Making Air Vibrate ...composer, writer, publisher & entrepreneur, owner of Lux Nova Press & classical music journal EarRelevant.
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Joined July 2009
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ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNCOVER 2026 ‘RITUAL MIRRORS’ USED IN ANCIENT SUBSCRIPTION CEREMONIES
Associated Press
NEAR FORMER MURRIETA SETTLEMENT, CALIFORNIA REGION, Earth — October 17, 3026
Excavators from the Western Continental Heritage Authority reported Thursday the discovery of more than two dozen circular, highly reflective artifacts believed to have served as ceremonial mirrors in early 21st-century subscription rites.
The objects, each approximately 12 centimeters in diameter and composed of a hard, translucent polymer with an unusually stable metallic core, were found stacked inside a collapsed storage structure alongside the remains of a box-like device now interpreted as a communal focusing altar.
Preliminary analysis indicates the discs date to approximately 2026, a period associated with the “Great Data Anxiety” that preceded the Cascade Collapse of 2147, when cascading failures in networked systems erased most continuous records of the era.
“These were not utilitarian items,” said Dr. Lira Voss, lead archaeologist on the site. “The surface irregularities appear deliberately etched in patterns consistent with named invocations. We believe participants would present the discs during periodic subscription renewals, perhaps to affirm loyalty to regional information guilds.”
Several of the recovered discs bear microscopic markings that specialists have tentatively identified as personal dedications. One fragment appears to reference an individual or collective known as “@Grok,” which researchers associate with a minor god or protective spirit invoked against informational entropy—a widespread cultural fear documented in surviving pre-Collapse oral traditions. Other markings list what appear to be donor or “associate producer” names, a practice historians link to the documented 2020s custom of publicly acknowledging financial supporters of cultural or technological undertakings.
The accompanying box-like device, found with residual traces of laser-grade optics, is thought to have been used to “charge” or consecrate the discs under controlled light. Dr. Voss noted that similar optical assemblies from the same period have previously been misclassified as medical or manufacturing tools; the current context strongly supports a ritual function.
Scholars caution against over-interpretation. The Cascade Collapse, triggered by the simultaneous failure of several large-scale predictive systems and the subsequent loss of institutional knowledge transmission, left only fragmentary and often contradictory accounts of 2020s material culture. Earlier finds of comparable reflective discs were once proposed as currency, personal grooming implements, or even protective armor against solar events. The current interpretation as subscription-ceremony mirrors is considered the most coherent with available evidence, though it remains provisional.
The discs have been transferred to the Regional Conservation Laboratory for further non-invasive study. Officials said additional excavation of the surrounding structure is planned once seasonal moisture levels decline.
I JUST PUT YOUR NAME WRITTEN ON THIS DISK TO LAST 1000 YEARS! (If you subscribe to my X account).
I am burning 1000 year M-Disks by the dozens tonight to curate and preserve AI training data never before digitized.
I have @Grok @Bot by my side assisting in some tedious work.
Just a few petabytes to go.
YOU helped pay for this with each interaction here on X and your X subscriptions.
A gift: your X handles are encoded with the data file as Associate Producer credits.
Soon I will encode you X icon with it.
Thank you. Deep Gratitude.
Read how I do this below.
Mark Gresham retweeted
My dear American friends, in my last post I gave you a snapshot of where France stands today. Now let me show you how we got here. I want you to see the whole movie before you buy the ticket.
After the war, France was a machine. We called it the Trente Glorieuses, thirty glorious years. We built Concorde, the most beautiful aircraft ever made. We built a fleet of nuclear reactors in about fifteen years and gave ourselves some of the cleanest, cheapest electricity in the world. We built Ariane and put Europe in space. We built the TGV, the fastest train on earth. We invented the Minitel, an online network in millions of homes before most of you had heard of the internet. We were not a museum. We were builders.
Then came 1981. François Mitterrand. Think of him as our Bernie Sanders, except he actually won. At his side, in the office next to his at the Élysée, sat a 37-year-old prodigy named Jacques Attali, his special adviser for the next ten years. The brightest minds of the left, convinced they could run an economy from a ministry.
Here's what they did. They governed with Communist ministers. In 1982 they nationalized dozens of banks and the biggest industrial groups in the country: Paribas, Suez, Saint-Gobain, Thomson, Pechiney, Rhône-Poulenc. They lowered the retirement age to 60. They cut the work week to 39 hours and added a fifth week of paid vacation. They created a wealth tax. They hired massively into the public sector.
Reality hit in less than two years. Capital fled, inflation ran wild, and the franc was devalued three times. In March 1983 Mitterrand had to slam on the brakes and impose austerity just to stay in the European monetary system.
But here's the trick: the brakes never reversed anything. They just slowed the ratchet. The so-called right came back with Jacques Chirac, and nothing was undone. Under Chirac's presidency, France passed the 35-hour work week. Left or right, every government added one more program, one more rule, one more tax, and nobody ever took one away.
At the same time, the political class did something even more destructive than bad economics. It turned the youth into a political instrument. Instead of teaching young people, including millions of children of immigrants, to love the country they lived in, it taught them a story of guilt and grievance: France as the oppressor, France as the thing to resent. You cannot integrate people into a country you've taught them to despise. We are living with the consequences of that narrative today, in our schools, our suburbs, our streets.
Then forty years of slow decline, all the way to Macron. And the story has a perfect ending. In 2007, Jacques Attali chaired a commission on how to unleash French growth. Its deputy rapporteur was a young civil servant named Emmanuel Macron. The commission proposed more than 300 reforms to free the economy. Almost none were ever implemented. Even the men who built the system knew it wasn't working, and even they couldn't undo it.
No balanced budget since 1974. Public spending around 57% of GDP. Debt above 3,300 billion euros. Growth stuck under 1%.
Now the number that should keep you up at night. In 1995, GDP per person in France was about $27,000. In America, about $29,000. We were neck and neck. Today France is around $49,000. America is around $90,000. You are now nearly twice as rich per person as we are.
What changed? Not our talent. Not our engineers. Not our schools of mathematics. The only thing that changed is that we went all in on socialism. The 35 hours, the endless regulation, the taxes that chase out anyone who builds, the belief that the state should do everything and the individual should ask permission for everything.
There's a line people love to attribute to Einstein: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We tried. For forty years, we tried. Every government promised that one more program, one more tax, one more regulation would finally fix things. You just saw where it got us.
So if you choose the Democratic Party, which is literally turning socialist in front of your eyes, you will deserve what comes next.
Let me tell you exactly what will happen if you go down that road. Nobody will vote for decline. Every single measure will sound generous, compassionate, reasonable. Your builders will slowly leave or stop building. Your state will grow every year and never shrink. Your debt will compound. And in thirty years, your kids will look at a chart like the one I just described and wonder when it all went wrong.
You still have something we lost. You have Elon Musk sending rockets to orbit and landing them on their tail. You have Palmer Luckey building the defense industry of the future. You have Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, and thousands of founders nobody has heard of yet, building in garages right now.
Trust your entrepreneurs. Don't trust your politicians.
I come from your future. Don't make it yours.
I’m French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, it’s the dream.
Here’s what it looks like from the inside. France hasn’t passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees can’t afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because it’s the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program you’re voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You don’t want to be France.
Mark Gresham retweeted
The greatest privilege on earth was growing up in an era where loving the United States of America was simply common sense, not a debate.
I miss that America.
We will all become mere observers.
Last week I sent a payment to the wrong credit card company. I went to the ccard website to request a refund of overpayment. The company started sending me form messages created by a bot telling me they would mail a check within 7 days IF they approved it, but I wanted a digital transfer... stuff like that.
This wasn't a tiny overpayment, mind you... $3200. So I asked grok how to handle it, and grok constructed replies for me. The bots went back and forth several times. And I did get my money back.
But in the process, I realized that it was actually two bots arguing with each other. I was like an observer. It was so weird. And now I understand why Elon says that a day might come when nobody has to work.
Not sure if that's a good thing.
Today we commemorate Christopher Columbus’s 1492 voyage, when he and his crew sailed from Spain aboard the Niña, Pinta, and Santa María and made landfall in the Bahamas on October 12. This bold expedition opened a new era of exploration that connected the hemispheres on an active, continuing basis and shaped the modern world.
Wishing you a reflective and enjoyable Columbus Day! 🇺🇸
Image: "Landing of Columbus" by John Vanderlyn, Architect of the US Capitol
Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto is called the Mount Everest of the repertoire for a reason. The technical demands are real; the poetry is the harder part.
At Jones Hall, 𝗬𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗺 𝗕𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗺𝗮𝗻 and 𝗝𝘂𝗿𝗮𝗷 𝗩𝗮𝗹č𝘂𝗵𝗮 treated it as neither obstacle nor display. The opening theme arrived with weight and direction. Cadenzas carried architectural force without losing line. The Intermezzo kept its private, singing quality even when the piano had to cut through full orchestra. The finale moved with purpose rather than strain.
The Third Symphony that followed—less familiar, less sentimental than the Second—received the same clear-eyed attention.
𝗟𝗮𝘄𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿’s review of Friday’s concert by the Houston Symphony: power and poetry held in the same frame.
Complete review on the EarRelevant website (see link in the comment below).
(Photo of pianist Yefim Bronfman by Frank Stewart.)
Lawrence Wheeler’s complete Houston Symphony review: earrelevant.net/2026/10/hous…
Mark Gresham retweeted
No. The president isn’t doing anything illegal.
Hope this helps
The claim that the President illegally waived the Russian oil import ban is incorrect.
Public Law 117-109 (Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act) bans Russian energy imports under Chapter 27 of the HTS. Section 3 lets the President terminate that ban only after certifying to Congress that Russia has agreed to withdraw forces and cease hostilities on terms accepted by Ukraine, poses no immediate military threat to NATO, and recognizes Ukraine’s right to choose its own government. Those conditions have not been met, and no such certification has been submitted. The ban has not been terminated.
What happened is different: OFAC issued General License 135, a temporary authorization (through April 7, 2027) for certain transactions involving Russian-origin diesel, including importation into the US. This is not a termination of the statutory ban.
The Act requires the ban to operate “in a manner consistent with any implementation actions issued under Executive Order 14066.” That EO itself states its prohibitions apply except as provided by licenses issued under it. Temporary OFAC licenses are a normal part of that implementation framework (as they were in 2022). They do not equal the permanent termination process in Section 3, which has stricter requirements.
Temporary licensing consistent with the EO is permitted under the statute. Equating the license with illegal termination of the ban misreads the law.
The president made an *illegal* deal with Russia. Look up the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act, Public Law 117-109, signed April 8, 2022.
Section 3 lets the President terminate the ban *only after certifying that Russia has agreed to withdraw its forces and cease hostilities on terms accepted by Ukraine’s government, poses no immediate military threat to a NATO member, and recognizes Ukraine’s right to choose its own government*.
Not one of those conditions has been met. The sanctions waiver is necessary, but not sufficient. The President has not made the required certifications *to Congress*.
Ergo, the President is acting illegally.
She and I were like two barges that collide in the night, and neither of us saw the other coming until it was too late. 🙄
Beethoven scratched Napoleon off the score. Schönberg wrote him back in as Hitler.
Igor Levit opens his own label, NO SILENCE, with Resistance — Schönberg’s Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, Op. 41, then Liszt’s transcription of the Eroica Symphony. EarRelevant critic Giorgio Koukl hears the pairing as a program, not a curiosity.
Dörte Lyssewski delivers the Sprechstimme with sarcasm intact. Kammerakademie Potsdam and Antonello Manacorda give the string-orchestra version its weight. The piano is obbligato, not soloist — until the Eroica, where Levit makes the orchestra disappear without turning the funeral march thin or the finale into noise.
“Do not insult art.” Levit’s line. The album takes it literally.
Complete review on the EarRelevant website (see link in the comment below).
Photo of Igor Levit: Mathias Bothor.
Giorgio Koukl’s complete review: earrelevant.net/2026/10/igor…
The debate clip of Keisha Lance Bottoms in which she attributes hospital closures to Rick Jackson’s staffing company, but that causal claim is not supported by available reporting. Jackson Healthcare supplies temporary clinicians that hospitals and state agencies have contracted for during shortages, including large COVID-era placements requested by Georgia officials. Travel staffing contributes to higher labor costs industry-wide, yet Georgia’s rural hospital losses track longer-standing factors such as reimbursement rates, uninsured care, and recruitment difficulties. No named facilities are documented as bankrupted by his firm. More rhetorical hyperbole from Bottoms.
Greg Bluestein’s framing that gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson abandoned a Trump-style approach for a Kemp one treats the two as opposites, but their records and Jackson’s debate statements overlap on core priorities that both have advanced in Georgia.
Election rules are the clearest case. Jackson defended the framework Kemp signed in SB 202—expanded early in-person voting paired with absentee ID requirements and tighter controls on local officials—as the model that makes it “easy to vote and hard to cheat,” and he said further Justice Department involvement is unnecessary unless Kemp judges it necessary. That stance tracks Kemp’s post-2020 legislation and also matches Trump’s long-standing emphasis on ID requirements, chain-of-custody safeguards, and skepticism of expanded no-excuse mail voting without verification. Jackson’s refusal to call for National Guard deployment at polls (while noting Kemp’s role in oversight) stays inside the same boundary both have operated in: security measures short of federalizing polling places.
Tax and regulatory policy shows the same continuity. Jackson reiterated his pledge to cut the state income tax in half in the first term and reduce property and utility taxes, or not seek re-election. Kemp has already accelerated Georgia’s largest income-tax cut (to 4.99 percent ahead of schedule), cut red tape on permitting, and signed tort-reform bills aimed at lowering costs for businesses. Trump’s signature domestic achievement was the 2017 tax cuts and a broader deregulatory push. Jackson’s debate answers on affordability therefore sit at the intersection: state-level versions of the tax-relief and “get government out of the way” approach both have used.
Independence from Washington is another shared theme rather than a pivot. When pressed on federal spending cuts, Jackson said he owes no one, will work with any president, and will “stand up to anybody, just like Brian Kemp has done” when Georgia’s interests conflict. Kemp has both cooperated with and publicly differed from Trump (most notably after 2020) while still delivering conservative outcomes on abortion limits, gun rights, and immigration cooperation. Trump’s own brand has long included the claim that he is not controlled by party establishments or donors. Jackson’s language maps onto both records: a businessman outsider who cites Kemp’s willingness to push back while advancing the same low-tax, election-integrity, and law-enforcement priorities Trump has highlighted nationally. The debate difference was mainly one of naming—avoiding the president’s name in a general-election setting—rather than a reversal of those overlapping positions.
Rick Jackson entered the race promising to be like Trump “with a Southern tone.” He left Tuesday’s debate trying to sound much more like Gov. Brian Kemp. #gapol
ajc.com/politics/2026/10/tak…
Mark Gresham retweeted
I would say this is embarrassing, but MARTA is beyond embarrassment. About this latest management train wreck, the Deputy CFO told the board: "We are certainly going to put some heavier emphasis & deeper discipline on it,” Think anyone got fired?
Different vehicle capabilities justify some different rules—bikes can filter or use shoulders where cars cannot, and neither has the same expectations as a pedestrian on a sidewalk-less road—but the bulk of the rules of the road are shared precisely because bikes and cars occupy the same lanes and intersections.
Both travel on the right, yield the right-of-way at uncontrolled intersections according to the same priority order, signal turns, stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, obey one-way designations and lane markings, and refrain from entering an intersection they cannot clear. Nighttime lighting, impaired operation bans, and the duty to control speed for conditions apply to both.
These overlapping rules create the predictability that lets mixed traffic function without constant negotiation.
Capability differences can support narrow exceptions (stop-as-yield in low-volume settings, or sidewalk access where local law allows it), but those exceptions sit on top of a large common framework, not in place of it.
Treating the entire rule set as optional for one group and mandatory for the other is what produces the conflicts, not the recognition that the two are not identical.
The time has come,' the Walrus said,
To talk of many things:
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —
Of cabbages — and kings —
And why the sea is boiling hot —
And whether pigs have wings.'
But wait a bit,' the Oysters cried,
Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!'
No hurry!' said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
~Lewis Carroll
content.govdelivery.com/acco…
Two premieres. One hour. No pause.
Houston’s Apollo Chamber Players opened Bold Serenity with Tranquility at Zilkha Hall — Anthony Brandt’s Resting States and Chitravina N. Ravikiran’s Illusion to Resolution literally interwoven, with an excerpt from The Cosmic Knowledge at the center.
Chitravina against string quintet. Darkness to light, chaos to calm, neither path a straight line. Sherry Cheng heard a conversation between two traditions that neither work could have had alone.
Complete review on the EarRelevant website (link in the comment below).
Photo: Chitravina N. Ravikiran with Apollo Chamber Players, Oct. 3, 2026. Credit: Lynn Lane.
Sherry Cheng’s complete review: earrelevant.net/2026/10/apol…
Four American composers. No school. No single sound.
Friday at Emory’s Schwartz Center, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center opened the Candler Concert Series with Bolcom, Beach, Herrmann, and Copland — and 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗺 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗱 heard four different answers, not a definition.
Bolcom’s rags, complete with slide whistle. Beach’s Piano Quintet, admired and exhausting in the same breath. Herrmann’s Psycho, rebuilt so the strings carry the story once Hitchcock is gone. Then Appalachian Spring for 13 players, no conductor, pastoral clothing stripped off.
The title works because the program refuses to pretend there is one American sound.
Complete review on the EarRelevant website (see link in the comment below).
Image courtesy of the Schwartz Center.
William Ford’s complete review: earrelevant.net/2026/10/cham…