canned dragons
Jane Penny, the frontwoman for TOPS is following in the footsteps of her bandmate Marta Cikojevic (aka Marci) and releasing a solo EP. The song features the satiny smooth vocals we’ve come to expect from Ms. Penny. I can’t confirm, but I would assume the music was composed by long-time collaborator David Carriere. There are sleek, modern sensibilities throughout the track that mix with a style that is in some ways congruent with decades old pop radio. This one will make for some pleasant repeat listens.
Via Gorilla Vs. Bear
The new 7-song EP, Surfacing, will be out April 5, 2024 on Luminelle records (which I believe is in some way affiliated with Gorilla Vs. Bear)
Spencer Kornhaber covers the merger of Pitchfork with GQ for The Atlantic.
Yesterday, Condé Nast’s chief content officer, Anna Wintour, announced plans to merge Pitchfork into the men’s magazine GQ. “This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company,” she wrote in a staff memo. On social media, many of the site’s key writers and editors, some of whom had been on staff for more than a decade, announced they’d been laid off. Much is still unknown about Pitchfork’s future, but music fans have reason to worry we’re losing the most important culture publication of the 21st century.
Pitchfork has had an outsized influence on the musical landscape over the years. That much is indisputable. Whether they has been a positive force is probably debatable. I remember a listening party with Josh Kolenik of Small Black a few months ago where he related that he stopped reading reviews of the band’s work after a negative Pitchfork review. Scathing criticism from Pitchfork can have a chilling effect on album and concert ticket sales and affect a musician’s livelihood. I’m not sure that they deserve a pass on their snobbery, especially when their dismissiveness is so impactful.
Ernie Smith from Tedium is effusive in his praise of the online publication.
I would argue that Pitchfork, despite the criticism it has received, has often been great, but its efforts in the past few years to rethink its approach to music coverage have been welcome. I think a telling moment in Pitchfork’s history came on August 19, 2019. That was the day that the website, in a clear course correction from its past, did an appraisal of Taylor Swift’s first five albums, records that it would not have been caught dead reviewing a decade earlier. It was a statement of the kind of site Pitchfork needed to become—one that accepts that our influences come from the mainstream and the underground.
It’s great that Pitchfork broadened their horizons. They needed more diversity. There is only so much we can read about bands with animals in their names or that sound like plumbing companies, and heaven knows Sufjan Stevens has had enough coverage to last him a lifetime. However, I’m not going to pretend like it’s super brave to give Taylor Swift some attention. Sailing with the prevailing cultural headwinds doesn’t take heroic effort. I read the occasional article on the site, but I’m just not sure that they are doing anything that’s particularly laudable or that we should have a day of national mourning for their declining fortunes.
Casey Shutt considers an article on AI by Paul Kingsnorth for Mere Orthodoxy. Kingsnorth sees demonic forces at play within technological advancement in general and AI in specific. Shutt expands upon the concerns expressed by Kingsnorth in his own piece. He hones in on the sense of real foreboding that plagues some who work with the technology.
The Godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, seems genuinely haunted by AI’s mysterious power and the astonishing speed at which it is advancing. Hinton said in a 60 Minutes interview that humanity does not know what it’s doing with AI, and he fears that we’ll get it wrong, something we can’t afford to do. Scott Pelley followed up, asking why. Hinton replied simply: “Because they might take over.”
And Hinton’s not alone. Technology reporters Casey Newton and Kevin Roose describe what they call “AI vertigo,” that is, the dizzying possibilities that could flow from AI technology and the unease it produces in its creators. In Newton’s reporting on the topic, he has found that those working with AI often have AI nightmares. Even Sam Altman, chief executive at OpenAI and as optimistic as they come regarding the technology, admitted feeling “very strange extreme [AI] vertigo” at different moments, especially surrounding the launch of ChatGPT-3.
Perhaps the most disturbing element of the piece is when Shutt introduces a woman called “Loab,” a creation of AI who seems to be cobbled together from the fragments of nightmares interrupted by the blessed relief of waking hours. I had to stop reading the story of Loab only part of the way through, so unsettling was the tale and the accompanying images that were generated by AI.
However, not content to stop at scaring us with Loab, Shutt brings the devil himself into the picture. Pointing out that the devil is known for his dishonesty, Shutt points to the fact that most of the concerns about AI center around deceit.
It is striking that when it comes to most of our AI fears, deception is the common denominator. In academic settings, concerns abound as to how the technology might be used by students to deceive their teachers into thinking AI generated work was student generated. Similar worries can be found in creative enterprises like music, visual arts, and writing. And let’s not forget that one of Sydney’s “dark fantasies” is to spread misinformation. Whether it’s misinformation, deepfakes, AI-generated work presented as one’s own, a faux romance with AI, deception is the common thread. The fingerprints of the “Father of Lies” seem to be all over the technology.
In tying the supernatural to novel technology, Kingsnorth and Shutt are playing with ancient fears. Of course, it isn’t safe to assume that the notion of evil has simply become outdated. It makes sense to view evil as a shapeshifter, adapting to the new ways in which it can infiltrate our lives more easily.
Jess Weatherbed writes for The Verge about members of the European Parliament targeting Spotify with regulations to make sure European music is well represented and that artists are compensated more fairly.
The proposition was made to ensure European musical works are accessible and avoid being overshadowed by the “overwhelming amount” of content being continually added to streaming platforms like Spotify. MEPs also called for outdated “pre-digital” royalty rates to be revised, noting that some schemes force performers to accept little to no revenue in exchange for greater exposure. Imposing quotas for European musical works is being considered to help promote artists in the EU.
Meanwhile, Professor Alan Jacobs is fond of ranting to his college students about Spotify.
I’ve made it a classroom practice in the last year or so to indulge in theatrical rants against Spotify, which is fun for me and for my students. They argue with me and I denounce them, all in good humor. But for all the smiles, I am quite serious. Spotify is creating in millions and millions of its users a new kind of Attention Deficit Disorder, not one that has them jumping from one thing to another, but rather has them in a kind of vague trance state. Spotify is like soma from Brave New World in audio form. And to be in such a state is to experience a deficit of attention, an inability genuine to attend to what one is hearing.
I’ve noticed I have a lot less desire to skip around when listening to music on CD than I do when listening to a streaming service. Roon helps with this somewhat, but even it’s not quite the same as having a physical object that has to be switched out if you want to play something new. I’ve listened to albums end to end so much more since getting a CD player.
Spotify: A gram is better than a damn.
As I headed to Divine Liturgy yesterday morning, I was glad to be able to participate in sacred time. The ability to set aside time for worship and repentant reflection has clear benefits for the soul. Elizabeth Oldfield writes about Keeping Sacred Time for Comment Magazine.
Rowan Williams says that “undifferentiated time” is one of the hallmarks of secular societies, and we are all dancing to its catchy, repetitive tune. Largely detached from the seasons, time feels like a headlong linear rush of news cycles punctuated by the commercial breaks of Black Friday and Starbucks Red Cup Day. Williams believes that one of the hidden gifts of communal religious practice is the way it helps us locate ourselves in, and stay in fruitful relationship with, time.
I wonder about “undifferentiated time” and its relationship to boredom, and the lengths to which we go to keep boredom at bay. When we consume too much of the cultural waste products because we feel like we have nothing better to do, it feels like we are doing a disservice to the soul. I know that I have a problem sometimes becoming too entrenched in online culture, much of which is, at best, unhealthy filler. I have to step outside that pattern and into a new relationship to time and transcendence. It seems even those with more secular inclinations recognize this need. Oldfield cites Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, who is widely read for his commentary on time.
Burkeman argues powerfully for the importance of collective time, the sharing of regular rhythms and practices with other people. For his audience, it sounds surprisingly radical. In language that could easily be heard in a sermon, he expounds the way collective committed rhythms actually liberate us, in contrast to the individualized, flexible, autonomous schedules we mainly keep, which Burkeman calls “the freedom to never see your friends.”
Communal activities centered around sacred traditions can, in the right circumstances, build connections. Of course, the time spent on these activities takes away from time for other things, at a time when it feels like there are endless ways to spend our most precious resource. Not all the ways we spend our time are equal, for sure, so it’s up to us to be judicious in this area. This calls for a kind of discernment that is unfamiliar in its sheer scope. Jeremy Abel writes about our inability to process the overload of information at our fingertips.
As we face a time of uncertainty and increasing demands on our attention, we need to decide now: will we pretend to be God, who can see and know all with perfect love and equanimity? Will we sell ourselves short by imagining our minds to be made of silicon, capable of handling the endless flow of data? Or will we accept ourselves as organic life: limited, frail, and worthy of peace and compassion, come what may?
The commentary from Abel fits in well with how Burkeman describes our relationship to the glut of information out there. We have to resist succumbing to FOMO in an environment where that is a constant nagging feeling. It seems to me that this takes a very deliberate decision to turn away from that path. To reorient ourselves to the world around us, both material and spiritual.
Some people share the fact that going to the gym is the only way they can keep themselves to an exercise routine. They don’t get the same motivation from having exercise equipment at home. I feel much the same way about worship. I use my prayer books and pray at home, but there is something to be said for traveling to a destination for corporate worship that forces focus and attention. There are no distractions. Everything around you points to toward a particular focal point. The presence of others forces you into a rhythm.
Though I fear I may have quoted too liberally from her piece (seriously, go read it), I’ll give the last word to Oldfield.
I’m more and more convinced that the way we structure our time—collectively, not only individually—is the key factor in our discipleship. The only way we can be formed to stay loyal to the logic of a different kingdom is to focus as much repeated, intentional attention on its stories and rituals and songs as we do on our phones, our televisions, and our shopping centres.
That sums it up nicely.
I’ve been fascinated by the idea that the opposite of addiction is connection since I first heard about it. It seems to be a transformative paradigm shift in terms of how we think about addiction and treatment. This piece by Robert Weiss details some of the research that has gone into formulating this conclusion.
Given the above, one wonders what is really going on with addiction. Obviously, there is more to the equation than just the dopamine pleasure response. Certainly, the experience of pleasure does play some role because it opens the doorway to addiction. But it is clear, since most people do not become addicts, that over time a person’s initial experience of pleasure is not what causes that individual to return to an addictive substance again and again, compulsively and to his or her detriment.
In an experiment, rats were given heroin and, in the absence of external stimulation and a community of other rats, became hopelessly addicted to it. In an environment with more to interact with and plenty of other rats, they ended up ignoring the heroin. The lesson transformed the thinking about addiction and helped to factor in community support as a factor in combating the problem.
Similar findings have been discovered in the area of mental health treatment in Finland.
In recent years, the Finnish model of care, known as ‘open dialogue’, has been seen as an alternative. Based on a network of family, friends and mental health practitioners, there are reports of significant long-term benefits, including fewer prescriptions, less time spent in hospital, and more people returning to education and work.
The more they are neglected, the more real-world connections show their necessity. The “loneliness epidemic” poses real and abiding risks for quality of life measures. U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recognizes the fact that online connections don’t have the depth and protective effects that in-person connections do. “Cultivating a culture of connection,” is not easy, though, particularly with the forces of modernity, technology and individualism, pushing against it.
I can’t help but think about those that have put themselves in the right positions to nurture relationships, though, and have not seen success. This could be someone who has trouble with interpersonal relationships. It could be someone who felt excluded at a church, synagogue, mosque, temple or even at the local bowling league. I have heard so many stories from people that fit into these categories. I think we have a responsibility to ensure that those folks do not fall through the cracks. Particularly, as we see more and more data underscore the importance of social relationships and support systems, we need to keep a close eye out for those who may not be successfully finding opportunities to be nurtured in this way.
The Skatepark In Palestine
This short film, Walls Cannot Keep Us From Flying, follows two skateboarders in Palestine. It shares their joy in the sport and their frustrations with the limitations of their surroundings. You won’t be able to help but feel the determination when one of them tries repeatedly to ollie a staircase into a busy street.
Content warning: If you watch this with kids they may naturally wonder why other kids have to live in what looks like a prison.You may find yourself wondering the same thing.
Via Kottke