When you hear Jeff Sessions speak, remember Matthew 4:5-7. Even the devil can quote scripture for evil and misleading purposes.
When you hear Jeff Sessions speak, remember Matthew 4:5-7. Even the devil can quote scripture for evil and misleading purposes.
Being a dad means I get to make paper cameras for this guy. We have fun together.
🔗 As someone who struggles with a love of records and a simultaneous desire not to collect more things, I can appreciate this story about Moby selling his record collection for charity.
Justin Lee at Arc Digital argues that Apple is painting itself into a corner by arguing for a strict interpretation of the constitutional right to free speech in the Masterpiece case. Previously, when the FBI asked Apple to create software to neutralize security features on the iPhone, Apple argued that the order was compelled speech and that source code should be included in free speech protections. In doing so, Apple was advocating for a very broad interpretation of the free speech provision of the first amendment. The new position seems contradictory.
Such an outcome would satisfy the social justice concerns of Apple and other corporate giants, but it wouldn’t necessarily be good for business. A definition of speech narrow enough to exclude decorative arts will almost certainly exclude source code as well. The FBI could easily use such a precedent in court to compel Apple to write code capable of breaching their iPhone users’ privacy.
Will this prove damaging to Apple’s legal concerns in the future?
🎵 Pure Bathing Culture - Hats: I immediately had the sense that Pure Bathing Culture covering the Blue Nile was a perfect pairing when I first heard the way the songs were rendered. This record is the tasteful black and white movie amidst the gaudy technicolor landscape of contemporary music.
One of the best things about the possibility of high definition vinyl is that it will work on existing hardware.
From Christ and Pop Culture on how the NFL has handled the player’s protesting by kneeling during the national anthem.
By excluding the NFLPA from this decision, the owners are accepting the false narrative that the protests are against America and the military. These dismissive actions demonstrate that owners have shown little concern about the injustices and inequalities the players were attempting to highlight. Instead, their demand to end the protests seems to only come from a concern for their bottom-line profits. The problem with this approach, beyond the suppression of the rights outlined in the First Amendment, is that it makes explicit what has been implicit for some time — most NFL owners care more about maintaining power and wealth than the health, welfare, and safety of their players.
The president’s and vice president’s interference in this space has been dishonest and unwelcome. The way the NFL has handled the peaceful and respectful protests has been uneven at best and racist and coercive at worst.
Add this to the cover-up and mishandling of the issue of players with brain injuries and you have some very good reasons for not supporting the National Football League.
One of the most rage inducing/heartbreaking things I’ve read this past week is that Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, removed her posts from Instagram. The action was most likely due to harassment Tran has been the recipient of for the last few months. Since shortly after the film’s debut, she has faced racist and sexist abuse online.
A certain segment of Star Wars devotees proved to be too attached to the series after the prequels failed to live up to expectations. I’ll have to admit to feeling let down by Star Wars 1-3 and I think there is legitimate reason to be concerned about where the series is headed. However, most of us long-time fans know where to draw the line between disappointment and outrage.
Now a set of fans has taken advantage of the social media tools that let them spew venom at the objects of their derision. These fans feel like they are entitled to a Star Wars that affirms their views of the world. Anything other than that registers like a betrayal to them. For these people, movies that were meant to be entertainment instead become sacred. Fairy tales in space become outsized in their importance and take on a idealized purity that is easily stained in the messy work of continuing the narrative. It’s truly a shame to see Tran and others taking part in what should be a wonderful experience of sharing a story with the world become the victims of online abuse.
Sending a GDPR notification email to the fans of your band is one of the most punk rock things you can do.
I was only a few years old when the Star Wars trilogy first came to theaters, and the movies and toys tied to them had a formative role in how I used my imagination. I played Jedi training with my cousin on the playground, my dad and I used plastic baseball bats and pretended they were lightsabers, and different spots in my basement became their own planets as action figures shuttled between them in tiny space ships. I remember being in a Toys R’ Us once, and trying to convince my mom that I should be allowed to buy a third Darth Vader action figure, after the first two both suffered through their oversized heads falling off of their lithe bodies.
It’s probably safe to say my life was begun in Star Wars fandom. However, I’m becoming increasingly convinced that the powers steering Star Wars want to make me hate the franchise by the time I die. After the original three movies, fans experienced a long drought that left us parched and thirsty for more adventures from a galaxy far far away. However, after purchasing the franchise, Disney seems to want us to drown in Star Wars excess.
The rumors and announcements of the future direction of the Star Wars movies don’t offer much hope for an old-school fan. The director of the latest film, The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson, who decided to omit or trash the mythology his predecessor cued up in the previous film, is being given his own series of Star Wars movies. The creators of the Game of Thrones series, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, are also being given their own series of movies within the Star Wars universe. At this point, it feels like Disney is giving directors their own Star Wars movies like an English monarch handing out titles.
The last two directors to receive titles, though, are particularly interesting picks. Most of us remember wincing or groaning when we rewatched Leia kissing Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, knowing that they would eventually be revealed to be siblings. With Benioff and Weiss being tapped to helm a new series of Star Wars movies, viewers are likely to see siblings doing much more perverse things than mere kissing. Incest is so common on Game of Thrones that Forbes magazine had an article titled Why We Secretly Love the Incest on Game of Thrones.
Perhaps a little less worrying, at least in terms of the creative team, is the news about the new Star Wars series that is set to appear on the upcoming Disney streaming service. For the series, the stewards of the franchise have tapped Jon Favreau to direct. Favreau has come a long way since playing Mike, the character who inadvisedly decided not to double-down, in the indie hit Swingers. His credentials are fairly impressive. Still, one has to wonder if a streaming show to binge and multiple movie series are what Star Wars fans need.
Photo from Kristina Alexanderson via Flickr
🎵 Wild Nothing - Letting Go: Wild Nothing is one of my favorite bands and I don’t care who knows it. It made my day yesterday to hear they have a new record coming out and that the first stop on their fall tour will be the Cat’s Cradle.
Today at work a colleague refused to drive my machine with an Apple mouse because he didn’t want “to get sucked into that cult.”
Teen Daze is reissuing a few of their albums. Their debut, the chillwave classic Four More Years, is available on vinyl for the first time.
🎵 Weezer - Africa: Just in time to remind us that mainstream social media can actually be a force for good, a campaign waged for months on Twitter convinced Weezer to cover not one, but two Toto songs. They are both amazing.
2018-05-26
A nautical journey in Boston. Walden Pond was not at all what I expected. I didn’t envision the beach vibe.
2018-05-27
Union Square donuts and some New England architectural charm.
2018-05-28
This way to Fenway Park.
Some people are just in it for the chase.
Amen and amen.
Sarah Kurchak, writing about her grandfather’s apparent affection for Jar Jar Binks, who he called “Ho Ho Ding Ding” and believed was a talking camel, comes to some conclusions about the power of film.
I also came to understand the depth and diversity of roles that a film can play in someone’s life: it could be a mere amusement or a guiding force, your best friend or your nemesis, your muse or your medicine. Even the most maligned movie can distract a person from contemplating the void as they face certain and fast-approaching death, or it can try to fill the hole that’s left when that person’s gone.
It’s a very personal piece that shows how a movie experience can be seen from many different angles. Touching on her grandfather’s decline and the running half-joke that was his enduring fascination with one of the most hated benign characters in the cinematic universe, Kurchak hits at how powerfully context shapes the value we get from an artistic creation.
New phone experience.
After literally working with town officials for years on a new site for a store, IKEA has just cancelled their plans to build a location in Cary NC. Since the town had been planning a lot of changes that hinge on the arrival of the new store, I’m sure those that had worked on the deal and all of the concessions that had to be obtained are seriously frustrated.
“When I asked whether there was anything Cary could do to influence IKEA’s decision, I was told that there was nothing; not even an incentive would make a difference,” Stegall said in his statement. “IKEA said they had an extremely positive view of and experience with the Town Council, our staff, the mall site, and Cary as a whole. The bottom line is that as wonderful a place as Cary is, we are just too suburban for IKEA’s new direction. “
I’m not sure how Cary is going to revitalize the old shopping mall that IKEA was going to essentially replace but I hope they have a contingency plan.