Spencer Kornhaber covers the merger of Pitchfork with GQ for The Atlantic. Yesterday, Condé Nast’s chief content officer, Anna Wintour, announced plans to merge Pitchfork into the men’s magazine GQ. “This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company,” she wrote in a staff memo.
Casey Shutt considers an article on AI by Paul Kingsnorth for Mere Orthodoxy. Kingsnorth sees demonic forces at play within technological advancement in general and AI in specific. Shutt expands upon the concerns expressed by Kingsnorth in his own piece. He hones in on the sense of real foreboding that plagues some who work with the technology. The Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, seems genuinely haunted by AI’s mysterious power and the astonishing speed at which it is advancing.
Jess Weatherbed writes for The Verge about members of the European Parliament targeting Spotify with regulations to make sure European music is well represented and that artists are compensated more fairly. The proposition was made to ensure European musical works are accessible and avoid being overshadowed by the “overwhelming amount” of content being continually added to streaming platforms like Spotify. MEPs also called for outdated “pre-digital” royalty rates to be revised, noting that some schemes force performers to accept little to no revenue in exchange for greater exposure.
As I headed to Divine Liturgy yesterday morning, I was glad to be able to participate in sacred time. The ability to set aside time for worship and repentant reflection has clear benefits for the soul. Elizabeth Oldfield writes about Keeping Sacred Time for Comment Magazine. Rowan Williams says that “undifferentiated time” is one of the hallmarks of secular societies, and we are all dancing to its catchy, repetitive tune.
I've been fascinated by the idea that the opposite of addiction is connection since I first heard about it. It seems to be a transformative paradigm shift in terms of how we think about addiction and treatment. This piece by Robert Weiss details some of the research that has gone into formulating this conclusion. Given the above, one wonders what is really going on with addiction. Obviously, there is more to the equation than just the dopamine pleasure response.
It was getting dangerously close to the end of the year, and I still hadn't picked out a favorite track from 2023, if only for my own contemplation, even if not for publication. This week, though, I finally listened to Daydreamer by Molly Burch, which came out in September. It sat in my album collection in Roon for a few weeks before I even took the time to actually put the virtual needle on the record.
The first band you think of when you think of Christmas music is probably not Ladytron. Then again, they have the icy synths, vocals that are enveloped by frosted echoes and wintertime themes. So maybe, while they are most definitely not Christmas music, their sound is appropriate this time of year. "All Over By Xmas" is really more for completionists, but the chorus did get stuck in my head after a single listen, so it's a pretty catchy tune.
Cartwheel, the new album by Hotline TNT on Jack White's Third Man Records, has the distinction of being one of Pitchfork Media's picks for best new music. While I'm not always in sync with the writers of that particular publication on what's fresh, I have to back up their decision in this case. Though Cartwheel occasionally relents in tempo and density, it’s extremely loud at all volumes, a force multiplier for the saddest secrets of its source material—power-pop love songs in love with the concept of love as learned from other power-pop songs about the same thing.
Years ago, then presidential candidate Donald Trump famously said he could shoot someone on 5th Ave. in New York and his supporters would still follow him. With each new indictment and poll number, his hyperbolic hypothetical proves itself to be more and more plausible. He's broken the boundaries of what any other politician could conceivably get away with many times over with little observable diminishment in the fervor of his fan base.
Ted Gioia writes about the battle between macroculture and microculture. ChatGPT makes the distinction between the two cultures: In essence, macroculture represents the dominant cultural framework of a society, while microcultures are the distinct subgroups with their own customs and values existing within that broader framework.Gioia believes microculture is taking over after the 20th century was dominated by macroculture, and welcomes the shift. Gioia was always more into microculture and the conceptually adjacent counterculture.