Robbie Gennet

Writer of words and music, imagineer, music educator, piano enthusiast, artist, bodyboarder and orchard grower, among other things. Planning a wild 2023!

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Your kid's piano teacher was reshaping their brain. A Harvard-led team tracked children from age 6 to 9 and found that kids who practiced an instrument at least 2.5 hours a week grew the corpus callosum (the cable connecting the left and right halves of the brain) by about 25% in the region that handles movement planning. Kids who practiced less or quit showed zero growth there.

USC ran a separate study starting in 2012 that followed children from low-income LA neighborhoods. One group learned violin through the LA Philharmonic's youth orchestra program. A second did soccer. A third had no structured after-school program. Two years in, only the music group showed brain changes: stronger white-matter connectivity, faster maturation of auditory processing, and greater activation in networks involved in decision-making and impulse control. The soccer and no-program groups looked the same on brain scans.

A randomized trial at the University of Toronto tested 144 six-year-olds assigned to keyboard lessons, voice lessons, drama, or nothing for a full school year. The music kids gained about 7 IQ points on average. Drama and no-lessons kids gained 4-5. That roughly 3-point gap showed up across every subtest, including reading and math.

Now the language side. Bilingual kids outperform monolingual kids on task-switching tests (jumping between different sets of rules quickly), and it holds regardless of which second language they speak. Brain scans of nearly 1,300 children and young adults from a 2021 Georgetown and University of Reading study showed that bilinguals kept more grey matter (the layer where the brain's processing cells live) as they grew up than kids who spoke one language.

The long game is where this gets serious. A 2025 Monash University study of 10,893 Australians over 70 found that people who regularly played an instrument had 35% lower odds of developing dementia. Bilingualism shows an even sharper effect. Studies across India, Canada, and the US consistently find that bilingual adults develop dementia symptoms 4 to 5 years later than monolingual adults. A 2024 door-to-door survey of 1,234 people over 60 in Bengaluru, India, found dementia in 4.9% of monolinguals and just 0.4% of bilinguals.

Both piano and a second language work through a similar mechanism. They force the brain to manage competing systems at once, left hand versus right hand, one language versus another. That constant switching strengthens the frontal regions responsible for planning, focus, and filtering distractions, building what neurologists call cognitive reserve: a buffer that lets the brain keep working even as age-related damage accumulates.

Those parents running their kids between piano on Tuesdays and Mandarin on Thursdays were basically running a two-front neuroplasticity program without knowing it.

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@heynavtoor @threadreaderapp unroll

[Matt Shumer @mattshumer_]

https://t.co/ivXRKXJvQg

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

I’m thrilled to announce that my new book, The Red Sphere, is now available for pre-order! The Red Sphere is an illustrated lyric book created in collaboration with acclaimed visual artist Skot Olson. Here’s the link to pre-order: https://t.co/VqORAK6ngG
@innovative_ink_ #NewBook

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

Happy Father’s Day to this awesome Dad~ your daughter is lucky to have you.

[Wholesome Side of 𝕏 @itsme_urstruly]

This is one of the best poems I've ever heard. Father of the year! 👏👏

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@anarchy_build @threadreaderapp unroll please

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@Spotify Find me on @AppleMusic too:

https://t.co/Uoi7GFdASe

#newartist #newmusic #newsong #newalbum

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

My new #interview with @VoyageLAmag just came out~ I appreciate the coverage, definitely a lot to share! Thanks for having me~ if you're just joining the program, my new music is widely available wherever you conveniently stream music. Go for it~ dare ya!
https://t.co/2wWYNt2O00

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

Link up @spotify https://t.co/WE14LCKhJO

#newartist #newmusic #newsong #newalbum

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@wmhuo168 @threadreaderapp unroll

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

I know @phish does what they want and probably doesn’t take requests BUT if there’s a chance @treyanastasio @mike_gordon @pagemcconnell @TheJonFishman sees this, bringing my kids to @HollywoodBowl Sunday and they’re frothing for Fee! Been a while since you played it, so maybe? 😃

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@unusual_whales Volatility is the new growth.

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

Thanks @skopemag for spreading the word!

[skopemag @skopemag]

Multitalented Musician Robbie Gennet Breaks Down More Barriers In Latest Album Release, Golden Wings, Featuring His Latest Single “Choices”

https://t.co/qCWfM4AGTs

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@johnrushx @threadreaderapp unroll

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@IterIntellectus @threadreaderapp unroll

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@jaynitx @threadreaderapp unroll

[Robbie Gennet @RobbieGennet]

@DrNeilStone Ignorance and hypocrisy