Rasmus Fleischer

Historian & writer, Stockholm.

Swedish account: Rasmus Fleischer (npub1ygp…2tn5)

Vox Vulgaris (early music for late humanity): https://voxvulgaris.bandcamp.com/
some mixes of newer music (recorded in my bedroom): https://soundcloud.com/rasmusfleischer
writings, academic etc (linktree): https://linktr.ee/rasmusfleischer
Bluesky account: https://bsky.app/profile/rsmsflschr.bsky.social

Last Notes

2026-05-15 18:07:11 CEST

"Minor Works is a curated collection of independent radio from around the world.
Independent radio matters because it is shaped by people rather than algorithms.
Minor Works was built from a love of independent radio and a desire for a better way to discover it.'
https://minorworks.live/

2026-03-25 11:31:10 CET

Cool new music discovery tool based on track adjescency within curated sets at NTS Radio:
https://back2back.space/
#music #musicdiscovery #musiccuration #ntsradio

2026-02-25 11:40:20 CET

"While #Russia Says It Is ‘Denazifying’ Ukraine, Far-Right Groups Are Fighting for Moscow"
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/24/while-russia-says-it-is-denazifying-ukraine-far-right-groups-are-fighting-for-moscow-a92033
"'The state is generally willing to tolerate almost any view, as long as a person actively supports the war'
...
The Rusich Telegram channel, which currently has around 243,000 subscribers, has repeatedly posted calls to kill Ukrainian servicemen instead of taking them as prisoners of war; to rape Ukrainian women serving in the army; and once asked for one Ukrainian POW, preferably a Crimean Tatar, to be provided 'for a ritual sacrifice to the Slavic gods.'"

2026-02-25 10:49:00 CET

👓 "A new hobbyist developed app warns if people nearby may be wearing smart glasses, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, which stalkers and harassers have repeatedly used to film people without their knowledge or consent. The app scans for smart glasses’ distinctive Bluetooth signatures and sends a push alert if it detects a potential pair of glasses in the local area.
...
“This is a tech solution to a social problem exaggerated by tech. I do not want to promote techsolutionism nor do I want people to feel falsely secure. It's still imperfect,” Jeanrenaud added."
https://www.404media.co/this-app-warns-you-if-someone-is-wearing-smart-glasses-nearby/
🔓https://archive.is/hiYJ5
The app is called Nearby Glasses:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ch.pocketpc.nearbyglasses
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses

2025-12-21 10:02:51 CET

Now when Anna's Archive has backup up all music on Spotify and is releasing it via torrents, we know what AI companies will train their music generation models on.
https://annas-archive.li/blog/backing-up-spotify.html
However, I doubt that just access to more music will do much to enhance those models. Because they aim to not just generate an average of all music (whatever that would be), but to generate music from specific textual prompts. That means that textual descriptions of the music is an equally important part of the training data needed for the AI industry to make further advances in this field. And while the Spotify backup includes metadata, that is in fact very sparse, mostly stuff like song titles and selections from a predefined list of genres.
There are hundreds of millions of tracks of music out there, but only for a tiny fraction of them, any human has written down a description of how the music feels and sounds.
That is the kind of information needed to build a machine to do the reverse: to generate music from a textual prompt.
There is a lot of talk about GenAI for music inevitably becoming much "better" in the coming years. Well, maybe if the AI companies would employ some thousand music critics to sit day long and write qualified descriptions for millions of tracks.

2025-11-25 22:53:45 CET

"human thinking is largely independent of human language — and we have little reason to believe ever more sophisticated modeling of language will create a form of intelligence that meets or surpasses our own. ...
We use language to think, but that does not make language the same as thought."
The AI boom is based on a fundamental mistake | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/827820/large-language-models-ai-intelligence-neuroscience-problems --> unpaywalled: https://archive.is/yttjq

2025-11-11 14:33:19 CET

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I really don't know, but it does indeed look like some genAI shit.

2025-11-10 15:49:19 CET

"On the Limits of Swedish Marxism"
My colleague Jonathan Feldman has written some critical notes from the Marx25 conference in Stockholm, a few weeks ago:
https://globalteachin.com/uncategorized/on-the-limits-of-swedish-marxism

2025-10-10 14:13:26 CEST

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the caption is meant to be affirmative: written by an AI booster bro, and/or by a language model paraphrasing Nick Land (1994) + Timothy Morton (2010).
http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-oriented_ontology#Hyperobjects_.28Morton.29
https://tldr.nettime.org/system_nettime/media_attachments/files/115/349/799/186/659/777/original/03a464a7de5ef4fe.jpg

2025-10-10 08:02:21 CEST

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Bloomberg: "OpenAI, Nvidia Fuel $1 Trillion AI Market With Web of Circular Deals" https://archive.is/af7Fz
Bloomberg: "Why Circular AI Deals Among OpenAI, Nvidia, AMD Are Raising Eyebrows" https://archive.is/E7nGC
Grant Slatton, professional AI booster: "The Technocapital Hyperobject at the End of Time Begins to Draw Itself Together" https://x.com/GrantSlatton/status/1975982007776837737

2025-10-10 07:46:16 CEST

Circular Economy 2.0
https://archive.is/af7Fz
https://archive.is/E7nGC

2025-09-26 07:31:20 CEST

Vox Vulgaris:
Late Music for Early Humanoids, pt 2
1. Angelus Novus/Madre de deus
(Mount Liberation Unlimited remix)
10:42
2. Angelus Novus
(Vulgarians remix)
07:02
3. Dresden 1987
(Anders Enge remix)
05:15
released September 26, 2025
https://voxvulgaris.bandcamp.com/album/late-music-for-early-humanoids-pt-2
#medievalmusic #electronicmusic #medieval #acid #techno #postpunk #dub #earlymusic #latemusic

2025-04-03 12:15:58 CEST

What if Sweden's reponse to US tariffs would be to legalize The Pirate Bay again.
You know, that search engine which once caused the US to threaten Sweden with sanctions.
#thepiratebay #piracy #copyright

2024-12-03 11:43:16 CET

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This might be less paradoxical than it sounds. We have to factor in the generational divide which tends to limit the consumption opportunities of younger population. Then it's not that strange to be in favor of degrowth as a collective project, while individually acting within the constraints of the current system.
Particularly, the generational divide (on a global scale) is related to housing. But maybe older people living extravagantly does not count as "consumption"?

2024-11-17 12:01:38 CET

Swedish news media keeps presenting Sahra Wagenknecht as a "left-wing radical". Like today, when Dagens Nyheter published a rather long political portrait of Wagenknecht. Nothing wrong with the text in itself: while it (reasonably) labels BSW as a "left-wing party", it does not present it as "radical" but rather makes clear that most of Wagenknecht's politics is rather centrist.
Nevertheless, Dagens Nyheter added the word "left-wing radical" both in the title AND the lead paragraph.
This really demonstrates a kind of centrist logic, unable to think that pro-Putinism can occur not only at the political "extremes" but in the centre as well.
(This should really be an obvious insight if one just looks back 20 years in German history.)
#germany #bsw #putin #centrism

2024-10-18 19:29:44 CEST

"I wonder if I sometimes detect a note of puritanical moralism in the American #academisation of #rave? There seems to be a need to justify all this hedonism and excess pleasure as, in fact, an important technique of self-actualisation or community building or other meaning-making activity
...
That’s not to deny the possibility that raves can be zones of personal and political transformation, but I’m reminded of the wellness lingo that’s attached itself to the “psychedelic renaissance” in clinical and therapeutic settings.
...
Raves and trips exist in similar in-between zones, where two things can be true at once. Partying is political; partying changes nothing. Raving is reconstitutive; raving is self-destructive. Reconnect with your body; dissociate from your body."
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/black-sky-thinking/clubbing-dancefloor-utopia-raving-academia/