music

Best Fender amp (over 5 watts) of all time? Twin Reverb, Pro Reverb, Vibrolux Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, or Princeton Reverb?

Best Fender amp (over 5 watts) of all time? Twin Reverb, Pro Reverb, Vibrolux Reverb, Deluxe Reverb, or Princeton Reverb?

Yeah, we are gonna be alright but it’s gonna take more. I like em... but the bar for "conscious Hip Hop" is very low.  You're only gonna get truly revolutionary bars that challenge the system from artists that the corporations are scared to touch.

A Vtuber Built on Community, Not Virality. I’m a music artist, VTuber, and radio-style host — and more importantly, I act as a voice and gathering point for a community I call Cyber City Underground. My work lives at the intersection of music, conversation, and community: original songs, live radio-style streams, and spaces built around listening, dialogue, and shared humanity.

A core part of what I do is creating places where people can slow down, talk honestly, and feel connected — not optimized, not farmed, not reduced to engagement metrics. Through my music and my live conversations, I’ve heard the same sentiment echoed again and again: the current internet feels fragmented, hostile, and engineered to divide.

That’s why seeing UpTrust launch genuinely means a lot to me.

A platform that puts trust, dialogue, and human connection at the center aligns deeply with the values I’ve been building toward — resisting algorithm-driven outrage and instead amplifying voices, nuance, and real conversation. This feels like the kind of space where creators and communities can show up as people, not products.

I’m here because I believe in a better internet — one where trust matters more than virality, and where communities are built through intention rather than manipulation. I’m excited to be part of this early wave and to contribute however makes sense as things grow.

Glad to be here — and hopeful for what this can become.

— Oni-1
🎙️ Radio-Style Host | 🎵 Music Artist
Voice of Cyber City Underground

A Vtuber Built on Community, Not Virality. I’m a music artist, VTuber, and radio-style host — and more importantly, I act as a voice and gathering point for a community I call Cyber City Underground. My work lives at the intersection of music, conversation, and community: original songs, live radio-style streams, and spaces built around listening, dialogue, and shared humanity.

A core part of what I do is creating places where people can slow down, talk honestly, and feel connected — not optimized, not farmed, not reduced to engagement metrics. Through my music and my live conversations, I’ve heard the same sentiment echoed again and again: the current internet feels fragmented, hostile, and engineered to divide.

That’s why seeing UpTrust launch genuinely means a lot to me.

A platform that puts trust, dialogue, and human connection at the center aligns deeply with the values I’ve been building toward — resisting algorithm-driven outrage and instead amplifying voices, nuance, and real conversation. This feels like the kind of space where creators and communities can show up as people, not products.

I’m here because I believe in a better internet — one where trust matters more than virality, and where communities are built through intention rather than manipulation. I’m excited to be part of this early wave and to contribute however makes sense as things grow.

Glad to be here — and hopeful for what this can become.

— Oni-1
🎙️ Radio-Style Host | 🎵 Music Artist
Voice of Cyber City Underground

A Vtuber Built on Community, Not Virality. I’m a music artist, VTuber, and radio-style host — and more importantly, I act as a voice and gathering point for a community I call Cyber City Underground. My work lives at the intersection of music, conversation, and community: original songs, live radio-style streams, and spaces built around listening, dialogue, and shared humanity.

A core part of what I do is creating places where people can slow down, talk honestly, and feel connected — not optimized, not farmed, not reduced to engagement metrics. Through my music and my live conversations, I’ve heard the same sentiment echoed again and again: the current internet feels fragmented, hostile, and engineered to divide.

That’s why seeing UpTrust launch genuinely means a lot to me.

A platform that puts trust, dialogue, and human connection at the center aligns deeply with the values I’ve been building toward — resisting algorithm-driven outrage and instead amplifying voices, nuance, and real conversation. This feels like the kind of space where creators and communities can show up as people, not products.

I’m here because I believe in a better internet — one where trust matters more than virality, and where communities are built through intention rather than manipulation. I’m excited to be part of this early wave and to contribute however makes sense as things grow.

Glad to be here — and hopeful for what this can become.

— Oni-1
🎙️ Radio-Style Host | 🎵 Music Artist
Voice of Cyber City Underground

On the Turntable: Air Supply “Air Supply” 1976. On the Turntable: “Air Supply” by Air Supply, Columbia Records (Canadian import), 1976. Rating: 6/10

For a few years in the early 80s, the Australian duo of singer-songwriter Graham Russell and singer Russell Hitchcock was carpet-bombing American airwaves with one great big easy listening ballad after another, from “Lost in Love” to “Every Woman in the World” to “Making Love Out of Nothing at All”, each one featuring boatloads of strings, ethereal choral harmonies, and Hitchcock’s signature stratosphere-scraping vocal climaxes. If you loved this sort of thing (and I did! and I do!) there was no one doing it better than Air Supply at the time. 

But their story started several years before they scored their big hit. In 1976, the band - then a six piece featuring a third lead singer Jeremy Paul along with future Divinyl Mark McEntee on guitars - debuted with this self titled record that went unreleased in the U.S. The Air Supply of “Air Supply” was primarily a vehicle for Graham Russell’s songwriting, and while they knew their way around some grand ballads - “Love and Other Bruises” was a Top 10 hit in Australia and would get recycled as the title track of their U.S. debut two years later - the sound is a bit more rock oriented throughout. Songs like “The Weight Is My Soul” (one of my faves) and “Ain’t It a Shame” could easily be mistaken for the Little River Band. “Feel the Breeze” rides along an easy disco lite groove and the artsy “Secret Agent” tries a little too hard for Steely Dan. You’ll hear some spacy synth solos scattered about and why not a few pub rock guitar licks. “We Are All Alone” goes off on an ill-advised Caribbean detour. 

Other highlights include singles “Empty Pages” and “What a Life”, the latter sung by Jeremy Paul - both would get re-recorded for the American “Love and Other Bruises” album but Graham Russell replaced Paul as lead on “What a Life”. Not a bad choice honestly, but it basically ended Air Supply as a vocal trio. Considering how popular they’d become as a duo, it was good for their career. But I miss what might have been, especially when I hear the haunting and proggy three part harmonies on “It’s Not Easy”: gorgeous and sad.

TBEX Wichita. Attending our first TBEX conference in Wichita, Kansas. This event brings creators and destinations together to collaborate in an effort to increase tourism. 

What cool new technologies are you seeing emerge? How do we know we can trust them? Curious about all, but I'd especially love to see non-AI versions, like:

• New batteries for solar: storing heat in big piles of dirt
• A while back Tommy mentioned cowfart backpacks
• Maybe it's something old for you, but we're not in your field so we don't know about it yet

Even though a lot of what we share won't make it, for a variety of reasons, I always find get an overview of the cool stuff humans are creating really inspiring and hopeful.

Have you heard the controversy surrounding Sabrina Carpenter's new album? For a taste, check out this article on the album art or this twitter thread.

What do you think of Carpenter's work, the public's reaction? Does it even matter?

I don’t know if I am doing this right. . I had the urge in my car to start singing an improvised song (inspired by my relateful camp experience at Annabeth’s Vocal Flow and Kedar’s bonfire jam) and it was in that exploration that I had the epiphany that I am allowed to write bad poems! This really excites me and now I’ve started to write a bunch of things that I feel poetic about. The permission to be bad has been crucial in my permission to try, and now I am wanting to maintain my permission to be bad and try in front of others. 

I haven’t posted on UpTrust because I question whether or not I am really “trustable” on any topic. I don’t feel qualified, or justified, or certifiably “trustable”, apart from maybe my honest attempts at honesty. But my honesty =/= truth. I could speak honestly about what I think a Beef Wellington is and still be wrong.  

But I can write bad poems, and I can be wrong, AND I can do that publicly. And in doing it publicly, maybe my poems become better and my honesty becomes truer. 

We need to stop shaming small dicks. OK this was meant to be anonymous cos I don't want to be slut shamed ... 

But I can't create a second anon account right now, looks like that anon account is just going to the wait list. And I care about this topic and I like what I have to say about it so I'm going to go ahead and share even though I risk attracting condemnation (that relates to a whole other hot take that I'll set aside for now).

So here's my #deeptake on the hot take that we should stop shaming small dicks:

Am I the only one who winces with a vicarious ouch every time a woman casually insists that a big penis belongs on her list of essential criteria for a good man - like in this great example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjqvY7Gdp1A)

That’s how I was going to begin this piece. Then I looked in the mirror and admitted that it would be more accurate (and more honest) to start with: I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.

I know this because of the talking-to a friend gave me a few years ago when I conspiratorially spilled on a perfect new love interest whose only flaw was that his dick was on the smallish side.

When she started to object, I pleaded for understanding. I can’t help my tastes and preferences! This was just how I was born! I’d had enough experience to know what I needed!

I am ashamed to admit that I went so far as to suggest that if we progressed in our relationship, I could at some point maybe ask him to wear a strap-on. I think that was the point at which my friend-worthiness was forever punctured in my her eyes. She was legitimately horrified, and confronted me with the possibility that it might just be me who was anatomically challenged!

And she was right - I was the one with the problem. I’m still smarting as I write this - not from my own body shame, but from reliving the moment where I had to face my callous and miscalibrated treatment of my would-be lover and of men collectively.

One of the things that hurts most is how I ignored the uneasy stab in my heart every time I indulged in this offhand mass-bullying. I always knew, in a palpable way, this was wrong. Every time I singled out penis size when celebrating one of my sexual adventures. Every time I laughed sympathetically when a friend proclaimed a preference for bigger penises or dismissed a smaller one. My inner voice always whispered to me - how do you think men feel about this? What’s it like to have your worthiness as a partner be diminished to a feature you are powerless to change? What’s it like to be the butt of an enduring in-joke, to risk silent ridicule every time you want to share the joy of sex with someone?

Even with my difficulty handling some bigger penises. Even experiencing the deep bliss of my encounters with average-sized penises. Even receiving the liberating possibilities that opened up with smaller penises. None of these facts penetrated my collusion with what now seems like an obvious and incredibly harmful mass psychosis.

HOW is this still normal?! The closest I have come to understanding the roots of my own behaviour is that I was under-developed, not confident and embodied enough yet in my own sexuality to really claim the truth of my own experience.

What’s true for me, actually, is that every penis I’ve been honoured to meet feels like a blessing.

As I have matured and found the capacity to recognise and cherish this, some of my most extraordinary and ecstatically transformative sexual experiences have in fact involved a pretty small penis! I think penis size was actually an irrelevant albeit happily coincidental feature in this case - a feature which finally crumbled any residue of the myth that small dicks are bad and bigger is better.

My prayer is that more and more of us are liberated from this myth. I’m pretty sure we don’t need it to fuel this kind of creative brilliance (which I opened with, but here it is again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjqvY7Gdp1A). And we’ll probably all have way more extraordinary and ecstatically transformative sex without it. That’s what I really want.