That and Friedman has been written some pretty respectable columns over the same period.
Author Archives: Chris
Music for Sunday Night
R.I.P. Steve Albini
It’s hard for me to articulate, but there’s a friend of mine, Peter Sotos, who’s written extensively about abuse and murder and things of that nature. A lot of his writing is extremely difficult to read. It’s repellent. You’re brought into the mind of a sadist, pretty convincingly. And I feel like that experience, reading that stuff, is shocking to your core in the way that the horrors of the reality of those things should be.
That was Big Black’s draw for me. Albini didn’t just sing about darkness and evil. As an artist, he threw himself into it. He articulated something that’s very hard to articulate. Their music captured what he describes in the paragraph above. He wrote unapologetically from the standpoint of a perpetrator who has utter contempt for his victims. I hadn’t heard anything similar before and anything similar since. There was a long time, 10-15 years, where I couldn’t listen to them. I listen some now but it’s still much harder to do so than when I was young.
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Reading Material – March 31, 2024
Just a list this week, no excerpts and in no particular order:
- Paul Burton, Boston’s too expensive, so “alarming” number of young adults plan to leave, survey says
- Jim Sciutto, US prepared ‘rigorously’ for potential Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine in late 2022, officials say
- Tom Nichols, Putin’s Nuclear Theatrics
- Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov
- Keegan Justis, Book Review The Innovation Delusion [Ed.: I just finished the book and recommend it highly.]
- Helen Lewis, The Worst Argument for Youth Transition
- Luke Goldstein, Attempt to Offload Shady For-Profit College Runs Into Trouble: The University of Idaho wants to buy the University of Phoenix for $685 million. Some Idaho lawmakers are starting to sour on the deal.
- Trevor Jones, Same Nebula from the City vs. Dark Sky
Music for Sunday Afternoon
Music for Tuesday Night
I heard this the other day for the first in at least twenty years. I’d forgotten about it. Amazing song. I’m embarrassed that I did.
Thought to come back to
Chronological vs kairotic time:
- Engineering is grounded in chronos; science is grounded in kairos.
- “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
- “Why was I able to stop smoking the 26th time I tried when the previous 25 I failed?”
Music for Saturday Night
Thought for the Day – Evergreen
The work of making this world resemble one that you would prefer to live in is a lunch pail [expletive] job, day in and day out, where thousands of committed, anonymous, smart and dedicated people bang on closed doors and pick up those that are fallen and grind away on issues until they get a positive result, and even then, have to stay on to make sure that result holds.
– Jon Stewart
Thought for the Day – February 20, 2024
What does labor want? We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities to cultivate our better natures.”
– Samuel Gompers, 1893