July 9, 2020
You should've been downtown
Last month Anderson .Paak released a new video / single, "Lockdown" (directed by Dave Meyers). "Set against an easy-rolling funk groove characteristic of the artist's summery sound, the song relates .Paak's own experiences attending recent protests and voices his belief in the righteous motivations behind them."
Renata Flores' Quechua covers and original Quechua + trap songs
"¿Qué motiva a una joven de 17 años a cantar en su idioma ancestral? Renata Flores, cantante, compositora y activista del idioma quechua revaloriza y promueve la lengua natal de sus antepasados a través de la música, mezclando sonidos andinos con géneros modernos." Quien Soy (Who I am) is a short Spanish documentary about Renata Flores, who started singing in Quechua covers, first House of the Rising Sun (original; subtitled) and went viral with The Way You Make Me Feel, and now blends other styles like trap and electric/dance to promote Quechua while also bringing attention to issues of femicide and the treatment of rural people. Renata Flores Brought Quechua to YouTube, and Then Everything Changed (Vice) [more inside]
It's not entirely show tunes, but nearly....
However it was that you first learned about Mandy Patinkin, you might not know that he recorded a really great album in the late 80s. Appropriately titled "Mandy Patinkin", it was released in 1989. The YouTube playlist unfortunately does not preserve the nature of the medleys on the album, but it's still an amazing listen. [more inside]
Polynesians and Native Americans met 800 years ago
Native South Americans were early inhabitants of Polynesia "DNA analysis of Polynesians and Native South Americans has revealed an ancient genetic signature that resolves a long-running debate over Polynesian origins and early contacts between the two populations."
State of Grace
In the video series State of Grace, Grace Baldridge explores the lives of LGBTQ+ people in celebrity-endorsed megachurches, the contemporary Christian music industry, and the reception of trans people in the church.
“People didn’t need neighbors anymore … now they had money“
Most people now described themselves as Falkland Islanders first and British second, but it was hard to say what that meant. Britishness was easy to proclaim—the Union Jacks, the red post boxes. Symbols were enough because everybody knew what Britain was, and there was too much of it to capture, anyway. But what a Falkland Islander was, was harder to describe.– How Prosperity Transformed the Falklands by Larissa MacFarquhar, with photos by Maroesjka Lavigne.
is cool with it if you turn it into a /p/ /b/ /v/ /ʋ/ /ɸ/ or /β/
Privilege.
The all-white country band formerly known as Lady Antebellum has filed a lawsuit to use the name Lady A, which Black Seattle blues, funk and gospel singer Anita White has used for more than 20 years. [more inside]
$$$ PUBLISHERS HAVE TRIED MULTIPLE WAYS TO AMORTIZE EXPENSE $$$
The return of the $70 video game has been a long time coming [Ars Technica] “Last week, 2K made waves by becoming the first publisher to set a $70 asking price for a big-budget game on the next generation of consoles. NBA2K21 will cost the now-standard $60 on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but 2K will ask $10 more for the upcoming Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 versions of the game (a $100 "Mamba Forever Edition" gives players access to current-generation and next-generation versions in a single bundle). It remains to be seen if other publishers will follow 2K's lead and make $70 a new de facto standard for big-budget console game pricing. But while $70 would match the high-water mark for nominal game pricing, it wouldn't be a historically high asking price in terms of actual value. Thanks to inflation and changes in game distribution, in fact, the current ceiling for game prices has never been lower.” [more inside]
The Quality of ____ Is [Not] Strained
AirNow "is your one-stop source for air quality data." This mapper "provides results from the largest-ever assessment of water-quality changes in the Nation's streams and rivers." The National Transportation Noise Map "facilitates the tracking of trends in transportation-related noise, by mode, and collectively for multiple transportation modes." "Finding a pristine sky is not as easy as it once was. But you can use the Map on this site to help you." Clear Dark Sky "shows at a glance when, in the next 48 hours, we might expect clear and dark skies for one specific observing site."
Can Salad Bars Be Saved?
No boy would ever be good enough for my princess...
is a thing I would say if I didn't acknowledge that princess is a fundamentally patronizing epithet! A dad discovers feminism and admits his areas of challenge and growth in letting his daughter be, you know, her own human being, allowing her to have her own emotional growth and make her own choices because that's what treating her as her own person means. Secondarily, Jon Hamm narrates this and adds humor to an important message. (Single link New Yorker Video warning - SLNY-erV?)
room for [...] mistakes.
A couple of days ago, Harper's Magazine published an open letter - A Letter on Justice and Open Debate - it had had in the works for a few weeks, signed by 153 authors and academics. The ensuing reaction and commentary and has been swift and intense. [more inside]
Picks or Plectrums
Made of wood, tortoise shell, celluloid, nylon, thermoplastic, metal, felt, graphite, among others, guitar picks have had an interesting evolution. [more inside]
becoming the camera
M Neelika Jayawardane writes for the Guardian & Mail in remembrance of the complex legacy and important record left by South African George Hallett, "a trickster figure — a chameleon who knew how to blend in with the background, and observe his photographic subjects’ burdens and most vulnerable states" who passed away July 1. [more inside]
'what could Terrace House have done ...?'
The biggest lie we ever told ourselves about the Japanese reality show was that it wasn't like all the other ones. - 'When I first pitched this piece, I wanted to know what it would take for Terrace House to return to television. Not because I wanted the show to continue, but because I wanted to know: what could Terrace House have done that might have prevented Hana’s death? [...] It is, to be clear, an absolutely futile and perhaps even offensive suggestion that, in a different world, things would be different. I also pitched the story weeks before Kyoko began speaking to the press, fighting to defend her daughter’s legacy and seek justice for her death. But I began digging, looking for so-called solutions to the mental health ramifications of sudden fame imposed by reality TV.' [more inside]
Alone Together: A DS9 Companion
Summary page and link to YouTube episode. “During the June 30 and July 3 meetings of the Sid City Social Club, Alexander Siddig and Andrew Robinson did a live reading of the first episode of a fanfic script titled Alone Together: A DS9 Companion.
The first episode, “These Days”, introduces us to Dr. Julian Bashir and Elim Garak some 25 years after we last saw them. We begin the story as Bashir goes to visit his old friend on Cardassia…“
« Previous day | Next day »