Ladies and gentlemen, and whoever else is still paying attention. It’s funny how quickly everything becomes meaningless to people. And I was probably insufferable.

Anyway, that’s done.

Let’s talk about something more interesting: how everything gets reduced to a number when you stare at it long enough. Because feelings are messy. Numbers? Numbers are fun. They just exist. So yeah, folks, with all that being said, this is the part where I start rating things. Don’t read too much into it. Or do. I don’t care.

“Hennessy whisky” / 17 It stands above the rest. Not because it’s perfect even though it is, but because it’s impossible to ignore.

The way a cigarette burns down / 14 Slow, I could say. Predictable. It just disappears while you’re not paying attention.

Video games / 11 Controlled chaos. You think you’re in charge, but you’re really just following rules someone else made.

Humans / 1 Inconsistent. Loud, very loud. Hard to measure. Always changing the rules mid-observation.

Empty streets after midnight / 15 Quiet enough to make you think for a while. Quiet enough to notice things you shouldn’t.

The moment right before something changes / 16 Everything is still possible. Nothing has failed yet.

That “almost asleep but not quite” feeling / 13 Soft. Suspended. Like drifting without falling.

The sound of rain on a window / 12 Constant. Soothing. It pretends to calm you while keeping you awake.

A locked door / 14 It doesn’t say anything. That’s what makes it interesting.

People laughing too loudly / 3 Overcompensation. Noise to cover something else.

The moment before you decide something / 14 Everything still exists. After that, something has to disappear.

Your own thoughts repeating / 11 Familiar. But familiarity doesn’t mean it’s correct.

Not knowing what comes next / 15 That’s when things feel real. Before they get explained away.

Being interrupted / 3 It breaks everything down. Not just of speech, of thought as well.

Too much attention / 7 It feels like pressure. Like being observed instead of seen.

Being misunderstood / 2 Not because it hurts. Because it wastes time correcting something that won’t change.

Typing something and deleting it / 9 Not failure. Just hesitation in physical form.

Seeing your name somewhere unexpected / 14 It pulls your attention immediately. Like it was placed there on purpose.

Late night notifications / 11 They interrupt the silence at the worst time. But that’s when they used to matter most.

3 AM itself / 15 It strips things down. No noise. No excuses. Just whatever is left.

Your thoughts echoing / 13 Repeated. Slightly different each time.

The silence before falling asleep / 16 The closest thing to nothing. And the hardest thing to stay in.

The urge to check your phone / 12 It feels urgent. It’s not. You’re just avoiding the fact that nothing new is there.

The smell of coffee in a quiet room / 11 Strong enough to notice. Not strong enough to fix anything.

“key” / 8 Only matters if something is locked.

“noise” / 8 Always there. Never the same.

Knowing what you should do but not doing it / 5 That’s where most people live.

Nothing making sense but you keep going / 15 Because stopping means thinking. And that’s worse.

This isn’t a scale of 10. It never was, Ten is too limited.

i better be off social media for a while

End of it. Not my problem anymore.

Tromgeroffel, toeters en bellen … het is verzamelen geblazen, want, Godot is op komst. Dinsdag 24/03/2026 is het zover, de parlementaire onderzoekscommissie belast met het onderzoek naar mogelijke disfuncties in het strafrechtelijk onderzoek 'Operatie Kelk' {POC Kelk} bespreekt en stemt over haar verslag en aanbevelingen.

• Om 12:00 komen de leden van de POC Kelk samen voor een “werkvergadering over het verslag van de commissie”, achter gesloten deuren, voor de 11de keer !
• Om 12:30 openen ze de deuren, en gaan ze over tot stemming over het geheel van de aanbevelingen.
• Om 15:00 en om 15:02: vervanging van één derde van de leden van de raad van bestuur: regeling van de werkzaamheden.“) zitten ze dan terug aan de orde van de dag in de commissie justitie.

Uit de agenda blijkt dat ze zichzelf niet direct plaats gunnen om te eten ? Nochtans zijn ze normaal altijd vlijtig met de “er wordt voor broodjes gezorgd”.

Belangrijker, zij geven zichzelf blijkbaar “maar” 1u30 de tijd voor het bespreken van het Verslag, de aanbevelingen en het stemmen daarover.

Voor de parlementaire onderzoekscommissie belast met het onderzoek naar de aanpak van seksueel misbruik, in de Kerk en daarbuiten, met inbegrip van de gerechtelijke behandeling, en de gevolgen op vandaag voor slachtoffers en samenleving {POC 2023} namen ze 4 uur tijd en organiseerden ze de bespreking en stemming in de plenaire.

De POC Kelk ging de “commissie van de waarheid” worden. Voor deze “waarheid” komt de POC Kelk dus niet in plenaire en voorziet maar 1u30. Gezien de korte tijd die wordt voorzien kan het rapport alvast niet lijvig zijn, en het is blijkbaar niet belangrijk genoeg om het in de plenaire te doen.

De agenda bevestigt niet direct dat er woensdag of donderdag over de POC Kelk in de kamer zal worden gestemd. Momenteel dus koffiedik kijken wanneer ze dat doen.

Tot nogtoe, welke “waarheid” voor deze “commissie van de waarheid”?

• drie keer uitstel, op 18/12/2025, op 19/06/2025 en op 12/12/2024;
• tijdens de hoorzittingen werden stellig herondervragingen beloofd en aangekondigd, die niet werden uitgevoerd;
• de “parlay” achter gesloten deuren tijdens 11 werkvergaderingen;
• klokkenluiders werden niet beschermd of ondersteund, noch werden maatregelen genomen tegen SLAPP's;

Is met andere woorden het serieu dat het parlement poogde te tonen bij de POC 2023 bij de POC Kelk ver te zoeken …

Zodra de stemming in de voltallige kamer zal zijn gebeurd publiceren wij, onder het universele recht op waarheid, de opname met het federaal parket dat het parlement niet wilde …

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alle informatie op deze site, zoals maar niet beperkt tot documenten en/of audio-opnames en/of video-opnames en/of foto's, is gemaakt en/of verzameld en gepubliceerd in het belang van gerechtigheid, samenleving en het Universele Recht op Waarheid

children for status is een onafhankelijk collectief dat schuldig verzuim door de Staat ten aanzien van seksueel geweld op minderjarigen en kinderhandel oplossingsgericht documenteert en aanklaagt

Adventurers

Character	Race	Class	Description
Arnulf Hetzer	Human	Thief level 1	A highly ambitious young man, aiming for great riches, awesome adventure, and not get broiled.
Ambros	Human	Cleric level 6	Follower of Aniu, Lord of Time.
Ignaeus	Elf	Fighter level 4 / magic-user level 5	A slightly weathered looking elf with dull blonde hair and chiseled features. Seeks wealth and knowledge.
Syd Grundy	Human	Ranger level 1	Tall, middle aged and scruffy looking man of the wilderness.
Thorinda Bung	Human	Monk level 1	She has blonde hair done up in a tight pony tail and wears light, loose suit.
Kenso San	Human	Fighter level 3	An arrogant and self-assured sellsword wandering Wilderlands to prove he can best anyone.
Tam o' Shanter	Human	Cleric level 3	A boisterous wine-lover of Losborst on a Great Crusade of the Grape.
Percy	Human	Fighter level 1	A career soldier dishonorably discharged due to his charismatic ways.

Blackmoon 20th, Spiritday

“Where shall we go to next?”

“There’s still stuff to explore under Castle Yukanthur, and Thorinda wants to go for a third knock-out in a row.”

And thus a party of eight adventurers set out once more for Castle Yukanthur, that old run just a watch northeast from Ironburg.

Environs were as before—overgrowth and moss—and adventurers had little patience for Syd's rubble inspection. Down and down the spiral staircase they went, with drunken Tam stumbling ahead. On and on, past the statue booming “WHO DARE ENTER THE CASTLE OF YUKANTHUR?!” and through the illusory wall.

Straight they went, and then left, and then into the chamber with four doors, and then through south west doors. They followed a long corridor until reaching a T-shaped junction splitting left and forward. To the left were doors, which the adventurers eventually forced open.

A ghastly sight!

A child dressed in chain shirt lying prostrate in the center of the large room. Besides it two pony-sized abominations lashing the child with their tentacles. Tubular bodies, a dozen of tentacles, disgusting slimy sheen.

Ignaeus cast Web and captured them all. While others fanned out, Arnulf approached the webbing and began stabbing one of the monsters. The abomination writhed and attempted to set itself free, but to no avail. It soon expired under the thief's cruelty. Encouraged, Ignaeus and Percy slayed the other one.

A locked chest, promptly smashed open—releasing a crunchy sound as it was struck—revealed a broken rat skeleton, six thousand copper pieces, and one thousand electrum pieces.

Adventurers carved a path through the web to reach the child. But it was no child! It was a male hobbit! He did not move and was unnaturally stiff.

“Must be paralysed.”

Party discussed at length what to do with him. Some were in favour of robbing him of his belongings and leaving him be. Others were in favour of at least leaving him in the corner of the room.

“Ugh... oooh... thank you for saving me. I am Bopo Oldhearth, and I am a warrior.”

He offered to join the party for a full share of treasure.

“A full share? For half a man?”

Hobbit left as the adventurers brutally ridiculed him.

Finding nothing else of interest, the party returned to the junction and explored further left, down another long corridor until they reached yet another t-shaped intersection. To the left was a winding corridor and to the right straight corridor terminating with bloated doors.

They chose the latter, bursting in like the great liberators they are. A volley of arrows hit them from darkness. Four penetrated Tam, contributing to his “drunken hedgehog” look. Thorinda the Lightbearer rushed in and illuminated the whole fifty by fifty chamber with her bullseye lantern.

Five pig faced orcs were crouching in the corner, shooting at adventurers.

Percy shot one dead. Others hacked the remaining four to death.

There was nothing of value nor interest in the room. Even the orcs hadn't had anything beyond their scimitars and short bows. Adventurers pushed onwards, through the doors opposite those they came through. This led them to another square room of equal size.

The walls were lined with smooth black stone that seemed to soften and dim the light. Four chest were arranged along the west wall. All four had broken padlocks and were entirely empty. Second from the south had a carving of stumpy, penile shape, under the lid.

Percy stood outside the whole time, worried that the whole chamber might be trapped. Once everyone else left the room through opposite doors he quickly ran up to rejoin them.

Another long, winding corridor.

“You know, long corridors like these usually have pit traps–”

Tam opined as he, Ignaeus, Ambros, and Percy fell through a pit trap at the bend of a corridor.

The quartet tumbled straight down, hitting a slide, then rolled and tumbled down the sharp slope. Roughed up, they emerged through a hole in the wall into yet another pit. For a brief moment they could see daylight way above them. Within a bat of an eye all four fell into ice-cold water. Current was strong and carried them on as they fought for air.

Unlike Ambros, Ignaeus, and Tam, Percy was lightly armoured. He remained composed in the face of adversity, and swam up, breaking the surface of water. This was an underground river and he was being carried toward cave wall! He pushed and swam, his muscles burning, until he reached the shore. He grabbed onto the jagged rocks and pulled himself up.

Two clerics and an elf were nowhere to be seen.

Percy looked around. Shy daylight shone through a hole in the ceiling, providing some illumination. He was in a large cave, bisected by an underground river. He could see there was some sort of exit on the other side of the cave. And there was a tunnel straight behind him, leading into darkness.

Veteran rummaged through his soaked belongings. A grappling hook and some rope. Exactly what he needed. Alas, even when he struck the opening in the ceiling his hook fell straight down. There was nothing he could anchor it to, at least not from where he stood.

His light sources survived, so he made good use of them to explore the dark tunnel behind him. Yet another cave, albeit slightly smaller. It connected to a much larger one, but access to it was cut of by the river. The current here was much stronger and Percy decided to backtrack instead.

He returned to the larger cave. Then he went to the far side. The river wasn't that wide, maybe some twenty feet or so, but the current was strong. He reasoned that he would have most time if he began swimming from the far side. That would mean least risk to get pulled under the rock.

Percy's plan worked as intended. He followed the ascending tunnel into a worked chamber, some twenty by twenty feet. There were single doors in the south east corner.

Percy listened at the door.

Then he tried to force them open.

He failed.

He tried again.

He failed again.

Then the door swung open.

⁂

Arnulf, Syd, Thorinda, and Kenso watched as their allies fell down the chute. They had no time to react nor to help them. Arnulf was the quickest, asking for some rope and light to descend after the unlucky four.

He clambered twenty feet down. Then he carefully slid down the slope. He poked his head through the opening. High above him was a circular opening, through which daylight shone. Down below him was darkness and sound of rushing water. He could also see a little bit of light—perhaps from torch or lantern. He tried shouting but no answer came back.

The thief returned and informed Kenso, Syd, and Thorinda.

“It must be the well!”

“Let's head there and drop down some rope!”

Indeed, the four rushed through the dungeon, ascended the stairs, and then through the ruined castle, through the woods, and towards the well.

“How much rope do we have?!”

⁂

Ambros sank like a sack or rocks. He tried to untie his plate mail. He found that very difficult while being rolled around in total darkness, his lungs burning with lack of oxygen. He tumbled along the river bed, scrapped and battered.

The situation was grim. The cleric didn't have much more to live. He wiggled his hips, he undulated his belly, he shook his shoulders—and the armour came off. With seconds to go, Ambros pushed himself off the floor, and exploded through the river.

He trashed around until he grabbed onto something solid. He clawed his way out. Then someone—or something—grabbed him by the heel and pulled him. The voice was ranting and quite audible through the noise of running water. But it was a friendly voice too. It was Tam. The clerics helped each other out.

⁂

Ignaeus fell almost face first. He dove into the chilly river, nearly hitting the bedrock in the process. He instinctively attempted to swim. It was difficult, but possible due to magical nature of his plate mail. He reached the surface just in time to take a healthy gulp of fresh air.

The river current was carrying him towards a cave wall at great speed. He outstretched his arms, grasping for something to hold to.

Success!

But not for long.

The current was to strong and it pulled him back in, sucking him through cold darkness. He tumbled and rolled, hitting stone and flesh, trying to swim.

He broke the water surface once more. He flailed around in total darkness, until he grabbed someone! He pulled himself up, and crawled upon something flat enough to rest on.

The voices were familiar—Ambros and Tam.

The soaked trio rested on a piece of dryish cave floor. Ignaeus cast Light on his person, illuminating the cave. It was some forty by fifty feet, bisected by the river. They were on a small piece of rock jutting out on the north side of the cave. Hewn corridor connected to the south side of the cave.

“Blargh! Water!” Tam roared as he took a tankard of ice cold, chilly, all natural, mountain water.

A rotted chest with three skeletons next to it were on the same piece of rock. One of the skeletons held a rusted shortsword. Chest contained five hundred gold pieces, a moldy red cloak, and a wand.

Tam took of his armour and hurled it across. Then he swam over, as did Ambros and Ignaeus. Following the corridor led them to a chamber some forty by thirty feet.

There was an open pit in the center, with rope hanging down. The rope was anchored by three iron pitons. Adventurers pulled up the rope and retrieved the pitons. Then they went through the south doors.

T-junction splitting left and right. They went left, then turned right, and then reached another junction. A horde of zombies grunted to their right. A pack of ravenous ghouls howled to their left. Ambros squeezed his gold gavel.

Newspaper by Lord Jubalon Flux.

Discuss at Dragonsfoot forum.

#Wilderlands #SessionReport

Vi opplever ikke en “energikrise” akkurat nå. Vi opplever en fossil energikrise. Prisen for å produsere energi fra sol, vind, vannkraft eller atomkraft har ikke økt de siste ukene. Men det har prisen på olje og gass, og dermed rammes hele resten av energisystemet.

De landene som har satset på fornybar energi, energieffektive bygg, varmepumper, kollektivtrafikk, sykkel og elbiler tåler denne fossile energikrisa mye bedre enn de landene som har klamret seg til fortida og er helt avhengige av olje og gass både til oppvarming, matlaging og transport. En amerikaner som bor i en by uten fungerende kollektivtransport, sykkelveier eller engang fortau langs veiene er mye mer sårbar for eksploderende bensinpriser enn en innbygger i Oslo. Grønn omstilling er ikke bare bra for klima og natur, det er også viktig beredskap.

Det forresten er ikke tilfeldig at det er så mye konflikt i de områdene der det er mest petroleumsressurser. Olje og gass er lett å kontrollere, og bidrar til maktkonsentrasjon og konflikt. Samtidig er petroleumsindustri ekstremt sårbart for angrep. Raffinerier, rørledninger og supertankere kan blåses i lufta. Globale forsyningskjeder kan forstyrres på tusen måter. Dette problemet finnes ikke i en fossilfri framtid.

Akkurat denne konflikten kunne riktignok vært unngått. Den gale kong Trump har satt i gang en krig med Iran uten noen plan, og uten å tenke igjennom konsekvensene. Men de enorme konsekvensene gir oss bare nok et eksempel på hvorfor det haster å venne oss av med fossil energi raskest mulig. Det bør også vi i oljelandet Norge være i stand til å se.

I think That in the future I don’t want to date someone that has an E dating history. I don’t blame anyone for doing it, but Maybe it’s just a mixture of my trust issues, or a healthy apprehension to that whole subculture, but I think I very much want my future partner to be someone who is comfortable without the need for external validation so heavily, as I think shows up in edating communities. I think it’s OK if someone has a past, but as long as it is genuinely that – a past. I don’t want to worry about unresolved knock on effects from that, or someone who is just immediately masked the symptom without addressing the problem. I want my future relationships to be ones where I feel completely secure and don’t have reasonable doubt or worry. Almost immediately in my relationship with E she had made a friend that she gamed with, and they would call and message separately. One day he asked her about dating and she said she would stop talking to him, and then when we had an argument later and we took a little bit of space she broke down and talk to him and entertained him. That immediately almost ruined the relationship, and I think in the future I should absolutely run if those signs show up. Thankfully she was faithful, but I think I don’t ever want to be in that situation again where I’m having nightmares and worried about her talking with ex partners, because she’s still continuing to hide them through the relationship. I don’t want to worry about how candidly she talks about these things from her past in a sense where it doesn’t feel like she actually learned and moved on from them, but rather just told herself that she’s a different person without doing the relevant work. I don’t want to tie my life to someone who is still figuring those things out.

There are moments on the road when the horizon stretches farther than usual—when you can almost glimpse the person you might become, standing somewhere up ahead, waiting patiently for you to arrive.

It’s in those moments that our choices take on a different weight.

When we decide only for the next mile, our steps tend to wander. But when we decide in the long light—when we let the future version of ourselves sit beside us at the fire and speak—we choose with a steadier hand. The farther ahead we look, the clearer the present becomes.

If you dream of a life with more freedom in ten or fifteen years, then today’s choices must be made with that distant freedom in mind. Not out of pressure, but out of companionship with the person you are slowly becoming. Let your future self be a quiet advisor, a compass you consult before taking the next turn.

And as you walk, resist the temptation to measure your pace against other travelers. Their path is not yours. Instead, look back at the footprints you left thirty days ago. Notice where the trail has straightened, where the terrain has softened under your steps. Celebrate the small distances you’ve crossed. Mark them like cairns.

Then turn forward again, lighter, and continue.

The road is long, but you are moving.

#DecisionMaking

I met someone who runs workshops on Guided Journalling. She shared a prompt with me: “What would be the sweetest and kindest thing that someone can say to you?”

Uh... I have to admit I have to think a bit, for that one.

I know! Why don't I look up what others have already said about me?

I feel shy though.

Here's something from J, a poet:

Thank you for your gentle, kindly presence and the warmth you bring to every space you enter.

Thank you, J.

And, from O, a restauranteur:

You play the piano so beautifully.

Aw, you're gonna make me blush. Thank you, O.

Okay, I think that's enough.

snapshots

bookshelf

1. The Heptameron, by Marguerite De Navarre
2. The blood of others, by Simone de Beauvoir (translated from the French).
3. Developing the leaders around you: How to help others reach their full potential, by John C. Maxwell.

#lunaticus

It was the best of times.

It was the worst of times.

Not Dickens. Not history.

A hallway.

A long, sterile corridor that smells like antiseptic and judgment.

Fluorescent lights humming like a death sentence whispered politely.

And there it is—

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

I hate it.

God help me… I hate it.

Because at the end of that hallway is a chair where they poison my son.

And I love it.

Because at the end of that hallway is a chair where they keep my son alive.

That’s the contradiction.

That’s the fracture.

That’s the place where the human brain short-circuits trying to reconcile heaven and hell shaking hands.

Poison that heals.

Pain that preserves.

Death that delays death.

People send me remedies.

Cinnamon. Vinegar. Diets wrapped in optimism.

And I don’t snap back. I don’t lash out.

Because they mean well.

But they don’t understand the math.

We’ve prayed for thousands.

Thousands.

And I’ve seen miracles—real ones.

Stage four cancer—gone.

Blind eyes—opened.

But miracles?

They’re lightning.

Not climate.

Most people don’t get struck.

Most people walk it out.

Same with sanctification.

Some drop the bottle and never look back.

Some burn the cigarettes and never crave again.

But most?

Most drag their flesh across broken glass one decision at a time.

Bleeding forward. Crawling toward holiness.

And those people?

Those are the ones forged in fire.

My son… Vinnie.

Ewing sarcoma.

Remission.

Relapse.

Remission.

Relapse.

And then the words that don’t echo—

feels like the weight of those words

they bury you.

“We’re not saving his life. We’re prolonging it.”

And yet…

Despite their words…

He lives.

He fights.

He sits in that chair while poison drips into his veins like controlled death…

and he thanks God for it.

“I thank God for the cancer, Dad… it led me to Jesus.”

What do you even do with that?

What category does that go in?

Because I want to rebuke the cancer—

and he’s thanking God for how it led to Life.

So I walk that hallway.

Every time.

And I hate it…

because I know how it makes him feel..

And I love it…

because selfish men like me aren’t ready to let go.

And then comes the dagger wrapped in paperwork:

DNR.

Do. Not. Resuscitate.

Three words that rip a father in half.

He looks at me—calm, clear, resolved.

And I say yes because I love him.

“If you love them, let them go.”

And I say yes because God loves him more.

Because God gave him free will—

and I will not become the man who chains him to a body he no longer lives in.

I hate it.

I love it.

I hate it because it asks me to release him.

I love it because it promises me where he’s going.

Because on the other side of that final breath…

he won’t be in a hospital.

He’ll be in the presence of Jesus Christ.

He’ll see Grandma Carolyn.

He’ll run without pain.

He’ll breathe without poison.

And me?

I’ll stand there—

torn between two worlds—

grieving what I lost

and rejoicing in what he found.

This life is contrast.

Not balance. Not clarity.

Contrast.

Light slamming into darkness.

Joy bleeding through sorrow.

Love screaming inside loss.

But hear me—

and let it split your mind open:

The people who walk it out…

who don’t get the instant miracle…

who endure the hallway…

the chair…

the diagnosis…

the waiting…

the IV distilling chemo…

Those people come out different.

Not softer.

Stronger.

Weathered. Scarred. Unbreakable.

Because what didn’t kill them…

didn’t just strengthen them.

It revealed to the world who God knew they were all along.

And at the end of all this?

We’re going home.

Every one of us.

Across that final river…

through those gates…

No more chemo.

No more corridors.

No more decisions that rip our souls apart.

Just joy.

Just peace.

Just family—whole again.

And I don’t just want to make it.

I want ALL of us there.

ALL my sons.

ALL my daughters—yes, daughters—the ones who married into my blood and became my heart.

Every piece.

Every soul.

Because if one is missing…

then won’t even heaven echo with loss?

So I walk the hallway.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Hating it.

Loving it.

Dying in it.

Believing through it.

Because somewhere between poison and prayer…

between suffering and salvation…

between goodbye and forever…

God is still writing a story

that only makes sense

on the other side.

In September 2025, a 31-year-old poet from Olive Branch, Mississippi named Telisha “Nikki” Jones watched her AI-generated R&B project, Xania Monet, debut at number one on Billboard's R&B Digital Song Sales chart. Jones had never considered herself a singer. She had spent years writing deeply personal poetry, running a printing company, and singing quietly in church. Then she discovered Suno, a generative AI music platform, and began feeding her poems into it. Within four months, record labels were locked in a bidding war that reached three million dollars. Hallwood Media, led by former Geffen Records president Neil Jacobson, won.

The reaction from the music industry was swift and visceral. R&B singer Kehlani took to TikTok, declaring: “There is an AI R&B artist who just signed a multi-million-dollar deal, and the person is doing none of the work. I don't respect it.” Victoria Monet told Vanity Fair that it was “hard to comprehend that, within a prompt, my name was not used for this artist to capitalise on,” pointing to the uncanny resemblance between herself and the AI avatar. SZA posted a screenshot questioning why anyone would “devalue our music.” Producer Jermaine Dupri compared the acceptance of AI artists to the Milli Vanilli scandal. The public narrative crystallised quickly: AI music was inauthentic, parasitic, and threatening to real artistry.

These responses are understandable. They are also, in a fundamental sense, aimed at the wrong target. The anxieties surfacing around AI-generated music are real, but the debate as currently framed obscures something far more consequential than questions of authenticity or artistic merit. What is actually at stake is a systems-level crisis about how musicians sustain themselves economically, how listeners discover music, and how the infrastructure of a multibillion-dollar industry distributes value. The moral framing of this argument, with its emphasis on “real” versus “fake” artistry, has become a convenient distraction from structural failures that predate generative AI by at least a decade.

When the Charts Tell Half the Story

Consider what it actually took for Breaking Rust, an AI-generated country music project created by Aubierre Rivaldo Taylor, to top Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart in late 2025. According to Luminate data, roughly 2,500 digital downloads were sufficient for its track “Walk My Walk” to claim the number one position. As Andrew Chow noted in TIME magazine, the digital music sales charts have long been vulnerable to manipulation, and the significance of the achievement was questionable. Country radio stations flatly refused to add Breaking Rust to their rotations. Radio consultant Joel Raab told Billboard that listeners “react negatively to the idea of AI voices on their stations.” Leslie Fram, founder of FEMco, called it “a notable wake-up call but not yet an existential threat,” adding that “in country, where authenticity and storytelling are core, this could erode trust if fans feel manipulated.”

Yet the headlines read as though something seismic had occurred. By mid-November, one third of the top ten on Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales chart was composed of AI-assisted artists. The framing invited a binary debate: should AI music be permitted on the charts or not? What went unexamined was why the charts themselves had become so easy to game, and why a few thousand downloads could generate the appearance of mainstream success on platforms that were never designed to handle the current volume of content.

That volume is staggering. According to Luminate data published in January 2026, an average of 106,000 new tracks were delivered to streaming services each day throughout 2025, a seven per cent increase from 99,000 daily in 2024. There were 253 million music tracks sitting on audio streaming platforms by the close of 2025. Nearly half of those tracks, some 120.5 million, received fewer than ten streams. Three quarters received fewer than 100 annual streams. A full 88 per cent received fewer than 1,000 streams.

These are not primarily AI numbers. The content flood was already well underway before tools like Suno and Udio made it trivially easy for anyone with a text prompt to generate a passable song. Spotify was already receiving roughly 60,000 uploads per day before the AI surge. The oversaturation problem, in other words, is structural. AI has accelerated it enormously, but it did not create it.

The Royalty Pool Nobody Talks About

The streaming economy operates on a pro-rata model. All subscription revenue is pooled together, then distributed based on total platform streams. If a track accounts for one per cent of all streams on Spotify in a given month, it receives one per cent of the royalty pool. This system mechanically advantages artists with massive audiences and punishes everyone else. Per-stream payouts on Spotify hover between $0.003 and $0.005. Only 1.4 per cent of Spotify's artists earn more than $1,000 per year from the platform.

When Spotify announced in January 2026 that it had paid out more than $11 billion to the music industry in 2025, the largest annual payment to music from any retailer in history, the figure sounded extraordinary. But as industry analysts have consistently pointed out, the distribution of that money is radically unequal. According to Luminate, just 541,000 tracks, representing barely 0.2 per cent of all available music, accounted for 49.4 per cent of total global audio streaming consumption. The vast majority of working musicians compete for scraps from the remaining half.

The platform's own policies have compounded the problem for smaller artists. In April 2024, Spotify introduced a minimum threshold requiring tracks to accumulate at least 1,000 streams in the previous twelve months before they could generate any royalties at all. The company framed this as fraud prevention, arguing that processing micropayments for low-stream tracks cost more than the payouts themselves. But the effects have been severe. According to Digital Music News, roughly 87 per cent of songs on the platform fall below this threshold. An estimated $47 million in annual royalties that previously trickled to independent artists was effectively redirected to the platform's top performers and the three major labels that represent them. A survey reported by Digital Music News found that 85 per cent of independent respondents experienced revenue reductions, with 65 per cent reporting “significant negative impact.” The European independent music body Impala criticised the policy for “stripping revenue from independent labels and niche genres, disproportionately impacting classical, jazz, regional and non-English repertoire.”

Mark Mulligan, the analyst behind MIDiA Research's annual reports, has characterised the broader situation as an approaching pivot point. “Industries arrive at pivot points when an accumulation of fissures coalesce into one big crack,” he wrote. “Streaming is approaching such a point.” The challenges, Mulligan argued, come from multiple directions: major rightsholders feeling investor pressure, artists struggling to cut through clutter, royalties failing to add up for professional artists, and music becoming commodified.

AI did not cause this royalty crisis. But it has weaponised the existing vulnerabilities. According to the IMS Business Report 2025, compiled by Mulligan and MIDiA Research, 60 million people used AI software to create music in 2024. Suno alone attracted 46.9 million monthly visits, according to Semrush, a remarkable surge for a platform that only launched in March 2024. Each of these users can generate finished tracks in seconds. Many of those tracks end up on streaming platforms, where they enter the same royalty pool as music made by human professionals who spent years honing their craft.

The result is a dilution problem. More tracks in the pool means each individual track receives a smaller share of finite revenue. And much of the AI-generated content flooding platforms is not even the product of genuine creative ambition. According to data released by Deezer in late 2025, the proportion of AI-generated uploads to their platform rose from 10 per cent of all deliveries in January to 34 per cent by November, reaching 50,000 fully AI-generated tracks per day. Of those, up to 70 per cent of streams were fraudulent, driven by bot networks designed to siphon royalties.

Spotify responded in September 2025 by announcing the removal of over 75 million “spammy” tracks from its platform. The company also introduced new policies targeting impersonation, spam uploads, and AI voice cloning. But these measures, while necessary, address symptoms rather than the underlying architecture of a system that was already buckling under its own weight.

Authenticity as a Red Herring

The discourse around AI music has gravitated toward aesthetics and authenticity. Can AI produce music that genuinely moves people? Does an AI-generated track carry the same emotional weight as one born from lived human experience? These are interesting philosophical questions, but they function primarily as displacement mechanisms, channelling structural economic anxieties into debates about artistic quality that are ultimately unresolvable.

Consider the case of Telisha Jones. Her poetry is her own. Her lyrics draw from the death of her father when she was eight years old. The emotional content is real, even if the voice delivering it was generated by an algorithm. “There's real emotions and soul put into those lyrics,” Jones told CBS Mornings. When critics accused her of “doing none of the work,” as Kehlani put it, they were making an aesthetic and labour argument simultaneously, conflating the question of whether the music was good with whether its creation involved sufficient human effort.

But this framing, real versus artificial, obscures a more uncomfortable truth. The recorded music industry was already failing most of its human artists long before generative AI entered the picture. A 2023 survey found that 46 per cent of respondents earned no money at all from their music-related activities. Only 13.3 per cent of musicians reported earning a living solely through music in 2025. These are not people being displaced by AI. They were already struggling under a system that concentrates revenue among a tiny elite while platforming the illusion of democratic access.

The “artist-centric” payment models being trialled by various platforms have done little to address this imbalance. Deezer piloted an artist-centric system in France in collaboration with Universal Music Group, promising to reward “professional artists” with consistent streams and to double payouts for songs actively chosen by listeners rather than served by algorithms. A peer-reviewed study published on ScienceDirect found, however, that the model “does not significantly improve remuneration to professional artists.” The fastest-growing segment of the music business, the study suggested, risked becoming “a permanent funding mechanism for the biggest labels and stars.” Passive listening through background playlists, algorithmic radio, and mood-based streams has long inflated play counts without necessarily reflecting artist loyalty. Under pro-rata systems, these passive plays carry the same financial weight as intentional, engaged listening. The “artist-centric” label promises reform while the underlying mechanics of attention and revenue concentration remain essentially unchanged.

The Fraud Economy Beneath the Surface

If the authenticity debate is a distraction, what lies beneath it is arguably worse. The economics of AI-generated music have created a fraud economy of genuinely alarming proportions. Deezer's data tells the most detailed story. By January 2026, roughly 60,000 AI-generated tracks were being delivered to the platform daily, accounting for 39 per cent of all deliveries. In total, Deezer detected more than 13.4 million AI-generated tracks on its platform in 2025 alone. A joint study with Ipsos found that 97 per cent of listeners in blind tests could not distinguish AI-generated tracks from human ones. Yet while AI-generated tracks accounted for only about 3 per cent of total streams on the platform, up to 85 per cent of those streams were fraudulent.

This is not a minor technical problem. It is a structural feature of a system in which generating and uploading music costs virtually nothing, streaming fraud is difficult to detect at scale, and the royalty pool is finite. Every fraudulent AI stream diverts money from a human musician who played by the rules. The incentive structure is perverse: the easier it becomes to create music, the greater the reward for gaming the system. In response, Deezer became the first streaming platform to explicitly tag AI-generated music in June 2025, automatically removing fully AI-generated songs from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists. By early 2026, the company announced it would begin selling its AI-detection technology to other companies across the music ecosystem.

Spotify's new spam filter, announced alongside the 75-million-track purge, targets uploaders engaging in mass uploads, duplicates, SEO manipulation, and artificially short tracks designed to boost streaming numbers. But the whack-a-mole nature of the problem is evident. As Spotify acknowledged, the new protections are necessary because “AI can be used by bad actors and content farms to confuse or deceive listeners, push slop into the ecosystem, and interfere with authentic artists working to build their careers.”

The word “slop” is revealing. It borrows from the vocabulary of AI-generated text content that floods the internet: undifferentiated material produced at zero marginal cost to capture advertising revenue or, in this case, streaming royalties. The parallel to the broader AI content crisis is exact. Music streaming platforms are experiencing their own version of the information pollution problem, with the same structural dynamics at play: near-zero production costs, algorithmic amplification, inadequate detection mechanisms, and shared financial pools that reward volume over quality.

The Settlement Paradox

The legal landscape offers its own contradictions. In June 2024, the RIAA filed suit against Suno and Udio on behalf of Universal, Warner, and Sony, alleging mass copyright infringement. The labels claimed these AI platforms had used “stream-ripping,” illegally downloading music from YouTube, to build their training databases. The potential damages were enormous: up to $150,000 per infringed song, potentially amounting to billions.

Then something unexpected happened. In November 2025, Warner Music Group settled with both Suno and Udio, dropping its lawsuits and signing licensing deals for AI music platforms set to launch in 2026. Universal followed suit, settling with Udio and signing its own deal. Sony, notably, has not settled, and litigation continues. Independent artists, including country musician Anthony Justice and a class led by David Woulard, have filed their own lawsuits against both companies, though motions to dismiss are pending.

The settlements reveal a pragmatic calculation by the major labels. Rather than fighting AI music generation, they have chosen to own a piece of it. Hallwood Media, the company that signed Xania Monet to her multimillion-dollar deal, is also an investor in Suno's $250 million Series C funding round, which valued the AI platform at $2.45 billion. The people funding AI music and the people signing AI artists are, in some cases, literally the same people. Hallwood had previously signed imoliver, another top-streaming Suno creator, with Jacobson declaring that the artist “represents the future of our medium.”

This creates a peculiar dynamic. The same labels whose artists are protesting AI music are simultaneously licensing their catalogues to train the next generation of AI music tools. When Kehlani said “nothing and no one on Earth will ever be able to justify AI to me,” she was expressing a position that her own industry's power brokers had already abandoned in private negotiations. The authenticity debate, in this light, begins to look less like a genuine moral reckoning and more like a public-facing narrative that obscures the private deal-making happening behind closed doors.

The Discovery Collapse

Even setting aside fraud, the sheer volume of content on streaming platforms has created a discovery crisis that harms human musicians independent of any AI-specific threat. With 253 million tracks available and 106,000 more arriving daily, the problem of being heard has become mathematically overwhelming. According to Spotify's own data, 53.3 per cent of artists on the platform have fewer than 500 monthly listeners. Two thirds have fewer than 1,000. In 2024 alone, 1.7 million new artists joined Spotify, averaging roughly 4,600 sign-ups per day.

Algorithmic recommendation systems, which were supposed to democratise discovery, have instead reinforced concentration. The algorithms are optimised for engagement, which means they tend to promote content that already has momentum. This creates feedback loops: popular tracks get recommended, which makes them more popular, which gets them recommended more. The result is a power-law distribution in which a minuscule fraction of content captures a majority of attention and revenue, while the long tail grows ever longer and ever more silent.

For an independent musician uploading a track in 2026, the competitive landscape is not merely other human musicians. It is also a flood of AI-generated content, algorithmically optimised playlists curated for maximum engagement metrics, and a discovery architecture that structurally favours incumbents. As MIDiA Research has documented, AI creators already represented 10 per cent of all music creators in 2025, and the number paying to create with AI doubled over the year. Meanwhile, the number of people buying traditional music software fell in both 2024 and 2025. Established creators are not merely watching AI from the sidelines. They are shifting activity and spend toward it, further blurring the boundary between human and machine production. The moral question of whether AI music is “authentic” becomes almost irrelevant when the practical question is whether any new human artist can break through the noise at all.

Responses That Miss the Point

Industry responses to the AI music crisis have tended to focus on labelling, banning, or regulating AI content rather than addressing the structural economics that make the crisis possible. iHeartRadio's “Guaranteed Human” programme, launched in November 2025, pledges that the radio company will not “use AI-generated personalities” or “play AI music that features synthetic vocalists pretending to be human.” Tom Poleman, iHeartRadio's chief programming officer, sent a letter to staff characterising the initiative as “not a tagline but a promise.” All on-air DJs and podcasts across the network were required to include the phrase “Guaranteed Human” in their hourly legal identifications.

The initiative reflects genuine consumer sentiment. Internal research shared by iHeartRadio found that 90 per cent of listeners prefer their media to come from real humans, and 96 per cent found the “Guaranteed Human” concept appealing. An additional finding showed that 82 per cent of consumers worry about AI's societal impact. But iHeartRadio continues to employ AI behind the scenes for scheduling, audience analysis, and workflow management. The distinction between AI as invisible infrastructure and AI as visible content producer is a boundary that may prove difficult to maintain as the technology becomes more deeply embedded in every stage of music production, from mastering to composition to distribution.

Around 60 per cent of musicians already use AI tools for mastering, composing, or creating artwork, according to industry surveys. Yet 65 per cent feel the risks of AI outweigh the benefits, and 82 per cent worry it could threaten their ability to earn a living. These numbers suggest a workforce that has already been forced to adopt the tools that threaten its existence, a dynamic familiar from every previous wave of technological disruption but no less painful for its historical precedent.

The US Copyright Office issued a ruling in January 2025 declaring that works created entirely by artificial intelligence cannot be copyrighted. This means that the music Suno generates in isolation has no copyright protection, which in theory should limit its commercial viability. In practice, however, the distinction is muddied. If a human writes the lyrics and uses AI to generate the instrumental and vocal performance, as Telisha Jones does with Xania Monet, the copyright status becomes ambiguous. The legal frameworks are trailing the technology by years, and the settlements between major labels and AI companies suggest the industry intends to resolve these ambiguities through commerce rather than precedent.

What a Systemic Response Would Require

If the debate around AI music were to shift from moral framing to structural analysis, several uncomfortable realities would need to be confronted. The pro-rata royalty model, which pools all revenue and distributes it by volume, mechanically ensures that the addition of billions of AI-generated streams will dilute payments to human artists. No amount of labelling or content moderation can fix this without changing the underlying payment architecture.

A genuine systemic response would need to address at least three interconnected problems. First, the compensation model itself would require reform. User-centric payment systems, where a subscriber's fee goes only to the artists they actually listen to, would insulate individual listeners' contributions from being diluted by AI-generated content farms. Several proposals along these lines have been circulated, but major labels, which benefit from the current concentration of revenue, have shown limited enthusiasm. Tidal, which pays per-stream rates averaging $0.0125, nearly four times Spotify's rate, demonstrates that alternative economic models are technically feasible, even if they remain commercially marginal.

Second, platform accountability for the content they host would need to extend beyond reactive takedowns of spam. If streaming services are receiving 60,000 AI-generated tracks daily, as Deezer's data suggests, and up to 85 per cent of the resulting streams are fraudulent, the platforms are effectively operating as conduits for royalty theft. The costs of this fraud are currently externalised onto the artists whose revenue share is diluted. Deezer's decision to sell its AI-detection technology is one step, but without industry-wide adoption, bad actors will simply migrate to less vigilant platforms.

Third, the discovery architecture of streaming platforms would need to be redesigned to ensure that human artists are not systematically buried under algorithmically promoted content. This is perhaps the most technically difficult challenge, as it requires balancing competing interests: platform engagement metrics, label promotion budgets, algorithmic efficiency, and the long-term health of a musical ecosystem that depends on new human talent being able to find audiences.

None of these reforms is currently on track to happen. The major labels are busy signing licensing deals with AI companies. The streaming platforms are focused on fraud mitigation rather than structural reform. And the public debate remains fixated on whether AI music is “real” enough to deserve its place on the charts.

The Quiet Emergency

The numbers tell a story that the authenticity debate cannot contain. In 2025, the global streaming market generated $25.12 billion in revenue, representing 67 per cent of total recorded music industry income. US streaming revenue alone reached $4.68 billion, capturing 84 per cent of the domestic market. Yet growth had slowed to just 0.9 per cent year over year in the first half of 2025, according to RIAA data. The industry is approaching a ceiling at precisely the moment when the demands on its revenue pool are expanding exponentially.

Meanwhile, fans are being squeezed from multiple directions. As Mulligan has noted, consumers face higher prices from streaming platforms, increased merchandise and vinyl costs from labels, and rising concert ticket prices from live entertainment companies, all while dealing with broader cost-of-living pressures. The willingness of listeners to pay more for music cannot be assumed to be infinite, yet the system depends on continuous revenue growth to accommodate an ever-expanding catalogue. Over 42 per cent of independent artists report they do not fully understand their own earnings breakdown, a transparency deficit that further compounds the power imbalance between creators and the infrastructure that distributes their work.

The 60 million people who used AI to create music in 2024 are not villains. Many of them are hobbyists, experimenters, or, like Telisha Jones, creative individuals who found a new way to express ideas they had always carried. The problem is not their existence but the system into which their creations are funnelled: a system that was already failing to sustain professional musicians, already rewarding volume over quality, already concentrating revenue among a tiny elite, and already proving unable to help listeners find music they would genuinely love.

When Victoria Monet told Vanity Fair that AI “puts creators in a dangerous spot because our time is more finite,” she identified something real but misdiagnosed its source. “We have to rest at night,” she said. “So, the eight hours, nine hours that we're resting, an AI artist could potentially still be running, studying, and creating songs like a machine.” The danger to creators, however, is not primarily that AI can produce music faster. It is that the entire infrastructure of recorded music distribution was built for a world in which creating and distributing a song required meaningful investment of time, money, and labour. That world no longer exists. The infrastructure has not adapted, and the people paying the price are the musicians who depend on it for their livelihoods.

The question is not whether AI music is authentic. The question is whether the music industry can build systems that sustain human musicians in a world where the marginal cost of creating a song has collapsed to near zero. That is an economic and infrastructural challenge, not a moral one. And until the debate is reframed accordingly, the artists doing the loudest protesting will continue to be the ones with the least power to change the structures that are actually harming them.

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References and Sources

1. Billboard. “AI Music Artist Xania Monet Signs Multimillion-Dollar Record Deal.” Billboard, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/pro/ai-music-artist-xania-monet-multimillion-dollar-record-deal/

2. CNN. “Xania Monet is the first AI-powered artist to debut on a Billboard airplay chart.” CNN, 1 November 2025. https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/01/entertainment/xania-monet-billboard-ai

3. Billboard. “AI Artist Xania Monet Debuts on Adult R&B Airplay.” Billboard, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-beat/ai-artist-xania-monet-debut-adult-rb-airplay-chart-1236102665/

4. NPR. “Breaking Rust is a hot new country act on the Billboard charts. It's powered by AI.” NPR, 10 November 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/11/10/nx-s1-5604320/breaking-rust-is-a-hot-new-country-act-on-the-billboard-charts-its-powered-by-ai

5. Newsweek. “The No. 1 Country Song in America Is AI-Generated.” Newsweek, 2025. https://www.newsweek.com/breaking-rust-ai-music-country-digital-sales-11022040

6. DJ Mag. “60 million people used AI to create music in 2024, IMS Business Report 2025 finds.” DJ Mag, 2025. https://djmag.com/news/60-million-people-used-ai-create-music-2024-ims-business-report-2025-finds

7. Music Business Worldwide. “Over 60,000 tracks are now uploaded to Spotify every day.” Music Business Worldwide, 2025. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/over-60000-tracks-are-now-uploaded-to-spotify-daily-thats-nearly-one-per-second/

8. Billboard. “How Much Music Is Added to Spotify & Other Streaming Services Daily?” Billboard, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/pro/how-much-music-added-spotify-streaming-services-daily/

9. Music Business Worldwide. “Music streaming platforms now host quarter of a BILLION tracks.” Music Business Worldwide, 2025. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/quarter-of-a-billion-tracks-now-sit-on-music-streaming-services-where-does-it-end/

10. Deezer Newsroom. “Deezer: 28% of all delivered music is now fully AI-generated.” Deezer, September 2025. https://newsroom-deezer.com/2025/09/28-fully-ai-generated-music/

11. Hypebot. “Deezer's 50,000 Daily AI Song Uploads: How Fraud Hides Behind Invisibility.” Hypebot, November 2025. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2025/11/deezers-50000-daily-ai-song-uploads-how-fraud-hides-behind-invisibility.html

12. Music Ally. “Deezer says up to 85% of its AI-music streams are now fraudulent.” Music Ally, 29 January 2026. https://musically.com/2026/01/29/deezer-says-up-to-85-of-its-ai-music-streams-are-now-fraudulent/

13. Deezer Newsroom. “Deezer and Ipsos study: AI fools 97% of listeners.” Deezer, November 2025. https://newsroom-deezer.com/2025/11/deezer-ipsos-survey-ai-music/

14. Spotify Newsroom. “Spotify Strengthens AI Protections for Artists, Songwriters, and Producers.” Spotify, 25 September 2025. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-09-25/spotify-strengthens-ai-protections/

15. Variety. “Spotify Announces New AI Safeguards, Says It's Removed 75 Million 'Spammy' Tracks.” Variety, 2025. https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/spotify-new-ai-safeguards-1236528493/

16. Spotify Newsroom. “From $11B in 2025 Payouts to What We're Building for Artists in 2026.” Spotify, 28 January 2026. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-01-28/2025-music-industry-payouts-whats-next-for-artists/

17. RIAA. “Growth in Paid Subscription Streaming Drives Mid-Year 2025 US Recorded Music Revenues to New High.” RIAA, 2025. https://www.riaa.com/growth-in-paid-subscription-streaming-drives-mid-year-2025-us-recorded-music-revenues-to-new-high-reports-riaa/

18. Billboard. “Kehlani Slams AI Artist Xania Monet Over $3 Million Record Deal Offer.” Billboard, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/kehlani-slams-ai-artist-xania-monet-million-record-deal-1236071158/

19. TheGrio. “Victoria Monet sounds the alarm on Xania Monet.” TheGrio, November 2025. https://thegrio.com/2025/11/18/victoria-monet-reacts-to-xania-monet/

20. CBS News. “Meet the woman behind chart-topping AI artist Xania Monet.” CBS News, 2025. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-woman-behind-chart-topping-ai-artist-xania-monet-i-look-at-her-as-a-real-person/

21. Billboard. “iHeartRadio Bans AI Music, Podcasts & Radio DJs With New Program.” Billboard, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/pro/iheartradio-bans-ai-music-podcasts-radio-djs-new-program/

22. TechCrunch. “Warner Music signs deal with AI music startup Suno, settles lawsuit.” TechCrunch, 25 November 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/25/warner-music-signs-deal-with-ai-music-startup-suno-settles-lawsuit/

23. TechCrunch. “Warner Music settles copyright lawsuit with Udio, signs deal for AI music platform.” TechCrunch, 19 November 2025. https://techcrunch.com/2025/11/19/warner-music-settles-copyright-lawsuit-with-udio-signs-deal-for-ai-music-platform/

24. MIDiA Research. “AI is reshaping the music creator economy.” MIDiA Research, 2025. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/ai-is-reshaping-the-music-creator-economy-and-that-change-will-reshape-the-music-business

25. MIDiA Research. “The unflattening of streaming.” MIDiA Research, 2025. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/the-unflattening-of-streaming

26. Billboard. “AI Artists Breaking Rust & More Hit Country Music Chart: Reactions.” Billboard, 2025. https://www.billboard.com/pro/ai-artists-breaking-rust-country-music-chart-reactions/

27. ScienceDirect. “Alternative payment models in the music streaming market: A comparative approach based on stream-level data.” ScienceDirect, 2024. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624524000258

28. AMW Group. “Music Streaming Statistics 2026.” AMW Group, 2026. https://amworldgroup.com/statistics/music-streaming-statistics

29. Digital Music News. “85% of Indies Face 'Negative Impact' from Spotify Stream Minimum.” Digital Music News, December 2025. https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2025/12/16/spotify-stream-minimum/

30. Hypebot. “Spotify Responds: Did the 1000 Stream Rule cost Artists $47M?” Hypebot, April 2025. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2025/04/did-the-spotify-1000-stream-rule-cost-indie-artists-47-million-spotify-responds.html

31. Music Business Worldwide. “One of Suno's latest investors will be of particular interest to the music industry.” Music Business Worldwide, 2025. https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/one-of-sunos-latest-investors-will-be-of-particular-interest-to-the-music-industry/

32. Music Ally. “Hallwood Media sees chart success with AI artist Xania Monet.” Music Ally, 18 September 2025. https://musically.com/2025/09/18/hallwood-media-sees-chart-success-with-ai-artist-xania-monet/

33. Deezer Newsroom. “How to Detect AI Music: Deezer Sells Its Detection Tool.” Deezer, January 2026. https://newsroom-deezer.com/2026/01/ai-generated-music-deezer-selling-detection-tool/

34. Copyright Alliance. “AI Copyright Lawsuit Developments in 2025: A Year in Review.” Copyright Alliance, 2025. https://copyrightalliance.org/ai-copyright-lawsuit-developments-2025/

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

Hello Again. Are you rooting for an NCAA ranked team?

While you are watching basketball, POTUS is threatening congress with refusing to sign anything until the SAVE America Act is passed by the senate. It has already been passed by the house.

This proposed law is designed to disenfranchise millions of Americans by requiring specific identification in order to register to vote. The documents include passports and birth certificates to prove that voters are citizens. Are you a woman? Did you change your name when you got married? If you did, the name on those documents may be different. If your current name is different, you may not be able to register and vote, and this is the purpose of the act.

Also included in this diabolical act are clauses to give the wealthy tax relief and hurt transgender citizens. It doesn't just cover voting rights. POTUS fears that he will lose control of congress and ultimately face an impeachment which will ultimately throw him out of office. He wants to insure that only his voters can go to the polls. This is just another reason why POTUS needs to be removed from office.

POTUS Roaster

Thanks for reading the posts I write for you. If you like them, please tell your friends and family. If you want to read the other posts I write, please go to write.as/potusroaster/archive

In Summary: * A quiet Friday winds down. Tried to follow a little baseball then a little basketball this afternoon but couldn't raise enough enthusiasm to stick with either. Listening to relaxing music now, and doing some quiet reading. I'll probably stick with that until I wrap up my night prayers in a couple hours then head to bed.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 226.31 lbs. * bp= 135/79 (67)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 05:45 – crispy oatmeal cookies * 06:45 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 09:45 – 4 hot dog sandwiches * 11:55 – bowl of lugau * 14:45 – 1 fresh apple

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:00 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:40 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap, yard work * 12:30 – watch old eps. of Classic Doctor Who * 14:00 – audio feed with Los Angeles pregame is working, MLB Gameday has started and displays stats and info for this afternoon's game, opening pitch is minutes away.
* 16:30 – turned away from the baseball game to catch an NCAA men's basketball game, Miami RedHawks vs Tennessee Volunteers, this game currently at halftime. The Vols are leading 51 to 32. * 17:30 – listening to relaxing music, quietly reading.

Chess: * 13:20 -moved in all pending CC games

When It’s Not Raining I Take A Chance

To the grape leaves and minding bay A profuse energy sixty miles ten We fought for what we can The tidy esteem of a World bet Trial in Toronto and closing The altitude we climbed for an angel And forever had done The Cross between our cell- and our bet Two things to abandon rod A performance by the loop And in bitter loop to end Man it, New York Sometimes life just ain’t a play We reckon to yard to remember For the Symphony at dawn Feeling frozen to the weaponry Six days West and I’ll be here The riposte of a lawn- making friends and making fold The wire out Pixies full of force The light reckons as I know Were it war, I’d be sent anyway But this is Saint Bridget and we spoke In timely two and two My square dream ahead And Aqua sports befriend The little bit of best- and I need insulin A growing to the maintenance Hero to her anxiety This maple in shades And due on course November Staying true to men in spirit The Victory low and hold Mileage high and through With folds to make mysterious Am I not headed out And six times the Water at war So let the Zulu rain We are obsessed with The Lord- and blinking lights- And days to make it later I am shining because I need you Now climb down from that coffin We are abstract to the risk I was a cousin of Earth Berodded and esteem For the light one As this must And seeming no set We are far to be free As the story goes And you were a miracle for the good- steady wonder For the Triune God and his prophet A simple goodness wears the tide This way or the Moon Running empty as the news For finds of the decorated house of yours First Class Jesus and no poem An enemy of torture And a special man by Rome A mystery of men In your tower And this bleeding heart supposes The Victory of existence And a paltry Summer choice To Lunenburg and home And I was the vet- For making near And I drew a blinking star Upon that thing that made me smile Obsessive by the dawn And no Aladdin- but you.

A few weeks ago, a friend asked my wife and I and a few other friends to act for a video sketch project. The friend provided food and hospitality and we all had a great time. My older son played with a couple other kids while my wife and I took turns holding the younger one. It’s always nice to get out of the house.

When it comes to speaking, my speech is monotone and soft. That’s why you’ll never hear me give a public speech, sing karaoke, or act in a film. I’m a better writer than a speaker. And even that’s questionable.

Maybe if I played in some sort of acting role, I’ll be in a silent slapstick comedy. As long as the pay is good.

#acting #dramaclub #friends #highschool

“You can do anything.” Said to me not as a generic affirmation, but to remind me: I am better than others.

“You’re so well behaved.” Another mark. Those other kids? They cause trouble and get bad grades. I’m better than them.

Skip two grades. A, A, A, B, A. The B is a failure. I’m better than this. I can’t let that happen again.

“You’re worth nothing.” The other message. “Pride cometh before the fall.” Don’t be prideful. “Pride is the first sin.” Don’t sin. “You can’t not sin.” I sinned. “You are dirty, unlovable, repulsive to God.” I am filthy. “Never forget that you deserve hell.” I won’t.

Quick! Hide my pride, before they see. I am worth nothing, I can’t forget that. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am better than everyone else. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am better than everyone else. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am better than everyone else. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am better than everyone else. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am better than everyone else. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing. I am worth nothing.

Ana whispers in my ear. “You are special.” The first kind voice in my head in years. The relief is overwhelming. I’m worth something! “You are better than them.” Aren’t I?

Don’t forget, I am worth nothing.

I am worth everything. Nothing. Everything. Nothing.

Never something. Everything or nothing, pick one. I can’t.

My psyche picks, and Ana offers relief. Ana picks, and it feels disgusting. Pride feels so gross. Back to my psyche.

Pride remains. Suppressed or dominant, I can’t escape it.

A zine chronicling the Conquering the Barbarian Altanis D&D campaign.

This issue details sessions 99, 100, 101, and 102.

Adventurers hunt the glowing hunters. Then they revisit an old favourite, which goes as every time before that.

You can download the issue here.

Overlord's Annals zine is available as part of the Ever & Anon APA, issue 9:

#Zine

Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, Titi. This week's subjects: Tech-Infused Fabrics, Cannes Film Festival, Toothpaste, and Champagne, Prosecco, Sekt and Cava

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Tech-Infused Fabrics: Tech isn’t just for gadgets—it’s now playing a major role in corporate fashion. The fusion of fashion and technology is already happening in the West African fashion scene, with designers experimenting with fabrics that adapt to your environment. Imagine a blazer that adjusts to your body temperature or fabric that repels water and resists wrinkles—perfect for the busy corporate lifestyle. Wearable tech is also gaining popularity, from smart watches to bracelets that help with productivity. So, if you thought the future of fashion was still years away, think again—it's here, and it's happening now. Power Suits with a Twist: While the classic power suit isn’t going anywhere, it’s getting an upgrade. The 2026 power suit in West Africa will be all about standing out. Think bold hues like deep emerald greens and fiery oranges, paired with soft, fluid fabrics that make you look as powerful as you feel. Corporate fashion will continue to honor the structured look of the classic suit, but designers are adding modern, playful touches: asymmetrical cuts, unconventional lapels, and creative tailoring. This gives the traditional business suit a fresh, modern energy while maintaining its authority. It’s all about merging strength and style! Cannes Film Festival is from 12th to 23rd May 2026. We've finished with the fashion weeks in New York, London, Milan and Paris, telling us what we should wear this autumn and winter, but there's more coming up. The Cannes Film Festival, held on the Côte d'Azur in the South of France (careful, there’s another Cannes in France somewhere inland) is a glamorous celebration of cinema. But as all these Global film stars show up to see their own films they also dress up and showcase haute couture from the luxury fashion houses as they strut the festival’s red carpet. So both film and fashion lovers get their share. It's pretty crowded, so if you want to see anything you need to arrive early. And of course the real events are strictly by invitation and with a lot of security. While it is a film festival first and foremost, the Cannes Film Festival has become known for its elegant and opulent looks. As a result, it is now considered one of the most stylish fashion events on the international calendar.

Toothpaste. We all want to smell fresh and have smiling teeth. But like so many things this one too comes at a price, and not only the price of the toothpaste. Digestion is a very important issue. If we do not digest properly part of what we eat will never get into our bloodstream, our body, to give energy, to build cells, to protect cells, what not. Irritated bowels can even lead to depression. So we know that the food is first digested in the stomach. Wrong, it starts in the mouth. If you chew long enough on bread or rice it becomes sweat, the enzymes in our saliva break down the carbohydrates in the bread or the rice into smaller sugars which can more easily pass through the intestine walls into our bloodstream. You can look up what enzymes are, if you like. And in the intestines it is bacteria which chop through the food and make it more digestible. Billions of bacteria. But in the mouth too there are bacteria, about 700 different ones. They help break down the food before it even enters into the stomach. Indeed, some of the bacteria in your mouth are bad ones and try to damage your teeth and especially your gums. So the toothpaste kills them all, the good ones with the bad ones. According to my dentist brushing your teeth and gums with water is sufficient, remove leftovers from between your teeth, that's all. And a new toothpaste is on the way, it stops the growth of the bad bacteria, allowing the good ones to thrive. The active ingredient is called guanidinoethylbenzylaminoimidazopyridine acetate (a mouth full, indeed) and the toothpaste is a called Periotrap, a German product. A 75 grams tube should cost about 225 GHC when it gets to Ghana. I estimate the product will come off patent in a few years and should then be more affordable.

Champagne, Prosecco, Sekt and Cava. Champagne is a famous sparkling wine, maybe the most famous of all wines. The French did a good marketing job here. It is made like wine, allowing grapes and their juice to ferment and produce alcohol, but with champagne they later add more yeast and some sugar and manage to create bubbles. So the alcohol you drink is in fact packed in bubbles which make it act faster, so you'll easily get tipsy. Happy celebration. Because of it's popularity Champagne sells at a premium, and for a low end bottle you pay an easy 350 GHC, in a restaurant that would sell at 700-1000 GHC. The more expensive bottles go from 550 GHC upwards to an easy 6000 GHC a bottle. But the Champagne process is not unique to France, though the name is, the Germans have their sekt, the Italians their Prosecco, and the Spaniards have their Cava. It's more or less all the same stuff, but I can get a decent bottle of Prosecco here for 150 GHC, half the price of a low end French Champagne. And a German wine maker Henkell just bought the nr 1 Spanish cava wine estate Freixenet for several hundreds of millions of Euros, so at least they reckon there's a future in these champagne copycats. Freixenet recently suffered drought and got into financial problems. Henkell already owns several brands of Prosecco, Sekt, Cava and Champagne. Cheers

Lydia...

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