Canned Dragons

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.

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At the beginning of this year, I went through a bit of a thought experiment. I imagined that I had the power to call forth a new album from any band of my choice. What band would I choose? The two names that came foremost to mind were Wild Nothing and Ice Choir, both essentially pseudonyms for single musicians who make immaculate sophistipop (Jack Tatum and Kurt Feldman, respectively). I've learned that although Kurt Feldman is working on some new music, his love for complex and time-consuming video games means that any kind of release may be long in coming.

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I have benefitted from the use of AI recently. When I wanted to buy a complementary DAC and speaker combination, I consulted the "Schiit Talker," Schiit Audio's chatbot. It helpfully steered me away from some speakers that were less compatible with the DAC (but cheaper) I was looking at and towards the Kanto Yu4 set. I've been extremely happy with the DAC + speaker combo since I acted on the advice and purchased the equipment.

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As someone who in college majored in psychology and family and child counseling, I’m a proponent of therapy as an intervention in the case emotional difficulties. However, I am starting to question the potential overuse of therapy. Olga Khazan writes for The Atlantic about a study in which Australian teens with no history of mental health challenges were given therapy and actually saw negative outcomes as a result. “Maybe everybody thinking about how anxious or hurt they are might not be the best idea,” says Jean M.

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I finally reached the breaking point with Apple Music. I’ve been a loyal Apple Music subscriber ever since the demise of the beloved Rdio streaming music service. I just can’t deal with the bugs across the application and service anymore. Recently, I set my downloads to lossless quality, but I had trouble simply downloading music. I would try to download an album, and the progress indicator would just spin around and around.

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We recently had a training exercise at work which took the form of a quiz on various compliance topics. The quiz was competitive, with each player picking their favorite musician/band as their username, and answering questions for a chance at getting on the five player deep leaderboard (I came in sixth, right behind Metallica). There were so many people who picked Taylor Swift as their username, you could hardly tell who was in the lead.

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Fr. Stephen Freeman writes about the modern condition in a way that resonates with me and what I've witnessed in my lifetime. I think we are often disappointed that God refuses to behave as the god of modernity. The extremes of the “prosperity” preachers are only the most egregious examples of modernity’s god. There are others, more subtle. For example, we expect God to cooperate with our political projects (both Left and Right).

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The first time I went to an Orthodox Christian Church, it was with a group of confirmation students from my Presbyterian Church. Not knowing the tradition, we just happened to end up at "Forgiveness Vespers," the service that kicks off the Orthodox Season of Lent. At this service, parishioners line up around the perimeter of the church sanctuary and walk around the circle hugging each other and asking for forgiveness.

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I've been writing recently about my new appreciation for physical media for my music collection. I've hit a few snags, though. As the absolute cost of obtaining music goes down in that you can get almost anything included as part of your all-you-can-eat streaming music plan, the cost of physical copies of that same music keeps increasing.[1] Just today, I received a CD I ordered from Bandcamp. When I opened the package, I couldn't help but feel a bit left down.

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Karaoke Night by soccer mommy When I went to the Hopscotch music festival a few weeks ago, two of the bands that I went to see were Soccer Mommy and Pavement. Pavement played the first day, Soccer Mommy the third. After Sophia Regina Allison, the woman behind the stage name Soccer Mommy, took the stage, she mentioned getting really into the festival and staying the whole weekend (something not all the artists did).

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