Niklas's thoughts

I want it to be better, but I also want to code. And I can't code with GitHub anymore. I'm sorry. After 18 years, I've got to go. I'd love to come back one day, but this will have to be predicated on real results and improvements, not words and promises.

—Mitchell Hashimoto, Ghostty

- GitHub has been losing focus on being a good code management platform, and has instead been focused on pushing AI tooling in ways that I believe could be counterproductive, and a general hindrance to open source maintainership. - I was unable to make changes to our website repository due to (Git-LFS) activity limits which could be consumed by any public person/actor (and therefore were completely out of our control). - Codeberg, a non-profit community-led organization that’s providing a service using an open source solution, is much more aligned to the values that we want to support and portray in BookStack relative to Microsoft (GitHub’s owner).

—Dan Brown, BookStack

The tangible one that tipped me to finally move: **I'm upset about GitHub Copilot.** It's fairly well known that Copilot can reproduce significant pieces of open-source code, stripped of their license. I'm moving to make it a **little bit harder** to have Copilot train on my code. This is perhaps a futile protest, but it's what I can do an individual. Writing about this is another aspect of what I can do.

—Nicole Tietz-Sokolskaya

The short version: GitHub is owned by Microsoft. Microsoft uses code hosted on GitHub to train AI models, including GitHub Copilot. I did not consent to my code being used this way. Neither did millions of other developers whose work now powers a $19/month subscription service.

—VintageTechie

Auf Wiedersehen, GitHub

—Thomas Dohmke, former CEO of GitHub

#ArtificialIntelligence #microsoft #code #programmers #microsoft

The Cramps are one of my favourite bands. Their debut album, Songs the Lord Taught Us, is excellent and influenced a million bands. It was produced by Alex Chilton, one of the main persons behind Big Star.

The Cramps ceased when Lux Interior, the singer, died.

Now, legendary Ian Mackaye and Henry Rollins help to bring out Gravest Gravy, a collection of previously-unreleased tracks recorded in 1977.

In Rollins' own words:

In October 1977, the Cramps, who were at that time, Lux Interior on vocals, Poison Ivy on guitar, Bryan Gregory on guitar, and Nick Knox on drums, ventured into Ardent Studios with the extraordinarily talented musician and producer, Alex Chilton. These sessions were responsible for the first two Vengeance Records releases, both permanently disfiguring the music world in 1978.

'Surfin' Bird' / 'The Way I Walk' 'Human Fly' / 'Domino'

“In 1979, young British degenerates were treated to a five track 12” EP by the Cramps called Gravest Hits, which featured all four tracks released in the USA, along with another from the October 1977 sessions, a great channeling of Ricky Nelson's hit 'Lonesome Town.' From there, the band released their first LP, Songs The Lord Taught Us, again working with Alex Chilton, and went onward, releasing records and touring all over until the sad passing of Lux in 2009.

“What Cramps fans might not know, was at Ardent, the band had planned to record their song 'TV Set' to be their first A side, along with another track or tracks. Alex told them that he liked to have a band play every song they knew and the best of the batch would be committed to vinyl. This was fantastic advice, and luckily for us, that's what the Cramps did. This is how 'Lonesome Town' found its way to Gravest Hits. But, there was much more to the story.

“In the late 1980s, Lux and Ivy endeavored to release more recordings from the October 1977 sessions. It was to be titled Gravest Gravy. It was a record for the fans, a journey back to Memphis, back to the first Cramps records, that, try as it might, the world has been unable to heal from. Lux and Ivy mixed several tracks between June 14 and 30, 1989 at Present Time Recorders, in North Hollywood. Alex mixed a few tracks in Memphis. The album had a title, a cover by the great Stephanie Chernikowski, who passed away recently, but for reasons lost to time, Gravest Gravy was shelved.

“In 2026, we sought to change that. It was apparent that this record absolutely needed to be with the fans. A team, still severely cramped from initial contact with the band, began to form and got to work.”

Gravest Gravy is released on 2026-08-21. Get a lime-green vinyl version at Rough Trade. I can't wait to see what merch will be cooked up for this.

#music #MusicTips #TheCramps #IanMackaye #HenryRollins #LuxInterior #BryanGregory #PoisonIvy #NickKnox #psychobilly #RockNRoll

Ian Lynch of One Leg One Eye.

One Leg One Eye are an Irish band. As I'm writing this, I see part of the band is Ian Lynch from wondrous band Lankum.

Just listen to the first song on their new album, Crone: intertwining voices, shouts, guttural noise, thrashing of the Earth, upheaval, folk-song, droning wooden instruments, sweeping synths. This is simultaneously hypnotic and awakening.

Imagine Swans with a more folky tinge. The album is well mastered, by Lasse Marhaug, who's also worked with people like Sunn O))) and Merzbow.

Don't miss their debut album, And Take The Black Worm With Me, which is partly described like this by The Guardian:

Mixed by longtime Lankum collaborator John “Spud” Murphy, a My Bloody Valentine devotee, hurdy-gurdies, shruti boxes and concertinas are manipulated through loops and effects pedals, creating dazzling sounds. A church organ (played by Ruth Clinton of Irish group Landless) and backing vocals (by black metal vocalist Laurie Shanaman) add further strata of feeling. It all suggests great things for Lankum’s next LP, out in spring.

#music #MusicTips #IanLynch #drone #folk

Caroline Shaw is a fairly young person who's done a lot of interesting music. She has focused on voices in the past.

However, to say she's a vocal composer is wrong. She's composed and arranged a lot more interesting music than that.

For example, here's the entire soundtrack for the TV-series Fleischman is in Trouble:

Her vocal arrangements at times remind me of both baroque voices and what Hildur Guðnadóttir did with some music she composed for Chernobyl.

However, Shaw's most recently-released work, or, The Whale, which she's made with Andrew Yee, is very good in ways different to her earlier work:

Here's a live session with Shaw and Yee from 2023:

Here's a 22-minute interview with Shaw on her musical roots, creativity, and collaboration.

#music #MusicTips #CarolineShaw #NeoClassical #soundtrack

Wow! What a fresh breath of air. Triángulo de Amor Bizarro is a Galician band that's clearly into a lot of indie and alternative rock. I mean, their band name is 'Bizarre Love Triangle' in Spanish.

Just listen to the first two tracks: from the low-intensity-to-gothic-blow-up style of 'SMT en el Palacio Real' to the Alvvays-sounding indie-rock melodicisms of 'Diosas Adolescentes'.

Yep, the album even has strings (perhaps most strongly heard on the song 'Pat e trenca', a track that owes a lot to Nirvana's song 'Something in the Way').

This is lovely to listen to. There's variety in a kind of indie-rock circus way, meaning you get what you expect to get from listening to bands like The Las, The Smiths, Smashing Pumpkins, etc. but there's a lot of ideas floating around here. Buy the album!

#music #indie #rock

Here's a wonderful quote about change, to suddenly decide to do the right thing.

The quote is from the remarkable new book Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: My Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground by Zayd Ayers Dohrn:

My mother was already leaving the law behind. But King's protest wasn't the only experience that changed her that summer. Another chance meeting seems to have solidified her conviction that direct action, rather than legal study, was her best path forward.

One 102-degree day in July, Bernardine was at the church that served as headquarters for King's rent strike, working on a legal appeal, when somebody shouted, “There's an eviction two blocks away!” My mother and a few other legal advisors grabbed their armbands and ran outside, to find a group of sheriff's deputies carrying someone's belongings out of an apartment and dumping them onto the sidewalk.

“Nobody's shouting,” my mother remembers. “Nobody's saying anything. But they're dumping the kitchen table, children's clothing, toys, dresser drawers everything is piling up in the street.”

Suddenly, she felt somebody next to her-a presence that felt unusually imposing. A man turned to her and asked, “Would you hold my suit coat?”

“And it's Muhammad Ali!” she says, laughing. “The most recognizable person-along with Dr. King-in the world at the time! How did he get there? I have no idea. How did he know to come? Who called him?”

Ali handed her a blue, silk-lined seersucker coat, stepped forward, and picked up a kitchen table. He turned without a word, walked into the apartment building, and started up the stairs. “Instantly,” my mom remembers, “everybody, of the one hundred or two hundred of us standing around, picks up something and follows him inside.”

The deputies just stood there watching while the crowd put the person's apartment back together, piece by piece. “And that was it!” she says. “It was a people power moment. It was a moment of defiance, a gesture by somebody who could carry it off with such panache and so little fear. And it just gave everybody a spark of what's possible.

“And it was that combination-seeing King, night after night, speaking in churches, out there on the West Side-and then these marches on the weekends... It was all so powerful and so brilliant. It changed my life.

#book #reading #change #life #revolution

The album cover of The Velvet Underground's White Light/White Heat.

Episode 164: “White Light/White Heat” by the Velvet Underground

Andrew Hickey is the name of a person who should be hailed. He is the creator and the host of the podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. The fact that most of the podcast is freely available to all is truly fucking wonderful.

He made an episode about The Velvet Underground's song 'White Light/White Heat'. The episode is over three hours and twenty minutes long. It's 'about' a song that's not even three minutes long.

OK, that's an exaggeration in the extreme. Let me explain what makes the episode singular.

First, every episode of the podcast is focused around a specific song, but it's not only about the song; it's about the times in which it was made, the people, the surroundings, politics, philosophies, religion, etc. I made it sound boring, but it's fucking not.

Second, this episode contains so much music from sources other than the Velvet Underground's own shit. It's required listening! La Monte Young? LA MONTE YOUNG! I had no idea who the dude was until i heard this episode and it's fucking WARPED! The music he made and still makes!? Wow. WOW. Drones that intertwine and go on forever, that's him. Shit.

John Cage. JOHN CAGE: the composer, the mystic, the oracle-led genius who was afraid of old ideas. Wow.

I won't go on like I'm more insane than I actually am, so I'll stop soon.

In my head, what makes the song such a fucking riot is that it's kind of slow, kind of sounds like the instruments are played by beginners, and then it deteriorates while it elevates into becoming one of the true rock 'n' roll figureheads. This is garage rock, this is rock 'n' roll, this is three chords and the truth, this is non-CIS sexuality by a band who released their song 'Heroin' when The Beatles released 'Can't Buy Me Love'. Holy shit, The Velvet Underground were truly great.

After two minutes, 'White Light/White Heat' goes somewhere else; the bass. The bass! The guitar mangles?! The background sweat! Shit, this song says so much.

And to think of it, the song opens the album White Light/White Heat. The song is followed up by 'The Gift', a song that's over eight minutes long.

The stereo version of the song starts with the music mainly in the right channel. The left channel starts with a story being told by John Cale:

Waldo Jeffers had reached his limit
It was now mid-August, which meant he had been separated from Marsha for more than two months
Two months, and all he had to show was three dog-eared letters and two very expensive long-distance phone calls
True, when school had ended and she'd returned to Wisconsin, and he to Locust, Pennsylvania She had sworn to maintain a certain fidelity She would date occasionally, but merely as amusement
She would remain faithful

What a jump from 'White Light/White Heat'. Some of the WL/WH lyrics:

Hmm hmm, White light Aww I surely do love to watch that stuff tip itself in Hmm hmm, White light Watch that side, watch that side don't you know it gonna be dead in the drive Hmm hmm, White heat Hey foxy mama watchin' her walk down the street Hmm hmm, White light Come up side your head gonna make a deadend on your street

#TheVelvetUnderground #music #MusicTips #AndrewHickey #LaMonteYoung #JohnCage #podcast

Xiu Xiu are releasing Eraserhead Xiu Xiu on 2026-07-10. The first single is 'In Heaven'.

Xiu Xiu have since long toured their playing their version of the soundtrack to David Lynch's film Eraserhead. It's beautiful.

This is a calm song. I like the breaking of bottles at the end, it feels soothing to the sounds of an organ and what may be some kind of friction.

This is a cut of Xiu Xiu playing 'In Heaven' live in Scotland earlier this year.

#music #MusicTips #XiuXiu #DavidLynch

Amid the colorful cast of characters and personas who have distinguished themselves in rap—from Rammellzee to Kool Keith, Ol’ Dirty Bastard to Busta Rhymes—DOOM shines as another true original. When asked about the best advice he had ever received, he replied, “A wise man once said, ‘Do you.’ I know what he meant, but I didn’t really grasp what he said until maybe a year later. And that was like the wisest statement I heard out of any book or anything I ever read: ‘Do You.’ Be yourself and that’s the best thing you could be. Anytime you try to copy someone you’re not being genuine to yourself.”11 In the same interview he added, “I’m constantly striving for perfection, so what I’m doin’ is constantly elevatin’ and educatin’ myself in a way that, all right, I’m better than I was the previous day. Yunno, so, that could go on forever, there’s really not ever going to be a top, you know? I don’t think I’ll do it in this lifetime.”

The quote is from The Chronicles of DOOM by S. H. Fernando Jr.

Earlier this year, the BBC published a four-part podcast series on MF DOOM. DOOM is often referred to as 'your favourite rapper's favourite rapper', and there's something to that statement.

Two of my favourite DOOM albums are MM..FOOD and Madvillainy. Listen to either of those and you can't go wrong. There's something about the playfulmess (I accidentally wrote the 'm' but I'll let it be because it works) of that album that says a lot on how DOOM used comics, epic stories, souped-up samples, farce humour, and tricky words, not to mention sentence construction. DOOM is a legend in hip-hop and he was a legend while he was alive.

I mean:

DOOM had already arrived at a title for his full-length—Operation: Doomsday—from the best-selling Sidney Sheldon thriller The Doomsday Conspiracy (William Morrow, 1991). Loosely based on the Roswell incident of 1947, the story follows passengers on a bus in Switzerland who witness the crash of a UFO, that authorities claim as a weather balloon. The protagonist of the story, a member of US naval intelligence, stumbles on a plot called Operation Doomsday to keep the witnesses silent and cover up the fact that aliens have been in communication with governments on Earth for a long time. For DOOM, the title played perfectly into the concept for his new persona as he declared his mission to destroy rap.

To destroy rap.

Invent yourself and then reinvent yourself.

That's Charles Bukowski.

I mean:

Inspired by their futuristic beats, DOOM could focus on his writing, stepping up his pen game. “Viktor the director, flip a script like Rob Reiner,” he says on the title track, capping it with the punchline, “The way a lot of dudes rhyme, their name should be knob shiner.”

Yeah:

In the canon of DOOM, Madvillainy, far and away, ranks as his magnum opus—an album that transformed a hungry underground upstart, struggling for a second chance, into a serious contender. As seldom as critical and popular tastes overlap, the stars were definitely aligned for this one, as the overwhelmingly glowing response greeting its March 2004 release suggested. Pitchfork called it “inexhaustibly brilliant,” adding, “Good luck finding a better hip-hop album this year, mainstream, indie, or otherwise.” The Village Voice hailed “an outlandishly imaginative collaboration.” Already divining the future, the site Hip-Hop DX said, “Classic albums generally need some time to marinate and gain that status, but fuck it; they didn’t follow any guidelines so why should I? Classic. Yes, I said it. Classic.” They were even dazzled across the pond. “The wily creativity on display here is astonishing,” marveled Mojo, while Q magazine simply called it “one utterly badass album.”

Bandcamp offer a guide to the MF DOOM discography.

DOOM lives in all of us; we all live in DOOM.

#music #MFDOOM #RecordClub

Mike D was a member of Beastie Boys, one of my favourite hip-hop bands. He's now released new music since the B-Boys stopped in 2012.

Here's a live video now that Mike is performing live. This video features his playing Beastie Boys' song 'Looking Down The Barrel of a Gun' which is a great fucking song, originally produced by The Dust Brothers.

...and he brought Money Mark onstage. Mark is an old B-Boys collaborator and a brilliant musician in his own right; his album Push The Button and his underappreciated Brand New by Tomorrow.

Check out Mark. God damn! He could and can fly.

OK, just one more video.

This is perhaps the best-ever live-concert video. Holy shit. Beastie Boys gave 50 people super-8 cameras and just asked them to never turn them off. A year after the gig, Yauch and a few others edited this together. DAMN.

#BeastieBoys #MikeD #music #MusicTips #MoneyMark #love #HipHop