lukemaynard.bsky.social
Author, musician, lawyer, lapsed academic. Cat lover.
Disability warrior/advocate. Proud Canadian. Short-ish.
(He/him)
958 posts
1,115 followers
129 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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The only #coversong i've ever paid to license & release legally, and the only #music I dare to put on #Spotify (it's a toxic site to #indiemusic), is #RyCooder's "Across The Borderline." I'll never make a buck off it, but reviving this 42-year-old song right now was more important.
#NoKings. 🍁
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I just try to look on the bright side: other than the smog (and the wildfires), LA has the best weather in the world.
When is it NOT a beautiful day for kite flying? 😉🪁🌤️
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Maybe the reference to the current invasion of Califormia was too obtuse. I don't know anymore.
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Fun fact: this is not A.I. generated:
#TACO
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I would not have known this variant existed if you hadn't posted results. What a cool game—and what an odd phrase!
Phrazle 996: 4/6
🟪 ⬜🟪⬜ 🟪🟩 🟩🟩🟩 ⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩⬜
🟩 ⬜⬜🟨 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟨⬜🟩⬜
🟩 🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
#phrazle
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I think this is a very wise take, and I'm sorry it leads to such sad conclusions.
I can't believe it was a Marvel movie, of all things, that said it out loud: "the first country the Nazis invaded wasn't Poland.
It was Germany."🖤💔💛
America, too, has been "invaded" the same way: from within.
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I think it's OK to identify as "an American," on the condition that you also recognize your home has been conquered by a petty warlord who made it a vassal state of its greatest enemy.
Even as a Canadian, I have no problem today saying "I love America." The problem is, this country isn't that one.
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Is it the state of California? Because I can see one petty warlord from back east who's actively trying to conquer the state right now.
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Moody's has downgraded the US Credit Rating from AAA to AA1. It's not enough.
The WTF is earning its acronym as the Free World (formerly the "Rest of the Free World") is enabling the rise of a superfascist state in the grip of a madman by continuing to bankroll the biggest deadbeat in world history.
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Worse than either of them:
(1)Politics, when people treat it as a religion.
(2)Religion, when people politicize it.
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2/2
…have only grown more important now that we can virtually reproduce his million-dollar Paisley Park studio on our laptops.
When @ontarioarts.bsky.social, FACTOR & the CCA all turned down my grant requests to hire more Canadian musicians, his model enabled me to do #DesolationSound 100% alone.
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1/2
#Prince had a big effect on my #indiemusic —not because I do uptempo dance tracks re: gettin' freaky, but because he could & did play every instrument and handle all production when he had to.
Like Les Paul, he wasn't just a fine #guitar slinger, but a pioneer in the studio whose advancements…
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🤣
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ADDENDUM: While the line DOES get picked up as running gag/catchphrase (thanks for pointing out Ali Baba Bugs, @flabejota.bsky.social !), this is an even more directly targeted joke in its ORIGINAL context: if you screwed up the LA turnoff, you COULD basically end up in Mexico (El Paso anyway).
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It ran from Chicago to LA, straight through Albuquerque until the Interstate highway system in the '70s.
Until 1937, it ran through downtown N-S. That year, the alignment of the highway was changed to E-W, so the intersection of Central Ave. & 4th St., became the corner of Route 66 and Route 66.
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It's hard for modern drivers to appreciate that in pre-freeway America, c.1940, if you were headed west to LA and turned around on the 66/66 interchange around noon, you wouldn't know you were going the wrong way until you hit the WRONG major city, or the sun started setting on the wrong side.😖
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I did a huge deep dive on this classic Bugs Bunny one-liner once. In 1953, most actors etc. drove back & forth between New York & LA constantly. Albuquerque was a place where Route 66 intersected with itself in the middle of a flat desert.
See Footnote F:
www.theduckwebcomics.com/AlfiesWorld/...
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Maybe it ought to be "MACCA":
Make America A Canadian Colony, Amirite?🍁
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Absolutely! I'm flattered.
And I think it's important for the new leaders of the Free World need to start realizing that we can easily rent him too. It's not am option that should be left only to people who feel no shudder of moral disgust by it. If they're playing #RentAPrez, so should we.
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One of the worst things too-basic history lessons about the Holocaust have done, I think, is narrowed our idea of what "genocide" is to "direct extermination"—nothing else.
The UN's Genocide Convention recognizes so many different forms of targeted systemic harm as genocide. I wish laypeople did.😞
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2/2
…are pro bono legal clinics offering summary advice to artists. In Illinois it's these guys: law-arts.org
Civil lawyers who work on contingency can say "no fee unless we win" because they won't TAKE your case unless a payday is likely. That includes their ability to collect around a bankruptcy.
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1/2
I'm not the right kind of lawyer (or the right jurisdiction) to opine on the lawsuit itself, but I would at least reach out to someone who is for legal advice, especially with a (digital) paper trail.
Most civil litigators will give you a consult for free (at least where I'm from), and there…
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In the age of cheaply generated AI images, I appreciate the fine craftsmanship that went into this fine and very human-made Photoshop masterpiece.
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Now, now... the idea that Trump is going to enter into a sinister pact with an even more powerful, hidden evil so he can spy on everyone using one of the lost Seeing Stones is a lit...ohhhh.... oh no
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In theory, I love this idea.
In practice, you could trust me (morally speaking) to walk a vicious dog and keep it from biting people. But not if I'm under 200 pounds and the dog is over 2,000 pounds.
I feel like babysitting the United States would be a little like that.
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That's not a contradiction at all.🌈🍁
Mr. Trudeau likes being straight, and yet...
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6/6
…analogous to the Gestapo—a shift that probably forecasts the transition of Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem into the role of Himmler c.1936, or her replacement with someone better suited to Himmler's portfolio.
We'll see how much of this bears out: there's still time (not much) to stop it.
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5/x
Things to watch for over the next ~12 months are:
-The broadening of "Foreign Entity of Concern" restrictions at Trump's whim under laws like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
-Mass MAGA boycotts of "undesirable" businesses
-The (already begun) transition of ICE to Trump's secret police force…
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…have it coming because they've stolen all the wealth from the American fatherland and its noble people (2025 Apr 2 on) has no single direct event, but it's the Big Lie laying the groundwork for the Nuremberg Laws (1935).
We're not there yet, but we're proceeding there at roughly the same pace.
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…& sacked as many of Trump's enemies as possible in government roles, is the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (Law for the Restoration of Civil Services) (1933).
4.
The "Liberation Day" tariffs and the fist-pounding speeches falsely claiming that the people being tariffed…
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Trump's return to the Presidency (2025 Jan 20) is Hitler's appointment as Chancellor (1933 Jan 30).
2.
Trump's first deportation of undesirables to El Salvador's #CECOT without due process (2025 Mar 15) is the opening of Dachau (1933 Mar 22).
3.
The DOGE government purges, which sniffed out…
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We're not there yet: the #Shoah took until 1945. We're currently sitting around 1933.
Let me build you (and others watching the US fall to Nazism) a timeline:
1.
January 6 was #Trump's Beer Hall Putsch (1923), except the Germans actually had the decency to throw Hitler in jail for a year.
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True. But those places have billionaire emirs who can offer enough gold to satisfy his chronic greed. Trump isn't easily bought; he's RENTED. He'll never target them…as long as their cheques clear.
They also have schoolteachers, baristas, accountants. To Team Trump, they're just nonwhite illegals.
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If the Emoluments Clause didn't stop this from happening, not even this time, but the first time, then I'm beginning to doubt whether the Consitution of the United States of America—that country we loved & stood by, in spite of it all—has any vestigial relevance to whatever country you live in now.
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The historical Nazis had friends or at least sympathizers in other countries.
That won't be the case this time.
Some people outside the Reich could look at Hitler and turn a blind eye, saying, "he's not targeting me."
The world knows better this time. We ALL see they'd come for us if they could.
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5/5[end]
…being said, Daniel Lanois is a legend—and more importantly, he's a vast talent with uncanny taste in sound. That's going to be an incredible experience too.
I'm always glad when people know just how lucky we are to have him, both on Canadian stages and in Canadian recording studios.🍁
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…people were paying scalpers for obscured-back-corner-of-the-highest-balcony seats.
I'll never get this lucky again. And it felt nice to see that Paul-the-already-rich-guy wasn't gouging us. It was all the celebrity profiteers that stand between him & the people who just like music.
All that…
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…how bad was the crooked markup? It was bad enough that when I checked the floor seats out of spite, I found a single non-VIP, non-Silver Princess Package, non-Over-Promoted Vanity Ticket, in the SECOND ROW—just a plain old ticket—that was more than I wanted to pay, but less than half of what…
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…price; a sure sign of someone who's block-bought a row just to make money. I wonder sometimes if Ticketmaster itself, or its employees, buy with priority to self-scalp their own tickets.
I would have paid more for a resale. But I can't afford, and WON'T support, the unbearable gouging.
Just…
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This tracks with my story, though mine has a happy ending: I heard a day too late about Paul Simon. Scalpers took ALL the seats I could afford. The humble seats in the back ($55+tax) were all "official resale tickets" in the high hundreds of dollars range. Whole rows at the exact same resale…
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As ruinous as AI can be for artists, I'm really noticing how many human artists have become hostile to one another, baselessly accusing one another of being AI witches, often inciting a dogpile of artist-harassment based on incorrect suspicion.
It's not a winning argument or a good look for humans.
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What a master. One of my lifelong #guitar heroes. I'll never get tired of hearing just how clean, how superb #ChetAtkins was.
It's funny; just tonight I was going through old basement tracks & found this " #OverTheRainbow "—just fooling around on 3 guitars—so obviously a tribute to Chet's style.
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One of my favourite guitar albums of all time. Was Les really retired by 1976? That's wild…if so, we owe Chet a lot for bringing him back to us for another 33 years.
Here he is in 2009, still playing at 92, a few months before he passed—a bit slower but no less sublime.
youtu.be/F_z3-8Px2BE?...
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I can understand why a washed-up entertainer well past his prime and one of America's greatest public statesmen would naturally dislike each other.
I'm just surprised that a soft-spoken guy like @brucespringsteen.net, who seems quite shy, should turn out to be one of America's gratest statesmen.🎸
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It's a catchy song. It might not mean anything, if only he hadn't also released all those AI-generated NFTs of himself as a cop, then a cowboy, then a biker, then a burly construction worker...