People tend to think of Morrissey as an overwrought melancholic (and not without some reason). I've seen multiple late-night talk show hosts and comedians poke fun at his persona, satirizing the sadness of his music. It’s not all rainy days and Mondays in Morrissey’s catalog, though. “Now My Heart Is Full” represents a period in his li...

Derek Thompson wrote a newsletter edition for the Altantic about population growth collapsing in the U.S. The statistics he cites are alarming. “U.S. growth didn’t slowly fade away: It slipped, and slipped, and then fell off a cliff. The 2010s were already demographically stagnant; every year from 2011 to 2017, the U.S. grew by only 2 ...

This cover of a Paul Simon song by The Bangles achieved more popularity than the original. The clips show the band fake playing live in front of walls of tube TV’s setup to look futuristic, interspersed with scenes from the film Less Than Zero. Most of the movie clips involve Andrew McCarthy and Jamie Gertz making out, though we do get...

At Micro Camp 2021, Patrick Rhone did a talk on writing a book and he delved into the topic of blogging, which he framed as writing essays for an online audience. His point was that if you are a blogger, you are a writer. A writer for those who read your content online. It was an inspirational talk in how it shifted the way you can thi...

Rebecca Riddell has an opinion piece for the Washington Post (🔗 Via Lisa Sieverts) on the US trying to export privatized healthcare to nations that in some cases, at least, have pretty robust public healthcare systems in place. The example that she hones in on is Kenya, where the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is try...

People associate Ministry with their signature industrial/metal sound, but they have a dark past in the world of 80s new wave synth pop. Ministry mastermind Al Jourgenson, or "Uncle Al" as he is affectionately known (probably as much for his crazy, constantly revised stories about his past as for his status as elder statesman and proge...

Every time I think I'm out, they pull me back in. I've started listening to my records again and I had forgotten how great they sound. I try to avoid being a vinyl snob (and my audiophile chops aren’t strong enough, anyway), but there is a warmth that I don't get from the various bluetooth and streaming devices I have scattered around....

Frank Yang, of the late Chromewaves.net, has a new blog called Space Echo, where he does what he couldn’t really do on his previous music blog: feature older music. With Chromewaves, he was writing about new music coming out. He hustled to stay on top of the latest noises, but eventually burned out and shut the blog in 2013. This gave ...

In a piece entitled It's Not Your Fault You're a Jerk on Twitter, Katherine Cross writes for Wired Magazine about the psychological dynamics that drive antisocial behavior patterns on social networks. Her analysis on how the platforms accelerate what is already dissociative behavior from the human beings behind the keyboard draws paral...

I did most of my growing up in the suburbs of the District of Columbia, during the Reagan administration. We took many of our school field trips into D.C., including a few to the White House, and of course, to the plethora of wonderful museums that can be found in the district. My great aunt worked for several Republican politicians an...

When I was a kid, I spent a good amount of time with a cousin of the same age. Throughout our elementary school years, he and I shared a deep and abiding love for all things G.I. Joe. We hunted down the elusive Snake Eyes figure together. We turned our grandparent's spare room into a miniature theater of play warfare. I remember meetin...