January 2012
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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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Watch
“The way Loma blows out the mix of their records always makes them sound so incredibly heavy. If you’re in to melodic screamo this band is pretty much the cream of the crop.”
Loma Prieta - I.V. | Stokingtheroots
Finally got round to listening to this today, it’s really good. Almost had to check my headphones were connected properly at first and that it wasn’t just...
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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”
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“Sir, – Can nothing be done to remove the appalling carbuncle that is the Occupy...”
– The Irish Times - Letters
Hmm. Entirely reactionary as this letter-writer may be, he does (probably inadvertently) make a good point about what is empirically proven to be the most negatively viewed group in Irish society. What would we do if Occupy Dame Street was a Traveller...
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“Our most effective succor, however, may rest in what has not changed at all: our...”
– Ireland’s Diaspora, Yet Again - NYTimes.com
Can people please stop using novelists to explain Ireland’s economic crisis? Specifically John Banville, here, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Joseph O’Connor (I don’t know where the female or satirical novelists are, except not...
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“Equally, in a recession worse than the one which spawned punk, one buyer for an...”
– Posh punk: fashion turns the clock back to 1977 | Fashion | The Observer
I guess in a way it’s refreshingly honest to have someone quoted as saying DIY culture would endanger the profits made by retail consumerism? Or maybe just depressing - either way I’m in two minds about whether it...
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“What makes Tumblr so good for this? The networkedness of it gives new ideas the...”
– Tom Ewing. Tumblr is weird this way. My Tumblr posts to my Facebook, but there are people who read my Tumblr who I am totally unfamiliar with and many people I’m friends with on Facebook who I’m sure never read my Tumblr. What he says about the collaborative nature of it is why it’s hands down my...
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Diane Abbott's tweet and the red herring of... →
best thing I’ve read on this kind of thing for a while (and apparently co-written by an Irishman and an Englishwoman):
“The insistence on an apology evinces a new standard of racial sensitivity among rightwing commentators. Racist jokes are always “taken too seriously”, but Abbott’s sentence is offensive, no contextualisation allowed. Minorities “cry...
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“Past Life may have been cathartic to make, but it felt less like a personal...”
– Pitchfork: Top 50 Albums of 2011 - 13. EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints by Mark Richardson
Apropos of what I said yesterday, this is some really good writing - and thinking - about EMA. ‘Red Star’, which I wrote about at length originally here (and posted the early tape-recorded acoustic...
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“said he was a fag but you know he was a pretty man
don’t you know they...”
– EMA, ‘Anteroom’
h/t to philolzophy for the best definition of sexuality ever (and one I guess I subscribe to also): “kinda bi and straight”
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mothsinamoshpit asked: I feel a huge sense of relief in the track. "Big fat bluebird" I think is just her looking out of her bedroom window. It's as if she's looking around, taking note of what she sees, similar to in "California," except this time she is entirely content with it.
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52 Albums: #42
jakec:
It took a long time for me to make a concentrated effort to like My Bloody Valentine, because my initial impressions were “this sounds terrible.” So viscerally, in fact, that I became really apprehensive about the impending point at which I’d have to listen to them. And then I gave it the ol’ college try and it wasn’t so bad after all.
At first I found it mostly tuneless and confusing....
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“How do we get out of relationships of cruel optimism, out of this prolonged...”
– The New Inquiry - No Resolution
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mothsinamoshpit asked: I think that "Breakfast" is about having sex while her parents are in the next room. I take it as about the emotional side of sex, sort of a companion to "Milkman," which is a very physically sexual song.
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