January 2012
A Serious Observation
I made a joke about this to my partner, but the rate of Lana Del Rey thinking and writing (‘scholarship’) was actually amazing and cool. I mentioned her in a piece back in, I think, November — and that was after resisting mentioning her a few times already. At this point, all the greatest music writers and cultural critics, for the most part, (certainly not including myself in...
Things I Ate That I Love: Ladies, Women and Girls →
emilygould:
I found Molly Fischer’s essay about Jezebel, The Hairpin, xojane.com and Rookie interesting, provocative, and deeply frustrating. Her dissection of these blogs’ aesthetics and the rhetorical styles they’ve bred in their commenter-bases is skillful, but what is its point?
[…]
Which leads me to my other point. In composing an essay that ranges from the smell of Moe Tkacik’s...
4 tags
Apple's Avarice: Efficient, Excellent, and...
We might not have the flying cars, yet, but we’re sprinting to the future anyway. One company in particular, Apple, has constructed fabulous technological edifices that effortlessly extend our capabilities. Its contributions — inaugurating computer revolution after revolution, revitalizing digital media, bringing technology to bear on education’s problems — they seem miraculous. But a spate of...
1 tag
It's Not For You
I’ve had some really good conversations on Twitter today, which really foregrounded a problem with criticism. The idea of a critic landing a cross-genre shot, contre-pied’ing our expectations (think: David Wallace on Terminator 2) is delightful. But it has to be done extremely well, drawn from a decent amount of knowledge and even more empathy.
Most times, when a critic of one type...
It's funny that "oversee" and "overlook" are,...
(via bmichael)
I used to be so smart.
2 tags
Review Of Heems's (of Das Racist) Mixtape "Nehru... →
Himanshu Suri is not a role model. It’s a common trope for people of color: they’re taken as paragons for an entire race or culture and constantly questioned about the ‘right’ ways to treat or conceptualize ‘them’. You have only to trawl Heems’s tumblr, Nehru Jackets, on the odd late night to see this scenario play out. The questions (and answers) range from asinine to heartfelt to...
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
Philosophical Investigations §133 →
133. It is not our aim to refine or complete the system of rules for the use of our words in unheard-of ways.
For the clarity that we are aiming at is indeed complete clarity. But this simply means that the philosophical problems should completely disappear.
The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to.—The one that gives philosophy peace,...
Yale! Quarterbacks! Rhodes! Rape!
I almost don’t care at all about this story. I did read it in my RSS and then see it on Deadspin only moments later, so I assume it’s somewhat big or something. The idea is that this guy and his Friday Night Lights family moved all over the country so he could do real good at football, and then he did ok, and then he transferred to Yale where he was awesome because it’s Yale....
5 tags
Apple, Amazon, and Google's Dehumanizing...
For a long time, technology has played an obvious role in our lives. As the state of the art has advanced, technological progress has had a pronounced effect on the world: pollution, overpopulation, extreme class disparity. There’s a more insidious effect, prefigured by Wordsworth two hundred years ago: “Little we see in Nature that is ours; / We have given our hearts away, a sordid...
2 tags
“While Dean’s mix may be impeccable, there is one kink in MBDTF’s...”
– From a Respect Magazine interview with Mike Dean. This seems plausible, definitely, but I’m just slightly unconvinced. I mean, look for yourself below.
I’m not audiologist. It looks to me like there’s more compression on the album cut, but it’s not like the G.O.O.D....
1 tag
“What was the root cause of this rage and frustration? The answer: pour-over...”
– Chris Chafin, “The Scourge of Pour-Over Coffee” (The Awl)
What the hell is wrong with “pour over coffee”? Unless you’re using pressure (stove top espresso maker, espresso maker), heat-physics (percolator, AeroPress), or a French press, all coffee is pour over, right? It’s...
legospaceship asked: I'm curious how you think the Maximum fun Podcasts fit are part of the "liberal cronies making faux-racist jokes all the time." Not a loaded question or anything, i'd just love to hear your perspective on it.
“‘Make good stuff and make it easy for people to buy it’ is so...”
– mikkipedia
Let the market decide. Vote with your dollars. Poor people shouldn’t be overweight. If minorities just worked harder. You can be sexist against men too. Just go to college. Just pay for college. Work harder. Just write. Just make stuff. Minorities can be racist too. Your...
Stay Classy, Connecticut
NYT:
[East Haven Mayor Joseph] Maturo was being interviewed by New York’s WPIX-TV about alleged anti-Hispanic bias in East Haven, a shoreline town bordering New Haven and the subject of a federal civil rights probe that was launched in 2009.
The four officers arrested Tuesday are charged with depriving the civil rights of Latinos and their supporters, including by unlawfully...
Jobs
Himanshu Suri:
Yo, they probably call him Steve Jobs cause he got ‘em He can give a job to anybody, man, no problem
Mitch Daniels:
The late Steve Jobs — what a fitting name he had — created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the president borrowed and blew.
Steve Jobs:
Those jobs aren’t coming back.
1 tag
“There is hypocrisy all around: on the part of Ms. Del Rey, on the part of her...”
– So Lana Del Rey is like…. Tune Yards 2? I still don’t think she’s going to wash out, as such.
Whew, anyway. This was a really very interesting album review by Jon Caramanica. It reads like, I don’t know what. The eulogy of a gravedigger? A warranty card for a Rube Goldberg...
1 tag
Album Review: Lana Del Rey — "Born To Die"
In this economy, being able to sing like some weird adult-baby hybrid has got to be worth something, right? 1
I am open to it being worth nothing. ↩
“In America’s rough streets, there are four forms of currency—cash, sex, drugs,...”
– Yeah, dude, and only one isn’t exactly the end of the world and makes for a tedious #longread about how you love your stolen bike.
1 tag
1 tag
1 tag
“If you’re an artist and you created something and you knew the master was...”
– Neil Young, who, I mean I’ve read a lot of boring Head-Fi threads on this and I think he might be close to correct since masters have a lot of headroom for mixing and stuff, but this seems kind of disingenuous and in practical terms wholly incorrect. I have a lot of problems with some modern...
“I have no idea what these songs are supposed to be about. The lyrics are...”
– Or, you could like, listen closer and think. It’s not that hard. I like Klosterman, but no music writer is ever anywhere near good when s/he tries to parse why others like an artist without doing the actual messy ethnographic work, or (much worse) to be a sportswriter/political wonk and predict an...
Watchmatt-t:
SLEIGH BELLS - COMEBACK KID
ALEXIS ‘CRUSHES IT’
So like, Alexis Krauss was in an obscure pop band before her ascension to Sleigh Bells. That’s something. Is that interesting or not at all? #TheLDRWord
3 tags
1 tag
3 tags
My Variety Of Religious Experience →
oneweekoneband:
It was an emotional reaction. Sometimes, and I believe I’ll get to this in a later post, you feel like you’re broken down inside — soupy — and it’s not your fault. Or everything lights up for you, not in a way that makes anything clearer — the opposite of that, really — but everything lit up. Or you feel like you’re very far away from where you’re supposed to be, but that you...
6 tags
The Case Against 808s and Heartbreak
oneweekoneband:
Ok, here we are. I’ve been hinting all week that I think 808s and Heartbreak is not very good. That’s a bit of an oversimplification: I just think that 808s and Heartbreak combines the worst parts of my two favorite Kanye albums, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Graduation. It has the former’s shitty sound, and an under-cooked version of its theme; it has the latter’s...
“Even before my wife was pregnant, I never let a job prevent me from having a...”
– Marco Arment, talking like a real 1%’er. The same guy who called Kindles “disposable” and thinks paying authors is a “feature”. I guess inventing Tumblr and Instapaper gives you a pretty big bankroll, though.
3 tags
louisvuittondondraper asked: I can't understand how Late Registration doesn't hold up for you. It is easily Kanye's most solid piece of work before MBDTF. Even the best songs on Graduation are only as good as the entirety of LR, which has a consistent, yet highly characteristic sound, with some of the best sampling in hip hop. While it may sound a bit like a continuation of College Dropout, it's no doubt a...
1 tag
Swizz Beats Owns MegaUpload →
spaceagehustle:
According to this Page 6 article. A timely news story for the day, since MegaUpload would most likely be obliterated if SOPA/PIPA pass, as would this site possibly. Find out more and let your voice be heard.
-Flex
What. The? Fuck!
8 tags
One Week // One Band: Top Ten Kanye West Songs →
oneweekoneband:
“Runaway”
“I Wonder”
“All Falls Down”
“Dark Fantasy”
“Champion”
“All Of The Lights”
“Heard ‘Em Say”
“Paranoid”
“Can’t Tell Me Nothing”
“Jesus Walks”
Culled from his five solo studio albums. Criteria for the list include re-listenability, how much they pump me up, awesomeness of…
Vanity reblog. I realize I probably should have written at the beginning about...
2 tags
St Vincent “Cheerleader” (Acoustic)...
5 tags
The Real Passion Of Kanye West
oneweekoneband:
That final point is one of the most important parts of Kanye’s actual work. He has some heavy auteur signifiers, certainly, but he’s also skilled at working with people. He went from locking himself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers to working in an historic studio with Jon Brion. It was a fruitful — and fitful — collaboration. On the one hand, Brion was like...
3 tags
Shit Everyone Says →
Over at AlterNet:
Perhaps it’s obvious, but there are no Shit Straight White Guys Say videos. That’s probably because, well, most videos are Shit Straight White Guys Say videos. Shit Straight White Guys Say is most pop culture and most movies. The everyday straight white maleness of the cultural horizon is reminiscent of an Aziz Ansari joke:
Are white people just psyched all the...
“Imagine a professional sport that allowed all comers. There’d be an endless line...”
– I felt like I was having a stroke the whole time I reading this Lefsetz post on Lana Del Rey. First he said Rebecca Black dropping out of school to make music was “like you or me dropping out of the music business to become a professional baseball player.” I have no idea what...