take it from me, a t-shirt connoisseur (I used to be pro, in fact): these are good t-shirts. inexpensive for the quality you’ll get from Cotton Bureau, and a fundraiser to boot? done
Category: recommendations
good Jenny Odell interview:
Q. …these days, we’re all almost on the hook to have something to say about everything as soon as it happens.
A. Yeah. I find there to be something a little bit profane about that, given what’s happening right now.
Bandcamp Supporting Artists Affected by Pandemic – in which you’re encouraged to buy some great new music for yourself, and directly support musicians who can’t tour for a while ?
As I’ve written here before, I love Bandcamp. Artists keep 80-85% of their sales on the platform, making Bandcamp the only digital music store that I feel as good about patronizing as I do about buying a band’s CD at their show.
And today, Friday, March 20, as the world is grinding to a pandemic halt and all concerts are off, they’re helping out those artists by letting them keep 100% of their sales today. I personally will be stocking the hell up.
Now, a lot of of the biggest names in music are on major label deals that aren’t sold by Bandcamp. But there are also a lot of really excellent bands, some of my favorites of all time. A non-comprehensive selection, in no particular order:
- Sleigh Bells
- Wussy
- Moving Panoramas
- Flock of Dimes
- The Decemberists
- boygenius
- She Keeps Bees
- Los Campesinos
- Hop Along
- Courtney Barnett
- Heartless Bastards
- The Besnard Lakes
- Juana Molina
- S / Jenn Champion (new old release!)
- Summer Cannibals
- Diet Cig (preorder!)
- Gina Chavez
- Automatic
- Screaming Females
- Chumped
- EMA
- Bleached
- Torres
- Waxahatchee (preorder!)
- case/lang/veirs
- Nervous Dater
- Speedy Ortiz
- Amanda Palmer
- Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
- Charly Bliss
- Lucy Dacus
these free nightly opera streams from the Met are really good. bonus points for their app on Apple, Amazon, and Roku (no account or login needed, just select “free preview” to watch the day’s freebie in its entirety) ?
extra interesting episode of The Allusionist podcast: A Novel Remedy: why a clinical psychologist prescribes novel-reading to her patients, & how post-WW1 Britain was soothed by Agatha Christie’s murder mysteries ?
we’ve used the Paprika apps on Mac and iOS for years, and really like them. the ability to scrape recipes from web pages is great, and syncing works great (it’s handy having the recipes with you at the store). both discounted through 12/31
this interesting Allusionist episode on Dickens’ A Christmas Carol prompted me to get the audiobook from the library. less than 3 hours, a good holiday road trip listen
from The A.V. Club: The 20 Best TV Shows of 2017. we’ve enjoyed Alias Grace, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Good Place, & Handmaid’s Tale; adding American Vandal, GLOW, The Deuce, Big Little Lies, & Halt & Catch Fire to our list
“A Privacy Choice”. I agree with the sentiment; my choice is nonprofit, open source, & updated more often: Firefox
I gave a listen to a few episodes of the Still Processing podcast, and really enjoyed them. The hosts have a great rapport, as well as points of view I don’t always hear that often. I’ll let the blurb from the Guardian article where I learned of it make the pitch:
This weekly confab between Pulitzer-winning critic Wesley Morris and his friend and fellow New York Times writer Jenna Wortham is not, strictly speaking, all about politics. So what are they still processing? Being black in America, for starters. Also: queer life, anything inspiring/troublesome in pop culture, Beyoncé v Adele and more. Times colleagues make frequent appearances, and the duo also take the occasional field trip. (If ever there was the correct use of the word “poignant”, it would be to describe their tour of the Smithsonian’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture – or the Blacksonian, as they dubbed it.)
That “Blacksonian” episode (it’s from Oct. 6, 2016, if you’re searching by date in a podcast app) was a good one, as was the Feb. 2 episode, “You Only Leave Home When Home Won’t Let You Stay”. But they’re not all big, heavy themes; the latest episode is an Oscars preview. It’s good stuff, check it out.
P.S. Pod Save America, also listed in that Guardian piece (“four former Obama aides… usher in the [Trump] era”) is another good one.