Podcasts
- Open Mike Eagle’s What had happened was is a gift to humanity. It’s the history of weirdo, independent hip hop from the horse’s mouth. Season One with Prince Paul (producer for De la Soul, Stetsasonic, MF Doom, Paul Barman, etc. etc.) was easily one of my favorite podcasts of 2020. I’m late to the Season 2 party with El-P (Company Flow, Run the Jewels, etc.), but it’s sounding good so far. The third season comes out this week. It’s with Dante Ross, who I had never heard of, but that’s only because I’m not a true head. The guy’s influence and reach was large and the interviews are bound to be full of good stories.
Articles
- Noah Smith on preschool.
- Tyler Cowen on Chris Blattman and Musa al-Gharbi on the unlikelihood of major civil unrest in the U.S. I tend to agree.
- Denmark lifted all COVID restrictions. According to this thread, the motivation is a combination of the relatively benign nature of the Omicron variant in a highly vaccinated population and strong public opinions for eliminating resttrictions. He’s more confident on the harmlessness of long COVID than it seems the evidence merits, but I imagine this is the direction much of the world will be heading before long1.
Music
Brangelina Fancfiction by Fiona Fiasco& Melodiesinfonie.
plastic trees and yoga retreats mean nothing if you don’t love yourself palo santo bigotry and a proper jazz collection mean nothing if you don’t love yourself 3d printers and leoprint highwaist bikinis mean nothing if you don’t love yourself brangelina fanfiction and complete david lynch film collections mean nothing if you don’t love yourself silky lace panties and new years eve penthouse parties mean nothing if you don’t love yourself theodor adorn books and thursday philosophy clubs mean nothing if you don’t love yourself cocaine cutbacks and weekly cupcake bakery purchases mean nothing if you don’t love yourself
Better believe it, baby.
Mam Pe’ela Su’ure is a vibe. Gimme that sweet, sweet frafra-gospel (though it seems we should be calling it fare-fare-gospel).
Ursula K. LeGuin put out an album in 1985 with a musician friend of her’s by the name of Todd Barton. It’s like someone took a microphone to one of her worlds and recorded a small rural religious sect performing their spirituals. Not really something you would put on at a party, but pretty cool as imagined anthropological artifact.
I added this to the list last Monday when I first saw the tweet. Since that time I feel like the world has been sharing their thoughts on the matter. Seems like we might be at an inflection point as far as pandemic policy and public opinion goes. My vague prediction is that active management of the spread of infection outside the health care system is on its way out barring a new, deadlier variant replacing Omicron. ↩︎