‘I Don’t Know That I Would Even Call It Meth Anymore’ -- Different chemically than it was a decade ago, the drug is creating a wave of severe mental illness and worsening America’s homelessness problem.
By Sam Quinones

Maybe not long-read, but I'm tossing it here so I will read it later.

Jason Myles - I Was a Teenage Anarchist
https://jasonmyles.medium.com/i-was-a-t ... 18b00bb13
On the history of Punk Rock and various strands of politics

Saw an interview with him regarding the article and thought it sounded interesting.

VaticanShotglass wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 3:29 pmJason Myles - I Was a Teenage Anarchist
https://jasonmyles.medium.com/i-was-a-t ... 18b00bb13

Good summary of the sum of my accumulated despair over alternative or avant garde music and being a rebel and doing something to break out, something unexpected, something dangerous. In other words that it's not possible, didn't seem possible.

I was born in 1988. Always had the feeling of growing up in the absence of something.

Is this what Capitalist Realism is about? I thought it was boring and kind of just copypasting Zizek. Maybe I should have a look again. I mean this is basically the entirety of how I view my ability for creative expression and distinction.

The closing quote by Fisher makes me dubious again. "even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect" - wouldn't it more likely be the opposite? We've all heard dozens of these 'alternatives' - everywhere I look there's someone to tell me about theirs - so what makes this one so different? Isn't it more likely that these 'glimmers' are lost in the sea of noise? That these 'glimmers' are so indistinguishable to me from every other advertisement vying for my attention that I just can't muster the energy to care. Given what has been said so far, I can't understand the optimism in this passage. Feels like it cheats.

VaticanShotglass wrote: Thu Oct 28, 2021 3:29 pm Maybe not long-read, but I'm tossing it here so I will read it later.

Jason Myles - I Was a Teenage Anarchist
https://jasonmyles.medium.com/i-was-a-t ... 18b00bb13
On the history of Punk Rock and various strands of politics

Saw an interview with him regarding the article and thought it sounded interesting.

The sniff test -- Courtroom testimony about dogs detecting dead bodies keeps sending people to prison—even without physical evidence. Critics say the science is lacking.

by Peter Andrey Smith

I enjoyed this rant about blockchain, cryptocurrencies and NFTs. The perspective is that of a video game designer, but many of the arguments carry across.

If for any reason you're feeling too good about things and you'd like to be bummed out, might I recommend "The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition" by David Wallace-Wells in New York.

I don't know how many of you are interested in chart-topping pop songs, but there's a writer named Tom Breihan who has been doing this column for Stereogum called 'The Number Ones':

In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.

He drops a new one every few days, he's on 1991 now. I've gotten hooked on them.

https://www.stereogum.com/category/colu ... mber-ones/

jason from volo wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 11:28 am

Anonymous37 wrote: Sat Dec 18, 2021 1:47 am If for any reason you're feeling too good about things and you'd like to be bummed out, might I recommend "The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition" by David Wallace-Wells in New York.

I started reading and then saw there was a full version of the article and clicked on that. I got paywalled, and then got paywalled again when I tried to go back to the "annotated" article. Ugh. So just a heads-up to everyone that (unless you are a subscriber) you get one click/article on this site before you get paywalled.

Anyway, going to change browsers now to read the full article because what I had read so far was... definitely attention-grabbing.

If you don't subscribe to this web site and want to read the full version, it's here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07 ... umans.html

< edit > BTW, the article is a few years old, so some of the things alluded to in the article (e.g. the ice shelf breaking off the Antarctic) have already happened. And though it mentions pandemics and diseases, it doesn't mention COVID-19, which I imagine would have been mentioned if the article was written more recently.< / edit >

Sorry, yeah, I should have mentioned the paywall. New York allows you to read one article a month (or something like that) before it locks you out of the paywall.

I'm going through the hassle of copying it into a Microsoft Word document and turning the hypertext annotations into Comments so I can read it and the footnoted sources at my leisure. Which is an enormous pain in the ass, but I think it's worth it.

(As jason from volo notes, the article is a few years old: it was originally in the July 2017 edition of the magazine.)

I’m a freelance writer. I refuse to work for free.

About working as a writer, the normalized practices of not paying writers, writers themselves normalizing this practice by voluntarily working for free, writing (not unlike other creative professions) continuing to be treated not as a real job but as a hobby for wealthy people.