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traiken.bsky.social
Traiken
@traiken.bsky.social
580 followers 95 following 1.1K posts
Electronic rock at traiken.bandcamp.com, https://mirlo.space/traiken, and https://ko-fi.com/traiken
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traiken.bsky.social
Scene from The Simpsons Halloween episode where Clinton and Dole are replaced by aliens, and the Dole-alien is speaking to a crowd waving flags. Behind him are photoshop-inserted signs made by the Mamdani campaign font generator that read: "ABORTIONS FOR SOME" and "MINIATURE AMERICAN FLAGS FOR OTHERS"
November 10, 2025 at 3:03 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Seeing this number on YouTube is doing incredible psychic damage
Screenshot of a YouTube thumbnail for "skeleton dance," uploaded 20 years ago. That staggering number is underlined in red, emphasis mine.
October 31, 2025 at 9:00 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Screenshot of 2001 A Space Odyssey, wherein Dave Bowman is going through the star gate, bewildering lights reflecting on his space helmet, and he is freaking out at beholding the infinite.
October 25, 2025 at 2:02 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Screenshot of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, wherein Jar Jar Binks gestures to himself as he answers Queen Amidala, subtitled, "Mesa, Your Highness?"
October 19, 2025 at 1:22 AM
traiken.bsky.social
At this point I can fully believe that vampires a problem we have to contend with now
Screenshot of an email from the Red Cross of New Jersey with the subject line: "NJ Red Cross News: Strong Storm This Wknd, Fire Responses, & Vampires"
October 10, 2025 at 9:51 PM
traiken.bsky.social
Flabber looks like he’s from a Filmation version of Beetleborgs that premiered in 1973, look at this jolly motherfucker
A close-up of Flabber on the Beetleborgs lunchbox, drawn in a fashion that resembles animation of the 1970s, and not a live-action actor with prosthetics in the 1990s. He has blue skin, a pompadour, a Jay Leno chin, and a purple bellbottom suit with a cape and giant round belt buckle, like an Elvis impersonator that won a backyard wrestling championship.
October 10, 2025 at 12:44 PM
traiken.bsky.social
No one can tell you what Bonkwave is, but I can tell you what Bonkwave isn't: AI-generated. It's entirely human-made, and full of the mysterious, self-contradictory beauty that only genuine human art can have.

A Midsummer Bonk's Dream 1 releases today with a listening party at party.bonkwave.org
The cover of A Midsummer Bonk's Dream 1: black leaves across the center in front of a warm orange background, weathered to look like an old record. Below is information: Release Party 2025.9.11 UTC 19:00/BST 20:00/CET 21:00 PDT 12:00/EDT 15:00 AWST 03:00+1/AEST 05:00+1/NZST 07:00+1 https://party.bonkwave.org
September 11, 2025 at 11:05 AM
traiken.bsky.social
The first disc of A Midsummer Bonk's Dream releases in two days. Here's a preview of my track, just the drums and bass:
September 9, 2025 at 9:27 PM
traiken.bsky.social
I’m reading this in Morpheus’ voice
Side label on a jar of mayonnaise, which begins, “For over 100 years, Hellmann’s has been committed to using real, simple ingredients,” and continues on to extoll the company’s virtues and nutritional information. Same amount of time the humans have been fighting the machines in The Matrix, in case you don’t know the reference.
September 4, 2025 at 7:08 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Talk online is that the Department of Defense is doing night-flight training…

in suburban New Jersey, the most densely populated state in the country.

The fuck.
September 3, 2025 at 2:10 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Screenshots from Independence Day with edited captions. President Whitmore asks an alien, "What is it you want us to do?" The alien, identified as the CDC, responds, "Die."
August 28, 2025 at 3:35 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Fake Faux... is that a double negative? So is it real? Or somehow so fake that it does not meet the standards of "Faux?"
Screenshot of an online listing for a jacket, titled: "Women Fake Faux Blazer Leather Dress Suit Jacket Coat..." There's an image of a woman wearing a shiny black blazer, cropped at her mouth above and thighs below. She's holding a to-go coffee cup, which somehow is meant to help sell the idea of this exceedingly fake jacket?
August 19, 2025 at 6:16 PM
traiken.bsky.social
"OOF" by Edward Ruscha, a painting of the word OOF in yellow, taking up the width of a canvas, with a dark blue background. The photograph is of the painting on display in New York's Museum of Modern Art.
August 18, 2025 at 4:10 PM
traiken.bsky.social
There must be an easier way to do something like this, but I'm figuring it all out on my own, and y'know what? Taking the long way around is fine. A tedious effort, a hand-crafted sort of approach, is actually rewarding in its idiosyncratic uniqueness, ESPECIALLY in the face of AI slop.
August 14, 2025 at 5:22 PM
traiken.bsky.social
An example: I nibbled away at a black screen with my collection of homemade texture brushes over four days to make about 500 frames, just so I could get the kind of effect I had in my head and that it'd move the way I wanted it to.
August 14, 2025 at 1:22 PM
traiken.bsky.social
Moving stuff out of a ruined basement, I’m piecing together my dad’s inadvertent shrine to dead media: Beatles 8-tracks, Zip discs, even a software CD for the CueCat
An arrangement of items, all old, failed, and/or dead media. There’s a Zip disc: a larger kind of floppy disc that held 100 megabytes. It’s between a tin for an AOL CD and a Windows 95 CD. They’re on top of an audio cassette and a 3 1/2” floppy disc. On top of all that is the software CD for the CueCat: a barcode reader peripheral for computers in the late 90s that did not catch on at all. Beside this all is a stack of three Beatles 8-track tapes: a format that has existed as a punchline of failed media far longer than they were ever produced. The tapes are all compilations; 8-tracks were infamous for fucking up album sequencing, even cutting a song in half, requiring you to flip the tape before hearing the other half of it.
August 12, 2025 at 3:42 PM
traiken.bsky.social
With alt text.
An all-Lego recreation of the scene from David Lynch's Dune (1984) where the guild navigators enter a room. There are regular-sized Lego minifigs, in all-black spacesuits (they're spacesuits because they have the classic "spaceship orbiting a planet" logo from Lego space sets), flanking a large tank with a comically huge Lego head, its placid default smiley face perfectly juxtaposing the eerie size. This fits the relative scale of the Third Stage Navigator as depicted in Lynch's film.
July 23, 2025 at 8:52 PM
traiken.bsky.social
Not exactly an N95, but at least they were ahead of the curve.
The cover of Look magazine from August 3rd, 1937. The largest image is a colorized photograph of a woman and man, both wearing tight-fitting surgical masks, pressing their masked faces up against each other. It's captioned: "GERMLESS KISS--See Pages 40 and 41." Along the right side of the cover are four smaller black-and-white photographs. The first one is titled "FIGHTING ARTIST" and shows a man in a bow tie and tuxedo collar. The second one is "BABIES WANTED," showing two women looking at a baby that the woman on the right is holding. The third is "FUNNY CUSTOM," and shows a man puffing out his cheeks with a stern expression. The last is "GOODBYE FRECKLES," which shows a person with unnerving medical apparatuses in their eyes, mouth, and ears. There are metal tubes connected to the eye and ear coverings, and the mouth one is more like a giant tongue depressor holding this poor person's mouth open.
July 17, 2025 at 10:15 PM
traiken.bsky.social
Simpsons screenshot. Grandpa Simpson is seen eating peas out of a can in a black and white photo, held by a hitman, who remarks, "Ah, Del Monte... enjoy them, old man. They will be your last."
July 4, 2025 at 10:22 PM
traiken.bsky.social
This doesn’t tell me how many hobos to use
Photo of an old recipe book, specifically the recipe for “Hobo Stew.” It calls for: 2 (8 oz.) cans tomato sauce, any brand; 1 lb. hamburger; 2 green peppers; 2 onions; 1 large can crushed tomatoes; and 2 c. white salt and pepper.
June 29, 2025 at 10:02 PM
traiken.bsky.social
A closeup of a Putty from the quoted lunchbox photo, showcasing its inexplicable cool-guy pointing gesture. This screenshot is juxtaposed with an old photo of a shirtless Erik Estrada, also doing the cool-guy pointing gesture, with photoshopped hearts in the background and the added text, "Don't you go changin'!" It's low-quality and pixelated, clearly an attempt at internet humor circa 2007.
June 24, 2025 at 2:02 PM
traiken.bsky.social
Sounds like a choice between 90s juices
May 28, 2025 at 2:16 AM
traiken.bsky.social
Reposted with alt text.
Screenshot of two posts by mahgck. They say: "you have to outlive donald trump," "imagine how funny the internet will be on the day he dies."
May 10, 2025 at 7:22 PM
traiken.bsky.social
Then there was that time when Alexander came as a non-posable accessory, surely as a form of commentary on his under-utilization by the writers
Packaged action figure of "Sheriff Worf," which is Worf from his holodeck Wild West adventure in "Fistful of Datas." He's wearing a cowboy hat, yellow scarf, red shirt, brown vest and pants, and has a sheriff's badge. He's packaged with two brown revolver pistols and a uniformly brown Alexander, his son. Alexander does not have any points of articulation, and is off to the side with the rest of the brown accessories.
March 23, 2025 at 6:28 PM
traiken.bsky.social
“Luigi’s New York Style” has a different ring to it now, huh
Flyer for a pizzeria called “Luigi’s New York Style Pizza.”
January 14, 2025 at 11:56 PM