Straight outta Estonia.
Straight outta Estonia.
New Mexico governor mobilizes National Guard to tackle crime emergency in Albuquerque
I briefly attended high school in Albuquerque during the early 90s as my family deliberated on whether we wanted to live there (we ultimately didn’t). When I started making friends, I was quickly warned about looking people in the eyes, lest they interpret the action as “mad dogging” them and respond with suitable hostility. It sounded like something I would have heard on a show about prison life on HBO and I wondered if I had actually been sent to a penitentiary instead of a place for learning. A student had been fatally shot in the parking lot of the high school the year before I arrived by another student. Our school was broken into and vandalized by members of a rival school not long after I started there.
I am not the least bit surprised to read this news.
The new Bracket City game from The Atlantic is fun but my mind keeps thinking I’m looking at markdown.
Currently reading: How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill 📚
Jerome, that cantankerous translator of the Latin Bible, awoke one night in a frenzied sweat: he had dreamed that Christ condemned him to hell for being more of a Ciceronian than a Christian.
My 13-yr-old claims he doesn’t like music, so imagine my surprise at him walking around the house belting out Wham’s “Careless Whisper.”
I hate to feel like I’m just getting old and only able to appreciate music from my youth. I’m still open to new music and find much to enjoy in the output of the current generation of music. However, I suppose like anyone, I do have a soft spot for the soundtracks of my younger days.
Unrest - Perfect Teeth (Bandcamp)
W. David Marx writes on his blog Culture about 10,000 Maniacs and the earnest progressivism of the early alternative music culture.
Certainly 10,000 Maniacs were a bit over-the-top, but they fit seamlessly in the general aesthetic of “alternative” culture. Progressivism was cool in the 1980s. Merchant worked at a health food store, and before joining the band, considered a career in special-needs education. She was the one who pushed REM’s Michael Stipe to lurch towards more political content. These were the Reagan-Bush years, and artists resisted by drawing attention to the social ills that conservatives didn’t care about.
He contrasts that sort of authentic hope for change with today’s music, which has a very cynical live for the moment ethos. “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
I’m having a good deal of trouble bringing myself to throw out a perfectly good Fujitsu ScanSnap just because they not longer make drivers for it.
I love this set of photos from Emilio Herve of the Japanese Breakfast show at El Museo del Barrio. I’ve seen Japanese Breakfast live but wasn’t treated to this kind of spectacle.
It’s amazing how many different facial expressions Michelle Zauner brings to the proceedings.
Great. My son’s Echo Dot just notified him about the arrival of his birthday present. So much for surprises.