Matthew Connor

Moses Sumney wants to be real. His search for truth is a hallmark of his music, and he’s spent plenty of time exploring the shadows of his mind, getting comfortable with his own darkness.

“All the things you’re not really supposed to think about, like, ‘Oh, I’m going to die alone’—I think about that all the time,” Sumney says softly, strumming his guitar as we speak over Skype. “I’m just the kind of person that will go there. I’m obsessed with personal honesty.”

Sumney recently spent some time living in an apartment in London. It was either there or Asheville, North Carolina—a place where the woods, like the mountains in which they’re nestled, seem to go on forever. Asheville is Sumney’s favorite city in America, and it’s the place where he started work on his debut full-length, Aromanticism, a concept album that investigates an uncomfortable truth: What does it mean to feel loveless in a society that considers romantic love a primary reason for existence? In the rural stillness of the Appalachians, Sumney was able to disconnect from the world and connect with himself, in search of the answer.

“To truly feel solitude, I had to be someplace where there was no phone service, where I couldn’t actually go on my phone or the internet—because it’s not real if you can still talk to people, or if you can still check your notifications,” he says. “The first two days, I was antsy. Then it became liberating, because it’s like, ‘Wow, I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to answer to anyone. I don’t have to talk to anyone.’ I was thinking so much about things I never think about. My mind was activated, and I was going to places mentally that I don’t ever go, because I get distracted before I get there.”

When he wasn’t writing, Sumney spent his time drinking tea and reading—things like bell hooks’s All About Love, essays by Audre Lorde, and Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts. Eventually, the silence became suffocating; “alone” inevitably collapsed into “lonely.” For Sumney, that was all part of the process. “I’m a fan of acknowledging spectrums, and solitude is a spectrum,” he says. “It’s maddening, and it’s comforting. Being lonely when you’re all alone is very different from being lonely in the city.”

Sumney is used to isolation, though. When he was 10 years old, his family moved to Ghana from his hometown of San Bernardino. In the six years he spent there, Sumney immersed himself in music-making as a way to combat his homesickness. Other than a brief foray in high school choir upon his return to the States, Sumney developed his talents in secret. It was only after he moved to Los Angeles at age 20 that he began going public with his gifts. He began performing around UCLA, where he was a student.

His 2014 debut EP, Mid-City Island, was a five-track experiment that revealed a willingness to let his heart lead his music. The EP’s longest track, “Mumblin’,” is an improvised assortment of lo-fi loops and snaps that crackle under his haunting falsetto. Even on these early recordings, Sumney’s writing shines, full of abstract imagery and emotional candor. 2016’s Lamentations further strengthened that foundation; Sumney’s  vocals and avant-garde song structures became more refined, but not at the cost of his commitment to his specific vision. He shared stages with the likes of James Blake and Sufjan Stevens, and worked with Solange on her acclaimed 2016 album, A Seat at the Table. But even though he’s found support from peers and fans alike, he remains dedicated to using his art to explore his own “lonely world.” To that end, Aromanticism—an album three years in the making—feels like his greatest achievement.

“We have a lot of conversations about identity, gender, and sexuality spectrums, but no one was discussing the romantic spectrum. I felt kind of left out,” he admits. “I had these feelings that had been prominent in my life for a few years, and I started looking them up and came across the word ‘aromanticism.’ I thought it was so interesting and under-explored, yet so relatable.”

Sumney took it upon himself to investigate that notion, interrogating everything from the political to the biblical. As we speak, he mentions that America will probably never have a president who’s single, and is obsessed with the union of man and woman that’s outlined in religious texts. As he started thinking about the ways society prioritizes romantic relationships, he was able to identify the ways it affected him.

But Aromanticism isn’t about disinterest. “It’s admitting that you still desperately crave affection, even if you’re not fully capable of returning it,” Sumney says. On lead single and album standout “Doomed,” Sumney asks, “Am I vital if my heart is idle? Am I doomed?” His icy falsetto thaws ever so slightly as he shifts his concerns from the personal to the theological: “If lovelessness is Godlessness, will you cast me by the wayside?” That dilemma—reflected in a video which depicts bodies suspended in tanks of water, unable to touch—is twofold: desiring what feels out of reach, and a sense of outsiderism that accompanies a life lived alone.

“[Our desire for love] is genetic. It’s innate. It’s social. It’s so many things. But it’s complicated, because there are many of us who feel uncomfortable with other people, or in the presence of other people, and that’s a hard place to be,” Sumney says. “The loneliness that comes with that—apart from it being it innate—is pyscho-social.”

That feeling of “other” extends into this music as well. Sumney says he feels “sonically alienated” in terms of his production style. There’s a constant push or pressure for him to make music that sounds more generic, or is more in the vein of today’s hits. So far, he’s refused. On Aromanticism, his songs bend toward an ethereal sparseness, translating his own inner emptiness into sound. For all their spareness, the songs on Aromanticism have a palpable weight; but the heaviness comes from the lyrics, and Sumney’s savvy use of silence. An early version of “Indulge Me,” which now consists of little more than acoustic guitar and starry synth, featured a piano line that was removed at the last minute. Sumney originally imagined “Doomed” with a horn arrangement, but his quest to embrace minimalism led him to cut it.

“I wanted it to be challenging,” Sumney says. “I only gave in to those moments [to go large] on ‘Quarrel’ and ‘Lonely World,’ because I am kind of a maximalist in a lot of ways.” The album’s creation was similar to the paradox it explores. Sumney primarily wrote in seclusion, but relied on a small group of outside musicians to help bring his vision to life. He logged a series of single-day sessions with collaborators—among them Thundercat, Matthew Otto of Majical Cloudz, Paris Strother of KING, Cam O’bi, and harpist Brandee Younger—before retreating back to the sanctuary of his mind. He says it was the most collaborative he’s ever been, but the final product still feels intensely personal.

“I think my discovery is that there is no one way to live,” Sumney says, “which seems obvious. But every normative structure we have implies there is only one way to live—that there is a golden standard.

“The search for love will be fruitful for many, but there are maybe just as many people it will not be fruitful for,” he continues. “Connecting with people is quite beautiful and meaningful, but I also think recognizing and acknowledging the inability to do that, and recognizing that isolation and loneliness is equally beautiful I think it’s hard to be honest with ourselves about that.”

At a time when displays of love—Black love, especially—are revolutionary, it’s just as revolutionary that an artist would reject the idea of romantic love. In his introductory essay, Sumney calls Aromanticism “process music,” as opposed to protest music. Even as he grapples with these concepts of love and loneliness, his greatest statement lies simply in the fact that he’s here. “The most radical thing that any minority could do is create and exist in a world that implies you shouldn’t,” he says. “I’m just chillin’, doing my thing.”

—Briana Younger

The reality of climate change is that a global disaster created almost entirely by rich white people in the Global North is going to disproportionately affect the poor of the Global South who had almost nothing to do with it. In other words, just like every other environmental disaster, from the cancer corridor of Louisiana to who suffers the most in hurricanes, the poor have to pay for the actions of the rich. In fact, it’s already happening.

Climate change effects are to blame for the increasing acute undernourishment of children in Kenya, the United Nations said in a report released in Nairobi on Friday.

According to the UN, the failure of the March-June long rains, the third consecutive poor rains since early 2016 has contributed an additional 37,000 children across the country below the threshold of acute malnutrition.

“Climate-related issues have increased food insecurity in parts of northern Kenya where malnutrition rates have doubled in recent months,” the UN report says.

The report noted that the country’s undernourishment affected 8.8 million people, accounting for 19.1 percent of the population.

It states that almost 370,000 children across the country now require treatment for acute malnutrition, including 72,600 who are suffering from the most severe form and requires specialized life-saving care.

“In four out of 17 surveys conducted in June and July, acute malnutrition rates were at least double the emergency threshold of 15 percent,” the report said.

The failure of the March-June long rains, following two extremely poor rains in 2016, have led to widespread crop failure, acute water shortages, and declining production of milk in years, which pastoral children rely on for protein.

The report further blames drought related migration, early child marriages and child labor to lack of food and water.

In other words, climate change combines with local issues to keep the global poor impoverished while the global rich goes on without caring. In fact, I’m just going to keep my car running for a few hours just to kill some Kenyan kids and show how white people rock.

Share

Because pumpkin recipes can often be so wrong, you need a list of when they are so right. A hit-list of recipes to have in rotation for peak pumpkin (and winter squash) season. Emphasis on dinner, emphasis on savory.

1. Pumpkin and Rice Soup - (101 Cookbooks)
Six ingredients stand between you and this favorite ginger-chile kissed pumpkin soup. Served over rice it makes the perfect simple, soul-warming meal. Get the recipe here.

2. David Kramer and Hayley Magnus' Squash and Kale Salad - (Salad for President)
Use whatever pumpkin or hard winter squash you've got, cut into thick slabs. Kale represents big here accented with hazelnuts, pickled onions, and cilantro. Get the recipe here.

3. Pumpkin Cauliflower Risotto - (Wild Apple)
A beautiful autumn risotto made with pumpkin, cauliflower, and sage. You can up the veg even more, and, on occasion I'll even boost a risotto like this with a good amount of shredded kale...(The site seems to be gone, I'll replace the link if it comes back)

4. Incredible Squash Pizza - (Wholehearted Eats)
If you're open to alternative interpretations of pizza, this is a beauty. The "crust" is a riff on the popular cauliflower crust, this one made with pumpkin (or winter squash) slathered with a basil-spinach nut sauce, and topped with vibrant cherry tomatoes or other seasonal veg. Get the recipe here.

5. Two Ingredient Fresh Pumpkin Pasta - (Wholefully)
Making fresh pasta when I have a lazy weekend afternoon, is one of my favorite things. This Pumpkin Pasta caught my attention. Get the recipe here.

6. Pumpkin Miso Broth with Soba - (My New Roots)
Soba noodles in a pureed pumpkin soup flavored with miso and ginger. Top with lots of scallions, sesame seeds, seaweed (I like toasted nori, crumbled), and sautéed (or roasted) shiitake mushrooms. Or you can simply make the base soup and top with whatever you have on hand. Get the recipe here.

7. Pumpkin & Feta Muffins - (101 Cookbooks)
These are a super interesting, hearty beast of a savory muffin. Packed with seeds, spinach, herbs, and seasoned with mustard, you can use any winter squash. Get the recipe here.

8. Pumpkin, Spinach and Walnut Spaghetti - (Lazy Cat Kitchen)
If I can't be bothered to carve and cube an actual pumpkin or squash for a recipe like this one, I grab for a bag of frozen sweet potatoes. They're pre-cubed, and I always keep a couple bags in the freezer for lazy weeknights. Alternately, you might carve a number of pumpkins or squash on your own, and freeze any you wont be using. Being nice to your future self! ;)Get the recipe here.

9. Roasted Delicata Squash Salad - (101 Cookbooks)
If breaking down a big pumpkin or squash fills you with dread, this is your recipe. A longtime favorite, it calls for thin-skinned delicata squash, and you leave the skins on. Tossed with a miso harissa paste, roasted and combined with potatoes, kales, and almonds. Give this one a go for sure. Get the recipe here.

Continue reading Fantastic Pumpkin Recipes Worth Making this Fall...

As two-thirds of the boisterous vocal threesome that fronts the B-52s, Cindy Wilson and Fred Schneider are well-known for their expressive singing styles. Along with fellow vocalist Kate Pierson, multi-instrumentalist Keith Strickland, and late guitarist Ricky Wilson (who is long overdue for recognition as a 20th-century guitar visionary), the two singers helped craft one of the most distinctive sounds to emerge from the new wave era. Now, with the band still in full throttle celebrating its 40th anniversary (which passed on Valentine’s Day of this year), Wilson and Schneider also find themselves in the process of unveiling newly completed full-lengths on the side.

Fred Schneider & The Superions’ The Vertical Mind features Schneider’s hyper-manic persona front and center in a kind of pleasantly dystopian tiki/lounge/disco synthscape supplied by the core duo of Noah Brodie and Dan Marshall (The Superions). Arriving seven years after the group’s album of Christmas-themed originals, Destination…Christmas!, Vertical Mind sees Schneider keeping tongue firmly in cheek even as he gets edgier than we’re used to seeing him in the B-52s, addressing subjects like airport strip searches, lust, and…meatballs.

Wilson’s full-length debut Change, out in November, showcases her sensitive side against a rich, varied backdrop of futurist, electro-shoegaze psychedelia courtesy of guitarist Ryan Monahan, drummer Lemuel Hayes, and producer Suny Lyons. Both albums are the fruits of collaborations that have been simmering slowly for the better part of the last decade. Wilson begins a short tour of U.S. cities in early September.

We spoke with Wilson and Schneider from their respective homes in Athens, GA and Long Island via conference call. No surprise, they finished each other’s sentences a lot and broke out into laughter with almost every response.

You’re both in creative partnerships with groups of musicians who were already working together when you joined them. Could you talk about how you exchange ideas with them?

Fred Schneider: For me, Dan and Noah lived in Orlando at the time, and they asked me to put some words to some music they had written, which was very tropical—because we all like lounge music—and I just came up with something off the top of my head. Then, every time the band would go down to Florida, I would jam with them—sometimes with [pre-conceived] ideas, and sometimes spur of the moment. We got a rhythm going where we did our first EP, then the Christmas album, and now we have this Vertical Mind album. They do everything on ProTools, and we call it ‘three-dollar production,’ because there’s no budget. [Wilson and Schneider both laugh.] We’ve had Ursula 1000 and [Brian] Hardgroove from Public Enemy produce some of the new songs. It’s been fun.

Cindy Wilson: Suny Lyons has his own way of mixing that’s very modern. It’s been like a school for me to sit back and let Suny apply his imagination and his ears to the music. He came up with the sound of the record, this combination of psychedelic and electronic with French pop. He was very good about listening to Ryan and me and what we wanted in the mix too. It’s been amazing to watch the mixture of all these styles together, but [produce] a consistent album.

Cindy, talking to your husband [and one-time Ricky Wilson guitar tech] Keith Bennett to prepare for this interview, I got the impression that in the early days of the B-52s, the musical connection between Keith Strickland and Ricky was kind of the engine that drove the band—

Schneider: Well, I wouldn’t say that totally, because we all had ideas—

Wilson: What I think he meant was in the music. The first step was Ricky and Keith.

Schneider: Well, yeah, they came up with the music.

Wilson: But it was definitely all of us, in different stages.

Schneider: The music wasn’t always fully formed until after. We would jam on the lyrics, they would take those and put something loose together [as a structure around the lyrics], and then we would go back and re-arrange it. Things were never set in stone until everyone listened to everything.

On your new records, you both sound very comfortable. Your collaborators have created this background of sound that fits you both. How much do these newer partnerships hearken back to the way you used to work with Ricky and Keith?

Schneider: With me, none. Because I basically write all the lyrics and get Noah and Dan’s ideas for the music. Or they have ideas and I add onto them.

Wilson: For me, it’s very, very close. In fact, one of the things I love working with this new bunch of people is that it does feel like I’m working with Ricky and Keith as far as collaboration and, again, learning. It’s an effort where I get to grow, just like in the early days of the B-52s, when it felt like it was a growing spurt.

Way back, you described the B-52s as dada-ist, and that’s also the word you use to describe the Superions as well. How do you see what you’re doing as dada? Because there’s also that book of poems you did early on that inspired the first album…

Schneider: That’s where it’s from. My last year of college, I took a creative writing course and then I realized—because I was in forestry for the first two years and I switched to journalism—that I’d have to go to college for another two years. I did fairly well, but I just didn’t want to do two more years of college [laughs], even though I no career plans. So a friend of mine says, ‘I’m going to do this book of poetry for my final project’ and I go, ‘Boinggg, me too!’ [Wilson laughs.] The poems I wrote were very surreal and just, uh… odd. I had to read them in front of the class. This is Georgia in 1972, I think. Everybody but one person just sat there looking at me like, ‘What the hell?’ [Wilson laughs.] And the teacher even said, ‘I don’t understand any of this, but I know you’re serious.’ And I was. After a while, I really got into it. Some of the songs [off the B-52s’ 1979 self-titled debut album] came from lines from the book. I would jam with Keith in his basement on the spur of the moment. He would blow wind on a guitar, and I would sort of recite and sing. It’s surreal imagery. Things would pop in my head and I’d sing them and if I liked it, it would stay. Same with the band, all of us. We’d just start spontaneous and then start writing things down.

That poetry project was titled Bleb, poems based on overheard conversations.

Schneider: Yes. And then I expanded it to a book with Kenny Scharf’s drawings [released in 1987 as Fred Schneider and Other Unrelated Works; Scharf drew the cover art for the B-52s’ 1986 album Bouncing off the Satellites—ed.].

So those poems were an inspiration to all five members in writing the first two records, correct?

Schneider: I think everyone read the book and liked it. I don’t know if it inspired them.

Wilson: I think we inspired each other.

Schneider: Yeah. We all had a lot of similar tastes. We liked a lot of the same music, movies. We had a similar sensibility about a whole lot of things.

And you all liked going to thrift stores in the middle of rehearsal, right?

Schneider: Well, yeah. The thing is, we had no money, so it was like 50 cents for pants, 25 cents for a shirt, and a dollar for a jacket, so—

Wilson: Also, we wanted visuals. We liked to shock people.

How much was the seersucker suit that Fred’s wearing on the cover of the first album?

Schneider: That was actually part of a Halloween costume that originally consisted of an [undershirt] and a broken cigarette and a penciled-in moustache. [I didn’t look that way because of a] hangover. [Everyone laughs.]

The B-52s rehearsed religiously in your early days.

Wilson: Yeah, we definitely believed in rehearsal. They were unconventional songs, and an unconventional way to write. So we had to rehearse to learn when to come in and nail down the vocal melodies. They’re actually [challenging] little songs.

Schneider: The structures aren’t A-B-A-B-C-A-B-A-B and out. Sometimes they just take a totally different turn and just go… out [there].

So it sounds like just being in each other’s company was the motivation to spend hours working on the music.

Schneider: Well, none of us had really [good jobs]. I mean, I liked my job. I was the meal delivery coordinator for the Council on Aging for Clarke County—which was the most money I’d ever made before—but Kate didn’t really like her job at the local paper. Cindy had a fun job, but I don’t think it was well-paying. [Laughs]

Wilson: Well, no. For Athens, it was fine. I was a waitress at the luncheonette counter at Kress’s, which was like the center of the universe for Athens.

Schneider: It was. Peachy Burger Melts and pop a balloon for a free sundae.

Wilson: People would just come through that you knew. It was a parade of different characters. It was a really interesting and amazing experience. And at the end of the day, I would have an acre full of change, which was easy to survive on.

Schneider: Yeah, you could really live cheap. Rent was like 60 dollars.

Wilson: At the Taco Stand, you could eat for two dollars, and there was quarter beer night—

Schneider: At Allen’s [mentioned on the 1989 single “Deadbeat Club”—ed.].

Wilson: But it was really thrilling for me. I really enjoyed the band. I loved hangin’ out with everybody. It was a real growing experience for me. I was like 20 years old when we started—a baby, really. So it was all very exciting. I loved the revelations, everything that I was learning from everybody. And we were making people have fun and dance. It was a trip. And also, I met my husband at that first party we played [on Valentine’s Day, 1977—ed.]. He passed a joint to me or something. [Laughs]

His version was a lot more wholesome.

Wilson: Well, the point being that it was amazing. On that one night that the B-52s [played for the first time], I also met my husband. So for me, the planets were in a crazy alignment. Those have been the most important relationships in my life.

Fred, what was your first impression of Cindy?

Wilson: Hey, watch out now!

Schneider: Oh, [she was] fabulous! [Wilson laughs.] I kept asking for Ricky for years, ‘When am I gonna meet your sister?!’ And there’d be no response. [Laughs] Not that he was ashamed or anything like that, but it was just like [feigns eye-rolling tone], ‘Oh, my little sister,’ you know. But we hit it off right away.

How much did you have growing pains getting along? Because there were times where you would all live together to write, like after your round of touring on the first album was over.

Schneider: That wasn’t a good idea, to be honest.

Wilson: The time we moved to Mahopac, New York, there was just too much togetherness. We did it as an investment with the Warner Bros. money, but it was just too much.

Schneider: The old fart who lived next to us was suing us all the time—

Wilson: Because it was women and men living together and we weren’t—

Schneider: Yeah, god forbid individuals who weren’t married or a family lived together. And plus, it was like the middle of nowhere. You really had to drive to get anywhere. And it was known to be a not-very-friendly town.

Wilson: I know. But we wrote some really good music there.

Scheider: Yeah, we did.

Wilson: We survived that. To me, that was a lesson to learn, a life lesson. Keith and Ricky and I bought a place in New York [City] later. And Fred and Kate both found apartments in New York as well, so it became a much healthier situation.

Schneider: Plus, we weren’t very happy with management. That was a depressing thing about working. We were really ready to leave the management we had at the time as soon as we could. But it took six years.

Wilson: Yeah. [Laughs]

Schneider: That makes a difference. But living together was like The Shining sometimes.

Wilson: [Laughs] Well, it snowed [a lot] and we were kind of stuck in the house. There was only one vehicle.

Schneider: Yeah, we had this one van. It was isolated.

Wilson: My husband—boyfriend at the time—was living with us in Mahopac. It felt like, all of a sudden we’d left Athens and our friends, and we were plopped in a new space and it was all B-52s, all the time. Also, my husband started going out looking for jobs related to his field, which was in advertising.

Schneider: He had to [commute] to New York.

Wilson: I had to take him to the train station. It was 30 minutes to the train and an hour into New York or something like that, which was crazy. But we did it.

In 1987, the B-52s appeared in the ‘Summer of Love’ public service TV spot for Art Against AIDS. [Ricky Wilson died of complications related to AIDS in 1985—ed.] Since then, the band has weighed in on various social causes. As the B-52s do these 40th anniversary shows and you kind of take the temperature of the country, how much do you feel like you want to address what’s going on socially and politically in your solo work? It feels like there are flashes of it, but how are you responding as artists?

Schneider: I think what we do best is, do whatever music we feel passionate about, and we talk about the political stuff in interviews and do benefits and things like that. We don’t want to write songs where we hit somebody over the head with a message. ‘Channel Z’ [from Cosmic Thing] is very direct, but it also just isn’t a downer.

You’ve always balanced social conscience with fun. Years ago, Keith Strickland said that the B-52s are a ‘party band’ first and foremost.

Schneider: Yeah, we want to entertain people, but a lot of our songs have hidden messages. Like, we knew about the Radium Girls, who would [moisten] their paintbrushes [with] their tongues and then dip the brushes in radium paint for radium dials [in watch-making plants]. And after a couple of years, their jaws and teeth were falling off and they were dying.

Wilson: There’s still a part of Athens [an abandoned watch factory—ed.] that’s fenced-off [after being declared a radioactive contamination site by the EPA—ed.].

Schneider: That was in ‘Private Idaho’ [on 1980’s Wild Planet].

Cindy, on Change, you’re embracing an outlook that’s more… universal, maybe? There’s a sense of all of us growing as people together.

Schneider: It’s very positive and ethereal.

Wilson: We hope so. It’s kind of a searching record and [it delves into] looking inward. It’s kind of playful at times, but it’s definitely [directed] inward.

I have to ask: There’s been a lot of speculation behind what the meaning is behind the famous ‘Love Shack’ line ‘tin roof rusted.’ [Wilson laughs.] It’s well-documented that the music just stopped and you just ad-libbed. But there’s an interview from a Georgia radio station where you and the host were joking back and forth hinting that it’s a reference to a woman’s time of the month. At least that’s the impression I got. [Wilson laughs again.] Can you set the record straight?

Wilson: I love all these stories that have revolved around ‘tin roof rusted,’ but actually it’s none of those.

Schneider: Keep the mystery going!

Wilson: [Laughs] So let’s just keep the mystery going.

Schneider: It isn’t anything like that. Let’s just say that when we were jamming I couldn’t hear what Cindy was saying, and she just heard me go, ‘You’re what?!’ And she was going on about a tin roof or something. [Wilson laughs.] You know, a love shack [would have] a tin roof.

Wilson: When we listened back to the tape, we thought it was a great way to end the song.

Mysteries pop up around all sorts of things you’d never expect!

Wilson: Exactly.

Schneider: Well, we love what people think ‘cause it’s like so off the mark. It’s like, ‘Where’d you get that?!’

Wilson: I know! It’s very creative. And the audience becomes a participant in the creation of the song, in a way. We’ve hesitated to ever explain any of our songs, because we love their interpretations.

Schneider: I mean, who ever came up with ‘tin roof rusted’ being about being pregnant? [Wilson laughs.] When I first heard that, I was like ‘What?!’

Wilson: There’s probably a lot of wild interpretations to some of our songs.

Schneider: Well yeah, [lyrics] like ‘I’ll meet by the fur pyramid.’

Wilson: Oh, Fred! What about the backwards part that says ‘Your canary is dead’?

Schneider: ‘I burned my parakeet in the back yard.’

Wilson: [Laughs] What song is that!

Schneider: That’s on ‘Detour Through Your Mind’ [from Bouncing Off the Satellites].

Wilson: That’s right. There’s a backwards voice of Fred’s on that, which has probably prompted a lot of speculation, you know.

Schneider: You have to ruin your record to hear it.

—Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

I have a lot of issues with driverless cars, primarily that they are being developed to throw millions of people out of work. With driving pretty much the last decently paid working class job that employs huge numbers of Americans, these cars may have a social benefit, but they also come with a huge economic problem that the proponents of supporters of them simply handwave away. The U.S. trucking industry alone employs 8 million people and that doesn’t count the many other driving jobs that will be erased, from forklifts to taxis.

At least according to one researcher, the widespread ownership of driverless cars may also lead to vastly more urban sprawl, presumably because people will be more comfortable living far away from work if they aren’t having to do the driving.

Autonomous vehicles promise a future in which passengers are free to use their time productively (working, for example). And they can park themselves (or be part of a shared pool) which saves yet more time in the morning rush. Coupled with faster journey times, the incentives to live further out of town will increase significantly.

There are both push and pull factors at work here: sky-high residential prices in most cities push people away from urban centres while healthy environments and green living pull people towards the hinterlands. The limiting factor in suburban spread is often travel time, either by public or private means. Driverless cars fundamentally alter the equation.

Existing planning policies are based on our current transport systems. Green-belts, for example, are designed to reduce urban sprawl by restricting development within a buffer zone around an urban area. However, the reduced transport times offered by driverless cars make it easier to live outside the belt while still working inside. So these loops of green are in danger of becoming a thin layer in a sandwich of ever-spreading suburbanisation.

…

Natural habitats being lost entirely or splintered into ever-smaller fragments have long been understood as some of the primary causes of species extinctions across the world. Renewed urban sprawl threatens to increase the magnitude of both habitat loss and fragmentation. These threats are well known among conservationists, but there are differences of opinion on how best to respond.

For example, eco-modernists advocate a strategy of “land-sparing”, whereby human activities are concentrated into urban areas and vast tracts of land are set aside for nature. There are many cultural and ethical problems inherent in herding humans into cities, but the near-term planning issues posed by autonomous vehicles will exacerbate the challenge given they will boost demand to live in “unspared” lands.

Alternatively, some conservationists advocate “land-sharing”, in which human communities redesign the way we farm and live so as to co-exist with wildlife, cheek-by-jowl. Autonomous vehicles pose significant challenges for either approach, by supercharging the fragmentary effect of road systems.

Whichever approach is taken, we’ll need to redesign existing systems and policies to take account of the increased range that driverless transport facilitates. This may involve new zoning laws to protect wider areas of countryside than at present. It certainly requires further development of green infrastructure, habitat corridors and “greenways”.

I had never really thought about this issue around driverless cars before. If it is easier to drive and faster, then it probably will lead to much more sprawl. I would warn anyone who thinks that not having to actually drive to work is going to free up their time that their employers are going to do everything possible to claim that time from you.

Generally, I think that driverless cars cause as many problems as they solve, as do most technologies. They aren’t going to lead to some brave new world. I urge anyone who is excited about driverless cars to articulate solutions to both the unemployment and the urban planning problems they will cause.

Share

After slimming down to a trio, the dreamy Russian shoegaze band is putting the finishing touches on its third album in three years.

(Image credit: Andy Hughes/Courtesy of the artist)

illyadarling:

The B-52’s in Tampa FL, 1983

What, may we ask while hyperventilating, the heck are these videos that just showed up on The Knife's Facebook page?

(Image credit: Facebook)

In response to a new round of threats from North Korea, themselves spurred by new US sanctions led by the US, President Trump has now, rather casually, threatened North Korea with a nuclear holocaust. At a meeting on the opioid crisis a short time ago Trump just said: “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen,” Trump said. “He has been very threatening, beyond a normal state, and as I said they will be met with fire and fury and, frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before.” Read More →

Bandcamp is a platform for artistic expression, and all manner of variance in experience and identity, including gender and sexuality, is welcome here. We support our LGBT+ users and staff, and we stand against any person or group that would see them further marginalized. This includes the current U.S. administration, and its recent capricious declaration that transgender troops will no longer be able to serve in the military. That this announcement was motivated in part to help fund the border wall exposes it as part of the administration’s cynical, discriminatory agenda.

In response, we will be donating 100% of our share of every sale on Friday, August 4th (from midnight to midnight Pacific Time) to the Transgender Law Center, a nonprofit organization that works tirelessly to change law, policy, and culture for the more equitable. TLC does critical policy advocacy and litigation on multiple fronts, fights for healthcare for trans veterans, defends incarcerated trans people from abuse in prisons and detention centers, supports trans immigrants, and helps trans youth tell their stories and build communities.

When an Executive Order was issued earlier this year barring immigrants and refugees from seven Middle Eastern countries from entering the United States, we held a wildly successful fundraiser for the ACLU. We hope you’ll join us in now doing the same in support of trans rights. To participate as a fan, simply purchase music through Bandcamp on Friday and we’ll donate our share of the sale to TLC. To participate as an artist or label, send some or all of your share of Friday’s sales directly to TLC here, and let us know your plan in the comments below so that we can help spread the word. Thank you!

—Bandcamp Staff

Below, you’ll find a sampling of some of the music made by trans and gender non-conforming artists on Bandcamp. We hope that as you listen to these albums, you’ll discover some great new artists from all walks of life, who share their experiences in song.

Pandemix’s Poetic Punk Politics
Vocalist Shannon Thompson explains how she uses the genre’s tropes as a jumping-off point for her struggle to understand the world.

Glasgow’s Poisonous Relationship is an Unlikely Dance Music Genius
Jamie Crewe is an artist and filmmaker who explores gender, sexuality, mental health, and politics through surprisingly personal and poetic dance music.

Tica Douglas’s Theology of Uncertainty
The Master of Divinity student talks about how theological studies informs their identity and their haunting new record.

How Oakland’s Experimental Scene Became Browner, Queerer, and More Femme
Conscious efforts to be more inclusive have opened up space in the Bay Area noise and experimental scene for artists like Kohinoorgasm, Spellling, and Beast Nest.

Popper Burns Preach to the Punk Rock Choir
The Austin queercore/no-wave group create a drag world “bigger than an idea” where their audience can feel empowered.

TRNSGNDR/VHS and the Art of Confrontation
The Baltimore artist uses harsh noise to question accepted norms.

Theda Hammel on Giving Sondheim the Synth Treatment
On her EP SondHamm, the self-described “major trans celeb” turns classic Broadway showtunes into synth odysseys.

Vocaloids: Our Friends Electric
Computer-generated vocalists are helping artists like transgender musician Jamie Paige discover their voice.

Mykki Blanco Rips Up the Rule Book
Her new record finds her pivoting from wistful longing to fire-breathing on a dime.

Art-Pop Genius Oblivia on Martyrdom, Sainthood, and Stripping to Cat Power
Armed with a voice modulator and a drum machine, Local Honey, the trans femme performance artist behind Oblivia, says that her music aims to weaponize femininity to heal the wounds of patriarchy.

Tyler Holmes, San Cha, and Vainhein Imagine Experimental Queer Utopias
Three performance artists and musicians found inspiration to survive—and thrive—in their own ways, together, by channeling their rage to build something beautiful.

Hi Bias: Interview With Forced into Femininity
The latest tape by Forced Into Femininity (Chicago-based musician and performance artist Jill Flanagan), is only 10 minutes long, but its five songs pack a ton of power.

Big Ups: HIRS’ Queer Thrash Fury is Taking Over America
The Trans Girl Take Over tour takes the Philly collective to some unexpected places. Meet some of the bands they’re excited to share the stage with.

Album of the Day: ANOHNI, Paradise
On Paradise, ANOHNI imagines a utopia free of violence and masculine authority.

Album of the Day: Sweeping Exits, Glitter and Blood
The Portland glam-rock group switch up the power dynamics of horror.

Album of the Day: Aye Nako, Silver Haze
On Silver Haze, Aye Nako lulls listeners into comfort before turning the room upside down.

Here we go.

After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

….victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2017

There was a nine minute gap between the first and second tweets, suggesting to me that Trump was enjoying the drama that he was creating by destroying lives and careers. Helpfully, RAND has a report indicating that all of this is bullshit.

Share

sapphictaurean:

ithotyouknew2:

nbdcharleigh:

dog-rates:

fiftyshadesofmacandcheese:

Where can I buy her album tho

13/10 would buy it tbh

is that Adele’s dog? gotta be

This dog sings better than 80% of these other bitches

Bitch the VIBRATO

LMAO

I want to build on my post from Tuesday about how no one is even talking about the renewed Muslim ban, as well as Dan’s post from yesterday expanding on it to discuss Trump’s plan for mass deportations.

The initial response to the Muslim ban was amazing. As these things go, the seeming spontaneous actions by hundreds if not thousands of people to go to airports and disrupt the Muslim ban in fact was created by the hard work of grassroots organizers preparing for these sorts of issues and actions. The majority of people who showed up of course had no idea who these people were and they went out of outrage, but also because they heard other people were going. That’s where the organizing comes in. Their friends wouldn’t have gone if organizers hadn’t started that process, etc.

The secondary response to the Muslim ban was for liberals to give record amounts of money to the ACLU. From one angle, this makes sense. The legal teams fighting the Muslim ban in the courts had early victories and ultimately, one hopes that the American legal system would rule this as unconstitutional as it obviously is.

On the other hand, we know now that this probably isn’t going to work because of the Supreme Court. So where does that leave us? Donating to the ACLU is useful. It is not useful enough. It also gives the overwhelmingly upper middle class white liberal donors to the ACLU a bit of a pass in doing anything else.

Ultimately, the legal strategy and donations are good, but they have to be backed up with protest politics. As many said at the time, including the lawyers fighting the Muslim ban, the protests in the airports did a world of good, giving judges the shot in the arm they needed to stand up to Trump at that early moment when no one really knew if anyone would stand up to him. Without the protests, the stays on the Muslim ban might not have happened at all.

If the Supreme Court is not going to throw out the ban, what will you do?

I was discussing my post with an organizing friend of mine. She works in New York, with many of the immigrant-led organizations doing the grassroots work that meant so much during the JFK occupation. These are barebones organizations, holding the funding together by a thread. These are the groups we should be funding. The ACLU has plenty of access to money. We need to move our money around more effectively to people who add to the legal strategy through the equally important direct action strategy.

My friend noted that as this was all going on, she was desperately trying to get people to donate to a much broader set of organizations than the ACLU. She was using her Twitter feed to publicize all these other groups. It didn’t really work and she is very frustrated by it. I think the question for me is how to connect your everyday liberal to these organizations. When I think of who donates in situations like this, I think of professors. And I think of many commenters on this blog. I think that some of the problem is that there are a not small number of liberals who are openly uncomfortable with protest politics. In the aftermath of the courts intervening in the Muslim ban, some LGM commenters asserted the protests had nothing to do with it. This was of course absurd and countered by the very legal people working on the issue. But it gets at the feeling some have. This is a problem. Personally, I think a bigger problem is more that most donating liberals simply don’t know who they should give to, don’t know how to know, and aren’t going to do the work to find out. The ACLU is a nice safe organization. It does good work. It’s an easy donation without having to think about it too much.

But it’s not also not sufficient, as we are seeing. Donating to the ACLU is not an excuse not to be active and outraged at the betrayal of American values from this administration and its racist base. More is needed.

So my question to you is, what do you think a next step would be? If I was to promote grassroots organizations on this site, would you consider giving to them instead or in addition to big groups like the ACLU? How else will we reignite outrage over the Muslim ban? What do you recommend?

Share

This new slogan by House Democrats is terrible.

The campaign arm for House Democrats on Wednesday tried out a new slogan: “I mean, have you seen the other guys?”

The sticker slogan, one of several floated as part of a fundraising effort by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), caused a stir on social media, where many wondered why the party would try out such a self-deprecating campaign line.

“Not exactly the most inspiring slogan, @dccc,” wrote ProPublica reporter Derek Willis.

“Dems are asking people to vote on a new sticker and I’m not sure anyone in history has been as bad as this,” tweeted Adam Serwer, a senior editor for The Atlantic.

Or as someone tweeted to me:

"Arby's: Cause, you know, Jared"

— Richard T. (@Miceelf88) July 6, 2017

As Willis and Serwer note, this is pathetic. Hell, as Serwer notes, all their ideas are terrible.

Dems are asking people to vote on a new sticker and I'm not sure anyone in history has been as bad at this. pic.twitter.com/isYaZV60Dp

— Mazel Tov Cocktail (@AdamSerwer) July 5, 2017

It’s possible that “not being Republicans” might be enough to win the House in 2018. But if it is, it won’t be because of that slogan. It will be in spite of it. If Democrats want to convince people to vote for them, “We aren’t Trump” is not going to be enough. There has to be leadership, ideas, and vision. I’m not saying that everyday voters follow position planks on platform, but as Trump showed, they need to believe that the party they are voting for will appeal to their lived experience. Democrats clearly have not figured out how to do that yet. Maybe a national $15 minimum wage would be a start. Or, I don’t know, Medicare For All. That seems good and relevant. Anything is better than what the DCCC proposed today.

Share

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 25, 2017 is:

argy-bargy • \ahr-jee-BAHR-jee\  • noun

: a lively discussion : argument, dispute

Examples:

The tenants got into a bit of an argy-bargy over their shared porch.

"I would object to the leaders' debates much less if they took place only on the radio. Then there wouldn't be all the argy-bargy about who stands where, wearing what." — Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph (London), 24 Apr. 2017

Did you know?

Argy-bargy and its slightly older variant argle-bargle have been a part of British English since the second half of the 19th century. Argy and argle evolved in certain English and Scottish dialects as variant forms of argue. As far as we can tell, bargy and bargle never existed as independent words; they only came to life with the compounds as singsong reduplications of argy and argle. Some other colorful words that can be used for a dispute in English are squabble, contretemps, and donnybrook.

The Letter People. Those three words either mean something to you…or they don’t. If they do, you most likely have a fuzzy half-remembrance of the vinyl / 8-track set or the accompanying companion PBS children’s puppetry show. A sort of poor-man’s Muppets, these primitive creations were tasked with schooling the youth of the 70s/80s on […]