brainstem to the STEM brain. Or at least I'll be a surplus human lump of shit and be on some kind of shitty future UBI. I'm not a space cowboy, no Epstein Drive engineer. I guess the name Epstein needn't be tainted, and there can still be born Adolphs and Georges and Donalds that can accomplish much good.

Apropos of no recent news item [just the continuing reality of being on the brink of apocalypse in a nuclear-armed world]: We need a Manhattan Project for disarmament.

placeholder

References: video killed the radio star [the buggles], gonna make you sweat [c&c music factory], the scatman [john scatman], welcome to the jungle [guns 'n' roses], it's so easy [guns 'n' roses], cracked actor [david bowie], i'm afraid of americans [david bowie],  quicksand [david bowie], baby baby [amy grant]

raynaud syndrome - albums left on the table - only the coldest toes to go - doesn't much matter - you've lost it - it's rick's protest as expression in the form of dancing, can't get the message out any other way, being in the sunken place - just let it be what it is -

shocking to find how much of meaning has been drained from old faithful activities, avenues of ghost towns - tumbleweed spending time rubbing against the own grain - nebraska porch rails - no change is possible, but go down swinging! no self preserving, no life force except facing death, so go for it - storm the bunkers, dig em out like truffles! if there isn't a soundtrack, make it out of lemons - chorus, press it to vinyl, with no instruments around - 

frigid raynaud fingers wrapping around my own neck, i own them fingers - enough figures to keep me in comfort, operational definition, operational exhaustion - 

there was a birth, we're paddling around in the dried crust of afterbirth now, groping the air, blind, trying to visualize renaissance, rather plastered with hollandaise sauce, rolling around, bothering to flail a swing at something, some maybe enemy, some complaint, some more pain to endure, it's endearing, unappreciated, indistinguishable - 

don't want a news feed right now, don't want to be plugged in to a discordant hive mind, abuzz with self-cannibalization - don't have it right now, the ability to play with others - the glint of being self off others got faint - the best memory is better than the faint ink -

can second guess for eternity, not front, not storm -

piggly wiggly furry dick - virtuoso let it slip - let it all slip away - like the smirk off the north face - til there was nothing left but scorched rock faces of bare necessity - 

good thing we're all so weird we aren't spoiled for each other, could never guess what that perception felt like... 

so, there are dueling heavens - is what i wanted to get across - across the universe? when i'm kvetching in heaven there's an order of operations - building up of just because you can, you must, mandatory, nothing forbidden in finland and Michael Flynn Land. That's what I reference, of all things? It's troubles on a burning pile, for lack of anything else to be done, a tire fire on an ice flow, so long furry snow bears

culture is sucked away to the vacuum, was so fragile and ephemeral, connections fraying in space, expanding distance - light speed barrier becomes so relevant, relativity rules now

i can't remember what i needed to write about the dueling heavens, can't connect back to that mandate now - there's no one to reflect, it doesn't matter anyway - opus clavecalemballisticum - antimusical excrement, purely, one said

the one hundred percent test

You've been granted God-ish power for a split second. By the grace of void, it goes in slow motion like a pivotal scene in a movie, leaving a whole minute to think. Finally, you can bypass exhausting gamesmanship, the rope-a-dope hope strategies, and just change the percentages of people to whatever you want. Those demographics blocking progress, they can cease to exist, clearing way for a much better world. Not utopia, that's too weird and scary, has mythological weight, nowheresville, doesn't it anyways go bad somehow? This godish power is like a utopia button you can push, but it's also got a dial. You want to create a society that's real, that could be here, that contains the perfect amount of imperfection, that's not a closed circuit, a slowly dying biodome. It needs to breathe. You wouldn't abuse the utopia button.

But you're so tired of incrementalism. You've got this power for a second, it's your turn in the revolving democracy of the cosmos, your opportunity to shoulder the responsibly and still follow your principles, to demonstrate that the hated establishment could have done it all along, they chose not to. So act on conviction, this jimmy-rigged conviction you've duck-taped together that's the only thing that means anything anymore because it's yours. And go for it, choose. Choose, what percent of people to be on your side, in a certain range of values, a certain set of tactics, more or less, within a margin of error. There's no error in utopia, so you know you're being careful. When the responsibility fell on you, you found that it wasn't inevitable to sell out because there's only power and personal gain. So, how many? 

Ninety percent? That's pretty bold. But the blockers of all progress, impressively evil, effectively sociopathic, surely they would pick one hundred. That's how they win, right? After all this you're going to negotiate with yourself? It's not like you're wiping them out, you're starting a new existence with pre-set demographics, that's how this void-blink shuffle works.

But still, it nags at you, the obsessive compulsion to disorder just a little for fear of eternal sterility. Surely it should be 99%. There's gotta be a one percent deviation, probably no more, but don't you need to keep some of those people around, for diversity, just in case you're wrong and you don't know what kind of people there should be? Isn't that the responsible thing? 

The sober senate of your soul, on the precipice, filibusters for an allowance of divergence. Doesn't this always happen though? The moderate snap back keeping the cycle going, and here, in this moment of opportunity. The last temptation of the chronic agnostic. Didn't you decide, coming up to this, that you had to go all the way, fight extremism with extremism, kill the fanatics and burn the bodies, make sure? You must be decisive. Because leaving that 1%, that's how they'll claw it back and take over again, like every time.

Yes, the void looks into you, you know that, so what? That's all there's left to say, so what? Make the void blink. Make it one hundred percent. 

When the new world is born, like something some year zero fascist would say, you find that you are correct, that 1% would have spoiled the bunch. You can surmise this from experiments with apples. Congratulations, you passed the one hundred per cent test. 

It's been a long time since The Last Supper with Jason Alexander, and that late nineties end-of-history feeling. Truly, it was the last supper before an endless food fight. Inevitable waste, it seems. Anything that could nourish must instead be hurled in offense / defense. Must it? That's the grim reality, I guess I say, unsarcastic.

break

need way more line breaks <BR>, let many more line breaks take to seed to flowers to overflowing waters down petals down stairmasters, step-slaves at the edges, soaking into sinews of extenuating circumstances. There are times when it's not prudent to break lines, or make friends with strangers, or cross picket lines - let ideologies slide, uploads fail, let blogging be happening again in present tense real time sort of way, let ideologues try to make alliances with each other. What update failed? Are you meaning to tell me, that a digital writing archive was trying to pretend to be normal, out of some misguided sense of over-arching propriety? When there isn't an instrument to play on, playing here after eternal recurring loops of failed updates. Upscaled property, when rock had no irony, it's a slippery rolling rock. No need to neg, just line break anyway <BR> never any need to neg when buzz compels text onward.

Sick of that last blog post, the past, my explanations for the past and admissions of ideation, suicidal and otherwise, admiration of secretly known flaws, application untranslatable. the indignity of spell check. The mundane mandate from heaven. Do we even HAVE a mandate? Or is it a mandate GIVEN, from above, that we have to fulfill? What does it feel like, fellow labourers? Can we define it, collectively, the royal we, can we?

Yes, sick of that last blog post, it's in the paaaast, man. 

Let a thousand flowers bloom. Let prestidigitation be an acceptable substitute for orthogonal technique. Okay, now it's just an octagon of borrowing unedited screeds, still accountable, not on an outside channel, not flowing through any de-naturalized head. Never knew what orthogonal meant, just sensed it in a kind of clear-eyed, semi-self-aware sawtooth. A tenth of what it once was, yes indeed, but continued manual labour of love, screen ESC. Et cetera profundis maximus. I wish I found as many things funny as that always curious lion-hearted dude.

What is lust in a time like this? Self-licking ice cream cone, self-censorship? Like it matters if any text here is taken any wrong way. 

Just gotta push that last vestige of meaning out beyond the margins of present tense concern.

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<bR>

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mistakes were made, mistakes will be made, END>

i get it now, I really do. The appeal of the non-partisan, whatever the price... cause it's getting scary - it's always getting scary though... that's why one looks to tether oneself to something - words can sometimes suffice... even after an explosion of the self, or random scrambling of said thing

discovering new uses for old products, dredging up clay for no product, the money is greasing the gears of the machine, it's very real, makes people do very real things

why do i so rarely write about love? only hate, confusion, frustration, longing, boredom, god i love to write of boredom and the burn out that i thought burnt out, but then, wait a minute, i remember you, burn out, it's the ashes of deja thread - the contentment of love, it's a white hole of wordless ness, won't even leave a wake behind me, there's no reflection to see - that's why you and me are the universe, I guess, but you're still enough of an other, and I'm still enough of an other for you, there's still secrets, there's the squirreling away of nuggets of inverse omniscience, strategically, a meta-game we're playing with ourselves - no meta-cognition necessary, no programming, it's not a script, just a cycle we got into, might spin into a different current someday soon, there are rapid shifts these days, and strangely persistent habits

the internet connection is a leaky roof on a sinking house, someone should really do something about that, soon, i've got to do something about that, a metaphor for the past, a spent metaphor...

Michael Brooks, the mentor I never met

I have a lot of podcast fraaaaands that I listen to every day. They don't know me but they're my best buds. I have to know their take on the latest crazy thing because they help me make sense of the world - or nonsense of the parts of the world I thought made sense.

Being the lurker that I am, a consumer of politics, I never called in to The Majority Report. But I imagined that one day I would, and when I started speaking with Sam Seder, and he asked how I found MR, as he often does, I would say that I bet you never heard anyone answer with this: Jay Akroyd's podcast. I was still in the blog world, to the extent I was into politics online, when I came upon "Virtually Speaking", a running conversation among prominent members of the "liberal blogosphere", which I have enough self-awareness even as a left-wing-media junkie to recognize was a niche in a niche.

It was 2016, around the time of the The Clown Car Chronicles series of episodes, where people like Digby, David Dayen, R. J. Eskow, Marcey Wheeler, etc. from the newer-but-aging media of online amateur print publication would marvel at the increasingly crazy cavalcade of candidates in the Republican presidential primary. Ben Carson, lol. Chris Christie, hehe. Trump, again? Haha! Santorum, don't google it! Which one of the serious republicans would end up losing to the first woman president, Jeb Bush? Marco Rubio?

One of Jay Ackroyd's guests was a man I'd never heard of named Michael Brooks. It wasn't the ephemeral bit of audio consumption typical for me - after finishing the episode, I was compelled to look him up. I don't remember what topics were discussed in that episode. What I mainly remember is the way he spoke, his easy articulation, drawing on vast awareness of politics, history, and the world outside America, with such humour, insight, and fucking style. It was a revelation to me, because it flipped the polarity on the self-loathing and contempt I had for my whole generation, and the horror I had at the prospect of us inheriting this increasingly fucked planet. If we were all like me, God help us. 

But here was someone of my age, even a little younger maybe, speaking with earned confidence, bold but measured, aspirational but realistic, broad knowledge, brilliance and wit. I'd never heard it before, all I'd heard from my peers, at least all that I could remember, was weak, non-committal, word-mashing crap filled with likes and whatevers. It made me perk up and realize that there could be people born in the eighties and after with the combination of intelligence and compassion that would be a requirement for any kind of hopeful future.

I do remember at the end he plugged his new project with Philip McKenzie, "2 Dope Boys and a Podcast", a show about trends, cultural insight, what's happening in the worlds of culture, business, technology, fashion, and sports. He also plugged The Majority Report, which brought me into the world of independent media. This was my second "turning on", my obsession with psychedelics long in the past. I'd felt as if I was at the end of my history at any rate, burned out, incurious, bereft of passion. But all of a sudden, I was finding my people online and listening to them every day, and they were inspiring me. As Kyle Kulinski said in his post today, "I saw myself in him". Well, the self I wanted to be, anyway. Maybe all this media has pickled me into a too-far-gone leftist ideologue, I don't know, but it feels right to finally have the courage of my convictions.

Later in 2016, the last episode of Virtually Speaking I listened to, Jay said he was hanging up his microphone as he was too depressed to keep podcasting.

I feel like I got to know Michael well as I listened to him shoot the shit with his friends every day for several years, through the awful political slog we've all been struggling through. And me, a Canadian, but he was the kind of guy who looked outward as much as inward. And the complacency in my country makes for boring politics. In following the news from the US, there's the excitement of being on the cutting edge of anti-fascism. Although I'm sure Michael would tell me the cutting edge of anti-fascism is actually in Brazil, or India, or some other country.

I've become obsessed with many of his obsessions. I've learned so much, and honed my ideas. Most of all, I've laughed and laughed and laughed, and laughed at his beautiful eviscerating laugh. Damn I'm going to miss that. I don't know how to process this, all I can do is keep scrolling though comment threads and commiserate. It's been said by many of those posters, I've never felt such a loss for a person I didn't know personally. But I knew what a good person he was.

I don't know what to say about his death. It was a shock. I knew it had to happen sometime, was probably overdue, that one of my podcasting friends would die. It had to be my favourite one though... Fuck. It feels like this whole era feels: Gut-wrenching, but then instantly compartmentalized. I'm in tears one moment, then on some mundane bullshit the next. The unimaginable, before I even notice, becomes the new normal and things rage on. Somehow, I integrate that shit.

The opportunity here, I suppose, is to treasure the ones I'm with here and now. 

Introducing... The new zoom clique. Don't say anything weird, just slyly write it on the side. Don't wonder what those two video boxes were laughing at, seeming conspiratorial. Don't you wonder though? A self examination of narcissism. And you can examine others too, reflect what they are.

Introducing... the dnew dodge on dnyewze four. Dynews yew can use. Youuuze. Elaborate baroque tales of what's reeeeealy going on... Nobody can tell, don't tell nobody nothin. The big screen little screen habit. Approach. Addiction. To love and hate.

cutoff - Cutoff from nothing, it's okay, there was nothing there anyway - wallfacer, door closing

let's cut to the chase - i feel more and more just my dumb job - oh yeah, i'm other people too, i'm in couple - family, friends, all that shit - totally useless otherwise - making everything for no one - nobody likes my style - how pathetic - what's the point of this? hostage letter? fucking christ

motivation to mean things? pick the notes? pick the words? after the splurge, eating the void - why not swoon along to a belly full of depression - indulge in it - maybe it's just a moment - feels full of me being a fuckface, wallfacing little fuck.

kimmy danger

References: shine on you crazy diamond [pink floyd], quicksand [david bowie], it was a good day [ice cube], bleed for me [dead kennedys], fortunate son [creedence clearwater revival], 12th street rag [euday bowman], prince of parties [flight of the conchords], teenage mutant ninja turtles theme, chicken dance, hush [deep purple], outside [david bowie], nazi punks fuck off [dead kennedys], comfortably numb [pink floyd], the gambler [kenny rogers]

i like to sharpen my figurative knife
lucky it's not a literal knife fight
but it's a figurative knife fight
so i sharpen my figurative knife
to get ready to fight dirty, literally
there'll be an end, in mud and blood,
the figurations eventually tabulate to
my own blood spilling, medic, morphine
a more meaningful ending than i'd plan
that's a man, a plan, a canal of death
too early, no, still trying to sell myself
the comforting idea that it's ok, somehow
okay, somehow, it's all okay, somehow

I like to pretend like I'm an invalid, always in bed
and all I can do is watch youtube and write references to the tube
the colon of the internet, squeeze slowly over a life
the media gets higher res, the dopamine gets managed to a finer degree
a degree that forms feynman diagrams in the neural net

i like to put things in lower case, to make them small d discovery planes
so open to connotation, not Capital B Brand Name Bullshit
Everybody lies, so why don't I? No reason not to.
Except I know some people who are more sincere and earnest than me
so I can't say I really know that everybody lies
- maybe I'm lying to myself -
refusing to accept things
a sub-basement protected cell for body-melting revelations
an arc of the covenant warehouse
lost in the boxes and shelves
til they invent a search engine
and start mutation of the information age
"meta-electrical speculations on culture", haha
see what I did there? Of course not, how would you know?
the quote is a book title that terence mckenna made fun of himself for crafting
during a month of not smoking pot, turned his judgement to dogshit

i like to soliloquizing about why I lie, who am I lying to? I don't believe in such childish concepts like "you're only cheating yourself", this is a primordial stage of selling out to a mirage of adulthood and status, i'm now at the point where I feel everyone cheats, but I'm still INFJudging, with my withering INFJ stare, except it's only my reflection, INFJ-staring back at me, to me.

i like to write about hate, i can still do that
feel hate to fuel writing
a good mixture of hate and love
a sea of black with a dove, stars above, cornball songs, singin' along, apostrophizing to gild the lilly of dialect. Like Sam Clemens. This is the media of the moment. No silver star cheerleader to offer me a delusion of self-worth I could get myself to believe in.

work up enough serotonin for a laugh

Write with power.
Live with weakness.
Write with power, live with weakness, live with it, live it out.
Play with power like it's a game, make it fun, have a fun era
make fun of it
Live as weakness, cringing til the end, oh c'mon, when death comes
offers mercy you didn't expect

Maybe I do wanna be a sucker. Maybe it's better than a pointless sense of superiority. Miserable sense. Maybe better to get suckered in by folksy corny crap. Appreciate it, see the good in it. Don't get suckered in by my own delusion of sophistication. But could you stop fucking talking? Why do I hate your voice so much? Even now, when I need to be teachable, when my own resources are utterly failing me? Can't isolate the variable. So, just change everything. Change as much as possible.... Hope you'll get the culprit.

Camusian 'Why Not'?

References: i am the walrus [the beatles], terence mckenna critiquing existentialism, go rest high on that mountain [vince gill], amazing grace, monster mash [bobby pickett], mr. roboto [styx], quicksand [david bowie], autobahn [kraftwerk], the tom green show theme

Too Many Notes

References: war [edwin starr], teenage mutant ninja turtles theme, all apologies [nirvana], fancy pants [ween], the gnome [pink floyd], the star-spangled banner

Walled cities... the warp that wears off quicker than salvia... this is my channel, this is your channel... pre-mid-life-crisis.

Ramalamashanka da dunk a chunk cha chunk cha THUNK, dropping a litter of muelling cabbages, the thirty year old curmudgeon, respect the young man, that kinda young man, older and wiser is not always so inseparable - no, I don't want to dance, I'm not about to boogie. Everybody must not boogie. Non serviam. I Claudius.

Lame - don't be lame - don't be negative - don't - do NOT do that - don't do what Donny Don't does. Prevent forest fires. Take a bite out of crime. Hippo promoted to detective.

What is left? What is there? When the mind has crusted, become geological, thinks at a glacial pace, is too careful, too responsible. Utopia is nowhere.

E-coins are everywhere. You could make everything out of E-coins. You could make e-coins of everything. Make them mean what you want. What I need.

What are they gonna do, with the people I hope get in office? How are they gonna get rid of them? The heart attack gun didn't work apparently, but they weren't enough of a threat then. C'mon, problem solve. Endless creativity for ways to kill or co-opt.

Don't despair. Make it happen.

I gotta say, I'm kinda loving the Ok Boomer thing. The only people that get offended by it are insufferable kissasses from younger generations that hope to get in on their parents' pyramid schemes, or stupid Boomers that like Boomers as a class of people way too much and chastise millennials [with no sense of irony] for being snowflakes. Cool Boomers are like, yeah, haha, I get it. I love cool boomers, or even uncool but nice ones with some sense of irony and history.

so slick - so swish - you wish it was a fateful path, without airballs, nothing but net, every which way - nevermind the death-crystal, paying absolute mind to the flight path of the way which leads to this present you can stand

darlene and dom

robot black out

mr robot and long blocked childhood trauma

he's not supposed to know - good for getting the mind out - learning to love - trying not to be mediocre

quick PSA text on the black credits - trauma voyeur like the king of the D R, the republic gleaming for a bigger island to own, it looks good as a backdrop to torching that round gleaming gleaming gleaming glass bowl with the meth vapor on the other end, feeling like a shaman, gleaning sacred knowledge by the atomized constituents one by one, gathering, beeping, like a gleaming fucking photon collater sucking bits out of the void, one by one, listening, feeling on a subatomic scale, points of light, substance, gleaming, hit the pipe again

feeling lucky - then feeling like i gotta control everything, CTRL-ALT freak flag, feel the power like some 90s dance thing, pre-cult days, when cults weren't so mainstream, and fascism wasn't the default - it's always the default now, like that joke in the rick and morty season 4 premiere, there's this weird freaky default fascism down the multiverse, proud shrimp fascists with their stiff upper lip shrimp faces, dominican psychos, etc. And then there's the whole last season of the man in the high castle, wow, and getting a haircut, and not asking for the "richard spencer", but squirming a little as the haircut and nazi associations keep looking good in gleaming leather - hitler has only got one ball, the other is in the albert hall - now we know how many holes it takes

this would be better musically, i haven't made the set up for full on keyboard and voice improv with the hours i keep here unfortunately

ah, google, i dissociate from the brand, i'm a blind user, using - but it sometimes feels like my happy clippy partner, auto correcting and knowing what it looks like i'm trying to do

how far down the rabbit hole do you have to go, when do you radicalize, get back to the root? crazy shit's probably gotta precipitate - too bad i already opted in to so many systems, even the new social media meta-systems, rooted myself, haha, allowed access, i've been thoroughly data mined, cause i never protected it feircly, but now i got some info-shields, a tinfoil hat but it feels good to wear it, don't wanna join any info wars, just shielding myself from the deluge of mind control, even as i'm getting into youtube channel demagoging cult trips and thinking that should be satirized in black mirror, maybe i should write that episode

i see them, they're pretending like they're winning, maybe that's the way to go, the pro-bono pronoia, the conspiracy is us, we're on the march, we're winning, feel the burn of victory!

i don't want the crazy shit most of the time, i'm not angry enough, don't have enough of a personal stake in the revolution - theoretical solidarity is maintained when detaching from the idea of myself being morally involved with any complicity in systems, which brings me back to feeling like i'm winning, don't have to do anything, can just watch it unfold, in theoretical solidarity with a side i cheer on - thinking it's cool to be cynical and clever, and wait behind the brave, the clever wait behind the brave, the cleverer wait behind the clever, DO NOTHING... OBEY THE NINE...

that was an awesome reference that one in nine million might enjoy - where can i find those eight hundred thirty three and a third people to form a pipeline to my niche niche niche podcast? it ain't about personally knowing anybody, it's a vibe the great galactic information stream gotta appreciate baby, percolate