Time waster #39508 – Watching Beat Stevie.
January 25, 2008
These are little Youtube video series done by The Streets and his little crew, just talking shit on camera.
This one happens to have Queens of the Stone Age.
Death to the Major.
January 24, 2008
Remember when people used this stuff ^^^^to make albums with? Me either.
Good article on the impending passing of the major label record industry.
Much has been made of this for a good while now. In actuality, I really hope this is going to have a nice effect on what people CHOOSE to listen to. A lot of the time, labels spent billions to convince you that Mariah Carey, Nickelback, and Nelly were the best things poppin’. It was built solely on hit records.
While this trend will probably not change in a sense, we might now have a growing audience of listeners that aren’t trained and tuned for the radio ready hits of what will soon be yesteryear for the likes of Universal or Warner Bros. This would be just on the strength that these labels won’t have the marketing dollars to steer you in their direction every time you look for new music.
The interesting thing is that, just like the rest of America, it’s the record industry’s “middle management” that is really feeling the heat – getting let go by the dozens.
I think one sign that things are changing, from a musical perspective – Arcade Fire. The lead singer Win Butler made it onto the cover of a national publication (Spin, I believe) alongside The Bruce Springsteen. Nationwide, the band is garnering mainstream appeal. It may not seem to be a big deal……but if you remember when the Strokes or the Arctic Monkeys dropped their debuts, to MUCH (or too much depending on who you talk to) critical fanfare, there was a cover here or there…..but the widespread acclaim wasn’t present. Now, I talk to lame-ass herbs I work with here, or at the record store, and they casually name drop Arcade Fire like they knew of the band the entire time.
But really it’s cool – why? – because they now know really good music is out there lurking in places they didn’t know existed in their sheep minds……… and they are realizing that they no longer need to accept God(smack) into their lives.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded
January 24, 2008
Brian reintroduced this on the Liberator and I thought it was worth sharing as we should be actively considering how to fund and push a movement outside of the flawed paradigm of the non-profit world.
“A massive and largely unregulated industry, the US non-profit sector is the world’s seventh largest economy. From art museums and university hospitals to think tanks and church charities, over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity share the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) designation, if little else. Many social justice organizations have joined this world, often blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. But even as funding shrinks and government surveillance rises, many activists often find it difficult to imagine movement-building outside the nonprofit model.
The Revolution Will Not Be Funded gathers original essays by radical activists from around the globe who are critically rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. Together with educators and nonprofit staff they finally name the “non-profit industrial complex” and ask hard questions: How did politics shape the birth of the non-profit model? How does 501(c)(3) status allow the state to co-opt political movements? Activists or careerists? How do we fund the movement outside this complex? Urgent and visionary, The Revolution Will Not Be Funded is an unbeholden exposé of the “non-profit industrial complex” and its quietly devastating role in managing dissent.”
Check it at South End Press.
You should be afraid of what this man had to say.
January 24, 2008
I just read an article on Ars Technica, a cool little technology/computer/etc. blog I read for work.
And frankly, it’s very scary stuff. Dick Cheney spoke at a Heritage Foundation meeting…the article reads:
“During his speech, Cheney endorsed proposals to expand the scope of warrantless electronic surveillance, called for such programs to be made permanent, and advocated granting retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications service providers that were complicit in potentially illegal government wiretapping activities. “
Think about this for a second….a minute….half an hour, or more.
Are we un-remembering the King?
January 21, 2008
This Yahoo! article I read today gave me a few thoughts…..first about a book (a must read) I read a couple/three months back called How Nonviolence Protects the State. (Thanks Dirty….and yes, lil bro…it’s on the way.)
My other thoughts were of children and school. When I was a child I was told about how great he was and how he was basically the driving reason that black people had a particular month to be happy about.
Ok, that was sarcastic…..but in seriousness, his striving for gaining rights for people of all color was so…uplifting. Typical of a lot of black children, I grew up without a father…a positive black MALE role model….except for the athletes and entertainers I saw on TV…..Malcolm X….and Dr. King. King was the peacemaker…..the one willing to go to jail for the cause, which was all well and good when you’re a kid. They show you the I Have A Dream speech….the March on Washington….the sit-ins.
But most people don’t know that King, right before his death, was becoming more militant in philosophy. Even I didn’t know it, until I started on this black history reading bonanza back in 2004. (I had a need to understand more about my roots at that time…and still do.) When you’re a kid, that’s something you never heard. I never heard it from my mom (mainly because she was a child herself.) And most of my relatives were just trying to get by in East Texas, back in the day…..doing whatever they were doing. In school, they say that Malcolm was the militant one…neverminding that King himself had gone in that direction. It makes me think now – What exactly is young America learning about black history, and are they told that it’s, in fact, AMERICAN history?
Are they learning that George Washington Carver and Frederick Douglass belong with Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Graham Bell?
Are they still teaching it as a SEPARATE chapter?
What’s still being left out?
As the article (and the book a noted) correctly points out, King is remembered only as it fits a particular agenda – and not King, as the complete person, with changing philosophies….even the flaws that every man and woman carry. He’s been flipped into this Jesus-fied caricature of himself – Civil liberty personified……with people invoking his name whenever they want to pull the equality card.
In 1968, people hated that man. Hated him for what he stood for….and this is something you’re never taught in school. They play his existence up as an all-loved figure, when in actuality, it was the complete opposite. You’re never taught that doing the right things in life will bring hatred upon your head at times…until later in life…or on old 80′s TV shows.
Here we are 40 years later. Where are we? What’s different in 2008? Racism and classism is still in full force, just a lot more opaque…yet, still transparent in other ways (another post altogether). Why are we continuing to live on with his legacy frozen in time and never built upon?
As I said, black history is American history……why aren’t we, Americans of ALL colors, marching the message (or hell, ANY message) forward?
(Maths + English) + Def Jux = The motherfuckin’win!
January 19, 2008
Stolen from Pitchfork for further awareness.
We haven’t exactly been shy in expressing our fondness for Dizzee Rascal‘s Maths + English album. We gave the disc our recommendation when we reviewed it back in June, and it even landed at #49 on our list of our favorite albums of last year (single “Pussyole” made it onto our top songs list at #28) But when XL originally released the album, it wasn’t given a physical release in the U.S., just a digital one. It was unfortunate; as our reviewer Nate Patrin wrote, “Dizzee’s best prospects for an expanded fanbase may well be across the pond.”
Happily, Maths + English is getting another chance, thanks to the good folks at Def Jux. The indie rap powerhouse will issue the album on CD for the first time in the States April 29. (It will also re-release it digitally, as it is no longer available as a download here.)
The Def Jux version will feature new studio tracks “G.H.E.T.T.O.” and “Driving” as well as a remix of the UGK-assisted “Where’s Da G’s” by Def Jux label head El-P. All told, it sounds like it was worth the wait. In other Dizzee news, he’s got those dates we told you about recently. Maths + English (U.S. edition):
Maths + English (U.S. edition):
01 World Outside
02 Pussyole (Old Skool)
03 Sirens
04 Where’s Da G’s
05 Paranoid
06 Suk My Dick
07 Flex
08 Da Feelin’
09 Bubbles
10 Excuse Me Please
11 Hard Back (Industry)
12 Temptation
13 Wanna Be
14 U Can’t Tell Me Nuffin’
15 G.H.E.T.T.O. [bonus track]
16 Driving [bonus track]
17 Where’s Da G’s (El-P remix) [bonus track]
The Sun vs. The Human vs. Nature. Where’s the news on this?
January 19, 2008
If these studies (in the first video – the part with Africa is crucial on a socioeconomic front) are true (and they seem to stand up considering the people in the videos are pretty reputable figures on the subject………then where is the coverage? I’m not saying this is the absolute truth at all. But I watched An Inconvenient Truth a couple times before, and it made sense to a degree….but it seemed to be missing some information, or just missing a kicker of sorts.
While I do believe that we are definitely NOT helping things with our CO2 emissions and the various pollutions we create….you have to wonder why these Sun reports are never broadcast…..
Why are we constantly being told that WE alone are killing the earth and warming it up…and causing the bad weather….when in actuality, while we might be helping it a bit, it’s actually the Sun that is the true driver?
Not only that – in a video (the second video….slightly questionable, but I used it because of the solar implications it used – not the human CO2 stuff) made this year, scientists are talking about an ice age…….which coincidentally, we are actually “due” for. That supposedly ‘unreasonable’The Day After Tomorrow movie isn’t so stupid after all. And again….why is this never discussed in the mainstream? Why is human caused CO2 being force fed down our throats when there isn’t even a scientific consensus on that particular theory?
These videos, when given further thought, really lend to the need of more extensive information on how climate has (and will) affect our society – where is the report/study on this? If you consider all of the events of our history – I have a feeling climate has had a LARGE (though somewhat indirect) influence on everything we know. This can’t be ignored.
I told you not go get that Prius just yet……
As Mr. Bertrand Russell says:
If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way, and much of what is currently believed in international affairs is no better than myth.”
You see this face – it means I’m not bullshittin’.
January 19, 2008
This man says that if need be…..he’ll need to drop a few things on your head – even if he’s not totally sure if you mean to do harm to his country. Where/what are we heading to? Why exactly does Russia need to preemptively bomb others with nuclear weapons? I’m not saying we are fixing to be microwaved into a “Hot” War……but what is exactly ticking Russia off? (….or perhaps….why are they playing themselves up as a big bad monster?)
Iran, Iran, Iran let me count the ways…
January 17, 2008
If you look about a week or two back there was a post on Corrosive Material about The Defense Minister of Isreal going to have a meeting with President Bush about the “feasibility” of an attack on Iran. Lets just follow a little trail that leads straight to Irans front door. For all intensive purposes lets say it began with the NIE document. The National Intelligence Estimate essentially stated that Iran halted all nuclear programs in 2003. This was a huge blow to Bush, well atleast it should have been considering he was threatening us with some threats from Iran which apprently according to the NIE were never there. Do you remember “So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,”(W) Instead of admitting wrong doing, they have to come up with another reason to get over there. At first Bush tried to backtrack and say that despite research we should follow his gut because he knows whats best for us. Amazingly the media wasn’t buying it. Then this happened. I dont know if you remember this in the news but what was reported is that there were Iran War Ships in the Gulf planning to attack us, but guess what? This is what really happened. Shortly after the Strait Of Hormuz incident Bush went to the middle east himself (I must add this is his first time going to Isreal since his presidency began), and during his visit he hit various other countries trying to convince of Irans “threat” and simultaneously talked all kinds of shit about Iran. He called it “The Freedom Tour” (no joke). After he has returned the administration has continued to up the rhetoric. Also Isreal has began to attack Palestine again, and for some reason this information has been incredibly scantly reported. The news is hard to follow especially when things are chopped up onto soundbytes or the real news is on E13 of your news paper. It is necessary to be aware of this war with Iran. It becomes a fun game to piece the news together where it actually makes sense, this is just a superficial view but hopefully enough to make people read into it more and catch up on this story as it unfolds. By using indy media and digging a little deeper you can really run into the truths about anything. Lets watch and see what happens eh?
