Song Exploder
• Hrishikesh Hirway
Katie Crutchfield is a singer and songwriter from Birmingham, Alabama. She’s been making music under the name Waxahatchee since 2010. Her fifth album, Saint Cloud, came out this past March. Pitchfork named it Best New Music, and The Guardian called it the best album of the year so far. In this episode, Katie breaks down how she made the song “Fire."
This episode was originally published July 29, 2020.
For more, visit songexploder.net/waxahatchee.
“When botanist Richard Deakin examined Rome’s Colosseum in the 1850s, he found 420 species of plant growing in the ruins: cypresses and ilex, pea plants and more than 50 types of grasses.” A fascinating thread on the flora and fauna in the Colosseum.
theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the-lives-of-1850126997/
The Onion Editorial Board:
All great journalists, and even those lesser journalists who don’t work for The Onion, eventually ponder why we do what we do. Is the point of reporting to illuminate the world around us, so that we may make meaning of it? Or is it to cause people in minority groups to question their humanity and persuade others to demonize them? We know where we stand, proudly dreaming of genitals.
Research shows that trans people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be the victim of a violent crime. We salute our colleagues across the media who are working tirelessly to make that number even higher.
This was published in 2023, but seems particularly apt post-election.
Link: theonion.com/it-is-journalism-s-sacred-duty-to-endanger-the…
I know astronomical imagery is on the verge of being over-processed these days (those colors don’t exist out there!), but this image from the JWST is shocking. Clear evidence of Sesame Street’s Yip Yip Martians from billions of years ago. What did Jim Henson know and when did he know it?
Tags: astronomy · James Webb Space Telescope · remix · Sesame Street · space
theinformation.com/articles/openai-considers-taking-on-google-with-browser
A kakistocracy is “government by the worst people” or, more literally, “government by the shitty”.
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): Surveillance Self-Defense, “our expert guide to protecting you and your friends from online spying”. A good resource for those living under an authoritarian regime.
“All together, the billionaires tapped for the Trump administration are worth at least $344 billion — higher than the GDP of 169 countries.” Plutocracy, pure and simple.
In a 1953 speech called On the Future of the American Negro, W.E.B. Du Bois spoke about wealth inequality and his vision for measuring prosperity:
Work is service, not gain. The object of work is life, not income. The reward of production is plenty, not private fortune. We should measure the prosperity of a nation not by the number of millionaires but by the absence of poverty, the prevalence of health, the efficiency of the public schools, and the number of people who can and do read worthwhile books.
Democracy Now has a recording of part of Du Bois’ speech (starting at 5:48).
Tags: economics · USA · W.E.B. Du Bois
“You’re thinking…what do I want? What happens if I don’t get it? And Milhouse has to think a lot about what happens if he doesn’t get it, because he hardly ever does.” Pamela Hayden, the voice of several Simpsons characters, retires after 35 years.
