Lowgold “Burning Embers”
One of these days we’ll realize that Lowgold was quite possibly the most underrated UK indie rock band of our generation. They’ve got a new album out, and like the last three, it’s epoch-making.
John Darnielle represents for Detroit techno. »
Commenting on Roland and Yamaha’s dismissal of techno legend Juan Atkins for sponsorship — despite having “Detroit Techno” factory settings on their machines! — the Mountain Goat barks, “Without guys like Juan Atkins figuring out how to work your machines and making great sounds with them, they’d be useless crates. You don’t actually think people made tracks like this just by reading your impenetrable manuals, right?”
The best excuse for disqualification from being a juror in the R. Kelly trial. »
“When one juror failed to show up for service, deputies called his house and his mother answered. She told the court that she didn’t know where her son was and that he hadn’t been ‘right’ since he was shot in the head a while back.”
Thank you, Gavin.
Yesterday’s historic ruling in California highlights how significant one act of civil disobedience can be. Newsom gambled his political career against an unjust majority for the sake of a minority. Show me the Presidential candidate that would have the courage to do that. (Not even you, Obama.)
Community Techno Unit.
The Pod are a pair of UK producers who are dealing with the death of British rave by engaging ordinary people in the construction of hard techno. And if that description is not obvious enough, yes, it’s satire. (via)
America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree. »
“Colleges trumpet the statistic that college graduates earn more than nongraduates,” explains Marty Nemko, “but that’s terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they’d still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they’re more motivated and have better family connections… So it’s not surprising that you’re likely to meet workers who spent their family’s life savings on college, only to end up with a job they could have done as a high-school dropout.”
If The Chronicle of Higher Education is saying it, it must be true!
Brian Eno “Becalmed”
Another birthday MP3, this time for Eno, who turns 60 today. (Whoa!) I chose to share my favorite track from Another Green World — an exercise in ambient that predates the SAW duology by seventeen years.
Extending album art.
Photoshop always offers the best and worst in creativity, but this collection is worth a few laughs. (via)
America doesn't hate Hillary as much as it hates women in general. »
Because misogyny travels across racial divides and is generally seen as “less of a problem,” the kind of gender bias we saw throughout the Clinton campaign was unfiltered. For example, Penn Jilette went on MSNBC last week and said, “Obama did great in February, and that’s because that was Black History Month. And now Hillary’s doing much better ‘cause it’s White Bitch Month, right?” Would he find the joke equally as funny with a reverse punchline? Maybe, but in this country, sexism is more socially acceptable than racism.