"He spoke about the difficulty of empathy ("Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of"), the importance of being well adjusted ("which I suggest to you is not an accidental term") and the essential lonesomeness of adult life ("lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation")."Noticed on Goodjobbb.
Great sentence from Jon Stewart:
"I'm saying war is, by definition, temporary insanity."
Watch this twice.
The City of Berkeley figured out a great way to help residents solarize:
"The city foots the bill for the installation, but homeowners retain ownership and pay the city back over 20 years via an annual property assessment. And if they sell their house before the bill is completely paid off, no worries -- the liability for the remaining bill, along with the solar panels, goes to the next owner of the house."Makes me kind of want to live there. Via Salon.
Cyanatrendland compiles the top sites for exploring and gleaning inspiration from typography. It's presented well and the resulting finds are labyrinthine and inspirational. Here's a quick skim (pics link to respective sites):
I'm not a fan of Mars missions, but at least Google has the wherewithal to qualify them the only way Google knows how: with an interactive map rife with lander-links, articles on craters and ridges, and other stories.
You can navigate Mars here. I'm still not sold on the trillions it costs taxpayers to land a digital camera on that red rock. But I guess I have bigger beefs to grill. I'm comin' for you, Ad Council.
The Wall Street Journal has already-innovative architects imagine homes of the future. Be sure to get to the "ice block batteries" that actually exist at BofA headquarters in NYC.
Great sentence: "The 'bark' of the treelike house would be thin, insulating films that would self-clean and self-heal, Mr. McDonough says, thus avoiding the need to replace them after years of exposure to the elements."
Whoops. I love this song! Great sentence (if you're 16): "That's what you get when you let your heart win."
John Mayer talks watches in The Moment.
Great sentence: "In one [Esquire blog] entry, he itemized his Amex bill to show some of the strange things rock stardom had bought him: two Louis Vuitton suits, a Boba Fett action figure (an eBay impulse buy) and a hefty phone-sex bill."
From the director of Helvetica (not to mention Wilco and Death Cab movies) comes Objectified. It's "a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them."
Good write up at ISO50, and another great El Ten Eleven song in the trailer. This one is called "I Like Van Halen Because My Sister Says They Are Cool."
More info at Objectifiedfilm.com.
"The Consumer Price Index fell for the first time since 1955, 38 39 and bankrupt Lehman Brothers made plans to sell its 500,000-pound stockpile of yellowcake uranium, which has recently plummeted in value."
From Harper's essential Weekly Review, still one of the best things on the web.
Raphael released one of my favorite albums last year. I found his performance at the Google campus on their YouTube Channel. It takes a song to get the levels right, but all in all he makes it a pleasant listen. And he takes questions towards the end.
Great sentence (Jay-Z to Raphael on the "Oh Girl" guest verse): "It's special."
Here's my favorite song off the record featuring the ineffable Joss Stone:
Fish flakes!"Tokyo-style okonomiyaki (also known as manjayaki) is a runny, viscous and slightly unappetizing regional variant that is worthwhile only because you eat it with a tiny spatula the size of a coffee spoon, scrapping bits of burned rice-flour batter off the teppan like a jolly giant taking paint off the side of a barn."
We put saxophone on a couple of choice cuts. Here's an actual text message convo that occurred during the recording:
Timothy: "What're you up to tonight?"
BRLISM: "Saxophone."
Timothy: "Ha. Really?"
BRLISM: "For a spell, yes."
Timothy: "Well lemme know when."
Of course he thought I meant "saxophone karaoke," which is also a fine way to spend a Thursday night in San Francisco. That's where you go to the bar at the corner of 24th and Potrero (or-so), choose a song like Hall's and Oates' "Maneater" and, when you get to the solo, the DJ whips out his sax and lays it down.
That DJ is going to have at least two more hits to learn in the near future.
Here's the trailer for Wainy Days Season 4 (via Videogum). It's the best show not on TV, and I know I'm not the first to say so. David Wain created Role Models, Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, and a bunch of other bizarre comedy wingdings.
Here's a great example of how perfectly weird it is, courtesy of guest-genius Paul Rudd.
I never wear watches, but find them wildly desirable. This one is solar powered and radio controlled.
After years of effort, I found a station I enjoy on Pandora. That sounds dramatic, but consider my experience: I've registered twice in a period of two years and, disappointed, returned a couple times per registration optimistic that the library and algorithms would be improved. Basically, I found the results of my searches predictable, boring, or too unrelated to my expectations.
I was part of the problem, I realize. Why you're searching is more important than what you're searching for. I would turn to Pandora in those rare moments of iTunes-playlist boredom, search something like "Radiohead," then hope for flawless music. I'd leave dissappointed.
Eventually, Evan showed me a station he made for King Crimson. It came up with just what he wanted: experimental, progressive music from the 70's and 80's. I signed up again and searched The Album Leaf, wanting to hear more soft, instrumental, electronic-ish music. It didn't have to be "flawless" soft, instrumental, electronic-ish because I didn't really know what that would be.
Of the first 30 songs I listened to, I gave eight the "thumbs up," three the "thumbs down," and found the remaining 19 pleasant. I also downloaded four albums from two of 15-or-so artists that appeared on the station.
I'll probably never be a Pandora devotee (to much music library), but it's finally a tool I can recommend.
How awful is Microsoft advertising? Slate explores.
Great sentence: "Apple marketing has apparently succeeded so completely that we now see people lusting after Macs even inside Microsoft ads."
Of course Wired finds a ridiculous PC anachronism surrounding the anachronism that is PC spokesperson Girl Talk.
Nothing Compares 2 U (cover) live
Saw Gavin last night. The show was tough: middling venue, tiny audience, rough tour that probably seemed like the most important thing in the world a month ago. This guy is insanely talented and prolific. He seemed confused as anyone as to how he might burst through the fog of relative anonymity.
The Guardian UK reports on a study that finds "pirates" 10 times more likely to buy music.
Great sentence: "Researchers found that those who downloaded "free" music – whether from lawful or seedy sources – were also 10 times more likely to pay for music."
Thanks Kanye via Freshome because of Fusca Design. It's a bright blue rabbit hole here, people.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| We Don't Torture | ||||
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I wrote about my favorites sentences in Wells Tower's debut story collection for Flatman Crooked. See it here.
(My own) great sentence:
"Regardless, you see the sort of visceral tar pit Tower slogs through, an emulsion of ruthless historical pointillism and dialogue plausibly lifted from a night out with my friends."While you're there snoop around: I recommend the podcast and many of the unusual stories they tell; I don't recommend their thoughts on Lil Wayne.
Are there musical "universals?"From Wired: gracefully articulated truths about a new era in media consumption. Great sentence:
"Even as music labels and movie studios try to sue peer-to-peer networks out of existence, these same networks have been preparing music labels and movie studios for the emerging social-media world, in which sales form only a small slice of the revenue pie, and what really matters is who likes what, and who pays attention to them."Music, art, film, media is created from the ether, from negative space. That's where the possibility is and that's why there's an industry to begin with. What's weird is that we have a greater understanding of possibility and more people able to share in the exploration, yet the labels seem resistant of anything unestablished. Some of what doesn't exist is also what needs to:
"Finally, P2P accelerated the development of products that people want to purchase when free alternatives exist."
In a must-read for musicians, Endgadget disassembles the Monster Cable company. Great sentence:
"It's ironic, really, given that we currently have a blacklist in place for the overpriced cable-maker because of their rotten business practices (like regularly going after other companies that happen to use the word monster in their name, faking performance tests, and generally bilking customers out of their hard-earned dough)."
The first thing we did was listen to a song called "Stratospheric Boogie," as performed by the first guy ever to endorse a Telecaster.
Facts: 13 songs. Bass. Drums. Electric guitar. Acoustic guitar. Synth set to "Styx Mini Moog." Baby grand piano. Muir Woods Creek. Xylophone. Windchimes. Autotuned Brian Eno iPhone applications. Too many vocal tracks. Abundant handclaps. Next week: Sax. Pending: high school drumline.
Tonight: violin.
Andrew Sullivan is reading them so I don't have to, which is fine by me.
This will sustain as one of the year's most chilling sentences:
"Human beings were contorted into classic stress positions used by the Gestapo; they had towels tied around their necks in order to smash their bodies against walls; they were denied of all sleep for up to eleven days and nights at a time; they were stuck in tiny suffocating boxes; they were waterboarded just as the victims of the Khmer Rouge were waterboarded."Read more analysis here. The memo pdfs can be downloaded here.
Here's the new Phoenix video. I dig this song, but prefer this visual version:
Also: the band hosts a fine blog these days.
"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it. Don't wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot black coffee." - Agent Dale Cooper
Sasha Frere-Jones and Ben Greenman "decided to write a series of memos imagining what art directors would have said to Prince over the years."
Great sentence: "I am familiar with your proprietary spelling system. (U always make me smile!)"
Thanks to hel
Not that Nick Cave, I guess.
Nevada should be a giant solar farm. Better than secret military bases and meth labs.As you can see almost every single square inch of this country is suitable for home scale geothermal heat extraction. That means that if you wanted (and could afford to do so) you could almost certainly heat your home fuel free from the ground.
The more time passes, the worse corn ethanol looks. Too bad it's subsidized through the wazoo and historically, agricultural subsidies have been almost impossible to repeal...
This article is insane. First, a Bangladesh-ian "worker" building the "67th floor" of a new skyscraper:
"You have to carry 50kg bricks and blocks of cement in the worst heat imaginable ... This heat – it is like nothing else. You sweat so much you can't pee, not for days or weeks. It's like all the liquid comes out through your skin and you stink. You become dizzy and sick but you aren't allowed to stop, except for an hour in the afternoon. You know if you drop anything or slip, you could die. If you take time off sick, your wages are docked, and you are trapped here even longer."Next, an native born Emirati, living tax-free, education paid for, relishing the glossy spectre of a free state:
He says the lack of political freedom is fine by him. "You'll find it very hard to find an Emirati who doesn't support Sheikh Mohammed." Because they're scared? "No, because we really all support him. He's a great leader. Just look!" He smiles and says: "I'm sure my life is very much like yours. We hang out, have a coffee, go to the movies. You'll be in a Pizza Hut or Nando's in London, and at the same time I'll be in one in Dubai," he says, ordering another latte.Then, a blacklisted Emirati dissident:
Why is the state so keen to defend this system of slavery? He offers a prosaic explanation. "Most companies are owned by the government, so they oppose human rights laws because it will reduce their profit margins. It's in their interests that the workers are slaves."
It would be so much more fun to use the word "spigot" if I had this. 
"Somehow life got scored/ With screeching horns and diminished chords/ If only it was something sweet/ A simple melody"
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