Nate Haduch

Next month, California garage-psych greats Thee Oh Sees are following up last year's Mutilator Defeated At Last (and last month's live album) with a new LP called -- somewhat confusingly -- A Weird Exits. We've already heard the sprawling rhythm section workout of first single "Plastic Plants," and now they're sharing another … More »

Until their first show at Madison Square Garden in NYC last week, Radiohead hadn't played Let Down off of OK Computer in concert since 2006. I was lucky enough to be in attendance and some collective shit was lost over this, I tell you what. They've since played it at all three of their subsequent shows. (They've also played Creep twice in the past week, which is also rare.)

Here's the full set list from that night, which is mainly just for me in 28 years when this is the last remaining page on the internet with this info.

Burn the Witch
Daydreaming
Decks Dark
Desert Island Disk
Ful Stop
Lotus Flower
The National Anthem
15 Step
No Surprises
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief
Separator
Planet Telex
The Numbers
2 + 2 = 5
Everything in Its Right Place
Myxomatosis
Idioteque

Encore:
Let Down
Present Tense
Paranoid Android
Nude
Bodysnatchers

Encore 2:
Bloom
Street Spirit (Fade Out)

Update: Here's a video from when they played it in 2006 in Wolverhampton:

(via @jamsandwich)

Tags: music   NYC   Radiohead   video

The Playlist lists their picks for the 50 best sci-fi films of this century. Unlike the list of 50 best animated films I posted the other day, there are many movies on this list I haven't seen or even heard of, so I'm eager to dig in. Here are picks 6-2:

6. Her
5. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Upstream Color
2. Under the Skin

Good choice for #1 too. I really didn't care for Under the Skin. Nice to see some love for Edge of Tomorrow, Sunshine, Donnie Darko, Primer, and Snowpiercer as well. I would also have included Cloud Atlas, which I know not a lot of other people liked but I loved, and the first Hunger Games movie.

Tags: best of   lists   movies

tweedle: to lure by or as by music.

Last night on Late Show, Stephen Colbert debuted a brand new segment called “New York Tales,” and the first legendary NYC era he covered was the foam nightclub scene from the ’70s. The show was even lucky enough to interview Claudio Luca (Paul F. Tompkins), former owner of the most popular but extremely short-lived foam […]

Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally, Nick Kroll, and more are headed to theaters and Hulu later this summer. Today the streaming network debuted the trailer for Joshy, which centers on Middleditch as “the heartbroken title character, who uses what would have been his bachelor party getaway as a chance to reconnect with his friends.” Adam Pally, […]

According to the first national election forecast by FiveThirtyEight, Hillary Clinton has an 80.3% chance of winning the Presidency.

A 20% Trump chance is waaaaay too close for my comfort...that's better odds than ending up dead playing one round of Russian roulette. We gotta Mondale that Cheeto-faced shitgibbon.

Tags: 2016 election   Donald Trump   Hillary Clinton   maps   politics

Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland are headed to Broadway. Nick Kroll and John Mulaney revealed yesterday that their Oh, Hello show will begin a limited Broadway run at the Lyceum Theater this fall. Previews begin on Friday, September 23rd, and the show runs from Monday, October 10th through Sunday, January 8th. Here’s more from […]

The Floating Piers is a new art installant from Christo and Jeanne-Claude consisting of massive floating bridges and docks covered in yellow fabric that connects a pair of islands to the mainland in Italy's Lake Iseo. The video above offers an aerial view of the installation.

Visitors can experience this work of art by walking on it from Sulzano to Monte Isola and to the island of San Paolo, which is framed by The Floating Piers. The mountains surrounding the lake offer a bird's-eye view of The Floating Piers, exposing unnoticed angles and altering perspectives. Lake Iseo is located 100 kilometers east of Milan and 200 kilometers west of Venice.

"Like all of our projects, The Floating Piers is absolutely free and accessible 24 hours a day, weather permitting," said Christo. "There are no tickets, no openings, no reservations and no owners. The Floating Piers are an extension of the street and belong to everyone."

This is very reminiscent of The Gates, which is one of my favorite pieces of art. (via tksst)

Tags: art   Christo   video

Vintage/Anchor Books recently tweeted out a photo of a Most Stolen Books shelf at a bookstore. Some of the books on the shelf include The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (one of many Murakamis), Charles Bukowski's Hollywood, and On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

According to research by Candice Huber, books by Bukowski and Kerouac are indeed popular targets for theft from bookstores, along with those by Hemingway, David Sedaris, and The Great Gatsby. All of the books listed are by men, and most by "manly" men. This 2009 list from the UK is slightly different: J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books and Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book both rank high.

Libraries are a different story. According to Huber, the most frequently stolen library books are the Guinness Book of World Records, which is a favorite around our house,¹ and The Bible. Thieves could use the Good Book's wisdom more than many, I guess. Art books, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, and test prep books are also popular with the light-fingered. Judging from my personal experience hanging around garages and auto mechanics when I was a kid, Chilton's Auto Repair manuals were also lifted quite often.

1. "Daddy, our copy is from 2014. We should get the one from this year, so we can check if any of the records have been broken."↩

Tags: books   lists

cunctator: a procrastinator; delayer.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 6, 2016 is:

tranche • \TRAHNSH\  • noun

: a division or portion of a pool or whole

Examples:

"JPMorgan Chase must retain 5% of each tranche, or class, of notes to be issued by the trust…. The bank must also comply with disclosure and reporting requirements introduced for securitization…." — Allison Bisbey, The American Banker, 17 Mar. 2016

"The sale of a first tranche of shares to private investors via an initial public offering (IPO) … could start as soon as next year, with the eventual aim of being big enough to potentially buy some of the world's largest companies…." — Terry Macalister, The Guardian, 1 Apr. 2016

Did you know?

In French, tranche means "slice." Cutting deeper into the word's etymology, we find the Old French word trancer, meaning "to cut." Tranche emerged in the English language in the late 19th century to describe financial appropriations. Today, it is often used specifically of an issue of bonds that is differentiated from other issues by such factors as maturity or rate of return. Another use of the French word tranche is in the French phrase une tranche de vie, meaning "a cross section of life." That phrase was coined by the dramatist Jean Jullien (1854-1919), who advocated naturalism in the theater.

Talkshow has launched. It's an iOS messaging app for having conversations in public.

People text amazing things.

Talkshow is a simple messaging app that allows you to text these things in public. With Talkshow, individuals, groups of friends, entertainers, creators -- anyone! -- can have conversations in public, to be viewed by others in real time or after the fact. Every Talkshow can be shared outside the app and embedded into other websites.

Talkshow was built by Michael Sippey, who has recently been at Medium and Twitter and was a formative influence in my early days online, and Greg Knauss, who loves the web down to his bones and has pulled my own personal bacon out of the system administrative fire more times than I can count, so I am predisposed to like this app and also to recommend it to you.

Back in 2007, riffing on some thoughts by Marc Hedlund about turning Unix commands into startups, I suggested choosing web projects by taking something that everyone does with their friends and make it public and permanent.

Blogger, 1999. Blog posts = public email messages. Instead of "Dear Bob, Check out this movie." it's "Dear People I May or May Not Know Who Are Interested in Film Noir, Check out this movie and if you like it, maybe we can be friends."

Twitter, 2006. Twitter = public IM. I don't think it's any coincidence that one of the people responsible for Blogger is also responsible for Twitter.

Flickr, 2004. Flickr = public photo sharing. Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake said in a recent interview: "When we started the company, there were dozens of other photosharing companies such as Shutterfly, but on those sites there was no such thing as a public photograph -- it didn't even exist as a concept -- so the idea of something 'public' changed the whole idea of Flickr."

YouTube, 2005. YouTube = public home videos. Bob Saget was onto something.

Talkshow, 2016. Talkshow = public text messaging.¹ I am delighted to see that this approach still bearing fruit.

1. But, but, you cry, Twitter is public texting! Talkshow is public IM! Well, sure! Twitter does a bunch of different things now, but in the first few years, it was public IM. The big difference I see is while Twitter allows anyone to participate in any public conversation (which is both a plus and minus), with Talkshow, the membership of each group/show is limited but the output is public. And that difference will allow people to do some things better w/ Talkshow than they can with Twitter. ↩

Tags: Greg Knauss   iPhone apps   Michael Sippey   Talkshow

valetudinarian: a person who is excessively concerned about his or her poor health or ailments.

There’s a growing contingent of noise and drone-focused artists in Bristol’s music scene, from Subtext-affiliated characters such as Emptyset, Roly Porter and Paul Jebanasam through to Dot Product, O$MV$M and more besides. Sophia Loizou seemed to emerge out of nowhere back in 2014 when she joined this rising pool of producers with her debut release Chrysalis on Astro:Dynamics. Of course the strong reputation that label has made for itself helped foster some attention on the six-track album, but in many ways it took on a life of its own for anyone that listened. That Loizou had emerged with no previous track record made it all the more compelling; another drone filled album in a field full of drone filled albums, yet empowered with a stirring emotional heft and an ability to wield…

320 kbps | 101 MB  UL | MC ** FLAC

…devastating amounts of low end.

Now Loizou’s second album arrives, this time on Kathexis, and it’s patently obvious that her appreciation of looming bass hasn’t deserted her. “Divine Interference” may open up the album in a submerged fashion, but as the swells of fractured vocal melody and icy pads drift in and out of earshot, they’re accompanied by stalking sub bass notes that sound like the remnants of a soundsystem being heard from two miles back in the woods. Therein lies the appeal of Loizou’s approach to the avant-garde; while it may be challenging music in some respects, it’s injected with warmth and personality whether it be through chopped up human voices or cheeky rave signifiers, and it makes a serious listen also a fun one.

For all the jungle spotters out there, and even those with a passing understanding of the foundations of the genre, “Glimpses Of Death” holds even more delights. Even without the iconic documentary sample that arrives midway through it’s hard to miss the 1993 classic that Loizou has deconstructed and remoulded as a beautiful, lingering piece of electronica. In her hands the chimes in the track take on a striking resonance, gleaming in the greater space afforded to them. It’s a move that some might shy away from, tackling an evergreen piece of rave heritage in such a manner, but there’s no doubt that the striking beauty of the end result more than justifies the experiment.

“Genesis 92: The Awakening” is possibly even more explicit in its embrace of jungle signifiers. The blissful optimism of classic rave pads here take on an ominous tone through their heavy processing, but the break that comes calling from a distance sounds almost untouched. However, those recognisable sped-up funk grooves drift in and out of earshot in an off-hand manner, and the attention is instead put on disembodied groans of sampled soul and the vast ocean of heavy-lidded melodic tones they call out across.

Elsewhere in the album the nods to such sounds are far more subtle – it’s only after listening through a second time that you realise some of those flurries of static in “Artificial Infinite” are in fact drum breaks and not waves of interference. It’s a cunning reappropriation, not least given the poignancy of the piano chords and string-like sweeps that fill out the track. There is just as much emotion pouring out of “Order Of Elements”, its tired march absolutely wallowing in its own melancholia.

In the end, it’s in this conflux between the bleak, stern or simply serious moments and the light-hearted association of the rave touches that makes Singulacra as engaging a listen as Chrysalis was. There may be different reasons, for it feels like a decidedly different album, but it adds further credibility to the idea that Loizou is operating in an exciting space where experimental ambience can be as entertaining as it is immersive.

The show follows the cutthroat realtors at the (fictional) LA-based firm, Platinum Realty, as they duke it out for mega-commissions and a chance to become partner. Think Reno 911! with fewer cops and much bigger bank accounts.

JJ and Murphy O’Malaman, the Kid Detectives themselves are back with a whole new case they need to solve on this week's Comedy Bang! Bang! With the help of Scott, they're gonna do their darndest to solve the case of the missing babies. We'll also find out more of the O'Malaman twins' past as we dig deeper to figure out what really happened to their missing mother, why they have a connection to Alaska, and why they need to consult the bones.

Buzzfeed's Ben Rosen recently got a lesson from his 13-year-old sister Brooke about how she and her friends use Snapchat. Some highlights:

I would watch in awe as she flipped through her snaps, opening and responding to each one in less than a second with a quick selfie face. She answered all 40 of her friends' snaps in under a minute.

I assume this is a slight exaggeration, but even 40 replies in 2 minutes is an insane pace.

BROOKE: My new account? About a month and a half.
ME: New account?
BROOKE: Yeah, I didn't like my old name, so I made a new account.

Fluid identity, check. I have had the same email address and username on any and all new services since the 90s.

BROOKE: No conversations...it's mostly selfies. Depending on the person, the selfie changes. Like, if it's your best friend, you make a gross face, but if it's someone you like or don't know very well, it's more regular.
ME: I've seen how fast you do these responses... How are you able to take in all that information so quickly?
BROOKE: I don't really see what they send. I tap through so fast. It's rapid fire.

Response as message. Virtual eye contact. Like liking or faving. This reminds me of Matt Webb's Glancing project. I'm ok, you're ok. Virtual primate social grooming.

BROOKE: Yeah. This one girl I know uses 60 gigabytes [of cellular data] every month.

I use 60 Gb of data per year. If that. Do teens not know about wifi?

ME: How often are you on Snapchat?
BROOKE: On a day without school? There's not a time when I'm not on it. I do it while I watch Netflix, I do it at dinner, and I do it when people around me are being awkward. That app is my life.

ME: What the hell is a NARP?
BROOKE: Nonathletic Regular Person. NARP.

I am looking forward to working for Brooke when she's 24. She's clearly going to be in charge.

BROOKE: If you want to take a screenshot without your friend knowing, turn on airplane mode, take the screenshot, log out of the app immediately, turn off airplane mode, and then load the app back up.

Up up down down left right left right B A.

Update: I've seen a few people saying that how Brooke and her friends use Snapchat is how adults should be or will be using social media in the future. I don't think that's right. How teens use Snapchat is how many teens use anything they are intensely interested in and/or keep them in contact with their friends. Adults probably cannot and will not use Snapchat like this. They have different priorities.¹ Go read the Buzzfeed piece again...it's all about social status, something 13-year-olds care about very much, perhaps more than anything. "That app is my life" is not an exaggeration or an over-dramatization.

Back in the day -- and I'm talking about around the invention of farming and even further back -- everyone you knew in the entire world was never more than a few hundred feet from you for more than a few days. Wheels, domesticated crops & animals, industrialization, cars, and airplanes made it so that people could live farther and farther apart from each other, which is weird for social animals like humans and particularly difficult for teenagers for whom that social connection is the most important thing in their lives.

Smartphones, Instagram, Snapchat, and generous data plans have closed that distance again in many ways...or more precisely, have made the distance less relevant. Interacting with 190 friends¹ dozens or even hundreds of times a day probably feels a lot like being back in a hunter/gatherer band, socially speaking. Thanks to these magic pocket-sized rectangles, everyone you know in the world is never more than a few seconds away for more than a few hours.

1. Think about how teens used malls in the 80s and 90s as a social device. Adults didn't use malls like that...it didn't make sense in their lives. Malls were for shopping, eating, and maybe seeing a movie. Functional stuff. The intense social stuff happened mainly elsewhere: at work, at home, or at bars/clubs/restaurants/church/etc.↩

2. Note how close Brooke's number of friends (180 or 190) is to Dunbar's number, a proposed cognitive limit for stable social group sizes, and to the estimates of how big various hunter-gatherer societies were. That's interesting, right?↩

Tags: Ben Rosen   Brooke Rosen   Matt Webb   Snapchat

Scott Aukerman is going on tour with some Comedy Bang! Bang! pals. Aukerman revealed today that he’s taking Comedy Bang! Bang! on the road for a North American tour of live podcast tapings alongside guests Lauren Lapkus, Paul F. Tompkins, and Neil Campbell. The tour will make stops in Toronto, New York, Austin, Denver, San […]

Noela Rukundo, whose husband had only recently paid to have killed, showed up at her own funeral.

Finally, she spotted the man she'd been waiting for. She stepped out of her car, and her husband put his hands on his head in horror.

"Is it my eyes?" she recalled him saying. "Is it a ghost?"

"Surprise! I'm still alive!" she replied.

Far from being elated, the man looked terrified. Five days earlier, he had ordered a team of hit men to kill Rukundo, his partner of 10 years. And they did - well, they told him they did. They even got him to pay an extra few thousand dollars for carrying out the crime.

Now here was his wife, standing before him. In an interview with the BBC on Thursday, Rukundo recalled how he touched her shoulder to find it unnervingly solid. He jumped. Then he started screaming.

What a story. As @tcarmody says, "I like to imagine Bezos grinning and salivating over this story like Charles Foster Kane".

Tags: crime   death   Noela Rukundo

Artist Jaakko Seppälä drew 10 of his favorite comic characters in each other's distinctive styles, e.g. Lucy van Pelt in the style of Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield in the style of Donald Duck.

Update: See also the Great Comic Switcheroo of 1997, where a bunch of comic authors drew each others' comics for a day. (via @craigpatik)

Tags: art   Jaakko Seppala   remix

The time has come to determine who will officially be Scott's intern. Intern Gino Lambardo and Intern Marissa Wompler go head-to-head in the very first Comedy Bang! Bang! Intern Challenge judged by none other than CBB's first ever guest Rob Huebel of The Descendants, Childrens Hospital, and Crash Test fame. Two enter and one will leave the intern duties for good. Who will be victorious? Tune in to find out!

The Master of None season finale begins with Dev (Aziz Ansari) unable to decide what to have for lunch. Settling on tacos is only the beginning: tacos from where? Who has the best tacos? Which of these best tacos is the best of their best tacos? Later in a dream sequence, Dev can’t decide whether […]