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Mark Richardson: Caustic Window (Aphex Twin) — Caustic Window LP (Pitchfork)
Mark Richardson: Caustic Window (Aphex Twin) — Caustic Window LP (Pitchfork)
It’s tempting to speculate on how the record would have been received at the time and why it might have been shelved. James was moving fast in those days, so it’s possible that this album felt too much like where he’d been before, especially given the new ground he was breaking with SAW II. By the following year’s I Care Because You Do his sound was again changing rapidly, and the rest of the decade saw him attaining the status of a serious composer. Given all that, Caustic Window LP probably wouldn’t have left a significant mark, and would have been heard as second-tier James. Twenty years later, though, we’re hearing it with that aura, that extra bit of longing that comes from how scarce music from James has become. And in that light, second tier is still very good indeed.
·pitchfork.com·
Mark Richardson: Caustic Window (Aphex Twin) — Caustic Window LP (Pitchfork)
Laura Hudson: Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start (Wired)
Laura Hudson: Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start (Wired)
Think about how social networks might improve if—as on the gaming sites and in real life—users had more power to reject abusive behavior. Of course, different online spaces will require different solutions, but the outlines are roughly the same: Involve users in the moderation process, set defaults that create hurdles to abuse, give clearer feedback for people who misbehave, and—above all—create a norm in which harassment simply isn’t tolerated.
·wired.com·
Laura Hudson: Curbing Online Abuse Isn’t Impossible. Here’s Where We Start (Wired)
John Twells: A Beginner’s Guide to Angelo Badalamenti (FACT Magazine)
John Twells: A Beginner’s Guide to Angelo Badalamenti (FACT Magazine)
Whether it was Moby’s sampling of Badalamenti’s unfathomably influential ‘Twin Peaks Theme’, James crooner Tim Booth’s desire to collaborate (the two ended up releasing full-length Booth and the Bad Angel), or German band Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s relentless fetishism, the unmistakable blend of wavering strings and sluggish, pitch-black jazz has made an indelible mark on contemporary music.
·factmag.com·
John Twells: A Beginner’s Guide to Angelo Badalamenti (FACT Magazine)
Divya Manian: We Can Finally Talk About Sexism in Tech–So Let’s Be Honest (TIME)
Divya Manian: We Can Finally Talk About Sexism in Tech–So Let’s Be Honest (TIME)
Ultimately, Spiegel’s emails reveal more about the tech culture that embraces such behavior. These emails are not revelations from a silly incident 20 years ago but rather happened a mere five years ago, when Snapchat was being created. It reveals how Silicon Valley’s fascination with self-obsessed youth has led us down a treacherous path that is unsafe for women and people of color. There’s an urgent need to provide safe spaces for women and people of color online. On the whole, I’m witnessing consistent conversation about discrimination and diversity. My hope is that these conversations lead to significant changes in team culture, demographics and how VCs choose to fund startups.
·time.com·
Divya Manian: We Can Finally Talk About Sexism in Tech–So Let’s Be Honest (TIME)
Alex Payne: Dear Marc Andreessen
Alex Payne: Dear Marc Andreessen
Unless we collectively choose to pay for a safety net, technology alone isn’t going to make it happen. Though technological progress has sped up over recent decades of capitalist expansion, most people on the planet are in need of a safety net today. The market hasn’t been there to catch them. Why is this different in Awesome Robot Future? Did I miss one of Asimov’s Laws that says androids are always programmed to be more socially-minded than neoliberals? Meanwhile, we don’t need to wait until a hypercapitalist techno-utopia emerges to do right by our struggling neighbors. We could make the choice to pay for universal health care, higher education, and a basic income tomorrow. Instead, you’re kicking the can down the road and hoping the can will turn into a robot with a market solution.
·al3x.net·
Alex Payne: Dear Marc Andreessen
Christopher Michael-Martinez’s Father Gets It Right
Christopher Michael-Martinez’s Father Gets It Right
Christopher died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the N.R.A. That’s true. That the killer in question was in the grip of a mad, woman-hating ideology, or that he was also capable of stabbing someone to death with a knife, are peripheral issues to the central one of a gun culture that has struck the Martinez family and ruined their lives.
·newyorker.com·
Christopher Michael-Martinez’s Father Gets It Right
Garann Means: June 16, 2014 (The Pastry Box Project)
Garann Means: June 16, 2014 (The Pastry Box Project)
We need more engineers and more productive engineers. We don’t need to send people on quests through the dark woods of our issue tracker to have them prove their worth. We need to get them running the project locally, finding tasks to do, and fixing issues as quickly as we can. We know lots and lots at this point about how to do good engineering: intelligent, predictive, and, ultimately, easy for the end user. At some point we’re going to have to drop the fantasy that putting up with bad engineering is evidence of a good engineer.
·the-pastry-box-project.net·
Garann Means: June 16, 2014 (The Pastry Box Project)
Susie Cagle: The Case Against Sharing
Susie Cagle: The Case Against Sharing
[…] the full gamut of a true sharing economy[—]from the controversial Lyfts and Airbnbs to the individuals who run home businesses knitting scarves and baking pies without traditional employment safety nets or the corporate muscle of Big Sharing. While the former wields the power to get its way, defining “the sharing economy” at the expense of workers and consumers, sole proprietors and nonprofit collectives are often the ones facing real legal problems that they can’t afford to solve. The benefits big disruptive “sharing economy” players might be making for themselves are not exactly trickling down.
·medium.com·
Susie Cagle: The Case Against Sharing
Darius Kazemi: Thoughts on Small Projects
Darius Kazemi: Thoughts on Small Projects
I don’t care about advancing the state of the art. I care about being a creative person who lives a good life and does projects that make me happy.
·tinysubversions.com·
Darius Kazemi: Thoughts on Small Projects
Adrienne LaFrance: The Library of Congress Wants to Destroy Your Old CDs (for Science) (The Atlantic)
Adrienne LaFrance: The Library of Congress Wants to Destroy Your Old CDs (for Science) (The Atlantic)
But this kind of obsolescence has a way of creeping up on you. Even the researchers involved with CD preservation efforts at the Library of Congress say that academics started thinking about this kind of work later than they should have. "We really haven't focused as much on 20th-century media because you just think there are multiple copies of things. People just assumed it's more widely distributed."
·theatlantic.com·
Adrienne LaFrance: The Library of Congress Wants to Destroy Your Old CDs (for Science) (The Atlantic)
Clive Thompson: Artificial Forgetting
Clive Thompson: Artificial Forgetting
Here’s one way to help create the “right to be forgotten”: Have your online utterances vanish after a period of time.
·medium.com·
Clive Thompson: Artificial Forgetting
Mike Monteiro: Getting Comfortable With Contracts
Mike Monteiro: Getting Comfortable With Contracts
Start with the understanding that contracts benefit both parties. Generally people go into a business arrangement with the best of intentions and a lot of assumptions. A contract makes those assumptions explicit by documenting the terms of engagement clearly.
·muledesign.com·
Mike Monteiro: Getting Comfortable With Contracts
Michael Barthel: Genre Slowdown
Michael Barthel: Genre Slowdown
Instead of years of local/subcultural prep work resulting in a sudden mainstream (or midcult) explosion, we see the sauce simmering, and see all the ingredients that go into it. And as a result, we don’t call it sauce. We just see the ingredients, and don’t think they need to be reclassified. Indie rock changed enough between 1994 and 2014 (waaaaaaaay fewer guitars) that you’d think it’d be called something different, but we still call it “indie rock,” because we didn’t get to see a big, dramatic moment with a big, dramatic break. If everything’s always connected, it becomes much harder to see meaningful divisions.
·barthel.tumblr.com·
Michael Barthel: Genre Slowdown
Kat Howard: Not All Men
Kat Howard: Not All Men
Most men would never go on a shooting rampage, because they believed that they were owed sex by women. Most men. Sadly, not all men.
·strangeink.blogspot.com·
Kat Howard: Not All Men
Kate Losse: The Speculum of the Other Brogrammer
Kate Losse: The Speculum of the Other Brogrammer
The brogrammer becomes the flat, oppressive ideal, and the fact that "bro" was originally a term of complex, critical affection within a community is lost, replaced by a distorting mirror in which people see themselves reflected as comic Hollywood caricatures, while disavowing their own, very real participation in what remain very real cultural issues.
·katelosse.tv·
Kate Losse: The Speculum of the Other Brogrammer
David Meir Grossman: Folks have been debating lately on how, and if, they should incorporate musical theory into writing about music.
David Meir Grossman: Folks have been debating lately on how, and if, they should incorporate musical theory into writing about music.
I don’t know anything about music theory, not what an E or an A means in terms of sound. But through the crucial context Ross gives, and his descriptions, I don’t need to. My Lai to Manson, this is not going to be a happy work. The E “longs for resolution”, signifying tension. It does what all great music writing should do, make you desperate to hear the music being described.
·onemanbandstand.tumblr.com·
David Meir Grossman: Folks have been debating lately on how, and if, they should incorporate musical theory into writing about music.
Geoff Manaugh: Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II Turns 20 (Gizmodo)
Geoff Manaugh: Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II Turns 20 (Gizmodo)
Bay Area sound critic Marc Weidenbaum—acoustic historian, noise futurist, music instructor, and writer of a brand new book about Aphex Twin—has been blogging about music, electronics, and everyday sounds at his blog Disquiet here at Gizmodo for the last few months.
·gizmodo.com·
Geoff Manaugh: Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II Turns 20 (Gizmodo)