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May 7, 2026

The B-Side

The tracks we didn't expect to hear

Every record has two sides. The A-side is the hit—the thing everyone's supposed to care about. The B-side is stranger, quieter, sometimes better.

Today's news is full of B-sides. The war that might be ending. The careers being abandoned. The public figures fading. The small businesses closing while tech promises the next generation.

We keep flipping the record, hoping for a different song.

7-inch / bonustrack by TOCA ME
Diplomacy

US and Iran closing in on agreement to end war

After weeks of escalation, airstrikes, and Fed anxiety—suddenly, maybe, an ending. Not with a bang but with negotiators in back rooms. The bonus track nobody saw coming. Sometimes the B-side is where you find the resolution.

7-inch / bonustrack

by TOCA ME

"1500 x 1700 gif - created 11 March 2026 by TOCA ME / TI"

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The Beauty in the Ordinary by Dana Svetliza
Culture

China's youth are ditching the rat race

They're calling it "lying flat," "letting it rot"—young people refusing to chase the promotions, the apartments, the lives their parents scripted for them. State media blames foreign influence. But maybe they just flipped the record and found a song they liked better.

The Beauty in the Ordinary

by Dana Svetliza

"Sometimes we worry about so many things beyond our reality that we forget who we are, where we come from, and who we have beside us."

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Digital Decomposition by Alex May
Politics

Giuliani out of ICU, remains hospitalized with pneumonia

America's Mayor. 9/11's symbol of resolve. Now: critical condition, ICU, pneumonia, lawyers. The B-side of a career is playing, and we're all just watching the depth information deteriorate frame by frame.

Digital Decomposition (2017)

by Alex May

"This unsettling interactive work was never shown publicly... To get these results, I had to move very slow."

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Connecting deeper by guruguruhyena
Economy

"I am trying to stay alive." Jobs at mom-and-pop shops are disappearing

The hardware store, the corner deli, the place that knew your name. Closing, closing, closed. Meanwhile, somewhere, someone is deploying a testnet for the next generation. The future keeps arriving without asking if we're ready.

Connecting deeper

by guruguruhyena

"deploy etherlink testnet for next generation..."

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DROPSHOT by Kyle Flemmer
Technology

The Pentagon keeps promising to follow the law when using AI, but what are the limits?

We let the machine play the game. We corrupted the signal. We recomposed it into something we didn't quite recognize. Now we're asking: wait, what are the rules? The game has always been glitched. We're just noticing the artifacts now.

DROPSHOT

by Kyle Flemmer

"Screen recording of Tennis (1985) for Nintendo Entertainment System glitched with Real-Time Corruptor and recomposed in Aseprite."

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Flip the record

The A-side is what they want you to hear. The war. The grind. The decline. The disruption.

The B-side is where people actually live. Finding peace. Opting out. Moving slow. Staying alive. Playing glitched games with corrupted rules.

Sometimes the bonus track is the only one worth listening to.

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