Canned Dragons

Last week, I wrote about some musical favorites from 2021. This week, I'm posting the video from one of my favorite songs that isn't from last year, but that I discovered last year. I think this one surfaced due to the Apple Music recommendation algorithm, which has gotten really good. I ask Siri to play a song on the diminutive but fairly powerful HomePod Mini, then, once the song is done, the device magically plays other music that I like. The hit to miss ratio is high these days, and I'm finding out about a lot of bands that sound similar to the ones I already enjoy. Since several music blogs that I used to follow have now become celebrity gossip sites (ahem, Stereogum, cough, Consequence), I need a sonic buddy in the form of a solid recommendation engine.

Geowulf's "Saltwater" sticks in my brain and produces a sort of wistfulness that's simultaneously sad and comforting. It evokes memories of trips to the beach, which have spanned the entirety of my life, and leaves me with a longing for another walk on the sand to sort through my thoughts. The image of letting saltwater wash over you "even when you're broken," speaks to me physically and emotionally.

My favorite Christmas piece this season was How Christmas Changed Everything by Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren in the NYT. She goes back to the early days of Christianity to observe how the life and death of Christ impacted believers in such a profound way that they defied deeply embedded cultural norms. Warren explains that our familiarity with Christianity in the West tends to make us forget how much it changed the rules for people, who were, in every ancient society, involved in some sort of caste system. Christian belief assigned value to each human being (though it’s fair to say “Christian” societies have not always lived up to this).

Because of this, early Christians became known for rescuing and raising infants who were “exposed,” that is left outside to die, a common practice in the ancient world. They were known for voluntarily remaining in cities amid plagues to care for the sick and the poor. The rapid growth of the early church was driven in part by slaves and women who were attracted to the Christian movement, a fact that was noticed and ridiculed by the wider Roman world.

These same radical ideas reverberate down through the centuries. They eventually motivated the invention of hospitals, mass education, and widespread literacy. They inspired those who opposed slavery and influenced the contemporary idea of universal human rights. Charles Malik, a Lebanese Christian who helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, said, “The ultimate ground of all our freedom is the Christian doctrine of the absolute inviolability of the human person.” In different ways over time, the belief in the dignity of even the weakest in society flowed from people meditating on this same shocking story that the church tells at Christmastime today.

This is the legacy of Christ’s birth that I want to remember during this time of year.

My most popular blog post in 2021 was Ethical Consumerism and the Amazon Dilemma. It spurred a lot of conversation, both online and off, which is the most I can hope for any post. I started writing the post in March and didn’t publish it until months later. My fatigue was so draining, at that point, that I couldn’t just bang out a long blog post.

I'm constantly asking myself: What is a conscientious consumer to do? Those who have disentangled themselves from the great ecommerce beast, please let me know the process you went through. I'm open to even ways to partially extricate myself and feel good about contributing to a healthier retail, publishing and working environment.

I’m still struggling with how to pare down my patronage of Amazon. It hasn’t been easy. They are the most popular option for many reasons, but most of all, they are the leader in efficient online shopping. However, I did make some progress:

• I got a Kobo for reading. I love ereaders and the Kobo has built in Pocket and Overdrive integration. In theory, I’ll never be without something to read again.
• I started recommending people buy me Christmas gifts direct from the manufacturer (like the Edifier TWS ear buds and the ElevationLab QuickDraw).
• Now that I’m not taking as many herbal supplements, I can order them from smaller shops.

I’ve still got prime and I still order goods from Amazon on a regular basis, so I have some work to do in the new year.

My favorite song of 2021 was “Hard Drive” by Cassandra Jenkins and not just because the techie in me likes comparing the mind to a hard drive. The song’s unusual time signatures, sophisti-pop leanings, audio samples, spoken word vocals and a saxophone intro that sounds like the morning light filtering through the blinds on a sunny Saturday make a brilliant concoction.

I wrote a post about the song and video in April and the song can still give me goosebumps.

When Cassandra Jenkins begins the song “Hard Drive” with spoken word, it feels like a hypnotic induction. With the saxophones playfully decorating the background, the accompanying instruments sound a bit like something off the Blue Nile’s Hats LP. Jenkins transitions to a singing voice as the chorus starts and it sounds all the more beautiful for the contrast with the spoken narrative. The song is masterfully constructed. As Jenkins speaks towards the end of the track, she narrates a friend assuring her of a better future, then slowly counting to three while directing deep breathing, which mimics the part of cuing someone out of hypnosis.

“Hard Drive” isn’t for everyone. It’s unconventional in its song structure and broken narratives formed out of Jenkins’ conversations with strangers. My wife can’t stand it (I think she finds it pretentious). However, if you close your eyes and allow yourself to be immersed in this walkthrough of Jenkins’ mind and encounters, you may find yourself richly rewarded.

Runner up: Forever (Sailing) by Snail Mail.

It seems the world of online bullet journalists is mainly comprised of women, so I was happy to see that there is a Men Who Bullet site. I have used tons of good ideas from the women in the bullet journaling community, but I also like that there are some men who are publicly into the practice (besides Ryder Carroll and a few others) and may have a different style.

I frequently find myself thinking that my journals are too spartan and not ornate enough because of the amazing and intricate art in some of the bullet journals I see. Some people really spend time on using a bullet journal as a creative end in itself, and I see value in that, I just don't have the artistic abilities to pull off some of the elaborate layouts. If making your journal look cool is your hobby, I think that's awesome, but I want to make sure that first and foremost, the journal is functional.

I held out for a long time before getting any kind of mobile phone. I had a Twitter account years before I had a smart phone. Everyone was surprised when I told them I didn’t have the device that had, by that time, many thought of as a necessity. The reaction was usually some form of, “but you’re a technologist?” It’s true that I am into tech, but, like the Amish (though a little less extreme), I choose the tech that I think will be a benefit and understand that there are usually trade-offs.

For me, the downside to having a mobile phone was theoretically always being available. Now that I have one it’s being too tempted to constantly pickup the phone for a hit of social media or to research whatever is on my brain.

Jen Wasserstein writes for the Guardian about how difficult it has become to navigate in the world without a smart phone.

It’s awkward when I ask a stranger for directions and they pull out their smart phone, looking at me as if to say, “where’s your phone?” My brother says I’m like a smoker who won’t buy her own pack, but smokes everyone else’s. I never wanted to start smoking at all, but the world is conspiring to make me bum one. If I bought my own, I know I’d be smoking a pack a day.

The shape of our society is changing the phone from something nice to have to something mandatory to have. There is something unfortunate about that.

Friday Night Video

Spectres “Northern Towns”

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

Frosted EchoesRobert Rackley

I hope you are able to celebrate the coming of the new year. May it bring blessings and peace.

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.

When my son heard this song, he asked if it was Joy Division. It is certainly indebted to the Factory Records sound. While this track sounds inspired by Joy Division, another single, “Tell Me,” sounds more like New Order. It’s clear where Spectres influences lie. You just have to go back to Manchester about four decades ago.

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. I want photography to be diverse and fun, and the monolithic feeds I see in Glass don’t check either of those boxes for me now.

I wrote a few months ago about how Micro.blog fits into the Glass equation. I’ve seen some amazing photographs on the M.b. platform and there are people I follow that have near-professional photography skills. There are quite a few amateur shots. It feels like a really nice balance. I don’t feel intimidated posting photos.

Anne-Laure Le Cunff of Ness Labs was just interviewed by Indie Hacker. I really like the balance that she is able to strike between a fascination for work that requires a computer, and being able to extract time where she is not using a device.

What I spend the majority of my time doing: Sitting in front of my computer. Whether it’s learning, creating, connecting with other curious minds... I sometimes think it’s too much screen time, but there is such joy coming through this window on the world!

On her reading habit becoming a ritual:

Another thing that’s helped me move from routine to ritual is that starting last year, I’ve followed a strict rule of no electronic devices in my bedroom. It’s probably one of the simplest and best lifestyle changes I’ve made. It sounds obvious but not having devices in my room makes me sleep earlier, and better. I wake up with more energy and I’m more productive and creative.

While most of what she does involves screen time, she also puts hard boundaries around those activities to make time for other enrichment. I would find the part about putting away electronic devices in my bedroom pretty difficult. I wouldn’t give up my Kobo, of course, but even when you have an iPad, that lean back device form factor makes it too easy to use when supine. The closest thing I’ve got to her resolve is to set downtime to 9:30pm, but even that is too easy to break by putting in my screen time code.

It seems the Chinese government is starting to understand that a political system with no real values is not healthy for people. The citizens of the country are increasingly developing a sort of nihilistic tendency. “Among the online youth, for example, ‘sang culture’ (roughly the equivalent of “doomerism” in the West) has proliferated.”

To combat a lack of spirituality in their culture, the Communist party is turning to Marx to inspire. From People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist party:

Recalling the “warmth” he still feels after finishing this study of Marx, a “warmth [that] comes from spiritual excitement, spiritual joy,” the reviewer concludes with an account of the “deep sense of inner satisfaction and happiness” he has gained, before declaring himself, with the cry of a convert, “a Marxist believer!”

The piece notes that these pronouncements sound more like they come from mid-2000’s American Evangelical Christians than Chinese Communists. The party recognizes, though, that they need to combat the malaise that their culture has engendered.

This has kicked off a scramble, led by top Party political theorist Wang Huning, to “create core values” to fill this uncomfortably God-shaped societal hole with the comforts of a synthetic ideological alternative.

It remains to be seen if the Chinese can be spiritually fulfilled by Marxist theory, which is still purely materialist.

→ The CCP gets religious about Karl Marx | The Post

Via social.ayjay.org

Christians love the part in A Charlie Brown Christmas where Linus gives his speech about the true meaning of Christmas, quoting from the book of Luke. I am not exempting myself from the devotion to that scene. A few years ago, I read this passage at a Christmas Eve service at our church, and, even though it wasn’t in the translation from which I was reading, I was tempted to use the phrase, “and they were sore afraid,” just to be like Linus.

In the movie A Charlie Brown Christmas, when a frustrated Charlie Brown asks, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Linus, with his security blanket in hand, steps center stage and quotes Luke 2:8–14. In the middle of his recitation, as he says, “Fear not,” he drops his blanket—the thing he clung to when afraid.

One thing I hadn’t notice before was the part about Linus dropping his security blanket, which his sister Lucy tried in vain many times to wrest from him, when he recites the scripture. It wasn’t until I read this passage in Our Daily Bread that I recounted that crucial part of the scene. Linus always carries that blanket to feel safe. The action has a symbolically profound implication about how we try to let go and trust in the Lord to guide us, especially during this season.

→ Fear Not | Our Daily Bread

Friday Night Video

Hazel English “Nine Stories”

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

Frosted EchoesRobert Rackley

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. It’s like shaking up a bottle of soda pop (soda for those in the East Coast and pop for those in the Midwest) and then opening it up to a carbonated explosion that sends the beverage everywhere.

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.

• Blissed
• Blessed
• Pissed
• Dissed

I’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. are for the benefit of others as much as ourselves. How do we respect the lives and health of others while living in community? Ed Yong recently canceled his birthday party in order to keep people safe, because his birthday falls so closely to Christmas.

If someone got sick, I know others could too. A week later, many of my friends will spend Christmas with their own families. At best, a cluster of infections at the birthday party would derail those plans, creating days of anxious quarantine or isolation, and forcing the people I love to spend time away from their loved ones. At worst, people might unknowingly carry the virus to their respective families, which might include elderly, immunocompromised, unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or otherwise vulnerable people. Being born eight days before Christmas creates almost the perfect conditions for one potential super-spreader event to set off many more.

Yong doesn’t worry so much about himself, but others whom he might not even know getting sick during the holidays. This is the kind of mentality that drives disease prevention. Yet, even as I praise Yong’s thinking, I think about welcoming my sister home from international living only a few days ago with a birthday party for her. She hadn’t been vaccinated. Though her vaccine status was not for lack of effort. Vaccines are harder to come by in Eastern Europe. We did what we could to mitigate the risk with vaccinations of those in the US, but ultimately deferred total caution for fellowship. In our defense, almost everyone present is planning to be together in that grouping throughout the holidays.

Almost everyone is navigating these tough decisions right now. However, it feels like those that aren’t getting vaccinated aren’t even trying to choose. At least in the US, they are simply giving up on doing what is easy and meeting that low bar to help ensure the continuing health of others. This became real for us this week when the unvaccinated coworker that is in closest proximity to my brother at the bank in which he works tested positive for Covid. We are now looking at the possible outcome of my brother not being able to attend the Christmas celebration with relatives that have come from the other side of the country and the world to be a part of. I’m not sure of why his coworker isn’t vaccinated, but I suspect the reason isn’t what most would think of as legitimate. Hopefully, testing will show my brother is negative.

For Christians, caring for others is a matter of faith and conscience. The particulars are summed up well in this relatively short piece from Catalyst magazine, in which Joel B. Green profiles the position of the eminent bioethicist D. Garett Jones.

Though he doesn’t draw attention to the absence from Scripture of the modern category of “human rights,” Jones does observe that “serving one another and laying down one’s life (rights) for others” is central to the Christian ethos. He draws the inescapable corollaries regarding caring for one’s neighbor, serving “the other,” for example, through donning face masks, practicing social distancing, and participating in efforts to vaccinate everyone, including oneself, who is eligible. “This is Christian social responsibility in practice.”

The piece goes on to explain Protestant Reformer Martin Luther’s stance on taking steps for disease prevention to ensure the health of self and neighbor. Similar statements have been echoed across other Christian traditions. It’s pretty clear where the faithful should stand on these issues.

My anger has to be tempered by humility, grace and an understanding of my own actions. If I’m honest though, I’m still pissed.

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.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man after Elon Musk, only fueled such feelings by spending the earlier part of Saturday celebrating a celebrity space launch by his company Blue Origin while emergency crews at the warehouse dug through rubble looking for bodies.

Bezos eventually sent a couple of vague tweets pledging support for the employees in Edwardsville.

→ Deadly collapse at Amazon warehouse puts spotlight on phone ban - BNN Bloomberg

The 2021 Flickr x LEGO Build and Capture photo contest just concluded and there are some stunning images among the top ranked. I especially appreciate the way Shannon Sproule, one of the winners who tied for first place, plays with light in her photos.

Vivaldi CEO Jon von Tetzchner writes about how Windows tries to get you to make Edge your default browser again through pop up windows once you’ve opted to change to another browser.

Microsoft’s moves seem desperate. And familiar. It is clear they don’t want you to use other browsers. They even offer to pay you to use the browser via their Microsoft Rewards program. This is not the behavior of a confident company developing a superior browser. It’s the behavior of a company openly abusing its powerful position to push people to use its inferior product, simply because it can. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Can you say monopoly?

Apparently, Microsoft isn’t worried about a repeat of its antitrust battles from the 90’s.

Vivaldi just launched version 5.0 of their browser, featuring in-depth theme customization and robust translation options.

→ Microsoft back to its old tricks to get an edge on the competition.

Kevin Crowley was caught in a crowd during a trampling incident that killed 94 people. He was severely traumatized. He tried therapy to help him cope, but it was initially to no avail.

But two years ago he spotted a poster advertising therapy over the internet, and he decided to give it another go. After dozens of regular sessions in which he and his therapist talked via text message, Cowley, now 49, is at last recovering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. “It’s amazing how a few words can change a life,” says Andrew Blackwell, chief scientific officer at Ieso, the UK-based mental health clinic treating Cowley.

What’s crucial is delivering the right words at the right time. Blackwell and his colleagues at Ieso are pioneering a new approach to mental-health care in which the language used in therapy sessions is analyzed by an AI. The idea is to use natural-language processing (NLP) to identify which parts of a conversation between therapist and client—which types of utterance and exchange—seem to be most effective at treating different disorders.

The NLP being used would operate something like sentiment analysis. The results from these findings could open up the door to much more effective, evidence based protocols and standards within psychotherapy. This type of research and rigor is crucial right now, when mental health issues are on the rise globally. As someone with a degree in psychology, I can state that I’ve never seen this type of a heavily data integrated approach to psychotherapy before and it gives me great hope for the discipline.

→ The therapists using AI to make therapy better | MIT Technology Review

Friday Night Video

Hoops - Cars and Girls

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

Frosted EchoesRobert Rackley

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. The song explores when adulthood blooms and exposes the shallow thinking of youth. When life’s bigger problems come in, they start to crowd out the less important things we thought that carried so much weight when we were younger. As the apostle reminds us, “But now that I have become a man, I’ve put an end to childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11, CEB)

In the video, the band poses, preens and prances around in an 80’s bimmer. The video is so tongue-in-cheek that it becomes almost unbearable at times, but the band’s mastery of the classic song more than compensates for the silliness.

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. Instead of defeating multiple powerful enemies around the globe, we'll be talking about how we defeated ourselves. That thought really hit me hard when reading this piece from Elizabeth Bruenig, regarding the recent photos of politicians and their families proudly holding assault weapons in front of Christmas trees.

I’m not triggered, as it were, by the mere sight of guns. And I tend toward the belief that there are so many guns in circulation and so risibly few politicians demonstrably invested in taking any kind of action on even meek and meager changes to gun policy that there’s not much point in talking about it anymore. Our own politicians are celebrating guns at Christmas mere days after a school shooting precipitated by the purchase of a handgun for the perpetrator as—yes—a Christmas gift. America armed its civilians with so many guns that it conquered itself. I guess this is defeat.

Many knew that the ordinary, sane people who just want their kids to be able to be safe in schools had lost the battle after nothing was done following the Sandy Hook tragedy. Then-president Obama called that the angriest he had ever been as president. We've gone from inaction on the part of politicians to blatantly flaunting weapons with kids directly following another school tragedy. We went from those tragedies being outliers to being fairly commonplace. If a foreign enemy was killing our children in their schools, there would be outrage. We would vow to vanquish our foe. In our present situation, as Bruenig says, we allow or even architect our own defeat.

It looks like the Onion will be able to keep rerunning their famous satirical article, ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens from 2014. This piece will be evergreen because the situation won't change in America. Since part of our legislative branch of government seems to think it's their primary job to "trigger the libs," they will keep flaunting our loss. If America was a soccer team, this season would be littered with own goals.

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." I like to think of city pop as the cousin of sophisti-pop, which arose in the UK around the same time period, has the same elements of new wave, pop, jazz and soul and matches the polished to a sheen production of city pop.

"Plastic Love" the song has all of the sonic staples that made Japan a neon-permeated fantasyland in the 80's. The video has the neon, but also a nod to the 70's (dig the disco ball) as well as a high-end contemporary feel to it.