June 11, 2019
Women in Rock & Roll's First Wave, 1950s and early 1960s
For sixty years, conventional wisdom has told us that women generally did not perform rock and roll during the 1950s. The reality is, however, that hundreds—or maybe thousands—of women and girls performed and recorded rock and roll in its early years. And many more participated in other ways: writing songs, owning or working for record labels, working as session or touring musicians, designing stage wear, dancing, or managing talent—to give just a few examples. The Women in Rock Project is working to document these musicians, artists, and other women in the first wave of rock'n'roll, from Faye Adams to “The Duchess,” Norma-Jean Wofford, with biographies and partial discographies, and some interviews. [more inside]
Ten Minutes Of Righteous Outrage
I am the eye that is looking at a spectacle.
Françoise Gilot, 97, Does Not Regret Her Pablo Picasso Memoir Gilot, an artist in her own right, does not regret the (at the time) controversial book she wrote about her 10 years with Picasso. To be republished this year, she had a few words to share with the NYTimes - all of them on point. [more inside]
🐈🍑👃💥
Cats 'Farm' Bacteria in Their Butts (Live Science). Why do they do this? Cats use their anal glands to produce a stinky pheromone spray made up of many volatile chemicals (which they use to mark their territory with messages that tell others who they are and whether they're ready to mate). And it turns out they probably don't make most of those smelly chemicals themselves; they outsource a lot of the production to microbes that live in those glands, new research reveals. (bioRxiv) (PDF) [more inside]
wanderin beneath the clear blue sky
Father's Day is coming up
"I made a human flesh coin purse" Twitter | Threadreader
"I want to carry in this" Twitter | Threadreader
"Please look for a guy who is not scared" Twitter | Threadreader
"Search search 'Metabo bag'!
"By the way, type w which may be attached to the butt side is also w" Twitter | Threadreader
"I want to carry in this" Twitter | Threadreader
"Please look for a guy who is not scared" Twitter | Threadreader
"Search search 'Metabo bag'!
"By the way, type w which may be attached to the butt side is also w" Twitter | Threadreader
We got work to do
Mavis Staples turns 80 on July 10, 2019. She's on a birthday tour, and in May she released her 12th studio album entitled We Get By (Bandcamp, and full album stream from ANTI- records on Youtube). WTF with Marc Maron interview (June 10, 2019 - interview starts at 14:55). [more inside]
How Spotify pursues emotional surveillance for global profit
"Music is emotional, and so our listening often signals something deeply personal and private. Today, this means music streaming platforms ... have troves of data related to our emotional states, moods, and feelings. As it turns out, in a move that should not surprise anyone at this point, Spotify has been selling access to that listening data to multinational corporations." Big Mood Machine, by Liz Pelly for the Baffler.
Fans are slans
At least when it comes to inventing an effective tagging system better than anything big tech can deliver so they can enjoy their Steve/Tony slash, as Wired's Gretchen McCulloch explains.
A Community Striving To Rebuild One Of The Poorest Places In The US
Battered by poverty, discrimination and climate change, Native Americans on the Pine Ridge Reservation are raising homes – and hope – for the next generation. [more inside]
Mobile Homes
How Mobile, Alabama fought urban blight to restore abandoned houses. Why a small group of Government employees, including "a landscape architect, a dreadlocked anthropologist, and an industrial designer with a man bun", fought to change the state constitution to make it easier for the state to seize property - and how they did it. Also featuring the strategic deployment of bright pink stickers, a $22 plate of red beans and rice, and one determined "house-hugger".
the market will solve it!
Back in 2000, economist Robin Hanson proposed futarchy, a governance model in which people would Vote Values, But Bet Beliefs.
"Under this system, individuals would vote not on whether or not to implement particular policies, but rather on a metric to determine how well their country (or charity or company) is doing, and then prediction markets would be used to pick the policies that best optimize the metric. " [more inside]
"Under this system, individuals would vote not on whether or not to implement particular policies, but rather on a metric to determine how well their country (or charity or company) is doing, and then prediction markets would be used to pick the policies that best optimize the metric. " [more inside]
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch)
The next true installment in the Nintendo franchise is (now) slated for a March 2020 release (previously: 2019). Video on twitter (alternative). As usual, you attempt to build an idyllic life from within a capitalist economic system controlled by Tom Nook, with crafting being a significant activity. Features a flimsy axe, sunsets, camp sites, fireflies, and crippling debt.
For I Have Tasted The Fruit
Can video games have an ideology? (Previously on Sim City) Yaz Minsky thinks so: Sid Meier at the End of History: the Philosophy and Politics of Alpha Centauri (58:00) can working on video games have an ideology? On March 4, 2019, three creators—two of the creators of independent video game Night in the Woods, Scott Benson and Bethany Hockenberry, along with prolific artist/musician Wren Farren—announced rather suddenly that they’d established The Glory Society, a new worker cooperative video game studio.
Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Fowl Play: Chickens in Video Games [Forces of Geek] “In video games however, chickens have a long and varied history, they’ve become something of a joke and have also been treated pretty badly so it’s no surprise that in some games they are straight up evil. [...] Chicken abuse has been a constant and re-occurring theme in gaming. For some reason, we enjoy attacking them, mocking them and using their limited ability of short range flight for our own means. [...] Then again, some of the chickens in games are so formidable I wonder if it’s a commentary on their treatment in the real world, what would chickens like to do to us humans as recompense for our treatment of them?” [more inside]
A Thing for Moving
There's No Excuse Not to Speak Your Mind
In 2018 Seinabo Say sat down with Billboard to talk about her upcoming second album, "I'm a Dream." From Billboard: On her critically acclaimed debut album, 2015’s Pretend, the Swedish-Gambian singer battled self-doubt and self-sabotage on soul-pop tracks like “Younger,” which chastised herself for not working harder, and “Who,” a brutal self-interrogation that asked questions like: Who do you think you are? What have you done to deserve that? But on her upcoming second album, I’m a Dream, she’s noticeably changed her tune. The video for the first single, the ominous banger “I Owe You Nothing,” sees Sey posing like royalty as she declares, “I don’t have to smile for you/ I don’t have to move for you/ I don’t have to ‘dance, monkey dance’ for you." [more inside]
In historical terms, the dimension of the catastrophe is staggering
Despite initial statements minimizing the extent of the loss, court documents reveal that a 2008 fire at Universal Studios wiped out an immense collection of irreplacable master tapes of some of the 20th century's greatest recording artists: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Willie Dixon, Bo Diddley, Etta James, Buddy Holly, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and Sun Ra. The list goes on. (SLNYT)
It's all up in the air
Juzzie Smith busking blues with a unique technique. An infectiously happy and stunning to watch one man band. [more inside]
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