February 2012
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nevermind the sex pistols, it's f**ked up
that I liked the opening two seconds of the new Earth track(s) way more than an attempt to listen to at least 15 seconds of the new Fucked Up (even skipping past the tortuously slow opening). just saying (that Fucked Up are such a bland, formulaic - like a clock that chimes punk riffs - rehash of melodic hardcore that I think it’s insane that they’re so popular, even if Andrew’s...
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raptoravatar:
Does realizing that I’d probably never complain about civil liberties, illegal drone strikes etc. again as long as Obama just puts out a picture of him being a nerd every 2-8 weeks for the rest of his time in office make me a prisoner of The Spectacle?
The Spectacles, you mean?
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“The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve...”
– “M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized.” (via marathonpacks)
the medium is the message
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Charlie Brooker: When the Daily Mail calls... →
“There was a minor kerfuffle a few weeks ago when the Daily Mail website overtook the New York Times to become the most popular news site in the world. Liberals can whine all they like, but that’s a formidable achievement, especially considering it’s not really a conventional news site at all, more a big online bin full of pictures of reality stars, with the occasional Stephen...
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Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week →
This is just too good (also last week, via the CLR):
“Funny also how Eamon Gilmore solemnly told us that we need to “honour agreements” with public sector unions. Just after tearing up agreements made with voters about the promissory notes/third-level fees/children’s allowance (I could go on). But then where Catholic morality calls for treating all citizens the same, Labour’s ethic seems...
Music Reviews a la Boatzone3: Bestuv 2011,... →
boatzone3:
Every year I spend too much time writing foul-mouthed blurbs about last year’s records, and 2011 was the biggest job yet. If you could spare a minute or sixty for a look-see, well golly it would mean much to me.
Just hop one click over to my wordpress joint, maybe leave a comment, and then this whole thing’ll finally be behind us.
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boatzone3 replied to your quote: It’s an issue that often surfaces in interviews…
US ideology worsened under neoliberalism: the elevation of an ill-defined middle class, in a bizarre twist on Marx, to “universal class” status. Romney’s recent fuckup -“I’m not worried about the poor”- implies that “real Americans”=middle class.
Sure, I read about that in the Guardian (and it’s...
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“It’s an issue that often surfaces in interviews such as this. People with decent...”
– What now for the hopes and plans of Ireland’s middle-earners - The Irish Times - Sat, Feb 04, 2012
No, they’re indicators of material privilege. And people with lower incomes also have ‘decent aspirations’ and ambitions, they’re just less likely to be realised.
...
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Notes On The Front: Working Our Way into the... →
Michael Taft -
“Let’s bottom-line this: if anyone thinks that driving more people into deprivation – whether in work or on social protection – will further economic recovery and fiscal stability, they should lie down in a dark window-less basement until that thought passes. Rising deprivation puts strains on social services, in-work productivity, and the Exchequer (the Government loses...
January 2012
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Sh!t White People Say: Pt. 2
“I hope Das Racist cancelling their entire European tour for undisclosed personal reasons is just a massive postcolonialist joke.”
(previously)
“Our group came about as the result of each of us growing tired of all the get rich quick scams that run so rampant on the internet. Many of the programs are excellent and workable except the average person becoming involved in them simply do not have the skills to put them into action.”
ahahahaha…
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“For me, it’s some form of intellectually satisfying ecstatic music that I...”
– Tim Hecker interview at Resident Advisor
This is really good - he says some very intelligent stuff without sounding too esoteric or bandwagon-jumping; e.g., on Ravedeath
“The record is not about the technology. In some ways it isn’t about anything at all, like an expression of bare...
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The Cedar Lounge Revolution: Sunday Independent... →
From a leading commentator in Ireland’s best-selling Sunday broadsheet:
“Much though I hate to disagree with our esteemed President, on Hayek, I have to. Far from being discredited, Hayek is our inspiration now. It was he who showed how state intervention — the US Fed and Bank of England setting ultra-low interest rates in the Twenties — contributed to the Great Depression, and how,...
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“Many of the funds that show up on Romney’s tax returns but not his...”
– Romney tax returns detail funds not included in ethics forms - Los Angeles Times (via)
I for one welcome our new world leader pretend/overlord of foreign (in)direct investment. Somebody needs to pay for all those brass plaques!
(since the company address is in Dublin 4, and the loosely-regulated...
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“It is admirable that Higgins touches upon issues of scholarship with a certain amount of prior knowledge, but his invocation of “technocracy” is the sort of neoliberal posturing, simultaneously absolving individual responsibility and reasserting the need for “better leadership” (of what?), that seeks to historicise itself (à la Gingrich’s campaign speeches,...
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“It was a cracker of a Michael D speech: we counted a head-wrecking nine...”
– First they came for our sociologists, and I did not cry out because I was not of that faculty…
feeling a bit reductio ad hitlerum today (in an ironic way)… maybe I should go back and do my PhD in 1930s European Communism.
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“For example, we have arrived at quite widespread acceptance by policy makers of...”
– I see your President’s State of the Union address, and I raise you mine’s. More on this to come.
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"I get the sense that asexuality is part of her... →
marathonpacks:
About one of the most resolutely sexual albums of the last few years. A shame that Grantland’s huge audience is exposed to this level of crude misrepresentation masquerading as coy/self-effacing insight.
I dunno, it might help to include the surrounding paragraph:
“tUnE-yArDs is essentially one person, a somewhat androgynous American woman named Merrill Garbus. This is...
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andrewtsks:
hardcorefornerds:
andrewtsks:
[…]
Isn’t this just a version of internalized oppression, though? The next paragraph in this interview is a long, idiosyncratic account of punk history, which does make some good points in a lamentable way, followed by the statement “The entire history of post modern youth culture has been one long turn against punk, and people wonder why we...
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Gingrich victory throws race open →
“Former Speaker of the House trounces Romney in South Carolina with 40% of the vote”
LOL at plurality voting systems. What would happen if the US party nominees (let alone the actual president) were decided by STV (or more accurately in the context, IRV)? I’ve been thinking about this since the whole Romney/Santorum neck-and-neck thing in Iowa - where would Ron Paul’s...
backleftlitz:
Think I’ve saved myself whole low-rent storage centers’ worth of neurons by never once internally asking the question “What is a Hipster,” and by answering all external questions to that effect by saying like “beats me yo, I just love striped shirts!”
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“Are Irish people predisposed to depression? He says there is no hard evidence...”
– Excellent interview/feature with Tony Bates, author, psychologist and founder of youth mental health charity Headstrong, in today’s Irish Times.
I wrote recently against “generalisations about national psychology” in the sphere of economics and society, but at least here there is...
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andrewtsks:
“About when we were writing Hidden World, we made a pretty conscious decision that we didn’t want to be a big fish in a mostly small and stagnant hardcore world. We knew that almost every person who had ever done something important in indie rock (ie “the mainstream”) used to either be in a shitty punk band, or grew up going to punk shows in the 80s, which meant we knew we’d hit the...
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Thoughts on Megaupload (and soap)
1. Other filesharing alternatives are available (I’ve always found Mediafire, although to a slightly lesser degree recently, to be very user-friendly - and by user I mean exactly that, contributing nothing to it except theoretical eyeballs for crappy but reasonably unobtrusive internet ads), and probably will continue to be barring major shifts in the elements of supply - including...
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Humor me here.
marathonpacks:
For those of you who saw Tune-Yards’ whokill win the critics’ poll and went “ugggggghhhhh,” what is it that you don’t like about the album (or the artist)? I’m honestly not trolling here, I promise! I love the album (it was my #1), but I understand that her election as President Of Music doesn’t come with a mandate or anything. She’s still sold less than 50k, her victory was...
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“IF YOU MISSED the opening episode of Homeland on RTÉ2 last night, when it was...”
– Great drama grounded on uncomfortable political reality - The Irish Times - Sat, Jan 14, 2012
here’s where we talk about American television and attempt to negotiate a distinct location in an environment of post-nationalism and globalisation. fyi, American right-wingers/isolationists, there...
“To receive immediate updates and new posts subscribe to the Anxiety RSS feed.”
It’s Still the ‘Age of Anxiety.’ Or Is It? - NYTimes.com
What could possibly go wrong?
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“not every cab-hailer after a late night celebration is necessarily working as a...”
– New York cab fleecing holds less on data versus intuition
This guy, however, gets it - explaining the implication of charging $107 for a 1.5 mile cab ride.
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Worst, best, worst: Ireland's extraordinary labour... →
“According to OECD figures, there were 1,111,600 people at work in Ireland in 1956, the first year for which figures are available. In 1989, employment was down to 1,098,500. No other country – not a single one – experienced shrinking employment over that period of economic transformation in the western world.
This astonishing failure came despite unusually high fertility rates and an...
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“(It clatters its way through sounding like everything from Joy Division to...”
– Best music 2011 - Slate Magazine
Can someone please start a blog called Reasonably Dissecting Nitsuh Abebe’s Reasonable Dissections (RD-NARD)? Like Pitchfork Reviews Reviews, but with a point and an overarching intellectual framework? (It’s ok, PRR, we love you still, kinda)
Cos this -...
Sh!t White People Say:
“Got my Das Racist tickets”