I wouldn't call up Talib Kweli to record a song about gang violence in L.A., and I wouldn't call up KRS-ONE to drop a verse on a love ballad. The only real reason to call up LL is that he is black and thus must have something insightful to say about the Confederate Flag. The assumption that there is no real difference among black people is exactly what racism is. Our differences, our right to our individuality, is what makes us human. The point of racism is to rob black people of that right.

On fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva.

Rap Genius is the newest example in a long tradition of black music explained for whites, now with a neoliberal twist.

An intelligent, self-interested observer of this case, who happens to live in Florida, would not be wrong to do as George Zimmerman did—buy a gun, master the finer points of Florida self-defense law, and then wait.

The HRC has a lot of problems, and blindly supporting their marketing campaign is problematic.

The early history of MTV, with parallels to modern technology movements.

On the eve of his first inauguration, President Lincoln snuck into Washington in the middle of the night, evading the would-be assassins who waited for him in Baltimore.

The U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them.

All of which to say that Springsteen is very canny about his legacy. He’s smart and he should be. And he’s done a lot of good and made a ton of incredible music and inspired and even changed the lives of many people, including mine. But you have to remember to keep those two contradictory ideas about him in mind at the same time.

Which is all to say that, yes, this election matters more than most. It matters more politically because the party in power will likely see their agenda affirmed by a cyclical recovery. But it matters more to actual people because the Affordable Care Act is poised to reshape American health care in two years. A vote for Obama is a vote for the law to take effect and for 30 million Americans to get health insurance they won’t get otherwise. A vote for Romney is a vote for the law — and its spending and its taxes — to be repealed. There are few elections in which the stakes are so clear.

With last night's results, one can choose to see things two ways: (1) emboldened by their success and the obvious movement of the electorate in their direction, liberals will resolve that this time things will be different, that their willingness to be Good Partisan Soldiers depends upon their core values not being ignored and stomped on, or (2) inebriated with love and gratitude for Obama for having vanquished the evil Republican villains, they will follow their beloved superhero wherever he goes with even more loyalty than before. One does not need to be Nate Silver to be able to use the available historical data to see which of those two courses is the far more likely one.

No.

A profile of the legend and how the shows go.

Our society can't help becoming increasingly nostalgic when constantly bombarded with images remembered from our own lost youths. So a cyclic spiral is created, in which public demand increasingly opts for revivalism in place of new work, because information providers are more than happy to keep their costs low by keeping our attention focused on the past.

The experimental pioneer's groundbreaking work with computers in the 70s and 80s helped lay the foundation for many of today's electronic noise makers.

Many Arab men today are attempting to unseat patriarchy in their own marriages and family lives, just as they have attempted to unseat inhumane, dictatorial rulers. Instead of portraying and viewing Arab men as the unpredictably violent enemies of women—and of the United States—we need to realize that most young men who have taken to the streets during the Arab uprisings are there for a reason: to create more just and humane societies, including for and with their mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters.

Our staff marks the 30th anniversary of the compact disc with stories of second-hand triumphs, pesky scratches, insidious CD burning schemes, and more.

A schoolgirl and a former traveling Bible salesman helped turn deodorants and antiperspirants from niche toiletries into an $18 billion industry.

On one basic level, what happened in 1969 with Wonder—and what happens every day with mp3 leaks—illuminates a very basic economic fact: Official markets will always lead to unsanctioned ones that feed off of the legit products—and often operate much more efficiently. Consumer desire has never automatically limited itself to strictly legal operations, particularly when fans can convince themselves (often rightly) that they’re doing no harm to the artists.

I don’t agree with this completely, but it’s a solid argument. More broadly, the political problem of the Democrats is that they’re a party of capital that has to pretend for electoral reasons sometimes that it’s not. All the complaints that liberals have about them—their weakness, tendency to compromise, the constantly lamented lack of a spine—emerge from this central contradiction. The Republicans have a coherent philosophy and use it to fire up a rabid base. The Dems are afraid of their base because it might cause them trouble with their funders. Romney believes in money. Obama believes in nothing. Most liberals want to write off Obama’s bad performance as a bad night. It’s not just that. It’s a structural problem.

As of Tuesday, September 4, 2012, things look bad and won't be getting better soon.

Has the debate over breaking up the banks that were too big to fail, save for a change of heart by the former chairman of Citigroup, Sanford I. Weill, really changed or picked up steam as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No. Have any new regulations for banks or businesses been enacted as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No. Has there been any new meaningful push to put Wall Street executives behind bars as a result of Occupy Wall Street? No. And even on the issues of economic inequality and upward mobility — perhaps Occupy Wall Street’s strongest themes — has the movement changed the debate over executive compensation or education reform? It is not even a close call.

I've had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I've helped many folks say yes to life but I've definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.

My list of my 100 favorite albums from 1996-2011.

In his new book, Mp3: The Meaning of a Format, McGill University professor Jonathan Sterne exhaustively and eloquently traces the history of the mp3 from the initial hearing model developed in Bell Labs to the current debates about piracy. As the author argues, each time we rip a CD to our hard drives, we're not only saving space in our living rooms or ensuring we have the appropriate gym soundtrack, but also reaffirming a fundamental idea about the limits of human perception.

I interviewed Jonathan Sterne for Pitchfork about his new book. While conducting the interview, I thought Pitchfork readers would like to know about how AT&T’s capitalistic policies in the 1910s and 1920s laid the groundwork for those compressed bits of data currently clogging their hard drives, and other gentle, science-laden facts about the mp3’s history. I was wrong. But not to worry! Here are the cut bits.

2,546 votes and 863 comments so far on Reddit

A musical and social history of the effortlessly smooth, radio-bred style typified by the likes of Smokey Robinson, Luther Vandross, Anita Baker, and Sade.

This is so, so awesome. Gate-triggered second and third mics on Bowie. Eno and Fripp innovating with feedback and synthesizers.