Category: field notes

News, essays, reviews, surveillance

Scratch Pad: Soundproof, Rodgers, Waiting

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ Young child, perhaps in a bookstore for the first time, to parent: “It’s, like, soundproof in here.”

▰ Making abstract, rhythmic electronic music intended to sound like something falling apart in reverse? You could do worse than to study the first 42 seconds of Diana Ross’s (and Bernard Edwards’s and Nile Rodgers’s) “I’m Coming Out.”

▰ Well, it wouldn’t be Jamuary without an unwarranted takedown notice from SoundCloud

▰ Membership in the DisquietJunto is open: just join and participate. There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

▰ The music in the waiting room at the car dealership is “Hotel California.” I’ve been waiting an exceedingly long time. A service technician hums along as the song arrives at the line “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” I’m trying to discern if the individual is aware of the irony.

▰ Few situations make me feel like I’m in a Kobo Abe novel quite like sitting for a long time in a waiting room

▰ If I’ve done my math correctly, the 750th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project will begin on May 14, 2026

▰ Two books this week: I finished reading my second novel of 2026, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (following quickly after Flesh by David Szalay). I’ve been to London (and more broadly various parts of the United Kingdom) several times, but clearly not often enough to get the nuances of the rivers and monuments that are anthropomorphized here. The story, an urban fantasy reworking of Punch and Judy, made me want to re-read China Miéville’s King Rat, an urban fantasy reworking of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. … I also finished the first graphic novel I’ve read this year, the just-published collection in the often excellent Lazarus series, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Michael Lark. I really dig this long-running series, a plot-heavy not-too-near-ish-future sci-fi thriller, more timely than ever due to its emphasis on post-capitalist feudalism and the wages of longevity. After I read the first issue of this latest arc, I waited until the sequence of six issues, collectively titled Lazarus: Fallen, was complete before taking it all in in one sitting. (Note: Don’t start reading the Lazarus books with this one. Start at the beginning.) Lark is reported to be have suffered a stroke at the end of 2025. Here’s wishing him a smooth recovery.

A Troubling Such Instance

Or, life during online

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is from the Disquiet Junto email project announcement newsletter than goes out Thursday, January 22, 2026, shortly after midnight Pacific Time:

We get used to — if not entirely inured to — the buggy vagaries of the software platforms we spent our time on.

I experienced a troubling such instance of the phenomenon this week, when I uploaded a #Jamuary track to my SoundCloud account. My fairly rudimentary music was instantly flagged for copyright infringement, even though what I had recorded sounded nothing like the track that was singled out as the supposed source material.

Fortunately, my challenge to the infraction notification was deemed satisfactory by whatever software algorithm or employee intervention occurred. My track eventually went live, and my SoundCloud account was not erased from the internet. However, the experience lingered as a potent reminder of how fragile these systems are, and all the more so our connections to them.

Part of the reason the Disquiet Junto has always been on multiple platforms — originally primarily SoundCloud and Twitter (RIP) — is so there’s always a place for conversation, for people to convene and share. Upload to SoundCloud, post on Lines, share on Instagram, chat on Mastodon, listen on Bandcamp, and on and on.

There is no requirement, for example, to be on SoundCloud. Plenty of people post to Bandcamp, YouTube, and elsewhere. To the extent the Disquiet Junto is even “on” SoundCloud, we’re on there because that’s where we started, and the service is still around, and no platform, apart perhaps from YouTube, has suggested itself as dependable and functional in a way that might serve the (seemingly simple) structure of our weekly activities.

Why, you may be wondering, isn’t there an official Junto home on the web? I’ve run the scenarios many times alone and with others, and setting up our own platform, while enticing in theory, has its own inherent problems. Those perceived complications don’t mean we won’t do it someday, but it’s not the priority. The platform isn’t where my main thoughts are. My main thoughts are with ideas that encourage people to make music, to explore new ways of making things, and to communicate (non-verbally for the most part) with each other across borders: linguistic, cultural, and so forth. My main thoughts are about observing activity within the Junto, and in turn both developing new projects and absorbing ones proposed by members of the community. That’s what happens. Where it happens matters less, and so long as it happens lots of places, the Disquiet Junto is in good shape.

Scratch Pad: Null Return

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

Apparently I posted a whopping single post to social media this past week, aside from a photo I shared here separately. This week was clearly quite busy, as I flailed out on Jamuary after the 11th (longer than I even thought I had, when I looked back at my activity this morning during the coffee phase of the day), due to workload and general activities, but I hope to get back to it. Perhaps some of the relative non-posting has to do with my having weaned myself off the platforms while offline at the end of 2025, but I always take the end of the year off, so current circumstances would still register as an outlier scenario. Anyhow, that one post, edited after the fact, and a few other items below:

▰ 17 weeks until the 750th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project.

▰ One concert this weekend, another possibly this coming week

▰ Likely short trip to NYC and environs at the very end of January

▰ The six massive (tractor trailer-–size) diesel generators that appeared down the street during the recent power outage and storm are due to be removed over the next few days. They’ve been silent since they were turned off. It remains a pleasant surprise, when going past, to confirm that remains the case.

▰ My work mode can be described as “the more screens the better,” and yet my backpack and travel modes tend toward the spartan.

▰ Getting back in the habit of going to the gym. My main sonic observation is that doing so is a lot more pleasant with noise-canceling earbuds.

▰ Finished reading zero books this week but made plenty of progress on several.