I spent more time than usual mixing and mastering my next song, but I hit the big upload button and now I can finally stop worrying about it. 😮💨
J Herskowitz
@jherskowitz.com
▶️ Advising + Tinkering on Parachord & Achordion 🎸 as Quarantine Angst ⏮️ Product @ SeatGeek, Spotify, Tomahawk, LimeWire, AOL music, DigiScents, GameShark & some other stuff 🪹 Brooklyn, NY https://achordion.xyz/user/jherskowitz
This week I just so happened to build leava.xyz - a little app to help people in my neighborhood easily contact each other & ask to move unattended double-parked cars that may have blocked them in. I didn’t even know about this… timing is everything? www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/n...
The New York City Parking Sticker of Shame Is Back (Gift Article)
After 14 years, the city has returned to slapping bright stickers on cars that do not move for street sweepers.
nytimes.com
I decided to build it. It's currently totally anonymous (bi-directionally) with no user accounts. Owner mints QR codes, prints them out an sticks them in their window (or on their bike, boat, or other of their things that sit in public spaces). Sender scans QR code and sends message. </scene>
J Herskowitz@jherskowitz.com · 2mo agoIdea: simple anonymous QR driven communication channel so that people "leave a note" on your car that you actually get immediately. "Can you move your car?" "You left your lights on." "Sorry, I hit your car here's my info..." Intention is to be helpful but too easy to be abused by bad people?
Getting back to it...
Parachord@parachord.bsky.social · last wk.I've opened up more alpha slots for the mobile apps. Android: Open to anyone 1. join the Parachord-Testers group (groups.google.com/g/parachord-...) 2. opt in to testing first, then the Play listing (play.google.com/store/apps/d...) iOS: First come/first in 1. testflight.apple.com/join/zXvg5zxK
I'm planning on bringing my in-house expert (my Classics major post-grad son) to my screening of The Odyssey so he can dumb it down for me afterwards.
I've take a couple of well-deserved (if I do say so my damn self) weeks off from @parachord.bsky.social and Achordion work - but it's so f'in hot today I guess it may be time to get back to it.
It's only been out a few days, so I guess I should still be promoting my new song. I like it, particularly the back half of it. If you have a few minutes to spare, maybe you will too? open.spotify.com/track/4CUCN7...
Coney Island
Quarantine Angst · Coney Island · Song · 2026
open.spotify.com
Nothing like releasing a new song to smoke out some Achordion bugs in how it deals with tracks that still have incomplete identifier propogation (ISRC, MBID).
New song dropped today. If you are looking for a sort of cinematic retro indie rock instrumental (at this point I'm just sort of throwing words together) vibes maybe give it a quick listen from wherever you get your music? achordion.xyz/release-grou...
Coney Island — Quarantine Angst
Coney Island (2026) by Quarantine Angst on Achordion. Play any track on Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, or any other service you use.
achordion.xyz
A couple of weeks ago I asked Spectrum to send me an upgraded modem. A new one showed up a couple of days later, but now they continue to send me new ones every couple of weeks since (3 so far). Anyone need a modern?
I'm the exact right age that it took me a minute to realize this wasn't right.
lord of the slimes@xrae.bsky.social · last mo.gumby was always saying this
Guys, it had a hell of a run but it's time to put the brand out to pasture.
Breaking: The Supreme Court has - in addition to further attacking trans kids just trying to be kids - has also just empowered middle school and high school gym teachers to "verify" your children are cis-girls.
A decade ago: fan armies trying to artificially drive their favorite artist to the top of the Spotify Charts forces a change to the charting algorithm A week ago: fan armies trying to artificially drive their favorite artist to the top of the Last.fm Charts forces a change to the charting algorithm
Gotta be honest, I'm really ready to be done with this. Not fun.
Parachord@parachord.bsky.social · 2mo agoWell, I put it off long enough but it's time to invest in a real N-way multi-primary sync engine that can keep playlists updated across multiple services. I think it should be able to power cross-service collaborative playlists too.
Tried to make it more obvious that those were streaming links in the flyout. The more people scrobble to ListenBrainz and the more @para.chord users, the more external links that show up. Because your music community should be bigger than your music service silo.
Check out this AI dataset search engine from @theatlantic where you can search for artists and see which of their songs are in various training datasets. www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-...
AI Watchdog - The Atlantic
The Atlantic's ongoing investigation of the books, videos, and other media used by the world's most powerful tech companies to train their AI models.
theatlantic.com
Idea: simple anonymous QR driven communication channel so that people "leave a note" on your car that you actually get immediately. "Can you move your car?" "You left your lights on." "Sorry, I hit your car here's my info..." Intention is to be helpful but too easy to be abused by bad people?
Some firsts today: played one on my songs live, with a full band, at a real venue, with people in the audience (at a local Guitarmaggedon). It definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I'm happy I did it. I may even do it again some time.
TIL some medications have listed side effect of "emotional incontinence". So, there is a new phrase I will be working into my everyday conversations from now on.
Yesterday I started hashing out on an idea for a new app (not music related), and I'm actually pretty worried that I may start working on it.
Bot crawlers (presumably for AI training) coming from Alibaba data centers causing my monthly Achordion hosting costs to triple is not something I was expecting. Hopefully I've new slowed them down, but this is one of the reasons why we can't have nice things.
I've been busy with a bunch of other stuff lately, but this one is finally starting to come together. I feel like I'm in a bit of a Big '80s guitar thing right now, but maybe you all hear something different? 🔊
Huge shout-out to the people that take a second to just send a "thanks for your work" or "I'm a fan". Those carry a massively outsized impact - and just makes the world feel a little nicer at the same time. ❤️
I've spent a lot of time in the car recently — so even though no one else asked for it this is what you get. (Yes, I emdash on purpose to try and convince people I'm not real.)
Parachord@parachord.bsky.social · 2mo agoA new Android build with a full-featured Android Auto support is now available. Link on parachord.com homepage.
LinkedIn: "5 people who work at Apple have viewed your profile recently" Thanks, but what are they *saying* about me?