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When the US sneezes, Australia digs a bunker

As citizens of a country that follows the US into every war it's been in since 1945, we have a right to an opinion.

US wars, and Australian involvement in them, directly affected my timeline.

An opinion might be that we ought to be asking our own leaders WTF we are doing. Another opinion might be 'hey this is geopolitics, been this way since we were abandoned by the Brits in '45' We have a lot of opinions. Maybe I have a lot of opinions.

Preachy Artists irritate me. The idea of getting preachy makes me think I've lost the point I want to make. I'm also pretty sure, from my neuroscience reading, that it plain doesn't work.

True Kung Fu is accepting that everyone learns, nobody teaches. A further learning is that not everybody learns, or sees, or chooses to.

Those who have taken a life in combat have had their mental state altered in ordered to suppress the natural inclination of most Humans not to kill. The science suggests the majority of Humans don't actually want to kill anyone.

A lady from the Department of Veterans Affairs said to me once, 'we trained them to be terrifying and then we sent them home to their families'.

This is what bugs me.

Sometimes there is a price to know what you know.

Once you've paid that price there is no undoing it.

I hear easy talk of war, I hear Chicken Hawks who have never raised a weapon, who have never suffered the outcomes of victory. No one walks away from this unscathed. The impact of what we do lasts for generations.

To our cousins in the US we ask you to walk lightly.

To those who call for the ring of spear on shield simply to hear the noise of battle I say - I will hear your words when you stand in the front rank, awaiting the charge.

From behind a desk, in front of a camera, spinning fantasies of War, you have no right to speak, because you know nothing.

You have paid nothing to know nothing.

Now say what you know. Say nothing.

Franklin's Workshop

Franklin looked at me over the rim of his bifocals

his voice very much poor richard

what troubles you my friend

the fate of the Republic Sir

'if a friend tells thee a fault' he said

and I sadly acknowledged

The King is Mad, I say

We have no king, he cried, outraged in entirety

Yet liberty's mantle overthrown I say

The wind has caught it up about her head, she's blinder than justice

None ride to midnight calling the hue and cry.

Rubbing his glasses, around him, his workshop strewn

with the imperfect unions of ancient times,

he nodded his wiser head and bent back to his work,

for no thing created by man fixes itself.

Separated By Connections, Betrayed by Facebook! Holy Carp are we watching the demise of social media's early giants?

Oh boy there's so much I don't say on the blog. I'm dedicated to limiting my ranty stuff.

Today is not the day to keep quiet.

I'm the bunny who got the Social Media job for the band and I've had my head in the web for a while.

A few years back we kind of opted to say 'no' to ME ME ME LOOK AT ME SUBSCRRRRRIIIIBBBEEEEEEE.

Not us.

After Myspace (oops) and then 3 Facebook approaches,4-5 different people working on social media, with effort, 10 years and $ - and

it.has.not.worked.

For us.

LIKE ME LIKE ME.

Why? Surely we're doing something wrong? Just add more money, more effort, MORE LIKE ME LIKE ME SUBSCRIBE!!!

Spend my time and energy to be popular rather than doing, um, what is it we do again?

Send out so many emails that people block us? DEMAND attention!

It's the attention wars (yeah you heard that phrase here a few years back).

Produce a weekly show about nothing so that Youtube will get more viewers and sell ads?

Tweet my breakfast. Send selfies all the time.

LIKE ME

Or...maybe our contrarian viewpoint was simply because we've been online so long. I don't mean since 2007. I mean cos we're all Tech Veterans since Web 0.1.

FB and SM worked for those who already had a profile coming out of the late C20. For new stuff? well..

It takes time to assess. I have.

Here's something that really rang my bell.

This is a pic from @r0zetta doing some analysis.

These are network charts based on analysis of fake accounts. See how they don't connect.

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Social Media has created a universe of micro universes.

People separated in experience, with no connections between system. And these are the bots. You don't even know they're bots.

You're not connected to one another, you're in a pocket universe. Ouch. What an illusion.

I love the web. Social media is great. The existing players have made mistakes that were hard to understand until time had passed.

Betrayed By Facebook

The news that Facebook is shocked, shocked to find that corporate, political and State Actors have 'fraudulently' used facebook to sell users out to Bots, Trolls, Propaganda Farms and Evil Doers is commendable.

Thank you facebook. I always knew you were on our side.

Until you started limited 'organic' (non paid) reach to our community.

Until you started scripting our lives to 'monetise' things.

Until you fostered Corporatisation of our Humanity.

Until you attempted to commoditise Life.

There are many things that people will forgive, and who am I to offer pebbles of wisdom to a collossus, but Game Theory does suggest that Pay Back is a bitch.

People don't like Betrayal.

Trying to get the Punters back in after you've betrayed them is hard. especially when their user behaviour was changing anyway.

Youtube. Google. Twitter.

Youth depression. Manipulated Elections.

Lions, Tigers, bears, oh my.

Attention Wars have entered a new front.

Reputation Warfare.

All this stuff is fascinating to observe and to write about. I'll still keep playing with Social Media. Maybe not the same one's we've invested time and effort in, because maybe it's a dead end.

We like making albums, we like that you dear reader, help us to do that by contributing financially by buying/streaming whatever. That's a necesary part. That means we will always be interested in ways of engaging.

At the same time, we have pulled away from investment in time and effort in social media for the last 3 years.

Yep that's right.

By concentrating on what we're good at, we may not have achieved OMG 1,000,000 LIKES. We may not be able to tell ourselves that we're OMG SO MANY PEOPLE LOVE US.

Instead, we have made some good albums, spent time with people we love, played shows, heard other musicians who kick ass, worked with people we look up to, are inspired by, and even a few of our idols.

We've travelled. Written. Listened. Grown as humans and as a collective enterprise.

The CD is DEAD. Long Live Music.

Social Media May be dead/dying or transforming.

I'll keep an eye on it, play with, interact with it, and never make it the focus of our work.

FB may get throuhg its current scandal but I am wondering if it's too late and that people have changed behaviour.

Fascinating.

Front loading and road testing.

Ah it was good to be back.

Each time at Coogee, Mr Wizard wants to start with POWAH! POWAH!

....aaaaand we wind up starting with Every Where Feels Like Home.

Which can be a surprise for those listening when we switch over to the POWAH set.

Well not exactly the POWAH set but we wanted to try the new stuff, and that's electric.

I do try to provide warning to those assembled, there are two guitarists with amplifiers. It's not metal but there will be some sound.

Speaking of amps, Mr Wizards new Vito rig is wonderful. I'll ask him to post some details.

Last night we had a chance to road test 4...no...6 of the songs from the next project.

The next batch are another interesting yet understandable mutation. Brother Bill has a depth of complexity to his work and it shows in this lot.

This is the first time we've used Multi Track at the Demo stage, leading to more dubs, more layers.

There's still the abbreviated musical syntax Mr Wizard likes from modern Japanese music, Brother Bill has been able to absorb and distill it. More Paul than Paul.

The arrangement on 'I disappear' echoes stylistic choices we've made/continue to make, excepting that it's an even more refined version. Brother Bill is one scary dude.

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Taken together, playing these new songs in a bracket shows the relationship in thought, something that is consistent across each of the things we do. As the thought changes, the music changes, or vice versa.

10 years in and continuing to take risks and mutate. Heh.

Mutato Potato!

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Songs come and go from the setlist until turning the page remembers an old forgotten favourite.

It's still risky to do new stuff. wonderfully risky. I'm still iffy on the vocals, the words, the guys on arrangement.

Yet casting our ears back over the last 10 years they feels like songs from another century, and maybe that's the case.

Farewell Stephen Hawking and the Heavy Bombardment Period

True Fact: Mr Wizard originally proposed a name for our band - Blues Factor 4. Yep. Sci Fi is in our DNA.

If we have thought afar it is because we stand upon the shoulders of giants.

Thank you Stephen Hawking, godspeed.

This week we started work on the Starlight Suite element of the Dark Skies project. Brother Bill found a structure, the Solar system.

Idea's and guide tracks are coming into my inbox at dinosaur threatening speed. Between the other songs Mr Wizard, Rosie and Brother Bill are sending my way, I'm calling this the Heavy Bombardment Period.

Space is in our minds right now.

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In addition to Hawking radiation and continuing to popularisie science, Stephen Hawking may have been an inspiration in another way: to do what you can, no matter what your circumstances, for as long as you are able.

Ever forward, onward traveller.