Legendary recording engineer Steve Albini has died at age 61 of a heart attack. If you know, you know. And if so, you probably came of age in the 1990s, when few truly understood The Problem With Music. For years he was known as much for being an “irascible gadfly” (a term I used for him in Hearts on Fire) as he was his devotion to pure live sound on re…

I enjoyed “Toy Story 4,” though I’m not terribly happy they made it. That may sound strange, but here’s why: “Toy Story 3” was a very conscious end to the animated franchise. In it the child Andy, now all grown into a young man, gave away his toys to little Bonnie, and quite literally rode off into the sunset. Cowboy Woody (voice of Tom Hanks), Buzz (Tim Allen) and the rest of the toys, who come to life when humans aren’t around, had completed their life’s journey and started anew.

Google is betting its future on AI. First came Bard — now called Gemini, which competes with ChatGPT. Google also launched an intriguing AI-powered notebook tool called NotebookLM, which I’ll write about soon. Three of Google’s newest free AI tools, part of the AI Test Kitchen, let you generate images, text and music. They’re available so far in the USA, Kenya, New Zealand, and Australia. Read on for a summary of MusicFX, ImageFX and TextFX.

I really love Doug Wilson. He’s a brilliant writer. I’ve posted his videos a few times here, but now, he’s interviewing with Tucker. This is just eight minutes of it, which means the rest will be at TuckerCarlson.com. His Youtube is called Blog & MaBlog. Here is the full episode: ncG1vNJzZmirkai1or%2FTqKWeZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe9OumqSdomLBorjKrGStp12ZvLazjLCgpaufow%3D%3D

It’s far from the first time I’ve featured country on This Week In Jams, but this is definitely the most country 🤠 TWIJ 🎸has ever country’d 🍻 on one playlist 🔥 Miranda Lambert, Ashley McBryde, Maren Morris, Eric Church, the Chicks, Chris Stapleton, Lainey Wilson, Brent Cobb, John Prine, Loretta Lynn, and more! Apple Music | TIDAL I’ve been listening to this playlist for the last four days and it’s way more than a weekend party playlist (though the first half definitely does that job well).