MDM Broadcast - 2021

Coming to Netflix this week, "Pieces of a Woman" sounds like a horror of horrors film.

Apropos of nothing, it's always interesting how photographs can change meaning over time. This photo of mine from 2008, on the campaign trail in South Carolina, a woman bypassing a young woman to hand John Edwards a note.

"In times of crisis, look for the people welping."

Happy to come across Ken Lum's work today: http://kenlumart.com/untitled-collection-2/

"In & Of Itself" is on Hulu, or wherever you can find a way to see it. Don't look it up and read about it first, just trust; you can do it.

Our family has been amazed at all the recent megawave surf swells around the world; Jaws at Oahu, Mavericks in California, Nazare in Portugal -- but the one thing we'll never forget is the TO THE MOON 🚀 ambition of this jet-skier (at Jaws) who just decided to go for it!

(Source time-stamped here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=557&v=qJ-KVnHlPdM )

"Greetings, Mrs. Richards!"

...and here's the terminal command that got us 90% of the way to that clip:

ffmpeg $(youtube-dl -g 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6JX4Ok-MzA' | sed "s/.*/-ss 3:03 -i &/") -t 00:18 -c copy fantastic_four_photographer.mkv

Ramell Ross in this morning's NYT about an ICP exhibition is a great example of my favorite kind of real world photography - if you skipped over his incredible "Hale County This Morning, This Evening" I just checked for you and it's streaming on Prime and Kanopy https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/arts/design/ICP-documentary-photographers.html

Charlie Warzel is excellent this morning, thanks to a source dropping a big batch of cell-phone data from the insurrection. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/opinion/capitol-attack-cellphone-data.html

“ppl are chill if its used to give you a garbage banner ad for something you bought 2 days prior on amazon but not to save lives...”

If Caveh Zahedi's new to you, his career as a filmmaker is inconsistent and often brilliant, but the most accessible (maybe best?) thing he's done is his new podcast where he tells a short autobiographical story every day this year. I just caught-up this morning, and it's incredible.

Start at Jan. 1st and see where it takes you.

Loved the section in that postmodern novel from the late-70s I just drove through -- the part about how there were digital billboards alongside highways in the foggy metropolis, their cold screens flashing into the dusty dawn, advertising on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, looking for any and all information about insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol.

Didn't expect this monarch/salmon migration overlap. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/02/15/saving-the-butterfly-forest

David Ehrlich is singing my song.

A couple weeks ago I stumbled across this live Chick Corea performance from 92, and while I've never been A BIG FAN it wowed and reminded me what makes live jazz so great to watch as it happens, in the flesh. (Yeah, this is a recording, so...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58_kvKi-Rrw

Last night, I took two spins through the Trilogy sequel. So much fun, especially thanks to Brian Blade. Sad that all these greats are of a certain age now!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilogy_(Chick_Corea_album)

Adam Curtis, talking old/indie Web.

Interesting that a sequence in "Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris" includes Baldwin holding forth to a group visiting Delaney's studio. That 27-minute short is currently streaming on Mubi, but here's a quick clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihan5YSbiso (and that account hosts 6 clips from the short, too) plus, the reference above, from this weekend's NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/12/t-magazine/black-abstract-painters.html

Hard to put into words how significant a viewing experience this is, of all six episodes over a rainy weekend. Incredibly eclectic and masterful, persuasive, imperfect, raggedy, illuminating, maddeningly circuitous, and just plain perfect brain food — if yours is like mine and appreciate non-narrative storytelling structures. Just incredible work, and great that people who’ve never heard of Adam Curtis are finally falling into it all.

If nightly watching of 30-minute-long Megavalanche point-of-view rides hasn't taken over your family yet, thank me later.

The MSCHF robot paintball dog is now shooting-up the fake gallery of art history... https://spotsrampage.com/

"picture unrelated"

We've never seen a great GIF about the inability to find the perfect GIF, but we're still looking...

Worth it.

Relistened again to one of my favorite albums today, "The Lemon of Pink" from The Books, and I can't believe it was made before the advent of YouTube, when most of the collaged sound integral to their sound was (in part) from VHS, ripped to minidisc.

Am still surprised that a style of music based on audio samples ripped from YouTube videos hasn't proliferated in the years between.

https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/5920-the-books/

How many screenplays for romantic comedies are being written right now where the two love interests meet in a vaccine line? Hundreds?

This morning I learned that a riff I've known for 30+ years from the opening of "There She Goes Again" on REM's "Dead Letter Office" is a crib of the opening riff from Marvin Gaye's "Hitch Hike" and I only realized it when I heard the Rolling Stones' cover of "Hitch Hike" even though I'd also heard the riff in the Velvet Underground's original recording of "There She Goes Again" and I couldn't help but wonder if REM knew they had a cover of Marvin Gaye buried inside their cover of the Velvets.

It all made me wonder where else the riff had appeared, and I figured at some point I'd put together a YouTube montage of all the riffs together, but then realized someone else had the same idea, THREE DAYS AGO.

Appreciating the discontinuity of calling Spotify-produced audio files without RSS “podcasts” when they’re only available to Spotify subscribers while logged-into Spotify.

Without globally-accessible RSS, the audio isn’t “casted” at all, they’re just inert proprietary audio files (like songs!) and Proprietary Pods don’t have that same ring to the investor class that’s bullish on whoever’s spending the most money to lock down one of the internet’s greatest, free ideas.

An Update
On Making Decisions
Changes at Basecamp
I Bought A Sauna

- a poem, by Jason Fried
https://www.platformer.news/p/-how-basecamp-blew-up

Never thought someone would create an animated "mockumentary." Wild hybrid that's equally confounding/intriguing. Can't recall voice actors being tasked with improv'ing their dialogue -- and their delivery feels perfectly unscripted, beguilingly "real." Also fascinating how the digitized backgrounds appear to be a half-step between actual photographed life and rotoscoping. Same family, but feels like 7 generations away from "Spinal Tap." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_Ghosts_(TV_series)

Loving how athletes are making the next leap, from deciding (like Osaka) that they're empowered and don't need the media as much (because they have social) to realizing that social media has created a mental health crisis of addiction (not just for teen girls, but for athletes themselves) and are beginning to turn away from it.

https://twitter.com/dylan_dethier/status/1421220492711657473

It's the overlap of Osaka & Biles' realizations with the nascent understanding that the thing that's enabling everyone to have a voice might also be a substantial vector of unwellness as it relates to mental health.

Linked story here: https://golf.com/news/brandel-chamblee-rory-mcilroy-social-media-caution/

In March & April, when vaccines became available here, I remember asking around about how the vaccinated might still be carriers of the disease -- that COVID might be living in a vaccinated nose & throat, but not affect the vaccinated host. That masklessness of the vaccinated might increase disease spread.

No one could tell me definitively if this was true, at the time (because there was no data, I presume -- but how about cautious speculation?)

This morning, in speaking about the Provincetown case on NYT's The Daily, Apoorva Mandavilli said that CDC & MA public health officials came to the conclusion in the wake of that spread that "not only can vaccinated people get infected, but they have about the same amount of virus in their nose & throat as unvaccinated people do. That's completely unexpected."

Completely.
Unexpected.

https://www.thecut.com/2021/08/an-awakening-for-aspens-art-scene.html

I wish portmanteau was a portmanteau.

Neil Young gets it.

By request:

"Oooh, race relations! Kale!"

https://dailymemphian.com/article/23792/mississippi-governor-tate-reeves-covid-response-impacted-faith

Highly recommended

Of more sonic interest, this, from Nala Sinephro https://nalasinephro.bandcamp.com/ https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/nala-sinephro-space-18/

If you've heard about the WSJ's Facebook Files but haven't read them or don't have time to read them because you're too busy (refreshing Instagram) I put together a page with some helpful quick links.

https://telegra.ph/Links-WSJ-Facebook-Files-09-17

As hearings ramp-up (today & next week) and a whistleblower is scheduled to go public Sunday, recall what this girl dad from Texas had to say to FB about Instagram affecting the mental health of teen girls last week.

"I used to go to this meeting called 'Virality Review.' Virality Review was run by the Social Cohesion team. The Social Cohesion team was focused on areas that were at risk for genocide."

- Frances Haugen, FB whistleblower, on The Journal podcast https://pca.st/3h2p4qg7

Two sentences taken directly out of post-modern novel about a dystopic tech-obsessed future written in early 90s, right?

Haugen's interview here is more direct, more personal, and more insightful than 60 Minutes' reveal last night.

Wow, the radical simplicity of this recommendation from a former FB data scientist -- an engagement-based stake right at the heart of the section-230 shield.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/06/opinion/facebook-whistleblower-section-230.html

Banning mandates is a mandate against mandates.

Fortunate to have caught the livestream debut of the new "A Love Supreme" live recording from Coltrane's septet / 1965 Seattle last night. Heard things there I haven't heard in years -- such power, passion, unbelievable creativity and communication -- it's astonishing how much there there is there. You could listen to it for years and not fully hear it all.

I might not be the only person who, upon listening to recordings like this, feels overwhelming pride in sharing a country with artists who fought for the creative freedom to make music of this kind, against all kinds of odds & oppression.

In true American fashion, the club where it was recorded in Pioneer Square was demolished soon after, and is now a multi-story parking garage.

A respectful review here in Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/john-coltrane-love-supreme-live-seattle-1216798/

love the ‘69 sunday evening “schlitz mixed bag”

Nam June Paik, again, way ahead of the game...

(“TV Buddha,” by Nam June Paik, © 1974. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Courtesy of the Estate of Nam June Paik.)

“The Alpinist” is the crushing answer to all the sunshiney questions about freedom & risk raised by “Free Solo” (& “Dawn Wall”).

It’s a portrait of an artist drawing across the most unforgiving canvas, where the finished work is ephemeral, and at its most ideal, requires an audience of none.

Wonder how many people have done this double feature. Zero, maybe?

Love this photo credit / caption.