Tag: UATV

JD vs VD

Vox Day is the Lead Editor of Castalia House and the author of the Sigma Game blog. He has been nominated for 7 Hugo Awards and is an Award-winning Cruelty Artist. In this terrifyingly erudite podcast, the publisher, polymath and provocateur tries to persuade James that AI isn’t totally evil. Also on the menu: what’s really happening with the Iran thing; comic books; why Milo and Owen Benjamin get more hate than Vox; composing film scores; and why James’s ‘we’re all going to die soon’ pension plan may not work.

The two-hour interview is available on the Delingpod, as well as on UATV for the subscribers.

DISCUSS ON SG

Abandon the Platforms

YouTube has adopted a strategy of slow strangulation of popular channels of which it does not approve.

YouTuber Jeremy Hambly, known as The Quartering, has revealed the devastating impact YouTube’s algorithm manipulation is having on his channel, exposing a coordinated soft censorship campaign targeting creators who challenge progressive narratives. His breakdown of the platform’s systematic suppression demonstrates how Big Tech companies are weaponizing their algorithms to silence dissenting voices without the transparency of outright bans.

“I don’t know if many of you have noticed, but I’ve been a lot more shifty and weird breathing lately,” Hambly admitted in his recent video. “And it’s because I’m having near-daily anxiety. There’s been something going on with my YouTube channel over the past couple of weeks that I have been spending almost every single night trying to figure out.”

The numbers tell a stark story of algorithmic manipulation. Hambly explained how “over the past several weeks I have noticed videos that used to get 50, 60, 70, 80,000 views were starting to get 10,000 views, 15,000 views.” This dramatic drop isn’t due to content quality or audience interest – it’s the result of YouTube’s deliberate throttling of channels that don’t align with the platform’s ideological preferences.

Even more concerning is the subscriber hemorrhaging Hambly has experienced. “For the first time in three or four years, I have started losing a lot of subscribers. Hundreds, thousands a day,” he revealed. This pattern suggests YouTube isn’t just limiting video reach but actively manipulating subscription feeds and notifications to starve channels of their established audiences.

The financial impact has been severe enough to threaten Hambly’s entire operation. “These numbers are if it continued like this past these two weeks, which it has been, I would have to fire everybody that works for me. Everybody,” he explained. This reveals YouTube’s soft censorship strategy – rather than creating martyrs through outright bans, they slowly strangle channels economically until creators are forced to change their content or abandon the platform entirely.

We’re now laying the foundation for the 4th Stage of UATV, which will be the best, strongest, and most stable yet. I alluded to a few of our plans for the next stage in last night’s Darkstream, but you’ll see the new features and content being added gradually over the summer.

And in the meantime, be sure to tune into the Big Bear and Dark Lord show tonight at 7 PM Eastern.

DISCUSS ON SG

Change of Plans

Big Bear and the Dark Lord won’t be doing their usual Monday night stream tonight due to a scheduling conflict. Instead, we’ll be streaming live Tuesday night on UATV at 6 PM Central.

Don’t forget to a) subscribe to UATV and b) get on the new payment system!

DISCUSS ON SG

Get Your UATV On

I’m on with Big Bear tonight. And you can also listen/download Vibe Patrol’s latest single, COSMIC TRIGGER (Fly Your Freak Flag), which was released today and will be higher quality than you’ll get from iTunes, Spotify, or YouTube, where the new track is also available.

Paywalls and Superchats are coming soon, so if you are a former subscriber, now is a good time to get on board with the new payment system.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Fatal Kiss

I’ve been working a bit on the next Soulsigma album, which is going to be entitled BYRONICS and will consist entirely of songs based on the poetry of George Gordon Byron, better known as Lord Byron. And while I’m not playing any of the album songs publicly or putting them up on UATV now, I have been playing a few of the experiments that didn’t make the cut on the Darkstream.

THE FATAL KISS is a song based on EUTHANASIA, which is one of Byron’s less-known, but more intense poems. It is mordant, obviously, but for some reason, it reminds me of Plato and The Death of Socrates, in which the philosopher wonders why anyone should fear something akin to the best night of sleep one has ever known.

Then lonely be my latest hour,
Without regret, without a groan;
For thousands Death hath ceased to lower,
And pain been transient or unknown.
“Aye but to die, and go,” alas!
Where all have gone, and all must go!
To be the nothing that I was
Ere born to life and living woe!
Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o’er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
‘Tis something better not to be.

Now that is a wordsmith! In any event, a UATV subscriber requested this one be added to what is now a 46-song music library available for listening and downloading to subscribers.

DISCUSS ON SG

Praise for UATV

I’m 49 and Australian. Without any shadow of doubt, this singular Owen and Vox conversation was more intellectually charged than anything our local media had thrown up in my entire lifetime.

High praise indeed. If you haven’t resubscribed yet, this is the time to do so, unless you’re outside the USA, in which case you’ll need to wait two more weeks. My current streaming schedule:

  • Monday: Big Bear Stream with Owen
  • Wednesday: Darkstream
  • Thursday: Arkhaven Nights with JDA
  • Friday/Saturday: Darkstream

I plan to keep to this schedule over the summer as we work to rebuild the subscriber base. And I haven’t forgotten about the Taiwan Invasion analysis; I will give everyone a heads-up before I stream that one.

DISCUSS ON SG

Go With the Flow

On last night’s Darkstream I provided some examples of what is possible with the new Suno 4.5 system. It’s definitely an improvement, especially in terms of vocal quality and overall audio quality, and it does a much better job of sticking to the lyrics. Probably the most useful change is that the initial song limit is now 8 minutes, which means that it won’t keep cropping fully-outlined songs short and requiring an extension, although it still can’t do short extensions to simply end a song very well and the Replace Section editor appears to have its selection timing off by a few microseconds.

What impressed me most was the way it finally let me finish SIDDHARTHA in the way I wanted, as no amount of previous extensions and remasterings using 3.0, 3.5, or 4.0 succeeded in producing what I was looking to do. However, 4.5 allowed me to turn out a beautiful five-minute song that combines David Sylvian and Enigma with Herman Hesse, and it turned out so well that I intend to construct a full album around it once I finish the Byronics project this summer. But in the meantime, UATV subscribers can listen to it in higher-quality than any of the audio streaming services provide.

Speaking of UATV subscriptions, this is the right time to get on board with the new subscription-and-payment system if you haven’t started the process yet. I’ve also got the Darkstream up-to-date, and we’ll get Arkhaven Nights caught up sometime next week.

DISCUSS ON SG