The chapter titled “Getting By” in Robert Leo Heilman’s Book Overstory: Zero begins with an excerpt from a Development Report by a timber logging company in Oregon:
“While the 1979-1985 years were disappointing for wood products manufacturuers and workers alike, the net result may well have been a blessing in disguise for the survival and long-term health of the industry. Hundreds of inefficient sawmill, veneer, and plywood plants have been shut down. Others have been modernized and streamlined to achieve maximum return per unit of product. New products have been developed which require lower labor costs, cheaper raw materials, and results in a better value to end-user. The net effect is a leaner, more productive and cost-effective industry. One of the principle means of reducing costs, of course, is to lower wage rates.” ~ Development Report and Plan, CCD Business Development Corp. Roseburg, Oregon, July 1986
The author goes on to tell about his experience keeping his family alive in rural Oregon timber country during the economic decline of that period. At one point, the author is having a conversation with another dad while their kids played.
“My dad told me the other night that there’s a plan for this area,” he said as we passed the bottle back and forth. His father was an accountant and local business consultant. “He says the mills are going to stay shut until everyone who can afford to move leaves. The mills are all automating and whoever’s left will be the people who can’t go anywhere else and they’ll work for cheap […] I don’t mean to say that this recession’s all been rigged. They’re just taking advantage of it is all. They owners are all going to use it to get people to work cheap. Once everybody gets hungry enough, we’ll all take pay cuts just to go back to work. They’re talking about ‘cost effectiveness’ and ‘competitive wages’ and like that.”
The author surmises:
“There was an inescapable logic to what he was saying, almost like an algebraic equation: Hungry people work cheap; people who work cheap go hungry.”
The author gets by by purchasing a milk cow. He trades the raw milk for eggs and a little cash from the neighbors and they keep each other fed for a while. He notes that everything they did was illegal– they sold raw milk without permits, drove their cars without insurance, didn’t report odd job income, ate poached venison.
“When the unemployment checks ran out, our little towns started to empty.” Eventually, too many neighbors moved off to Texas or some other place to justify the feed cost and Robert had to sell the cow.
“By the fall of 1985, there weren’t enough of my friends still living in the valley to cover the cost of feeding my cow. I sold her and her calf at auction and waited for the trickle-down. It was a long time coming, that trickle-down. Ten years later and we’re still waiting for it. The mills and businesses and government agencies recovered, but the recovery never arrived for the people who live here. For the first time in our country’s boom-or-bust economic history, business boomed while people stayed busted.”
Something spectacularly odd had happened to the timber town by 1985. In defiance of economic sense, the businesses churned back to life but the lives of the people left to work the mill towns were never the same.
“It was an odd sort of recovery. Employment rates, timber harvest levels, and emergency food use rose. The cost of cutting, hauling, and milling a million board feet of timber dropped and so did the wages and per capita income. Timber harvest levels of Douglas County were 400 million board feet higher in 1986 than in 1978 but produced $55 million less in wages. While the timber industry has become “leaner, more productive and cost-effective,” the people have simply become leaner.”
“I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.
It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.
I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.””
As Trump advertised during the campaign, his administration has moved to gain direct oversight over academic institutions across the country. The latest university to receive one of Trump’s letters: Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The letter demands that Harvard directly report to the Federal Government on all matters from hiring to curriculum content.
Interestingly, the wealth or background of the student is not requested
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, a nebulous collection of words at this point, is to be banned. It doesn’t make sense for an academic institution to ban the study of anything, really. A university dedicated to the discovering truths and exploring the universe should be free to facilitate the study of whatever its student body dedicates itself to. By having a say in hiring staff and student acceptance, the federal government will have an incredible sway in the ideological, political, and racial make up of these institutions.
“By August 2025, the University must reform its recruitment, screening, and admissions of international students to prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism.”
The Federal Government under Trump is also seeking leverage to censor criticism of Israel and to report the activity of students to the government. Already, we are seeing a drastically reduction in the amount of international students attending our colleges. This is a serious brain drain that undermines the free flow of ideas throughout the entire country. Especially when other countries, namely China, appear to be surpassing us in various fields of science and engineering, it seems it would be in our best interest to embrace our neighbors across the globe and try to learn from one another. Sharing knowledge between one another leads to incredible discoveries.
“By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse. This audit shall begin no later than the summer of 2025 and shall proceed on a department-by-department, field-by-field, or teaching-unit-by-teaching-unit basis as appropriate.”
The Federal Government also requests that an external party satisfactory to the president directly monitor the institution for “viewpoint diversity.” What does this even really mean? What diverse viewpoints are being stifled? Given the apartheid sympathies of Trump’s staff, he probably means Nazi viewpoints. Or anti-palestinian viewpoints. Are antisemites underrepresented at Harvard? Maybe there aren’t enough confederate sympathizers in Boston? Also, shouldn’t the viewpoints at a university be measured by their merit? Is this not Harvard University we are talking about?!!
“Harvard must implement a comprehensive mask ban with serious and immediate penalties for violation, not less than suspension.”
Feds want Harvard to attacs the right of individuals to wear face covering not three years after a deadly pandemic wiped out millions of people. The federal government wants harsh penalties on masking to prevent protestors for hiding their identities from photographs for ID purposes (which can be systematically scanned and categorized with AI). The voracious appetite to identify and store information about protesters in order to punish them draws to mind a kind of Neo Nixonianism– a paranoid government apparatus using modern recording technology to keep vast lists of agitators and ideological enemies to persecute. The letter also demands that students that partook in the Palestine protests following October 7th be retroactively punished:
“Harvard must investigate and carry out meaningful discipline for all violations that occurred during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 academic years, including the Harvard Business School protest of October 2023, the University Hall sit- in of November 2023, and the spring encampment of 2024. This must include permanently expelling the students involved in the October 18 assault of an Israeli Harvard Business School student, and suspending students involved in occupying university buildings, as warranted by the facts of individual cases.”
Indeed, the thrust of Trump’s new surveillance apparatus is being tested on college students with visas as we speak. Social media accounts are being scanned and databases being compiled of students with any ties to Palestine or related movements. More than 80 students in New England alone have had visas revoked for no other reason than expressing the incorrect opinion online.
“SHALOM MOUHMAD” — A giddy white house social media staffer after declaring that Mahmoud Khalil had been detained and moved to Louisiana for protesting for Palestine on Colombia University campus. He was a student of Colombia University at the time.
In his official statement accompanying the arrest, Trump declared, “if you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply.” This is a really strange way to to word this. “Contrary to our national and and foreign policy interests…” Not that slaughter of innocents is wrong? Or deeply un-American? Not that it undermines freedom and right to pursue happiness? Since when have people been subject to arrest for speaking against a policy interest? The federal government doesn’t exist to enact policy interests. It exists to uphold the unalienable RIGHTS of its citizens. Citizens in the USA have a right to think freely, to assemble and protest, and especially to express grievance with the government itself.
“Informed by the attorney that Khalil was in the United States as a permanent resident with a green card, the agent said they were revoking that instead.”
Trump’s government first and foremost seeks to limit the definition of constitutionally protected citizenship so that it can treat larger swathes of the population as non-citizens. More broadly, this move to limit civil rights protections only to citizens allows a second class to form where non-citizens in the country are not treated the same under the law. Alongside Trump’s ban on birthright citizenship, this allows the federal government to create a permanent class of non-citizens living within the country for perpetuity, as even the kids of immigrants will be denied the chance to become constitutionally protected citizens. On the global scale, it also implies that the rights imparted by the constitution are narrowly applied only to Americans of citizen status, and not applied broadly to humanity across the globe. Trump’s America is already taking steps to walk away from its obligations to uphold freedom and learning across the globe. In its place: conquest and colonization enters a new phase with psuedo-democracies like Russia and Israel using war as a means to expand territory while expelling/genociding existing inhabitants.
This is all quite a lot for a university to shoulder. If Harvard refuses Trump’s demands, they risk having billions of dollars in federal funding revoked. The highest level research in the country will be choked of funding.
And yet, today Harvard has decided to decline.
Donald Trump signs executive order dismantling the Department of Education
I learned today that two of my roommates have never really listened to Pixies. I then learned that one of them went to a Weezer show that Pixies opened for.
Pixies are an alternative rock band from the 80s and 90s. They are a band from Boston, getting their start in basement shows back when the city was affordable and hip and young.
Yep, that’s right. Pixies, the foundational band that inspired Weezer and Nirvana and the like, was born right here in Boston.
Wave of Mutilation is a song off their second album Doolittle (album cover with a little monkey on it). The song is about dying. My roommate that doesn’t really know the Pixies but still saw them live says he likes this song, but the “surf” version. Gave it a listen today while showering. Then I listened to the original and switched back and forth a bunch.
Boston isn’t the same city it was a couple decades ago. It has gotten hotter, more expensive. It isn’t easy for musically inclined bums to make a living here. I don’t know if it ever was easy, actually, but there are certainly less of them now. But people are still making loud music. You have to know where to look, but they are there.
A graduate student at Tufts University was arrested yesterday by a plainclothes federal agent. The agent, dressed in a hoodie, approached her, ripped her phone out of her hand, then handcuffed her. She was taken from Massachusetts to Louisiana, where it is believed that the courts will rule in favor of the federal government. She co-wrote an opinion piece in the school paper
Department of Homeland Security argues that her activities conflict with the foreign policy interests of the United States.
The first amendment of the constitution reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Mickey 17, the latest Boon Joon Ho film since Parasite (2019), opens unpleasantly enough. Viewers are immediately introduced to Robert Pattinson as Mickey being killed over and over again. He is an “expendable” on a space colony ship, which means that he is responsible for doing all the extremely dangerous jobs like exterior ship repair and… freezing to death in test chambers. Many of these jobs result in death. Thankfully for us, every time Mickey dies, he is unceremoniously reprinted from a machine that works more like a traditional laser printer than a hi-tech biological miracle. The human printing machine jams and stalls and unceremoniously plops the reborn Mickey onto the floor when the scientists responsible for printing him inevitably forget to pull out the tray. After birth, Mickey’s memories are reuploaded to his brain from a literal brick hard drive, and then he is put back to work.
When I say that the start of this movie is unpleasant, I mean it. Between the awful panorama of deaths and the grotesque human printing process, I admit I was squirming a bit in my seat and wondering if I had made a mistake choosing this film blind. But stick with the movie, because it manages to transition from horrific to sexy pretty quickly. Naomi Ackie’s character (Nasha) is introduced, and the two leads immediately begin a sex sequence overlayed by a galactic Trump speech. It’s hilarious, weirdly sensual, and a perfectly timed break from the drudgery of the film’s opening. We learn that Mickey and Nasha are going steady on the ship, making sweet love every chance they get and supporting one another through all the bullshit that the voyage throws at them. Maybe it is a little too sweet, maybe its even corny, but giving Mickey a sickly sweet romantic motivation is the glue that keeps this movie from being depressing.
While the film starts as a madcap space comedy, its depth as a work of science fiction begins to bear some teeth as the colonists reach their destination on a distant frozen planet. They send out Mickey to test the air, and he immediately contracts a pathogen that has him puking blood and dead in minutes. They send him out again to make sure. Then they use the results from these tests to concoct a vaccine. Then that vaccine fails so they send him out again. And again. Eventually, they get it right and the colonists are able to explore the surface of their new world without masks. Also there are aliens on the planet that look a lot like the spitters from Factorio. I don’t think this is a coincidence at all.
The implications of the human printing technology are delved into further when Mickey 17, who was supposed to be eaten by aliens, manages to actually survive and return to the ship. There, he discovers that another Mickey has already been printed. They immediately try to kill each other. An insane fight sequence that pins Robert Pattinson against himself unfolds, and one of them is nearly incinerated in the ship’s biological recycling system. This fight is really beautiful, two identical bodies fighting in the bowls of a ship, illuminated crimson by gaping pits of boiling hot lava. One Mickey pins the other, another goes for a death blow to the head. Finally, one of them ends up hanging for dear life in one of the pits. It’s like Star Wars Episode V redone, when Luke and Vader go at it in the Cloud City underbelly. Also, Robert Pattinson gets kind of scary and reminds me of Jim Carry’s The Mask.
It is during this fight that I lost track of which Mickey was which. 17 and 18 supposedly have distinct personalities, but I believe they get swapped at this point. Biologically, they are identical. Mentally, they are distinct in some ways, but they possess the same memories and motivations. The movie goes on to explore this double situation further, but I won’t give up all the juicy details. Two primary concerns emerge: there are multiple Mickeys, which is illegal in this universe, and the planet has other life on it that the colonists now have to contend with.
You’ll notice this right away in your own watch, but this movie is very political. Like, in an immediately relevant way. The leader of the space mission is played by Mark Ruffalo doing a hand over fist Trump impression the entire time. He espouses a doctrine of “Two Bodies, One Soul” that dictates that despite technological advancements that allow for an infinite number of copies of people to be created, humans only have one soul and therefor should only have one body at a time. The distinction is arbitrary of course. I wonder if any of the dogmas of our own time are arbitrary religious contrivances meant to hold back the chaos of rapid advancement? With science we can already manipulate embryos, change genders, and clone organisms. Many governments around the world forbid these practices out of fear of changing humanity. We can communicate instantly across the globe and associate with people in multiple continents at the same time, yet borders and countries still exist. Technology is not inherently liberating.
These questions form the basis of cyberpunk films like Blade Runner or Ghost in the Shell, which depict high tech societies that nonetheless suffer the same issues of systemic poverty and class inequality that our current world suffers. Mickey 17 takes on this tradition in its own way by revealing a world that is impoverished even in the face of miracles of science. The human printing machine is really an immortality machine, yet is is only used to reproduce drone humans born to die over and over again. The very fact that the human printer can bypass natural birthing is a major driver of its relegation to colonial work in the universe of the film. Mark Ruffalo’s Trump is obsessed with the idea of building a natalist colony that reproduces with natural sex.
The other concern of the ladder half of the film is the issue of colonization itself. The planet that the crew arrives on is, of course, loaded with natives. These natives aren’t animals despite their appearance. They are intelligent and can even be communicated with. The fact that the movie is able to contrive a translation device in minutes isn’t even very far fetched anymore– with AI, the obstacle of translation has shrunk considerably. Despite all of this, Ruffalo Trump is eager to escalate to annihilation. The crew prepares a toxic gas to eliminate the natives. Trump’s wife also circumcises the tails of one of the alien babies and eats it? I’m going to leave the inferences to you guys.
The climactic end of the film comes on fast with these two dilemmas at the fore: alien natives about to be exterminated, two illegal Mickeys about to be executed. I won’t spoil further. Things wrap up neatly enough, but the political questions at the heart of the film remain even after the credits role. In Joon Ho fashion, the ending is Hollywood in the least fulfilling way possible. The Korean guy is making fun of us again!
Artificial Intelligence is an amazing technology that is currently being used to make the most oppressive tool ever conceived by man. This is not an exaggeration. The internet is a vast and interconnected place that, in theory, holds information about every single person that uses it at all times. The problem to data analysts is that there is so much information that it is impossible for human researchers to analyze more than a small patch of it in a reasonable time frame. AI solves this problem by creating an electronic eyeball capable of not only scraping massive volumes of data from the web, but also analyzing and making inferences about this data in a fraction of the time it would take a human to do the same. Do you see how such a tool could be used for evil yet?
An electronic eyeball set to automatically monitor the social media feeds of every individual in a population could, in theory, be used to hunt dissidents and criminals simply by making inferences based on their browsing habits online. In theory, if it were illegal to be gay, then an AI tool could probably figure out that someone is gay based on their free use of the internet and generate a report in human-legible English for the proper authorities. This theoretical AI tool could also figure out who is sympathetic to gay causes and create a map of the gay community online for ease of monitoring and infiltration by law enforcement. Guess what? There is nothing theoretical about this technology anymore. Not only can AI aggregate and analyze human speech online, it is actively being used right now to monitor civilian communications and make reports to law enforcement in Israel and the United States.
The war with Hamas gave Israel and the United States the perfect opportunity to sharpen nascent surveillance technologies into full-blown AI-driven tools of war and oppression. One such tool is a classified IDF project called Habsora, which translates in English to “The Gospel.” The Gospel is a targeting system that is capable of automatically analyzing a battlefield (the city of Gaza) and any other communications data you feed it in order to select targets for military personnel to act upon and destroy. Having a computer run constant analysis of a combat zone frees up a lot of human resources for more executive tasks. The Gospel was allegedly first used during the 11 days war with Hamas in 2021 to great success. According to Aviv Kochavi, head of the IDF in 2019, this AI infrastructure has allowed Israel to find 100 targets a day: “To put that into perspective, in the past we would produce 50 targets in Gaza per year. Now, this machine produces 100 targets a single day, with 50% of them being attacked.”
A human being signs off on the final strikes, of course, but the IDF allegedly encourages “quantity over quality” in its operations. The devastation in Gaza speaks to that, which makes me wonder why an artificial intelligence apparatus is needed at all when almost every single building on a block will eventually be razed anyway.
Beit Hanoun in Gaza on October 10th (top). Same site (bottom) on October 21st.
Automated striking capability is only the tip of the iceberg. The apple of Israel’s eye is the perfection of a civilian-oriented surveillance technology capable of policing an entire population automatically. Such a project, which I will elucidate shortly, reminds me of one of the concepts I researched back in college called the Panopticon. Theorized by Jeremy Bentham back in the 18th century, a panopticon would be a new type of prison that would need far fewer guards to run than a standard jail. It was circular in design with all prison cells facing inward toward the center of the structure. At this central point would a guard tower with one-way glass windows on all sides so that every single cell could be observed from a central point.
An 18th century plan of Bentham’s panopticon
I’ll let Wikipedia explain the design: “Although it is physically impossible for the single guard to observe all the inmates’ cells at once, the fact that the inmates cannot know when they are being watched motivates them to act as though they are all being watched at all times. They are effectively compelled to self-regulation.” A prisoner cannot see into the central tower, so he cannot know if he is being actively observed. From his perspective, he is always being surveilled. A philosopher named Michel Foucault centuries later realized that this system of internalized surveillance applied to many aspects of modern life. He coined the term “panopticism” to describe it. Panopticism observes that human beings can be controlled simply by the threat of being observed. It is an unseen eye that nonetheless threatens to peer into our very hearts without notice. As an interesting aside, Foucault is one of the writers targeted by Republicans as “woke” and unfit to be taught in schools.
The invention of the security camera is a technological actualization of the panopticon. With cameras, every single room in a building can actually be observed without having an army of security guards on-location. As with the panopticon, however, the camera is only a one-way mirror. Without the man-hours to go through potentially thousands of hours of recorded footage, the ability for a camera to actively police people is limited and reactionary. Artificial intelligence bridges that gap. AI is advanced enough now to go through as many hours of recordings as one could possibly feed it and communicate in English about what it has observed. The same can be applied to sound recordings, images, social media posts… AI has the capacity to make good on the promise of the panopticon. Every single target is being observed and analyzed at the same time, with actual threats being brought to the attention of central command via push notification.
The branch of the Israeli military responsible for creating its surveillance AI is called Unit 8200. According to Guardian reporting on the matter, this unit has successfully created an artificial intelligence that goes through all the social media posts and communications by Palestinians in the West Bank in order to find and report anti-occupation sentiment. This, combined with a checkpoint system that is constantly photographing the face of every Palestinian as they move through Israeli occupied territory, creates a powerful system of categorization actively writing dossier on every single living breathing human in occupied territory using the internet. Palestinians are not full citizens of Israel despite being subject to this surveillance. Even full blown citizens of Israel are subject to this surveillance, as in the case of Rita Murad who was jailed for simply sharing an Instagram post that authorities deemed pro-Hamas.
Unit 8200 needed to gather as many voice recordings and informal written communications as possible in order to create its AI. An artificial intelligence is, put simply, a robot trained to speak by reading text over and over again until it is able to produce a human-legible result. So, Israelis needed a ton of text in order to train an effective AI tool, and they needed to spy in order to do it. According to the Guardian reporting:
”’However, when the IDF mobilised hundreds of thousands of reservists in response to the Hamas-led 7 October attacks, a group of officers with expertise in building LLMs returned to the unit from the private sector. Some came from major US tech companies, such as Google, Meta and Microsoft. (Google said the work its employees do as reservists was “not connected” to the company. Meta and Microsoft declined to comment.)
The small team of experts soon began building an LLM that understands Arabic, sources said, but effectively had to start from scratch after finding that existing commercial and open-source Arabic-language models were trained using standard written Arabic – used in formal communications, literature and media – rather than spoken Arabic.
“There are no transcripts of calls or WhatsApp conversations on the internet. It doesn’t exist in the quantity needed to train such a model,” one source said. The challenge, they added, was to “collect all the [spoken Arabic] text the unit has ever had and put it into a centralised place”. They said the model’s training data eventually consisted of approximately 100bn words.”’
In a terrifying perversion of the academic process, Israelis actually went in and gathered a ton of primary sources on casual Arabic. They did this not to understand the Palestinians better, but to build a robot that would be able to read their once-private communications for the benefit of police work. The tool, now implemented, will be able to detect subversive individuals simply by the posts they share online. If plugged into the right outlets, posts aren’t needed. The AI could use data from the webpages about what Palestinians are simply looking at. Did you know that? With Java Script, a developer can know exactly how long you look at an image online, how long you tarry over a specific paragraph. The internet enables a shockingly deep psychoanalysis of individuals that can be analyzed at scale with AI. Israel does not have a constitution, and there are no laws in its books that guarantee a right to freedom of speech or a right to privacy. So, within Israel’s legal framework, spying is fair game, and prosecuting crimes of thought is more than acceptable in its war on terrorism.
The USA has backed Israel’s efforts to oppress the Palestinians since day 1. Now, the new Republican administration is looking to utilize a similar artificial intelligence surveillance infrastructure to prosecute people in America for engaging with criminalized ideas online. Under a plan that Marco Rubio calls “Catch and Revoke,” the social media posts of international students on American university campuses are being analyzed by AI to determine Hamas sympathies. If deemed to be harboring disagreeable ideologies, these students’ visas are revoked. Since they are not full citizens of the USA, the free speech rights of these international students is apparently fair game for the administration. This comes at a time of record low international student attendance rates at our universities. Our country is becoming academically isolated as automated tools of oppression take an active role in police work.
Citizen students should be constitutionally protected from persecution based on their social media posts, but I suppose the 1st amendment does not explicitly protect citizens from being spied on by the government. Either way, the fact of the surveillance is chilling enough. Citizens now have to weigh whether speaking out about contested political issues is worth being potentially outed to employers, neighbors, and law enforcement by an algorithm. Citizens have to also have to weigh whether Googling something will implicate them in a crime.
Do these developments remind you of George Orwell’s 1984? It should. In Orwell’s novel, television sets installed into everybody’s homes actively record and monitor the population of London. Orwell’s novel warns of a surveillance state with such a degree of control that it can manage the lives of every single individual within a country with no chance of revolution. The main character in 1984 is constantly paranoid that he is being observed at every moment, and he actually is. With AI, we now live in a world where we are actually being observed every moment of our lives. Every time we step in front of a camera, speak near a microphone, or play with our phones… that data is likely being funneled to an AI project that is building a dossier on us on an individual basis. It is a simple project of automated data gathering!
It is possible that sometime soon, crimes of thought will be used as evidence to in trials to implicate the guilt of citizens. Private communications, readily accessible to law enforcement, may increasingly form the basis for legal cases and jail time. In Israel, this is already the reality.
A map of the world from 1984. A work of fantasy…
Years ago, when conceptualizing an automated surveillance technology such as this, we always imagined that it would be invented in a place like China. While I am sure the Chinese government is eagerly working on its own artificial intelligence surveillance infrastructure, it is the United States and Israel that have actually succeeded at creating and implementing a digital panopticon in our lifetime. Republicans argue that security is priceless. To them, it is necessary for a government to spy on its own civilians in order to prevent acts of terror that harm us all.
The idea of achieving security through oppression runs contrary to my values as an American. I would argue that we went to war with Britain and created the United States specifically to avoid the authoritarian impulse to control people through force. Building trust and community are far more effective tools for preventing violence, in my humble opinion. If we take care of our neighbors, they will take care of us in turn. We strive to love one another, we want to see one another succeed. We acknowledge that our neighbors live lives just as complex and unfathomable as our own. We know that our lives are far deeper than any AI can give meaning to. If I may get romantic, I think that love is far deeper than anything an AI could ever truly understand. Regardless, the administrations within the United States and Israel appear poised to abandon love seemingly without even trying it. Violence is the means and the end. The Palestinians aren’t neighbors to these people– just subjects that need to be controlled or eliminated by any means necessary.
As the Trump Administration continues its efforts to lay off as many federal employees as possible for reasons unknown, another worrying trend has emerged: transparency. The federal government has always published analytics information from across its many agencies free of charge simply as a matter of principle. After all, why would our own government, which we sustain for the good of ourselves and our posterity, ever need to withhold any information from us unless doing so posed a serious security risk? The answer is politics. The Trump admin, more than any in recent memory, is putting a lid on any information that is perceived to obstruct its policy goals. The most egregious examples amount to outright censorship, as in the case of the CDC removing its pages on HIV. HIV is in fact a real disease that people experience. Thankfully, a court order forced the Trump admin to put back many of the CDC pages it took down.
Even really simple data, however, is being targeted by this administration. The National Park Service hit a record 331 million visitors last year, a testament to the massive popularity of the program among human beings. Yet, the Trump administration released an internal memo directing national park staff to not make any social media posts or other public remarks about this information. Staff have been directed to only disclose the information if visitors ask themselves. This comes in the wake of the administration’s move to cut 1000 positions from the force alongside another 700 resignations from Musk’s “Fork in the road” plan. Reportedly, the National Park Service is being moved to a seasonal staffing model that does not need to provide guaranteed work hours or benefits to employees.
What possible reason is there to hide visitation numbers from the public? It is likely that Trump and the executives on his environmental board have unpopular plans for the land that it manages, so drawing any attention to the parks (despite their record breaking popularity) would interfere with business. Thankfully, the 2024 data appears to still be online, though it remains to be seen if this will be the last transparent release of information of Trump’s term.
Certainly, this aversion to the free flow of information is a symptom of the “Brainrot Era” that Americans have immersed themselves in. Anything that might stimulate critical thought is dangerous to the policy agenda, and must be tucked out of sight. If the Republican plan to turn the USA into the Philippines is to be successful, then we the people must shut the fuck up and take what’s coming to us! Go scroll Reddit or something! Distract yourself! Nothing to see here, don’t look at the man behind the screen…
Chair Comer, Ranking Member Connolly, and members of the Committee, My name is Michelle Wu.
I am the daughter of immigrants, and since November of 2021, I have had the honor of serving as mayor of Boston.
I’m proud to be here on behalf of our city—the police officers, first responders, and city workers…the faith leaders, teachers, parents, and neighbors—who partner every day to make Boston the safest major city in the nation.
And I’m proud to work alongside the greatest Police Commissioner in the country: Michael Cox.
Every year since I took office, we’ve set a new record low for gun violence in Boston.
Last year, Boston saw the fewest homicides on record in the last 70 years. Those are the facts.
And behind these record lows are historic highs:
The most-ever young people working paid summer jobs…the most pre-k seats at no cost to families…the most affordable housing built in a generation.
We have invested in the kinds of opportunities that cultivate prosperity and eradicate crime.
And the laws on our books promote the kind of community trust that keeps all of us safe.
In Boston, our Police Department resources—and taxpayer dollars—go toward preventing and solving crimes.
And when it comes to criminal matters, Boston Police collaborate with state and federal law enforcement every day.
But Massachusetts State law and the Boston Trust Act make clear that immigration is federal law enforcement’s responsibility.
We are the safest major city in the country…
Because our gun laws are the strongest in the nation…
Because our officers have built relationships over decades…
And because all of our residents trust that they can call 911 in the event of an emergency or to report a crime.
This federal administration’s approach is undermining that trust.
In the past month, I’ve met with residents and faith leaders in community centers and places of worship, asking my constituents what they want Congress to know.
And what I heard over and over again was fear and frustration:
spoke with pastors whose pews are half-empty on Sundays… Doctors whose patients are missing appointments…
Teachers whose students aren’t coming to class.
Neighbors afraid to report crimes in their communities, and victims of violence who won’t call the police.
This federal administration is making hard-working, tax-paying, God-fearing people afraid to live their lives.
A city that’s scared…is not a city that’s safe.
A land ruled by fear…is not the land of the free.
Next month, Boston will celebrate 250 years of our nation’s freedom.
And in every one of those years, Boston has welcomed the world to our shores.
From the English immigrants fleeing religious persecution, to the Irish forced out by famine…
To the families from Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cabo Verde, Vietnam, and so many more that call Boston home today.
We are the safest major city in the nation.
We are home to the greatest healthcare…
The greatest colleges and universities…the most advanced innovators…and the 2024 World Champion Boston Celtics. We are the cradle of democracy and the city of champions.
We are all these things not in spite of our immigrants, but because of them:
One in seven signers of the Declaration of Independence were immigrants. On the last four Red Sox rosters to win a World Series, one in five were immigrants. Of all the faculty at Boston University to have earned the Nobel Prize, all but one were immigrants.
Today, one in four Boston residents were born somewhere else. Most have jobs; many have kids.
All of them chose this country as home, because—like my mom and dad—they believed that, here, where you’ve been doesn’t limit where you’re going; the strength of your character has nothing to do with the color of your passport; and that how hard you work matters more than where you were born.
That—wherever you’re from—if you pitch in, look out for your neighbors, and cheer for the home team, you can build a better future here for the people you love.
So to every one of my neighbors back in Boston, know this:
You belong here; this is your home. Boston es tu hogar. Boston se lakay ou. 這是你的家. This is our city.
In my previous post on Trump’s fascism, I described how fascists leverage the freedom of speech to gain power before hypocritically pulling the plug on speech and enacting censorship. Well, it was prophetic. The Pentagon has begun banning books in military schools in order to carry out Donald Trump’s executive orders. This will supposedly effect 67,000 children worldwide, according to the Guardian piece on the subject. The executive orders on show:
Books targeted include a book about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, books that reference queer or transgender people, and even an innocuous book by Julianne Moore about a girl and her freckles. Alongside banning books, military schools are now being directed to ban gay pride clubs as well as general women’s groups (Women in STEM). Black History month has also been “canceled.” Because a month celebrating the contribution of the people we literally chained up, enslaved, and sold like cattle is somehow out of taste to the current Republican administration.
The Department of Education Website, whose front page proudly declares that it has cut programs related to the discussion of racism, ableism, gender-based discrimination, homophobia, and ageism in the workplace, released a memo in January about the firing of the department’s “book ban coordinator.” This person’s job under the Biden administration was to identify instances of book banning in school districts across the country (not a bad idea IMO). Not only has this role been eliminated, but the memo goes further to counter even the conception that books are being “banned” at all. In an amazing display of double speak by our elected officials, the memo describes the book bannings merely as “alleged,” and re-frames the bans as “established commonsense processes by which to evaluate and remove age-inappropriate materials.” The books are being removed from libraries– that is banning regardless of the legal language concocted to explain it.
Bannings are occurring, especially in Republican states. For example, Florida has banned over 4000 books in the past few years. Among the books in question are Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. Morrison’s novel is about a slave woman that murders her own baby rather than turning her over to slave hunters. The decision haunts the mother for the rest of her life. Vonnegut’s book is about a man’s severe trauma after witnessing and being trapped in the fire bombing of Dresden during WWII, the horror of which need only be implied. These are rich novels that tackle extremely painful moments in American history (Slavery and WWII). They define the very character of our country and give insight into how messy it is to be a human in a tough world. High schoolers and anyone with the capacity and interest to read these challenging books should do so! But evidently Florida’s government disagrees with me there.
The language used by the Trump administration in its gender and sexuality directive attempts to enforce what it calls “biological truth” or “reality.” The so called “erasure of sex” apparently has damning implications for the “validity of the entire American system.” Personally, I don’t think trans people are going to destroy the American system simply by existing. And I also think that we as Americans have a God given, constitutional right to wear whatever the hell we want and call ourselves whatever the hell we want. Trump’s executive order argues that the modern conception of gender as fluid/changeable poses a threat to women’s safety.
The implication here is that allowing trans women into women’s bathrooms endangers women. I don’t think this is the case in practice, and Trump isn’t giving any evidence either (he doesn’t have any). Someone willing to go through the immense effort of changing themselves to look like another gender (including potentially significantly re-sculpting their body and genitals) is having a difficult enough time as it is. Giving them a hard time about where they get to shit in public is ridiculous in my opinion. I will leave the rest of that debate to the experts, but Trump’s directive goes deeper than the bathroom policy. Later sections specifically attack the idea that gender can transcend a fixed male-female binary at all.
Trump is making war on what he calls “gender ideology.” The implications of this order is that citizens may be policed by the federal government on the basis of their own chosen gender or sexual identity, and that one’s sex (based on producing a particular type of reproductive cell) must explicitly be categorized for the purposes of identification. But why? Are we not in a post DEI era where racial and sexual discrimination (even for the purposes of improving diversity within institutions) is illegal? And how do we enforce these sexual identifiers? Will a woman have to provide some of her eggs to an officer if she is suspected of being trans upon entering a bathroom? Will the driver’s license test come with a gamete verification process (please jizz in this cup) in order to acquire an ID? It is unenforceable. Trans people have been successfully shitting in bathrooms for decades without causing societal collapse, and the modern Republican attempt to politicize and criminalize trans people is nothing short of a power grab.
The fascist parallels are frightening. When the Nazis came to power, the first place they went was the Institute of Sex Research in Berlin to plunder its contents of sexual literature and artifacts.
Any materials deemed obscene or subversive were sent to the bonfires. It appears as though sexual research has been vilified and targeted by authoritarian regimes for at least a century.
The Nazis banned Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, Oscar Wilde, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Conrad, and Helen Keller too. We do not know how far the Republicans are willing to go in their own banning spree, but no government should have the right to tell its people what they can or cannot read, or what they can or cannot think. Given that sex is an integral aspect of human society, I believe firmly that it must be studied and discussed freely. It must be observed with an open mind. We must be comfortable talking about sex academically, instead of relegating it to taboo or witchcraft. We have to be able to talk about sex with our children. Kids are certainly mature enough to think about this stuff–its the adults that seem to project their own inherited fears on them. By depriving young people of an honest sexual education, we leave the task to Pornhub or other even more dubious online actors. Worse, some may not learn how to have healthy sexual relationships at all and enter realms of criminality or abuse–thus bringing about the very horrors of sexual harassment and assault in public spaces that Trump claims to want to defend against in his executive order.
Finally, I resent this government’s assertion that it is fighting for an incontrovertible truth. This very same government that calls to question the polio vaccine or the carbon cycle wants to impose biological truths about gender on its population. Ha. Ha.
The reviews are apparently not moderated in any capacity.
Amazon has become another walled garden service, preventing me from viewing more reviews (the bad ones) without creating an account and logging in. The Republicans and their tech mega-donors have ushered in the great era of online enshitification.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” – Donald Trump, Feb 15 2025
During the Trump campaign, people got mad at me when I used the word Fascist to describe the Republicans. They said using that word would weaken its power. Like some geopolitical version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, they argue that if you call your political opponents Nazis now, we won’t be ready to heed the alarm when the real fascists show up. The folks I usually have this conversation with never let me argue beyond that point. If they did let me continue, however, I would say that they are misunderstanding fundamental aspects of Fascism that makes it so dangerous in the first place.
It’s this: Fascists try to look as “normal” as possible on the come up so that they can do all the evil shit once they secure power. Hitler was a published, outspoken jew hater and democracy-critic at least as early as 1925, but he wasn’t campaigning on genocide. He wasn’t loudly calling for the suspension of the free press. That came after. If you look like a radical freak on your come up, people might not democratically hand you the keys to power. Basically, the Nazis lied until they didn’t need to anymore, and then they went for the throat. Free speech is suspended the second it is not longer needed to access the levers of power.
So, if lying and obscuring the truth are central strategies to enacting a fascist regime, then politicians that espouse fascist ideas should not be taken at their word! And they need to be identified and combated BEFORE their rise to power, because once they have power it is too late. Once the Nazis started actually killing jews, gays, and catholics in the millions, it was far too late to solve the problem democratically. We needed to go over across the Atlantic and kill people to get them to stop.
Americans were in deep denial about the objectives of the Republican party during the 2024 campaign, and it isn’t hard to blame them– Trump was lying. Donald was happy to misdirect anytime an opportunity to do so arose!
On Ukraine, Trump was extremely vague. He said the war wouldn’t have happened if he were in office, and that he would end the war upon his return. Pressed for how, he said he’d make a deal with Russia and if Russia refused he’d give Ukraine “more than they ever got.” Now we see that the Republicans never had any intention of backing Ukraine. Ukraine will be receiving no more support from the USA. Ukraine will not be receiving security guarantees that could prevent a third Russian invasion in the future. Hell, they won’t even be part of the negotiations. Trump and Putin are going to work out a deal themselves, and Ukraine will either have to accept or be slowly annihilated. Putin and Trump, unified, have called for new elections in Ukraine so that a leader open to accepting Putin’s terms can be elected.
It doesn’t matter to Trump that Ukraine is an independent state with a Democratic system similar to our own against Putin’s autocracy. Or that invasion and murder are evil and against the law. Or that Europe is facing down its first land war since World War II with the possibility of much more conflict in the future when an emboldened Putin decides that he wants even more. Trump’s objective in Ukraine is now blatantly to end the war on Putin’s terms. Obviously he couldn’t say that during the 2024 campaign because that would have sounded really awful and possibly cost him the election.
On Israel, Trump zipped his lips. He said the war never would have happened if he were in office, and that he was the most pro-Israel president in history. Now that his Republicans are in control, we see what he meant by this: the USA will annex Gaza! We will relocate its millions of residents to some other place and begin a project of transforming the destroyed city into a lucrative real estate project. This idea is so outlandishly evil that even Trump himself seemed a bit embarrassed to say it out loud as he read the script.
(Aside: This isn’t the first time the Trumps have used violence as a real estate opportunity. At this very moment, Jared Kushner is developing a project on the site of the former Yugoslav Ministry of Defense building that was bombed to smithereens by NATO in 1999. The project is funded by Saudi Arabia, of course.)
Trump never let his intentions for Gaza go to light during the campaign of course. Saying so would have galvanized an incredible coalition against him and he would have lost the election. But we all knew Trump didn’t give a shit about the Palestinians. But we all knew Trump backed the Israeli right to conquer the West Bank and subjugate its inhabitants. Now that Trump is in power, his cabinet has declared that Israel has a “biblical right” to the West Bank and has removed all sanctions from settlers accused to violently stealing land. We all knew this was coming, but we pacified ourselves. We deluded ourselves into believing that Trump wasn’t going to do the fascist thing, that maybe he would bring peace to the world. Well, now we have a fascist in office.
Trump didn’t talk about South Africa particularly loudly during his campaign (if at all), yet suddenly South Africa has lost all US funding and the white Afrikaners that make up just 7% of the population while owning 80% of the farmland are considered persecuted refugees. Suddenly we notice that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, Trump’s key donors and advisors, are white South Africans that made their riches off apartheid. All US funding to the impoverished parts of the world (impoverished in no small part because of their subservient position to the USA) have been suspended by the Trump administration for reasons that have not been communicated to the public beyond vague calls of fighting corruption.
What we see from the Trump administration is a desire to conquer and expand. The acquisition of material wealth through extraction is emerging as his chief geopolitical aim. Conflict is his primary policy. He wants Panama. He wants Greenland. He feels Ukraine owes us half of all its rare minerals. All the old trappings of the campaign are gone. Fighting inflation is off the table–it doesn’t matter anymore. We’ll have to deal with “some pain” while Trump wages his new trade war with all our allies. It is the same language the FED uses to justify the interest rates that have stifled a new generation of would-be home-buyers for the past three years.
We weren’t told any of this was going to happen because Trump was being sneaky about it. Even when it was pointed out in 2024 that Project 2025 laid out some very concerning plans to gut the Federal government and use the judiciary to establish an unbreakable Republican hold on all US policy, Trump claimed he never heard of it. That was a bold lie– the project is being enacted right now. Donny is the biggest liar in politics since Bush and his Weapons of Mass Destruction (another Republican out for blood and conquest).
Fascism derives it power from lies. That is why fascists destroy the free press the second they have the opportunity to do so. It’s why you aren’t allowed to criticize Putin in Russia without being jailed or killed outright. It is why you will be jailed and censored in Israel right now for even suggesting that the Palestinians deserve to be left alone. Interestingly, the Nazis called themselves National Socialists despite opposing socialism intrinsically. Putin and Xi claim to be the heads of Democracies, and become enraged if you call them dictators to their face. Biden did exactly that, but Trump never will.
Fascism derives its power from lies. And now the fascist snake is at arm’s length set to begin coiling around our throats. JD Vance went to Europe just last week to implore the Neo-Nazi AfD party to come to power. Elon Musk was there a few weeks earlier rallying them to denounce multiculturalism and embrace German Heritage….
Gentleman, it can’t be more obvious. If you are afraid to call them fascists now, then there will not be a proper time to do so ever. We will soon reach a tipping point where the response to such accusations will simply be a smile. “We know. :)”
I poured a fireball in a dunkin iced coffee this morning and this is what came out:
Fatty in the oval office says I have to go home Crossed 3000 miles, greatest trek ever known No AC, you’d be bitching Blot flies have you itching Shut The Fuck Up Fatty, blow right through your dome I’m a pilgrim in a foreign land, but I wasn’t born to roam Rich bitches having their moment I just want a fucking home
Get your boots on buddy Just a hike cross the Darien Watch your step cuz mudslides get hairy, and Bring extra socks cuz its gonna rain again. Call me Abraham! Watch the rays, bring a hat or your baked, man Left the jungle behind, now we in the sun Nothing stopping this voyage, Fatty better fucking run.
When im done with him, Donny gonna be sippin tea with Snowden Better call up ICE, fatty need the protection gonna snatch these bodies like they stole the election three blind mice, reduced to dust they scared! donald, vance, and musk!
Yeah I said, When I’m done, Donny gonna be sipping tea with Snowden Landlord type ass aint ever been through nothin Wiki say he a felon, but he didn’t do no time Daddy paid for a lawyer, easy white collar crime And Donny pays for pussy too cuz he’s bland as hell No wonder we have active shooters, Mr. President an incel
And that’s just the start– Blackrock, Vanguard, the evil black heart Consolidating power like the dark lord Sauron type [i cant say that word] crushing dissent with a hoard of lawyers, and Peter Theil too, didn’t you hear? Built an AI to spy on you, literally called it Palantir
They say: Stacking the 401K? Thank you very much Whitey! Blast some muslims how we gon’ use that money If we lucky kill some Chinese too We’ll take those iphones and micro chips boo Keep working, you’ll retire for sure! Tho we might start a war, leave yo ass on some shore.
Lucky ones’ll come home with a medal Honest veterans coming back to a life of art Crafting cardboard signs in front the 114 Walmart
Is that the world we want to live in? Hell no.
~~~ Just need a beat and we’ll have a Donald Trump Diss Track. Written in response to the bombardment of headlines over the past few weeks.
It’s Monday, and we are going backwards once again to explore music tastes of the past.
In 2022, I had it all– an apartment in NYC, a long term GF, the love and adoration of my parents… and I threw it all away to work menial jobs in the cold rain! The period from 2021 to 2024 marks the greatest transformation of my life since the growth spurts of my puberty years. What I lost in material things, I gained in spirit and courage! I would never go back.
I started keeping regular records of my finances and mental state around this time. This took the form of a series of notebooks with a new entry added every week. At the end of the very first notebook (Nov 2022 – Feb 2023) I scribbled a list of my favorite albums that I listened to the year prior, but I never did make a formal post about them. Now, in the year of our lord 2025, I present this list.
Disclaimer: time has become a bit more stratified since the pandemic days, but for a long time after 2020, the flow of events became blurry. I mean, as I was living from 2020 to 2022, the flow of time seemed to blend together. As such, I don’t know if these songs were ones I was listening to in 2020, 2021, 2022, or all three. Probably all three! This epoch of three years felt like one gigantic year, honestly.
BEST ECO-APOCALYPSE CONCEPT ALBUM:
The White Goblin by Masayoshi Takanaka (1997)
The White Goblin is the sequel to Masayoshi’s original storybook album concept, The Rainbow Goblins (1981). The original album, which features a real storyteller narration between tracks, tells the story of a group of goblins that attack the rainbow for its colors. They ultimately lose and are transformed into butterflies and colorful birds or something. It is a simple concept with some good music.
“Everybody knows the story of the Seven Rainbow Goblins, the terrible end they came to, and the way the flowers saved the Rainbow at the last minute from being destroyed But very few know what happened afterwards The Rainbow shone in the sky more beautiful than ever Birds and beetles, butterflies and insects excelled one another in colored splendor The land and water animals observed their new flying friends with wonder and pleasure The Rainbow established a unity between Heaven and Earth..”
Mr. Takanaka is pretty rad
The sequel takes things to another level, with Takanaka creating a new, more viceral story from the childish original. Word of the vanquishing of the rainbow goblins reaches the cold north where, hidden alone in crevasses of eternal ice, the banished 8th goblin emerges from exile to conquer the world.
“Oh, Horrors! It’s the White Rainbow Goblin!”
The music gets crazy in this album. The white goblin descends into an underground city of blind cave-goblins, and the music goes hip hop mode for a bit. As the White Goblin and his army begin to devour all the colors of the world, the guitar gets heavy and starts to make industrial engine sounds. Like jets flying overhead. Obviously an analog for industrial society (the WHITE goblin ;p), the goblins start to consume all the natural resources of the world and build vast cities. The goblins eventually have to begin creating synthetic colors because all the natural colors of the world around them are devoured. As the world is dominated, the music itself becomes more synthetic too. Heavy beats and synthesizer to go with the guitar riffs.
It is a powerful album that reflects our own foolish destruction of nature. I highlight the lyrics here, but the album doesn’t really have any words besides the storyteller transitions between songs. Lots of guitar, honestly. The sounds capture the descent of the world very well. Much of Takanaka’s works are Jazz Fusion Rock and Roll type sounds, very upbeat and tropical. But there is something serious and cool about The White Goblin that has stuck with me for years.
BEST THROWBACK ALBUM:
Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest (2016)
Nothing brings me back to my high school days like Car Seat Headrest. The era from 2014 to 2017 saw the release of a ton of music that is now considered absolutely classic, but I was busy listening to Pink Floyd and classic rock. If my friends weren’t total music heads, I would have missed the release of To Pimp a Butterfly or Teens of Denial! Well, Teens of Denial is the one that comes back the most. Since 2022, I have always had a Car Seat Headrest phase every year! I relate more to the lyrics as an adult now than I ever did as a teenager. I was an upright, sober teen though. KILLER WHALE! KILLER WHALE!
While Teens of Denial is probably Car Seat Headrest’s best work, I did listen to the entire discography in 2023 while working on the farm and it was great. I don’t get the furry thing with Twin Fantasy, seemed fine to me.
CATCHIEST ALBUM:
City Slicker by Ginger Root (2021)
The YouTube algorithm is to thank for this one. Ginger Root’s hit single “Loretta” showed up in my sidebar, so I gave it a shot. I was already listening to a bunch of Japanese city pop playlists at the time, so City Slicker was exactly what I wanted at the moment. It is like a modern take on an era of music long past. Ginger Root is often described as “aggressive elevator soul”, and I think that about sums it up. Despite his feminine appearance, however, Ginger Root has some power in his singing. Loretta is really great, but “Juban Disctrict” might be my favorite song on the album.
“It’s so good to get down at the Juban District! Ah! I’m choked up but you’d maybe pass me up!”
But yes, Loretta is an amazing song that got stuck in my head instantly. Over the years since discovering him, Ginger Root has gone on to release two new albums and go on tour. I passed up on tickets to his Boston show and regret it every day. I’m just kind of nervous about seeing what other people that listen to Ginger Root look like. Are we all a bunch of weirdos? I should get over that and just listen to some good live music…
BEST YOUTUBE PLAYLIST:
Macroblank • 痛みの永遠 (???)
The way we listen to music has changed a lot. Can you believe we used to buy singles on iTunes or go to stores to buy CDs? Now, the computer serves up a stream of fresh music for free! YouTube’s algorithm is constantly serving up new suggestions, and I’ve come to find that they can be pretty awesome. Macroblank is one of the best discoveries ever. I know nothing about the artist besides that he might he Japanese? Or maybe the Japanese title is a stylistic choice? I’m hesitant to call it an album because the songs likely aren’t even by Macroblank. In the lineage of vaporwave music, many of the songs are remixed tracks of existing music from the past. The songs are mostly without lyrics, just beats and jazz smooth as butter. Drums, some bongos, guitar. There is a track in there that sounds like a cool version of a Bloon Tower Defense menu theme…
If you don’t know what vaporwave is, don’t worry about it. But Macroblank is the perfected/listenable form of it. It takes you to a liminal place. Sort of nostalgic but new at the same time.
Of course, Macroblank is just one player in a huge online library of mysterious albums and playlists. Usually, the videos without english names are the best. Problem with that is if you like something and don’t save it… chances of finding it again are low as hell! Seriously, I’ve lost track of some awesome music over the years, simply because I have no idea how to track it down again. Googling the album cover art (and the album covers are always divine for some reason) doesn’t help lol
BEST ALBUM 2022:
Laurel Hell by Mitski (2022)
I actually did not like this album when it first came out. I thought Be The Cowboy was fantastic, so Laurel Hell required me to reset expectations. I couldn’t really get into it, thought the lyrics were kind of dull and self-centered. Over time, I found myself thinking about some of the songs. I left the album for a while after its initial release, and when I came back to it it was like listening to Mitski for the first time again!
This album is, in my opinion, less abstract than Be The Cowboy. It less lyrically poetic. It IS more self-centered, with Mitski being sort of depressed and self-flagellating throughout. She talks about being controlling or how unsatisfying it was to go through film school route just to be drudging instead of making movies. The music is electrifying, like dry dust in the desert. The album opens slow and cold before a synthetic beat drops and suddenly everything is alive. I picture somebody being shot in slow motion when I listen to “Valentine, Texas.”
The song “Should Have Been Me” is an amazing climax to a fraught album.
“When I went through my list of friends and found I had no one to tell, of this overwhelming clean feeling, sweet serenity!”
It is like finding some sort of closure to a hard breakdown. Despite the loneliness of the artist, the strikes out triumphantly.
“When I saw the girl looked just like me, I thought must be lonely loving someone trying to find their way out of a maze! Oh, I know”
It isn’t Be The Cowboy. I don’t know if I can say that it is as good as Be The Cowboy. But it is a deeper, more personal album. The music is more memorable in a lot of ways. I wasn’t ready for it when it dropped, but I changed a lot in the months that came after and the album found me again as the year wrapped up. I’m glad it did!
LOOKING FORWARD TO 2023:
The last line in the notebook reads “SOS by SZA.” What an absolutely perfect album to drop during a breakup! “Kill Bill” has all the psycho energy I needed, and the other songs all kind of blend together into a wistful panorama of R&B tracks. It is a very chill album. With the recent Kendrick/SZA collab, I’ve been re-listening to this one quite a bit. It isn’t my favorite by any means, but Kill Bill itself might be one of my favorite songs of the 2020s.
And that’s all I wrote. Been meaning to get this down for years now. Next time, I’ll be exploring more of my present tastes. Music is a revolving door, though. Tracks emerge and disappear and return with the seasons.
