Friday, December 31, 2021
For this Friday Night Video, Spectres comes your way with some powerful, muscular post-punk. At first, I thought this was a fan-made video with the traditional fuzzy retro found footage. It wasn’t until the band was shown in the same style that I realized it was a legit official video for the song. This one has been in heavy rotation as part of my The Noise That I Loved Best 2021 playlist.
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Matt Birchler writes in Photography Needs to be Fun about how the new Glass photography network feels a bit too stilted and more like Unsplash than Instagram. Meanwhile, Twitter and instagram are teeming with pros, amateurs, and everyone else, and they’re just more rich photography experiences for me. Social networks have cultures that form around them, and my feeling is that the culture in Glass is way too buttoned up and monolithic.
Friday, December 24, 2021
This is definitely the most playful music video I've seen in some time. You have Hazel English, mostly dressed like a school girl from a private prep school, goofing around in fountains, reading in the grass, and well, attending school. The song exudes a twee charm with a suitable theme about crushing on someone and following them around like a puppy dog. I love the urgency in the guitar solo that closes out the song.
Thursday, December 23, 2021
Austin Kleon quotes Bill O’Hanlon when he talks about the four energies for writing. The first two (the upper quadrants) being positive, the second two (the lower quadrants) are the negative energies. BlissedBlessedPissedDissedI’d rather be writing from the upper two quadrants, but I have to admit to be expressing myself from the “pissed” category today. Much has been written about how the call to get vaccinated against Covid-19, the urge (or mandate) to wear masks, etc.
Saturday, December 18, 2021
Amazon employees yet again have reason to complain about their treatment from the company as it proposes reinstating a ban on worker’s cell phones in its warehouses. The employee perspective is that their phones can alert them to dangerous conditions, such as the tornado activity that ended up ripping apart an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, something that they don’t trust Amazon to do. The concerns about phone access highlight the deep distrust between executives who make rules focused on productivity and efficiency to gain a competitive advantage, and hourly front-line workers who often fear their safety is secondary to moving packages.
Friday, December 17, 2021
Last week I featured an important song in the Japanese city pop genre and made the comparison to sophisti-pop, which came from the UK. This week I wanted to feature some sophisti-pop for comparison, but didn't want to go straight at it. So what we have here is Hoops covering Prefab Sprout (one of the more influential bands in sophisti-pop) staple "Cars and Girls." From The Beach Boys “I Get Around” to American Graffiti to Sixteen Candles or even Ferris Bueller's Day Off, cars and girls were central to the post-adolescent male imagination in the sixties through the eighties.
Sunday, December 12, 2021
In America, those that lived during the time of World War II are often referred to as "The Greatest Generation." Their level of self-sacrifice and dedication to their country and to freedom around the world will long be remembered by history. They can tell their grandchildren stories of courage and coming together. By contrast, I wonder sometimes if I'll be telling my grandkids about the selfishness of this moment in American history.
Friday, December 10, 2021
The song for this video is from 1984, but the video was shot just recently. Originally not a huge seller, "Plastic Love" by Mariya Takeuchi has been growing in popularity over the last 40 years. It fits in with the 80's Japanese genre, city pop, and has come to be a defining piece of that style of music. Jason Morehead describes city pop as "a slick blend of jazz, pop, and funk that emerged during Japan’s economic boom in the ’80s and celebrated an upscale, cosmopolitan lifestyle.
Thursday, December 9, 2021
Alex Nowrasteh writes for Arc Digital on why there is so much culture war commentary ("from encoded presidential insults to drag queen story hour, Netflix comedy specials to baby books"). In short, because it's easy and cheap and pays big dividends. People love to read it for that confirmation bias rush and you don't have to be an expert in anything, such as science or politics. You don't even have to do research or risk getting called out for being wrong.
Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Facebook has been outed in the US for its dishonorable practices, but what it’s done in this country is nothing compared to the damage it has caused in other parts of the world. One the places where it has helped to create a perfect storm of violence by radicalizing users against the minority Rohingya is the country of Myanmar. The platform spread information and hate speech that cost the lives of a targeted group of people.
Sunday, December 5, 2021
The other night, I was reading through the cover story for this month's issue of The Atlantic, The Bad Guys Are Winning by Anne Applebaum. I got to the part about Russia helping to provide the autocratic guidebook to Belarus' dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, in order to crush the protests in the country. I got this feeling in my core that I was at my limit of bad news for the day.
Friday, December 3, 2021
Around this time of year, people are always buzzing about their Spotify Wrapped playlists. They post screenshots of what songs are in them and discuss their year in music. I have to admit, as an Apple Music user, I get a bit jealous. The cool designs that go along with the Spotify Wrapped playlists are really well done and make you feel like this year-end ritual is something special. Chaim Gartenberg writes about Spotify's yearly celebration of your personal year in music for the Verge.
Friday, December 3, 2021
Work Drugs bring their smooth yacht rock to this video of a girl wandering around a city. There are trips to the zoo, rides on public transport and shopping excursions. The full city tour culminates in a pleasant snow as the subject walks around with headphones on. She's in her own world with so many people around. It's the perfect picture of how everyone being lost in their heads makes a city so open to unimpeded ambulatory exploration.
Saturday, November 27, 2021
Over the years, I've had three eBay ID's. eBay used to allow logins from a single-sign on provider at some point (though I can't remember which) and I used that. Then they removed that feature and I had to change my ID. I made several transactions under the new ID. Now, a few years later, eBay will no longer recognize that ID and I had to create a new one. What is the problem with a new ID, you ask?
Friday, November 26, 2021
Bathe Alone recently recorded a series of videos at The Standard Electric Recorders Company. These kind of high fidelity, live studio performances make for some of my favorite music videos. There is an intimacy that feels like it's almost pulling you into a room with the performers. "Limbo" is one of the standout tracks on Bathe Alone's debut long player, Last Looks. The band's sole member, multi-instrumentalist Bailey Crone explains the dark meaning of the song in an interview about the sessions.
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Paul Kingsnorth kind of lost me on his anti-vaxxer rant this week. He is particularly worried about the increasingly stringent measures in Austria and Germany to get everyone vaccinated. Historical events in these countries give him particular cause for concern. Kingsnorth's rant does make me think about history, as well. Did George Washington's troops complain this bitterly about authoritarianism when he had them inoculated for small pox upon entering the Continental Army?
Saturday, November 20, 2021
I remember a time, not long ago, when we laughed at the introduction of Space Force from then-president Donald Trump. It was easy to jest, with the name that itself sounded like a parody, coming from a president that never could quite get anything real done. Of course, some of us remember "Star Wars," the space missile shield that president Reagan made up to psych-out the Soviets. Decades of science fiction speculation haven’t quite turned out the way they were depicted.
Friday, November 19, 2021
On the Weezer appreciation scale, I’m at the end next to Leslie Jones’ character in the infamous SNL dinner time fight skit. I appreciated the first two albums, went to see them on those tours and then they lost me after their return from hiatus. However, I do consider them to be an amazing cover band. Their “Teal Album” of takes on the classics brings me joy. I especially like how the vocals are handled on “Take On Me.
Thursday, November 18, 2021
When my oldest was younger, we used to read a Berenstain Bears book about prayer. While the books about these anthropomorphic bears are designed to be simple lessons for kids, the particular angles in this book struck me deeply. The take on prayer was nuanced and mature. In the book The Berenstain Bears Say Their Prayers, Brother Bear is on the same baseball team with his devout cousin, Fred. When they face a particularly tough team with an intimidating player, Fred prays before he pitches to a hitter they refer to only as “The Beast.
Thursday, November 18, 2021
Over the years, Cory Doctorow has made himself an expert on digital privacy. This essay is mainly about surveillance capitalism and Doctorow uses Vizio as a negative example. When he takes on the now old adage, "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product," his insight really resonates. In the simplistic account of what many call "surveillance capitalism," the original sin was swapping our attention for free content, summed up in the pithy phrase, "