"But there was nothing about the little, low-rambling, more or less identical homes of Northumberland Estates to interest or to haunt, no chance of loot that would be any more than the ordinary, waking-world kind the cops hauled you in for taking; no small immunities, no possibilities for hidden life or otherworldly presence; no trees, secret routes, shortcuts, culverts, thickets that could be made hollow in the middle – everything in the place was right out in the open, everything could be seen at a glance; and behind it, under it, around the corners of its houses and down the safe, gentle curves of its streets, you came back, you kept coming back, to nothing; nothing but the cheerless earth." Thomas Pynchon, "The Secret Integration" This is Ian Mathers' Tumblr. I live in Canada. Hi. ismathers @ bsky
It's hard to post intentionally bad writing without commenters proclaiming "oh but I feel bad! I love this!" Perfectly bad art is as rare a feat as perfectly good art. Even the most anonymous mediocrity definitionally will have its fans.
Enjoying bad art is neither virtuous nor unvirtuous because enjoyment is passive. It is barely a choice. I do, however, think that incuriosity is shameful. Taste, as in the ability to understand, diagnose, and articulate, the artistic choices that make up a work, is the vehicle for understanding and producing art. Taste can only be cultivated by reflecting upon a broad field of art, peak to dogshit. Because of this, the cultivation of Taste is one of my favorite parts of being alive.
If you've only ever watched marvel movies, of course they are your favorite movies. Your love of marvel movies means little. However, if you have sampled everything the world of cinema has to offer, have watched every single movie dogshit to peak, and marvel movies are still your favorite, that is meaningful. You probably have some very interesting things to say about movies. Even though I will probably disagree with them.
Enjoy dogshit to your heart's content. But reflect articulate that enjoyment; because this cultivates Taste.
Here’s part two of our monthly run-down of short reviews. Contributors (across both parts) include Tim Clarke, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Bill Meyer, Roz Milner, Justin Rhody and Jonathan Shaw.
Knockout Artist — Ramshackle Deluxe (Knockout Artist)
Talk about 80s music, and you’re liable to get gushy pledges of allegiance to gated drums and gravity-defying hair. But there was a counter-movement of rock musicians who rejected artificiality by tapping into country sounds and themes. Whether by design or happy accident, Knockout Artist, a quintet from Chapel Hill NC, nails that vibe. While Phil Venable drawls alternately defiant and shame-faced sentiments, a triple front of guitars and steel snarl and spiral over crisp drum cadences that’ll dispatch rock critics of a certain age to their basements to pull out their Long Ryders, Eleventh Dream Day, and Band of Blacky Ranchette records. If those names mean nothing to you, well, maybe Knockout Artist will.
Bill Meyer
LDL — The Eerie Glow Of Jellyfish (Relative Pitch)
LDL = soprano saxophonist Urs Leimgruber + analogue synth player Thomas Lehn + amplified spinet player Jacques Demierre. This Swiss/German combo has roots in an earlier trio that, with Demierre on piano and the late, august bassist Barre Phillips occupying the space now held by Lehn, had a fine two-decade run. Changes in gear and personnel contribute to the simultaneously bruising and delicate dust-ups that play out across this concert recording. Amplified, the spinet (an old parlour harpsichord) emits a whirlwind of brittle textures that shatter and coalesce with the synth’s alien squelch. Long, lacerating sax thrusts puncture and stir the action, resulting in a group sound that is remarkably unfamiliar given how long these guys have been around.
Bill Meyer
Donny McCaslin / Ingrid Jensen / Bruce Barth / David Ambrosio / Victor Lewis — Civil Disobedience (Blue Frog Records)
Turbulent times can bring out the best in artists, encouraging them to push deeper into themselves to make art that reflects the moment. Such was the case in late 60s jazz, an era that David Ambrosio’s new quintet looks to on their new release Civil Disobedience. Think about it like this: it features a blue-chip lineup (McCaslin, Jensen, Barth, and Lewis) playing Blue Note material. But what could have been just another standards album has slightly adventurous programming: Bobby Hutcherson’s “For Duke P,” Harold Land’s “Poor People’s March,” and Joe Chambers’s “Ankara”. Both McCaslin and Jensen play well here: on “For Duke P,” Jensen’s solo has her darting around the melody and stretching out long lines with ease. Meanwhile McCaslin gets a rich, sweet tone out of his horn on “Irina” and plays some nice, almost circular figures where he goes up and down his horn’s register. And with a rhythm section that gives them plenty of space to work — Lewis’s deft touch on drums never overpowers the players and Barth’s piano keeps them from flying too far into space — it’s an engaging, occasionally exciting listen.
Roz Milner
Pefkin — Unfurling (Morc)
Gayle Brogan has been making albums as Pefkin for over 20 years now, and Unfurling displays an unhurried, patient calm that can come across as lovely or foreboding, sometimes very close together. The two extended tracks anchoring this 40-minute collection, the opening slow-building radiance of “Green Bound in Ice and Snow” and the penultimate, starkly crawling “My Breath the Sea,” show her work in its strongest form, but the more compact other four tracks expand on those strengths in varied ways (from the mournful strings of the Penda’s Fen-quoting “The Dissonance” to the relatively pastoral “Sun Flecks”). Just like her music, Brogan’s sung lines are also careful, enchantingly placed, giving Unfurling a subtly and pleasingly otherworldly feel.
Ian Mathers
Raw Distractions — S/T (La Vida Es un Mus)
Tokyo-based Raw Distractions play a variety of punk rawk that walks (or stumbles) a fine line between pastiche and appealing artlessness. Is the band’s combination of street-punk scruffiness, Dead Boys’ energy and Johnny Thunders-style guitar heroics a calculated simulation of 1978’s overripeness, or are Raw Distractions so out of step with the contemporary that they’re really playing the music that they have to play? The riffs are sweet and then slashing, compellingly melodic and tuff — like Mick Jones working out on an early Sun Records tune. Songs like “Raw Dis” and “Midnight” have a hip-shot snottiness that’s winningly stubborn in its adulation what was so exciting about late-70s punk. But do we really need music this out of time? Aren’t we all just about out of time, as the earthball cooks and platform capitalism gleefully empties everything of real value? Maybe a raw distraction — and guitars this gloriously beat to shit — is precisely made to order for 2026. Amazon can next-day the vinyl to you.
Jonathan Shaw
Seefeel — Sol.Hz (Warp)
Though they share a label with electronic legends Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada, Seefeel have flown relatively under the radar since they first started releasing music in the 1990s. Their latest album, Sol.Hz, conjures a gaseous, shadowy soundworld that draws influence from the more minimal, industrial side of their labelmates, especially early Aphex and the more accessible side of Autechre. However, the most resonant comparison is probably Slowdive’s Pygmalion, in the way the looped, disembodied elements — synths, beats, Sarah Peacock’s ghostly voice — seem to hover apart from each other rather than locking into a rhythmic grid. “Everydays” rolls past without the individual elements coalescing; “Ever No Way” starts off-kilter, but as more elements are introduced, locks satisfying into place, like Boards of Canada’s “Jacquard Causeway.” It’s a disorientating and deeply atmospheric listen that paints a vivid picture across its runtime without overstaying its welcome.
Tim Clarke
Charles Joseph Smith — Collected Works and War of the Martian Ghosts (Sooper)
The 88 Keys That Opened Doors: An Inspiring Memoir of an African-American Man Who Achieved the Impossible Even As He Faced The Challenges of Being on the Spectrum (self-published)
Dr. Charles Joseph Smith is a living legend of the Chicago underground scene who has self-released over sixty albums on tape and cd-r. In the early 2000s I was introduced to a cassette of Smith waxing poetic on the word “Linden” through mutual friends in the Midwest noise rock scene, and it was immediately apparent that I was experiencing the work of a visionary artist. Despite being an internationally-renowned classical pianist, Smith is often found banging his head at basement noise shows and dancing at under-the-radar house music parties. This long-overdue four-sided adventure from Sooper Records compiles selections from the artist’s vast catalog created over the past thirty years, including both midi and piano realizations of Smith’s sci-fi opera War of the Martian Ghosts. It’s highly recommended that readers also pick up Smith’s autobiography, The 88 Keys That Opened Doors, to more fully understand the remarkable life of this composer. After having spent several years mute as a child, Smith astonished his family by playing perfect classical licks on the piano without previously having played a single note. While navigating the tremendous challenges presented by autism, Smith not only earned a doctorate in musical arts and traveled the world performing, but he also crafted a unique personal world through the power of music and became a beloved member of the underground community. Hopefully this beautiful collection of music becomes just one part of a multi-volume series of releases in the future.
Justin Rhody
Various Artists — Red Xerox: Chicago Youth Beat 2020-2025 (Desert Island)
Chicago’s Hallogallo scene flourished in the early 2020s, an interconnected community that played each other’s shows and sat in on each other’s bands and sometimes shared familial and romantic ties. Horsegirl, the buzzy, drone-y, all-female trio, made the first mark outside the neighborhood, but post-punk noisemakers in Lifeguard weren’t far behind (or too much ahead of poppier outfits like Sharp Pins and Friko). Yet the scene was more diverse that outsiders, perhaps, have given it credit for. This compilation yields the expected amount of fuzz and chime and agit-punk, but also a helping of confessional singer-songwriter music (Amaya Penya’s “Song for Avi,” and Free Range’s “Lost and Found”), dub (Current Union TM’s “Dukkha Coca”) and Tobin Sprout-ish lo-fi (Dwaal Troupe’ “En Utero”). The comp covers a lot of ground, but it’s carefully sequenced, It flows like a mixtape despite the diversity of ideas. And that’s maybe what makes it so special: Red Xerox tracks a scene that was exacting but inclusive, a little nerdy but full of enthusiasm. DIY, it seems, is in good hands for at least one more generation.
Jennifer Kelly
Geiger Von Müller — Neocubist Blues (Self-Release)
Guitar blues can be a traditionalist’s straight jacket, but it doesn’t have to be. In Neocubist Blues, London-based experimental guitarist Geiger Von Müller offers 14 mostly brief interludes that filter the drone and haunt and sting of blues guitar through a modernist lens. Here the slippery tones of bottleneck slide careen slightly off center, the steady thump of the Delta turns abstract and mathematical. “Toys in the Attic (Parts 10-12)” slashes and careens through heavy rhythmic territory, its percussive attack violent, almost punk. The slide gets viewed from three temporal angles: “Before the Slide,” “The Slide” and “After the Slide.” Each demonstrating considerable knowledge and skill in the blues form without pledging fidelity. Lots of guitarists follow Fahey, but few show affinity for BOTH his blues and his sonic experiments. Geiger Von Müller does, and that makes his Neocubist Blues worth exploring.
Doctors said that activists who were captured at sea while attempting to bring aid to Gaza were beaten to the point of severe muscle breakdo
Two Korean activists who were detained by Israeli forces after attempting to break the siege on Gaza and deliver aid recounted abusive treatment by their captors to local press on Thursday.
“After fully armed Israeli soldiers searched my body, I was dragged alone to a dark shipping container. The lights switched on, and whenever I looked at the light, they hit me in the face. Whenever my head was bowed, I was forced to look back up at the light,” said Kim A-hyun, 28, an anti-war activist who also goes by the name Haecho.
“[The Israeli soldiers] had tactical gloves on. After I was dealt a second blow to my cheek, I could hear a shrill sound in my ear. Following the third, I started to bleed from my nose and started to gag,” she said.
Kim Dong-hyeon, another activist who had participated in a humanitarian aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip, testified to similar conditions.
“My hands were tied, my body was searched, and I was continuously pummeled and kicked as I was being taken away. My wrists kept bleeding on account of having been bound so tightly, and I couldn’t feel my hands. My entire body, including my head and my legs, was in excruciating pain,” he said.
“When I started hyperventilating, I began to think that it was very likely that I might die,” he went on.
The two activists claim that they suffered serious health issues, including muscle damage and hearing loss, after being assaulted during their detention.
...
Kim A-hyun was diagnosed with a perforated eardrum as a result of the beatings she took to the face. Jonathan Victor “Seungjoon” Lee, a Korean American who was arrested alongside her, sustained a broken rib and other injuries after being tased.
“We are witnessing symptoms of rhabdomyolysis, which are usually apparent in victims of industrial accident cases involving crushes or those who have been severely injured in traffic accidents. The activists were released on Wednesday, but if that had been delayed by even a day and they had been subjected to more beatings, they would have suffered from severe harm,” said Dr. Lim Sang-hyuk, the director of Green Hospital.
The activists gave detailed testimonies of the abuse and torture they suffered during their arrest and aboard the prison boat.
“As soon as we boarded the boat, they pointed guns at us and subjected us to body searches. They hurled racist insults and curses at us the entire time. Male-passing people were tasered, while women and people perceived as female were subjected to sexual abuse,” said Kim A-hyun.
Driving around my town trying to find one single burger just one burger or a hot dog but Unfortunately everythings just rubble and twisted scaffolding upstretched and rotting and theres shit on fire and a big black ass sky
And so the work week comes to an end! It's been one of these, for sure. Not all bad, busy with some good stuff, but also overstretched and very tired. And that's not even counting my impromptu convention mudslide last weekend. I have a niece's birthday celebration tomorrow, and then I'll just be settling down gingerly with a big heaving sigh until Monday. Have a good weekend!
All the experiences I treasure the most from my University and grad school years are the times I was working on a paper or an exam or just doing the research and I sat there and struggled with a concept, reread the chapter, thought about it, wrote a few tentative sentences and then...it clicked. Or I was in a seminar and talking through an idea, half-way to getting it and...it clicked. That moment when the concept suddenly made sense, when the writing just started to flow and I'd crank out three or four pages of pretty decent work. It felt amazing, every horizon peeled back just a little, whole new avenues of thinking to explore. Why would you want to outsource that?
sleep disorders/conditions affecting sleep are no fucking joke man. they're more than just "takes an hour to fall asleep." like yeah that sucks but.
sleep issues can make people sleep all day and be awake all night no matter what they do. they can make people sleep for over half the day every day. they can make people stay up for over 24 hours frequently - and it just goes up from there. being up for days at a time just unable to sleep.
they can make people have a completely unpredictable sleep schedule too. not everyone is capable of going to bed and waking up at generally the same time, or maintaining it.
all this could be more temporary, or it could just be indefinite. like. having to live your life not knowing if you will or will not be conscious at any given time. you can't plan for fucking anything. you can miss almost every plan or event or obligation.
and everyone just hates you for it pretty much, thinking you're irresponsible and lazy.
be nicer to people with sleep problems. they make you physically and mentally feel like shit. they're not a choice.
you guys have got to internalize that sometimes, actually usually, people can be disgusting or problematic or stupid or annoying without deserving any sort of punishment, that its fine for them to just experience normal pushback from people saying theyre wrong and dont like their behavior , or requiring any more safety measures between themselves and persons they could harm than to have their actual behavior and stated intentions documented dispassionately. and also the opposite, that not every shitty person who says dumb things is actually some sort of brilliant, innocent martyr. sometimes people are just sort of crummy
Your parents getting elderly is a lot like having a piano hanging over your head by a fraying rope. Sooner or later it's gonna fall on your head and you think you know how much it's going to hurt, but nobody really really knows until they're bleeding on the sidewalk. And you just have to keep living your life until it happens.
Despite ICJ genocide warnings, 51 nations kept arming Israel, even after pledging to halt support.
A months-long Al Jazeera investigation has found that military-related goods originating from at least 51 countries and self-governing territories continued entering Israel after the ICJ’s warning of a plausible risk of genocide in Gaza.
Based primarily on an analysis of Israeli Tax Authority (ITA) import data between 2022 and 2025, and supported by customs records and freedom of information requests, the investigation traced military supply chains linked to countries across Europe, Asia, North America and South America. All named countries are signatories to the Genocide Convention.
In some cases, the military-related goods originated from countries that had formally imposed arms embargoes on Israel or had partially suspended arms supplies to the country.
In fact, according to the ITA data, arms imports increased after the ICJ ruling, with the largest share falling under the category of munitions.
The five largest countries of origin for military-related goods entering Israel - the United States, India, Romania, Taiwan and the Czech Republic - all recorded increased shipments during the war.
[...]
Patrick Wilken, a researcher at Amnesty International, said the scale of Israel’s military campaign made such international support indispensable.
“There is no way that Israel alone could have sustained the intensity of its massive bombardment across the Gaza Strip,” he said. “Israel has relied on a global supply chain of arms, munitions and support services, primarily supplied by the United States but supported by many other states.”
As the war continued, weapons-related imports to Israel increased. The data appears to bear that out.
[...]
Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor of international law and human rights at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera that “country after country has contributed to the evisceration of the international legal order by feigning blindness and refusing to abide by their legal obligations".
“This is myopic. The very states that helped build this legal order, and invoke it constantly, are now playing a central role in its dismantlement.”
"average cat owner spends 3 years in prison" factoid actualy just statistical error. average owner spends 0 years in prison. Miette's mother, who kicked her body like the football and went to jail for One Thousand Years is an outlier adn should not have been counted
#I hate how the “cats can have little a salami as a treat” post variants do not observe the typo#it's fine that not all of them do... it is not fine that basically none of them do
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