Dissent


"Dissent is an American Left intellectual magazine edited by Natasha Lewis and Timothy Shenk and founded in 1954. The magazine is published by the University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas. Former co-editors include Irving Howe, Mitchell Cohen, Michael Walzer, and David Marcus. The magazine was established in 1954 by a group of New York Intellectuals, which included Lewis A. Coser, Rose Laub Coser, Irving Howe, Norman Mailer, Henry Pachter, and Meyer Schapiro. Its co-founder and publisher for its first 15 years was University Place Book Shop owner Walter Goldwater. From its inception, Dissent's politics deviated from the standard ideological positions of the left and right. Like politics, the New Left Review and the French socialist magazine Socialisme ou Barbarie, Dissent sought to formulate a third position between the liberalism of the West and the communism of the East. Troubled by the rampant bureaucratization of both capitalist and communist society, Dissent was home to writers like C. Wright Mills and Paul Goodman who identified themselves as radical democrats as well as to editors who like Irving Howe and Michael Harrington more closely identified with democratic socialism. ..."



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Quantum Computer Music. What the heck?

Eduardo Reck Miranda
Eduardo Reck Miranda

"A technological leap that will make current computation and AI systems look obsolete? Tapping into the properties and laws of quantum mechanics, the nascent field of quantum computing promises just that. Eduardo Reck Miranda, composer and pioneer in the field of AI and music, gives a brief overview of the history of computing and sound that lead to this new leap, and adds examples of his own music practice with quantum computing. ..."

Premiere of »Spinning« at Goethe-Institute in London, December 2022.

"... »Zeno« is a milestone for me. What I have achieved with a rudimentary quantum computer sporting only a few qubits would require rather sophisticated AI programming running on a state-of-the-art desktop digital machine. This reinforced my hunch that music technology is on the verge of a significant leap. The thought of what these new machines might afford to musicians in 20 or even 10 years is mind-boggling. But what is quantum computing? How can a quantum algorithm represent musical rules? How can the results of processing a quantum algorithm make music? ..."

The Bloch sphere, a geometric representation of a two-level quantum system. 

"... For more details about QuPoly, the paper »Teaching Qubits to Sing: Mission Impossible?« introduces an earlier incarnation referred to as QuSing. The underlying mechanisms are identical. The two above examples are only a glimpse of how quantum computing can be harnessed for music. There is a growing community of enthusiasts embracing this technology. They are developing innovative approaches to music making. Several of these were presented at the 2nd International Symposium on Quantum Computing for Musical Creativity, which took place in Berlin in October 2023. If you are interested in a more in-depth introduction to the emerging field of Quantum Computer Music, I recommend the book, Quantum Computer Music: Foundations, Methods and Advanced Concepts, published by Springer in 2022. ..."
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Unknown Pleasures: Great, Under-The-Radar Music Books


"Dubiously attributed to sources ranging from Machiavelli to Winston Churchill, the phrase 'history is written by the victors' is generally used in relation to military offensives, but it could just as easily relate to successful literary campaigns. While many books richly deserve the adulation they attract, shelves full of underappreciated publications gather dust before they’ve even had the chance to register in the wider public consciousness. So, while we’ve recently revisited a number of the most enduring biographies written in the name of a myriad of musical genres at uDiscover Music, we’re also keen to reappraise some of the most criminally unsung, yet riveting reads known to rock, in our list of the best music books you’ve never read. ..."


"... Also an iconic figure during the 60s, fashion model and Andy Warhol superstar Nico appeared on the massively influential The Velvet Underground & Nico LP, but Songs They Never Play On The Radio (written by her latter-day pianist James Young) focuses on her final years existing in semi-obscurity in 80s Manchester. Some of the drug-related minutiae is not for the faint-hearted, but the author’s affection for his subject always shines through. ..."


"... Trends such as grunge and Britpop may have held sway during the 90s, but one of the decade’s lesser-publicized but vital scenes is explored in Brooklyn-based writer and musician Trends such as grunge and Britpop may have held sway during the 90s, but one of the decade’s lesser-publicized but vital scenes is explored in Brooklyn-based writer and musician Sara Marcus’ Girls To The Front: a passionate insider’s account of the uncompromising feminist-inspired Riot Grrl movement which nurtured the artistic breakthroughs of bands such as Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and the all-too short-lived Huggy Bear.: a passionate insider’s account of the uncompromising feminist-inspired Riot Grrl movement which nurtured the artistic breakthroughs of bands such as Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and the all-too short-lived Huggy Bear. ..."

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House of Games - David Mamet (1987)


"House of Games is a 1987 American neo-noir heist thriller film directed by David Mamet, his directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, based on a story he co-wrote with Jonathan Katz. The film's cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, and J. T. Walsh. Psychiatrist Margaret Ford has achieved success with her recently published book about obsessive-compulsive disorder, but feels unfulfilled. Her patient, Billy Hahn, says his life is in danger because he owes money to a criminal figure named Mike Mancuso. He threatens suicide, brandishing a gun. Margaret persuades him to surrender the weapon to her and promises to help him. That night, Margaret visits a pool hall called House of Games where she confronts Mike. He is willing to forgive Billy's debt if Margaret accompanies him to a back-room poker game and watch for the tell of George, another player: he plays with his ring when he bluffs. She agrees, and notices George playing with his ring after making a big bet. She discloses this to Mike, who calls the bet. However, George wins and demands that Mike pay the $6,000 bet, which he is unable to do. George pulls a gun, but Margaret intervenes and offers to pay the debt with a personal check. She then notices the gun is a water pistol, and realizes the entire game is a set-up for her money. She declines to pay, but spends the rest of the night socializing with the con men. The experience excites her and she returns the next night. She asks Mike to teach her about con games so she can write a book about it. Mike appears skeptical, but agrees. Margaret is enchanted by Mike showing her simple con tricks.  ..."






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Can You Crack the Uncrackable Code in Kryptos, the CIA’s Work of Public Art?


"It can be challenging to parse the meaning of many non-narrative artworks. Sometimes the title will offer a clue, or the artist will shed some light in an interview. Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created? Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point? Are multiple interpretations possible? Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation. But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what… He wants someone else to identify it. Kryptos’ main mystery — more like 'a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma' to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws. Professional cryptanalysts, hobbyists, and students have been attempting to crack the code of its 865 letters and 4 question marks since 1990, when it was installed on the grounds of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. ..."

The hands-on part fell well within Sanborn’s purview. But a Masters in sculpture from Pratt Institute does not automatically confer cryptography bonafides, so Sanborn enlisted Edward Scheidt, the retired chairman of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center, for a crash course in late 20th-century coding systems.

Sanborn sampled various coding methods for the finished piece, wanting the act of deciphering to feel like “peeling layers off an onion.”

That onion has been partially peeled for years.

Deciphering three of its four panels is a pelt shared by computer scientist and former president of the American Cryptogram Association, James Gillogly, and CIA analyst David Stein.

Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created?

Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point?

Are multiple interpretations possible?

Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation.

But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what…

He wants someone else to identify it.

Kryptos’ main mystery — more like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws.

Sometimes the title will offer a clue, or the artist will shed some light in an interview.

Is it a comment on the cultural, socio-economic or political context in which it was created?

Or is the act of creating it the artist’s most salient point?

Are multiple interpretations possible?

Artist Jim Sanborn’s massive sculpture Kryptos may inspire various reactions in its viewers, but there’s definitely a single correct interpretation.

But 78-year-old Sanborn isn’t saying what…

He wants someone else to identify it.

Kryptos’ main mystery — more like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” to quote Winston Churchill — was hand cut into an S‑shaped copper screen using jigsaws.




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The Music of the Pelican State Rises Up From Somewhere Deep

A map to deep musical realms, with crawfish on the side. Rafael Alvarez

"A week and a half before Mardi Gras — early February, in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans — a crowd gathered in the sanctuary of St. Anna’s Episcopal Church, on Esplanade. Though the season of Lent and repentance was just around the bend, they hadn’t come to pray or confess. About a hundred folks had paid the piper to dance to klezmer tunes as old as Hasidic weddings and jazz as local as a wiener sold from a cart shaped like a hot dog on Bourbon Street. ... This was not for tourists, not some clichéd derivative of Bourbon Street Dixieland. It had enough soul to satisfy both musician and audience. An older woman in a pew near the back, sounding as though she had discovered a fat and spicy shrimp in an otherwise inferior gumbo, yelled, 'REAL MUSICIANS!' Indeed, present were banjo, drums, sax, trombone, tuba, and accordion, in addition to Schenck’s rollicking licorice stick. It was seven bucks to get in and seven bucks for a bowl of pasta with crawfish and shrimp. Volunteers sold beer and hard liquor, with plenty of cold water to cool the faithful down. ..."


Dance your way out of the pews. 

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Dr Terror deals the Death card: how tarot was turned into an occult obsession


"As the train hurtles along, the art critic sniffs scornfully at the idea that tarot cards can tell your future. But he lets Dr Terror lay out his pack anyway, as does everyone else in the compartment. And, one by one, they are all dealt the same final card. It is Death. This chilling scene, from the 1965 film Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, is fairly standard tarot fare. Many people use the cards to tell the future, or to meditate and find mindfulness. In any occult shop, you’ll find a huge selection of decks. Just in time for Christmas, traditionally a great time for card games, a famous pack – created in 1910 by Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith – is being reissued by Taschen, complete with Waite’s booklet explaining the supposed mystic roots of tarot and what the symbols all mean: 'Death: End, mortality, destruction, corruption. Reversed: Inertia, sleep, lethargy.' ... The world’s oldest surviving tarot decks come from 15th-century Italy. They were commissioned by wealthy rulers who stipulated what they wanted, often adding in different picture cards, which they called “triumphs”. Today, these are known to occultists as the Major Arcana. One lost set, known only from a descriptive booklet, featured the pagan gods. The oldest pack that still (partially) exists – the Cary-Yale deck, created for Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan – mixes images that are still in today’s tarot, such as Death and The Lovers, with unique cards representing Faith, Hope and Charity. ..."

The lure of hocus pocus … three cards by Salvador Dalí.
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What do you do when anything goes? Duchamp’s Telegram

Thierry de Duve’s bag of non-art illustration, 2015. 

"The following conversation which took place at Kerri Scharlin’s 'salon' in New York on November 5, 2023, is published on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the series of six articles that Michelle Kuo, then chief editor of Artforum, commissioned from Thierry de Duve and published in 2013–14. ... BARRY SCHWABSKY: Thierry, your book is divided into two parts and deals with two historical time frames. The first part concerns 1917 and the Independents’ Exhibition where we believe Marcel Duchamp, under the pseudonym Richard Mutt, submitted the artwork Fountain. And it was rejected. That’s the sending of the telegram, which you say was only widely received in the 1960s. And so the second half of the book really concerns the 1960s and several artists who then acknowledged receipt of this telegram. ..."




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Nicolas Poussin: The Rape of the Sabine Women, 1637-1638

The Rape of the Sabine Women, 1637-1638

"The legendary rape of the Sabine women is the subject of two oil paintings by Nicolas Poussin. The first version was painted in Rome about 1634 or 1635 and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, catalogued as The Abduction of the Sabine Women. The second, painted in 1637 or 1638, is in the Louvre in Paris, catalogued as L'enlèvement des Sabines. The theme of kidnapping was very successful in Renaissance and Baroque art. Among the legendary episodes relating rapes, kidnappings or abductions may be mentioned those of Helen by Paris, of Europa by Zeus, of Deianeira by the centaur Nessus, and of Proserpina by Pluto; the latter was sculpted by Bernini (1621–1622). Beginning in the quattrocento, scenes of the abduction and reconciliation of the Sabine women were often figured on Tuscan cassoni (wedding chests), probably as domestic instruction for brides. Shortly after Poussin arrived in Rome in 1624, Pietro da Cortona painted a celebrated picture of the abduction (c. 1630), which was possibly influenced by such cassoni, and which in turn influenced Poussin. ..."


artsy
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Phill Niblock


"Phill Niblock (October 2, 1933 – January 8, 2024) was an American composer, filmmaker, and videographer. In 1985, he was appointed director of Experimental Intermedia, a foundation for avant-garde music based in New York with a parallel branch in Ghent, Belgium. ... Niblock's first musical compositions date from 1968. Unusually, even among the avant-garde composers of his generation, he has no formal musical training. He cites the musical activities of New York in the 1960s (and occasional memorable performances, such as the premiere of Morton Feldman's Durations pieces) as a stimulus. All his compositions are worked out intuitively rather than systematically. His early works were all done with tape, overdubbing unprocessed recordings of precisely tuned long tones played on traditional instruments in four, eight, or sixteen tracks. ... The layering of long tones only very slightly distinct in pitch creates a multitude of beats and generates complex overtone patterns and other fascinating psychoacoustic effects. The combination of apparently static surface textures and extremely active harmonic movement generates a highly original music that, while having things in common with early drone-based Minimalism, is utterly distinct in sound and technique.  ..."


"... Niblock’s most monumental film production, The Movement of People Working, has taken over twenty years to complete, from 1973 to 1992. It is a series of more than twenty-five hours of 16mm films and videos made around the world, in such countries as Mexico, China, Hungary, Brazil, Indonesia, and others. In each film, the artist shows people doing manual labor: fishing, repairing boats, stacking hay, carrying heavy loads, and performing a wide variety of physically demanding chores required for survival in basic, pre-industrial conditions. The films are silent, and the workers show no awareness of the camera and the recording process. When projected, the films are accompanied by music that Niblock composes independently from the footage. ..."





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We Are Ukrainians: Learning From the 2023 Kyiv Biennial

Kateryna Lysovenko’s vision anchored the Kyiv Biennial. 

"Vienna in late November recalls Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden quartet. It’s dark — bleak even — akin to time spent with the stereo and the lights down on a gray drizzly day. Austria’s capital city is synonymous with classical music, having been home in the late 1700s and early 1800s to Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert. It is also a city brimming with galleries, coffeehouses, and ghosts, a place where early-20th-century artists, writers, philosophers, and political radicals once gathered — including Gustav Klimt, Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leon Trotsky, and Adolf Hitler, a second-rate painter twice rejected by the local academy of fine arts. Then, as now, beware the failed artist. Rejection goosed by resentment stirs up shitstorms capable of turbocharging revanchist aesthetics of the most hateful sort. ... Alongside these and other markers of urbanistic excellence, there survives an urgent if temporary effort to examine the fragility of civilization amid the glittering heart of contemporary Europe: the 2023 edition of the Kyiv Biennial. ..."



In Vienna, the De Ne De Collective filled a gallery with pieces of a shattered chandelier from a destroyed cinema.
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Ripping Ivy

"When we moved into our little house, the large beds of English ivy in the front yard didn’t bother me much. It’s not what I would have chosen—who would choose an invasive species?—but my spouse and I agreed we would come up with a Yard Plan and make strategic choices, slowly and deliberately, including eradicating the ivy. Getting rid of ivy is notoriously difficult—my mom warned me it’s “backbreaking work.” I was also, when we moved in, finishing a book project, then in its sixth year and finally arriving at the fact-checking stage. The ivy project existed in the future. ..."


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Punk zine

"A punk zine (or punkzine) is a zine related to the punk subculture and hardcore punk music genre. Often primitively or casually produced, they feature punk literature, such as social commentary, punk poetry, news, gossip, music reviews and articles about punk rock bands or regional punk scenes. Starting in the 1970s, the DIY aesthetic of the punk subculture created a thriving underground press. Amateur magazines related to punk were inspired by the rock fanzines of the early 1970s, which were inspired by zines from the science fiction fan community. Perhaps the most influential of the fanzines to cross over from science fiction fandom to rock and, later, punk rock and new wave music was Greg Shaw's Who Put the Bomp, founded in 1970. One of the earliest punk zines was Punk, founded in New York City by John Holmstrom, Ged Dunn and Legs McNeil. Debuting in January 1976, the zine championed the early New York underground music scene and helped associate the word "punk" with these bands, most notably the Ramones. Other early punkzines from the United States included Search & Destroy (later REsearch), Flipside and Slash. ..."


"Punks did not invent the ‘zine; the DIY fan magazine has, in fact, been going for quite some time. If you allow some flexibility in defining a ‘zine and include any kind of amateur press, then political pamphlets and leaflets have been going for hundreds of years. It is only recently (in the grand scheme of history) that we have come to know them as ‘zines’. But what actually are they? The word ‘zine typically refers to any self-published, cheap/free publication (typically a magazine-style format) that has a small circulation (although this is not always the case) and often covers one particular topic, for example, music, TV, political causes etc. Zines have played a huge part in various subcultures over the years, providing access to information as well as an opportunity to build a community for what might be relatively niche interests. ..."

A Brief History of Zines 

"Among the artefacts to be displayed at Punk 1976-1978, a free exhibition opening this week at the British Library, are 14 fanzines. Titles such as Ripped & Torn, 48 Thrills and London’s Burning were produced by young men and women on a budget of nothing, the products of an intense but brief moment. Quintessentially ephemeral, they nevertheless speak to us four decades on. Inspired by the Sex Pistols and Mark Perry’s Sniffin’ Glue, the fanzine explosion of 1976 and 1977 remains one of the purest and most creative responses to British punk. The speed and cheapness of the format – A4 pages photocopied and stapled together – allowed for instant reportage and considerable creativity. There was no censorship: anything went. ..."




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January 6 United States Capitol attack

"On January 6, 2021, the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. was attacked by a mob of supporters of then-U.S. president Donald Trump, two months after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. They sought to keep Trump in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the Electoral College votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. The attack was ultimately unsuccessful in preventing the election results from being certified. According to the House select committee that investigated the incident, the attack was the culmination of a seven-part plan by Trump to overturn the election. Within 36 hours of the event, five people had died: one was shot by Capitol Police, another died of a drug overdose, and three died of natural causes, including a police officer. ... Rioters also assaulted Capitol Police officers and reporters, and attempted to locate lawmakers to capture and harm. A gallows was erected west of the Capitol, and some rioters chanted 'Hang Mike Pence' after he rejected false claims by Trump and others that the vice president could overturn the election results. ... On August 1, 2023, following a special counsel investigation, Trump was indicted on four charges. More than 1,200 persons have been charged with federal crimes arising from the attack. As of December 2023, 728 defendants had pleaded guilty, while another 166 defendants had been convicted at trial; a total of 745 defendants have been sentenced. ..."

"Two years ago, on January 6, 2021, a crowd of thousands attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 election results, spurred on by false claims the election had been “rigged” against Republican incumbent Donald Trump. More than 2,000 people entered the Capitol building, smashing windows, ransacking offices, defecating in public spaces and searching for members of Congress. The assault was ultimately unsuccessful but it has set off alarm bells about the stability of US democracy and the growing influence of anti-democratic elements within the Republican Party. ..."

Hundreds of convictions, but a major mystery is still unsolved 3 years after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot

***The Nation: The Insurrection Is Far From Over
 


FBI poster seeking information on violence at the Capitol Building published January 6, 2021
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Anthology Of Contemporary Post Industrial Music - Various Artists (2023)


"... The 20th century was marked by a turning point in the way we, human beings, relate to technology. Since the First Industrial Revolution until the advent of personal computers and the internet, we have watched almost one hundred years of technological revolutions that culminated into the creation of colour TV, the nuclear bomb, the modernist vanguards and postmodernism. We also saw the rise of a new music genre that was actually translating this industrial, chaotic, in-between wars and highly technological scenario of the 1970s: it was the birth of industrial music. The term 'Industrial Music' was coined by American sound artist Monte Cazazza in 1977. The name couldn’t be more precise to tell what these European artists were doing in countries like Germany and United Kingdom, such as it was the case of the English band Throbbing Gristle, who coined the music genre with the foundation of the Industrial Records. The 1970s were also a time when punk was growing in the UK, but with Industrial Records we were presented to bands such as Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, The Leather Nun, Monte Cazazza, and S.P.K. While in Germany the band Einstürzende Neubauten was certainly the most influencial in that regard. ..."

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Matchday 1: Kenneth Kaunda - Maher Mezahi


"In the final episode of 'Matchday 1' of the African Five-a-side podcast, we profile Zambia’s first president, Kenneth Kaunda. Kaunda so loved football and supported the national team that they were nicknamed the “KK11” in honor of him. We also explore how Kaunda got parastatal conglomerates in Zambia’s Copperbelt to sponsor domestic clubs and spur local football development. Special thanks to the research of Dr. Hikabwa Chipande and his extensive research on this subject which served as the basis for this episode. Watch the latest 'Matchday' episode below and subscribe to the podcast. ..."


Africa Is a Country Maher Mezahi is a football journalist based in Algiers who studies the cross-section between history, politics and football on the African continent.

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HARVARD SQUARE LITERARY MAP: A Walk-in-Progress

"The Harvard Square Lit Map is an invitation to explore the literary history of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and to experience 'the presence of a plurality of times.' The Lit Map is a collaborative atlas created by Lynn Sayers and Chris Lenney (of Lamont Library), in conjunction with the Woodberry Poetry Room. We also wish to thank the countless poets, scholars, and members of the general public, who contributed immensely to our knowledge of historic venues and creative locales: their names are listed below the map-in-progress. The map represents only a small portion of the total artistic activity in the vicinity and is in no way indicative of the breadth and depth of what has been created here. It is simply “the mooring of starting out,” as John Ashbery would say, a way for you to begin your literary exploration…. In creating this map, we also wish to acknowledge the Massachusett, Pequot, Wampanoag, and other Indigenous peoples, who have long inhabited this land—with their profound histories, cultures, and voices. Please assist us in expanding our understanding of the area by notifying us of any mistakes we’ve made and by suggesting names and past addresses of writers, communities, and historic literary venues that could be added to the growing list below. This Blog post features only a sample of the sites we hope to include in a larger project in the future. ..."


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Dead Internet theory

"The dead Internet theory is an online conspiracy theory that asserts that the Internet now consists mainly of bot activityand automatically generated content that is manipulated by algorithmic curation, marginalizing organic human activity. Proponents of the theory believe these bots are created intentionally to help manipulate algorithms and boost search results in order to ultimately manipulate consumers. Furthermore, some proponents of the theory accuse government agencies of using bots to manipulate public perception, stating 'The U.S. government is engaging in an artificial intelligence powered gaslighting of the entire world population'. The date given for this 'death' was generally around 2016 or 2017. The theory has gained traction because much of the observed phenomena is grounded in quantifiable phenomena like increased bot traffic. However, the idea that it is a coordinated psyop has been described by Kaitlin Tiffany, staff writer at The Atlantic, as a 'paranoid fantasy,' even if there are legitimate criticisms involving bot traffic and the integrity of the internet. ..."





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Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions (1976)

"Wildflowers: The New York Loft Jazz Sessions is a series of five albums recorded May 14–23, 1976 at Studio Rivbea, a loft jazz space in New York City, run by Sam Rivers and his wife Bea. The albums include performances by groups led by musicians such as Hamiet Bluiett, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Dave Burrell, Andrew Cyrille, Oliver Lake, Jimmy Lyons, Ken McIntyre, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Roscoe Mitchell, David Murray, Sunny Murray, Sam Rivers, Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, and Randy Weston.  ... Author Phil Freeman wrote: 'this set... contains an overwhelming amount of truly beautiful jazz performances, by names recognizable to almost anyone with a serious interest in the music... This music is composed, thoughtful, and artistic in every sense. The cliche of avant-garde jazz, that it is mere inchoate bleating, is repeatedly disproved here... This is an astonishing document, sonically wide-open to anyone with an ear for music of the spirit. The performances are varied enough, and sequenced in such a manner, that the most palatable, groove-oriented works will draw the listener in that he or she may appreciate the more abstract, experimental works as well. This music's vitality is timeless; these recordings should be heard by anyone with anything more than a glancing interest in jazz.' ..."





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The 2023 High School Yearbook of American Politics

"It has been such a special political year, brimming with extraordinary, even historic moments. From an ex-president indicted to a Senate staffer busted for making porn at work, each fresh development made you proud to be an American. Singling out the exceptional events and players was tougher than ever. I mean, when Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t even merit a mention …. But making hard calls is part of my job, and the true standouts deserve a shout-out. ..."


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Frozen In Time: This is Darkness playlist – December 2023

"Here are the dark ambient albums that we at This is Darkness have been listening to this month – some are new releases, but a few are older gems we’ve just (re)discovered. Please check these out by clicking on the Bandcamp link next to each review (or by clicking on the BNDCMPR link at the bottom of the page), and please consider supporting the featured artists. Enjoy! ... With LUMINA, world-renowned throat singer/performance artist/shaman SoRIAH returns with an incredible set of two collaborations featuring experimental legends Hans Joachim Roedelius (Cluster, Harmonia) and Norman Westberg(Swans). The music here is majestic, ethereal, and spiritual in both vibe and tone – and is intended to bring peace to the lost souls of those who have recently passed, a common overarching theme of SoRIAH‘s work. This album is also available here on beautiful 10” white smoke vinyl, with a hand numbered limited edition of 350. Simply wonderful. ..." 


LUMINA  SoRIAH, Norman Westberg and Hans Joachim Roedelius
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Past Lives - Celine Song (2023)

Past Lives review – a must-see story of lost loves, childhood crushes and changing identities. "This heart-meltingly romantic and sad movie from Korean-Canadian dramatist and film-maker Celine Song left me wrung out and empty and weirdly euphoric, as if I’d lived through an 18-month affair in the course of an hour and three-quarters. How extraordinary to think that this is Song’s feature debut. It’s delicate, sophisticated and yet also somehow simple, direct, even verging on the cheesy. Past Lives has been compared to the movies of Richard Linklater, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig; all true, but I also found myself remembering the wrenching final moments of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, with Tony Leung murmuring his pain into a stone hollow in Angkor Wat and – yes – the gooey genius of Dean Friedman’s plaintive 1978 chart hit Lucky Stars. This is a story of lost love and childhood crush, the painful and dangerous access to the past given by digital media; the roads not taken, the lives not led, the futile luxury of regret. ..."





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Michigan Supreme Court Decides Trump Can Stay on Ballot

"The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday paved the way for Donald J. Trump to appear on the state’s primary ballot, a victory for the former president in a battleground state. The state’s top court upheld an appeals court decision that found that the former president could appear on the ballot despite questions about his eligibility to hold elected office because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The Michigan decision followed a bombshell ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which on Dec. 19 determined in a 4-3 opinion that Mr. Trump should be removed from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. ..."




The Michigan Hall of Justice building in Lansing, where the state Supreme Court considered whether former President Donald J. Trump was eligible to appear on the primary ballot.
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