empirical skeptic, magical empiricist
work in progress: handsomecode.com / views.fm
Impromptu jam session in Kanazawa last night with a japanese guitarist and french pianist that are way better musicians than I ever will be, in the most wildly decorated rock bar I’ve ever been to. There are relatively few foreigners here in this ‘samurai’ town (which has Paul Smith, A.P.C., etc.) so being a musical white guy is an interesting novelty enough that my subpar musical skill qualifies me for invitations to play hotel gigs, which I guess is not a bad backup plan in the event my design/code career goes south.
A lot of my songwriting in the Hold Steady has to do with this place in your life where it’s appropriate to go to parties and have a dumb job. And then you get a little older, and it’s not as appropriate. There are people who make that transition, and then there are people who get hung up right there. It’s that frustration: ‘This isn’t turning out how I thought it was going to. Why is it so hard for me to get to work? Why do I sleep so much? Why am I not excited to see my friends?’
(via LG announces nearly borderless 55-inch OLED HDTV)
Finally it’s starting to look like the goddamn future.
We have a Facebook page now, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Give us your likes, now. All of them. Give us your goddamn likes!
I do think Andersen’s central point is a good one, though, which is that popular culture is the way it is right now because we have our heads up pop culture history’s ass thanks largely to the Internet
BSNYC breaks down that Andersen Vanity Fair article on the self-interested state of popular culture
Following decriminalization, Portugal has the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the EU: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%, Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.
While I’m sure you’re all happily enjoying some ‘Christmas medicine’ this week, as I am, it is good to reflect on the fact that many people are regularly incarcerated needlessly for drug related crimes, and there is still, in fact, a ‘war on drugs’. Happy holidays.
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/time-to-end-the-war-on-drugs
to steal from someone and not feel bad, you either have to be a sociopath or view the act differently. One way is to remove “Someone” from the equation. You’re not stealing from a person. Big companies do a lot to help people view them as less than human. I heard a speach by Noam Chomsky who said that corporations are like super humans. They cannot be hurt like a human can and they never die. They are not succeptible to scrutiny or accountability. this makes them more profitable. If companies want to enjoy these benifits to some degree they have to live with what else comes with being not human. you miss out on compassion, forgiveness, comraderie, empathy, trust all kinds of shit.
Hi I’m Louis C.K. and this is a thing : IAmA
Really awesome IAmA with Louis CK about his new special. Going to buy the damn thing instead of using bit torrent.
We seem to have trapped ourselves in a vicious cycle—economic progress and innovation stagnated, except in information technology; which leads us to embrace the past and turn the present into a pleasantly eclectic for-profit museum; which deprives the cultures of innovation of the fuel they need to conjure genuinely new ideas and forms; which deters radical change, reinforcing the economic (and political) stagnation.
Music service Grooveshark’s Chairman Sina Simantob sent this email to another executive: “…we are achieving all this growth without paying a dime to any of the labels… My favorite story related to our case is the story of a kid who appears in front of the judge for sentencing for the crime of having murdered both his parents saying judge have mercy on me cuz I am an orphan.” “In our case, we use the label’s songs till we get a 100 (million) uniques, by which time we can tell the labels who is listening to their music, where, and then turn around and charge them for the very data we got from them, ensuring that what we pay them in total for streaming is less than what they pay us for data mining. Let’s keep this quite for as long as we can.
Be careful what you put in an email « OmLinks
Great strategy, Grooveshark. Just, great job.
Great job, CNN.
OMFG
Stephen Colbert on CNN’s firing of approximately 50 journalists after the network completed a study on the quality of user generated content it was receiving via platforms such as iReport.
Colbert nails it. You savvy kids and your social tumblin’ are gonna be the death of us all.
CPG deconstruction. Love it.
A beautiful study in what happens when you eliminate complexity in brand design.
Actually just had a physical and routine blood tests – the only aberration was that my Vitamin D was very low. Physician wasn’t too worried though, apparently this is a common ailment for Americans, probably even more so for New Yorkers with office jobs.
I wasn’t made aware this put me at risk for diabetes, heart disease, and death though. I’m gonna be running to the drug store in a few minutes.
Pretty excited to listen to these.
I took a screen shot so that in case an editor at the NY Times was like, “Why the fuck is this on our front page?” and took it down, I would have proof that Fugazi releasing bootlegs was, for a moment, the most important story in the United States of America.