I don’t think I ever posted this: Hellgate NYC, a great, local, journalist owned New York City news site, sends incredible T-shirts to their subscribers.
I’m just endlessly fascinated with the Hell Gate bridge.
NYC Bands 🎵
I was randomly curious the other day, and looked up bands from New York City on Wikipedia. I noted down every one I recognized; it’s a very musically diverse list, and there were a few surprises, at least for me. Do you see anything that ties them all together? I’ll give you a hint: I don’t.
- A Tribe Called Quest
- Anthrax
- Beastie Boys
- Blondie
- Blood, Sweat, and Tears
- Blue Oyster Cult
- Brand New
- C+C Music Factory
- Chic
- The Chiffons
- Coheed and Cambria
- The Cramps
- The Cro-Mags
- Deee-Lite
- De La Soul
- Foreigner
- Fountains of Wayne
- Grizzly Bear
- Interpol
- Jawbreaker
- King Missile
- Kiss
- LCD Soundsystem
- The Lovin’ Spoonful
- The Mamas & the Papas
- Method Man & Redman
- Living Color
- New York Dolls
- The Pretty Reckless
- Public Enemy
- Ramones
- The Ronettes
- Run-DMC
- Simon & Garfunkel
- Sonic Youth
- Spin Doctors
- The Strokes
- Talking Back Sunday
- Talking Heads
- Television
- Terror Squad
- TV On The Radio
- Type O Negative
- Vampire Weekend
- The Velvet Underground
- White Zombie
- Wu-Tang Clan
- Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Thomas Frank writes about politically noxious nostalgia for Harpers. It’s connects the bicentennial in 1976 with our current impoverished political moment. I think it strikes a chord.
Donald Trump didn’t invent the eternal return of nostalgia any more than Ronald Reagan invented the retro style of the Seventies and Eighties. Nostalgia is today a structural feature of our modern world, the emptiness and vapidity at the heart of our culture, the inevitable mass-produced sentiment of a society that permanently feels that everything is constantly going wrong but is chronically unable to identify why.
I can certainly cop to rooting around in nostalgia (see my recent post on an old DOS game), and I do feel uncomfortable about it sometimes; the politics wrapped around nostalgia can be manipulative and harmful, and even if my idle musings on the past don’t have those goals, it feels like being too close to the past in thought can lead one astray in the present. Moderation in all things, perhaps?
The essay is worth reading in its entirety, and the conclusion is interesting, if unleavened. 🇺🇸
I think Corey Doctorow is right about the corporate motivations and economic implications of AI.
AI can’t do the jobs it’s replacing: AI is predicated on the premise that the monopolies, duopolies and cartels that control the global economy can deliberately worsen their products without suffering economic or regulatory consequences, because they’re the only game in town.
Give the whole thing a read, I think it’s worth it. 💽
Alt-comic God Brian Poseidon. Is that anything?
The drama of soccer.
Pure mood 🐈
Hairspray, 1988 - ★★★★
Still the best.
I discovered the uuidgen command, which generates a unique ID like 3E7FE9F8-9D26-42BE-999D-43D2D34697BC. This seems like it would be great to use in some shell glue script or another. 💽