Posts with Recent Comments
"Good healthcare is a luxury good here, not a human right."
Laurie Anderson's Home of the Brave
"You can’t put your finger on it, but after you leave, you have the feeling that your perception of things has been skewed slightly. Anderson is saying: We’re surrounded by bankrupt images and music that is fascist noise, and they’re pounding away at us, trying to break us down, to kill the spark, but if we keep two things we will be able to survive. Those two things are a sense of wonder and the ability to laugh back." - Roger Ebert (previously)
Sonic Youth's "The Diamond Sea"
"The wistful nineteen-minute epic that closes out one of the band’s 90s-era highlights in Washing Machine, is pathologically treasured like few favorite songs by few favorite bands. ... Besides containing some of Thurston Moore’s most gorgeously delivered vocals, the downright elegant guitar interplay throughout is a splendid reminder of the shadow Sonic Youth that had always dwelled beneath the surface pose of snotty NYC hipster brats making feedback with screwdrivers jammed into guitar strings. As was more and more evident as the 90s and 2000s wore on, Sonic Youth grew to embody a band as beautifully melodic as they once were crushing." - Zachary Corsa [more inside]
AI cameras and escape doors to stop Sydney's koala road toll
AI cameras and escape doors to stop Sydney's koala road toll. Artificial intelligence technology will be used to alert drivers to koalas crossing the road.
How Immanuel Kant Transformed Himself into a Model of Discipline
Immanuel Kant, the father of deontological ethics, is celebrated not only for his revolutionary philosophical ideas but also for his extraordinarily disciplined lifestyle. For nearly 40 years, Kant adhered to a rigid daily routine, which became as legendary as his intellectual contributions. As the first modern philosopher to work as a university professor, Kant’s life reveals the interplay of habit, discipline, and genius, showcasing a man far more complex than the stereotype of a machine-like thinker. [more inside]
504
The federal government worked very hard to shut the protest down. They claimed the disability activists were asking for too much. Too expensive! Impossible to implement! They cut off the protesters’ water supply and phone lines, so the protesters who knew American Sign Language started using it to communicate through the windows [Time, also see Change, Not Charity: the Americans With Disabilities Act (pbs)] [more inside]
libertarian dreams become totalitarian nightmares
CW: violence, forced labor. In 2005, Atelier van Lieshout began urban planning on an eco-friendly, climate-neutral call center staffed entirely by forced labor, known as Slave City. This nightmare artwork was a natural evolution of the earlier libertarian art colony of AVL-ville, as Joep van Lieshout describes in his recent lecture [SLYT] on AVL’s eerily predictive artistic explorations of technocracy and capitalism.
“You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out.”
Trump Administration Live Updates: Trump and Vance Loudly Berate Zelensky in Oval Office (SLNYT, archive.ph)
McSweeny's: Senator Schumer Votes to Let the Big Wooden Horse into Troy
by Ryan Wolin
GUARD 2: "Senator, there’s more… as we approached the horse, we heard what sounded like dozens of soldiers sharpening daggers inside. At one point, baklava fell out—and one of the soldiers said, 'Great. That was the last of the baklava. Now we have to kill a thousand Trojans on an empty stomach.'"
SCHUMER: "My brethren, soldiers may leap out of that statue tonight and kill me, but what’s leaping out at me right now is our total disregard for norms. What you see as an enemy threat, I see as a one-of-a-kind statue of a mare."
They're Suing the Government for the Right to Die
The ethics are muddy, the country is divided, and the world is watching Canada's next move. (TW/CW: suicide, self-harm, mental health issues, suicidal ideation) [more inside]
Forever No More
Forever 21 has filed for bankruptcy a second and presumably final time, announcing plans to "wind down" its retail stores. It blames Chinese fast-fashion rivals Shein and Temu for exploiting the de minimis exemption to undercut its prices. (previously) [more inside]
The Last of The Few
The last surviving Battle of Britain pilot, John 'Paddy' Hemingway, has died aged 105. [more inside]
Dress for this mess
Clearly, a better-dressed Congress — if not a more functional one — is possible. And a handful of current members are proving it. So I wanted to highlight a few of the most fashionable people in what is perhaps America’s least fashionable institution. Many of Congress’ best dressed people are women, but since I’m a menswear writer, I decided to focus on the men. With that in mind, here are the five most stylish guys in Congress. from Congress Is Falling Apart — But These 5 Guys Look Good Doing It by Derek Guy [Politico]
New $5 banknote to celebrate First Nations ties to Country
The Reserve Bank of Australia says the $5 note's new theme, selected from more than 2100 public submissions, will honour the emotional, spiritual, and physical connection of First Nations people to Country. Country does not mean a country like eg New Zealand, or the United Kingdom - each First Nations group in Australia has a geographical area within Australia that is very culturally and spiritually important to them that is referred to as Country. Country is the traditional lands of First Nations Australian peoples. First link. Second link. [more inside]
"Free speech and free markets."
Jeff Bezos bans Washington Post opinion writers from opposing ‘free speech and free markets’ "In a move promoted as supporting freedom of speech, The Washington Post will no longer publish opinion columns that oppose the core views of Post owner and Amazon executive chair Jeff Bezos, Bezos has reportedly told staff. " (The Verge link, does not appear to be paywalled.) Opinions editor David Shipley, who is not "hell yes" over this, has now left (NYT). [more inside]
The FAA Is In Crisis
Xyla Foxlin's "Hardest Video" A year ago Xyla Foxlin (previously featured on the Blue many times) posted a video "my IUD tried to kill me" in which she detailed mental health problems due to her IUD. A viewer reported her to the FAA who pulled her medical clearance to fly. In a new video, she details the review process, the mental health climate around flying and how she's working with the Pilot Mental Health Campaign to update FAA rules to foster treatment, not the current system of subterfuge practiced by pilots and air traffic controllers.
Cattle producer wakes to find olive python eating her bra and shirt
An Northern Territory (Australia) cattle producer had the horribly amazing experience of witnessing a python eating her laundry.
The serpent eventually regurgitated her clothes, which she said were quite slimy and in need of a thorough wash.
A reptile expert says pythons can be attracted to items that smell of food, such as those worn by people who work with animals, but believes the mass loss of bras is unlikely.
“We're going to take a sauna, sauna”
Though Melodifestivalen 2025, the six week qualifying competition to determine Sweden's Eurovision entry, is not yet over, one particular song and performance has caught attention: Bada bara bastu, by the Finnish collective KAJ. KAJ qualified from their heat for the Melodifestivalen final on 8th March. r/Finland: Their techno-style humor music is based on the Vöyri dialect of Finland-Swedish, which is difficult to understand even for most Swedish speakers. yle.fi: KAJ, often described as a comedy band, consists of Jakob Norrgård, Axel Åhman and Kevin Holmström.
Capacity for religious sentiment may derive from habitual use of drugs
Today, Allegro’s theory is remembered as a quintessential example of academic suicide, like a Cambridge egyptologist suddenly confessing a belief in ancient aliens. He was soon forced to resign from his position at the University of Manchester. Amid a conservative backlash to the drug-fuelled counterculture of the ‘70s, his work faded into obscurity, a laughingstock remembered only by a loyal band of fringe conspiracists. And yet, 50 years later, Allegro’s work suddenly seems oddly prescient. from Is God a Mushroom? [Long Now]