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The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City is Getting Too Evil

The Housewives world is already full of colorful, bored, evil, rich people. But RHOSLC takes this to a different level, featuring women who are unwell in a way that should not be on camera. Set against the backdrop of Salt Lake City, a city made up of only the ugliest McMansions, suburban strip malls and Mormons while being surrounded by the most beautiful mountains, this series always had a certain je ne sais quoi, raring out of the gate with insanity that verged on parody.

Joni Mitchell joins Neil Young, pulls her music from Spotify over Joe Rogan

The majority of people who want to listen to Neil Young don't know what Spotify is. This isn't the first time Neil has bet wrong on streaming – does anyone remember PONO? 

Growing Currency of the Personal Recommendation

In an era when micro-targeting and algorithms dominate personal tastes, the upstart newsletter’s real-time catalog of New York cool-kid sensibility is a terrifically unserious delight.

How to Age In Reverse, According to a Generation of Super-Athletes

A wellness revolution in pro sports has allowed stars like LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Novak Djokovic to continue to dominate into (relative) old age. GQ fitness columnist Joe Holder breaks down the moves you can steal for yourself.

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Artist: Antti Laitinen

 

Voyage (2008)

Broken Landscape (2017-2019)

via https://anttilaitinen.com/

Ancient Don.Earth Discovery!

An ambitious internet excavation has uncovered years of previously/missing unrecorded don.earth blog content! 

Amidst all the ancient artifacts, I was most excited to unearth my favorite songs from 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 – I've been crying to Phoebe Bridgers for 5+ years – a true self-discovery!

Also, I found Shia Labeouf shirt that I made (note: the shirt was made before he did all that terrible shit).

That's really about it. Mostly just a bunch of hot takes on random stuff (it's a blog!). You can dig around in the updated archives below if you want. 

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Sundance: ‘Jeen-Yuhs’ Gives Us the Old Kanye

The first chapter of this three-part docuseries brings you back to Ye’s beginning — and gives you a superhero origin story.

Why it’s too early to get excited about Web3

The man who defined the term "Web 2.0" (referring to the version of the internet most of us know today. An internet dominated by companies that provide services in exchange for your personal data) shares his thoughts on Web3.

How Tumblr Became Popular for Being Obsolete
Speaking of Web 2.0 – Tumblr's status as a relic of the Internet has attracted prodigal users as well as new ones. If Tumblr is a relic... what is Blogger? Is anyone else still using this platform? 

Meet Me in The Bathroom
Welcome to pre-9/11 New York City, when the world was unaware of the profound political and cultural shifts about to occur, and an entire generation was thirsty for more than the post–alternative pop rock plaguing MTV. In the cafés, clubs, and bars of the Lower East Side there convened a group of outsiders and misfits full of ambition and rock star dreams. When The Strokes secured a residency at the Mercury Lounge in 2000, the scene that had previously been ignored by record labels and music magazines took off.

Mars Wrigley company rolled out a sterile, bone-dry rebrand of those sentient, sexy, candy-shelled roly-polys we like to call M&Ms.
"The corporate fat cats in their ivory tower made of chewing gum have ughnooooooified the M&Ms because they think we, the current customers, are a bunch of dumpy sluts who need to be taught proper manners. The Mars Wrigley Corporation doesn’t think that girl M&Ms can do everything that boy M&Ms can do – and in heels!"

The rise and fall of Esprit, San Francisco’s coolest clothing brand
But underneath the splashy magazine profiles and heavy-handed political messaging lies another tale. It’s one of San Francisco corporate excess and office trampolines. By the mid-’90s, mirroring the rest of Boomer culture, the Bay Area hippies had fully transformed into take-no-prisoners capitalists, complete with brutal corporate takeovers and tumultuous divorces.

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The Super Bubble!

Gen Z cannot afford to buy a house so they're buying digital real estate instead... and other signs that we are living in a bubble (or a simulation, either way) –

JPG files selling for millions. Dorks spending thousands of dollars on monkey avatars. Dogecoin. High growth tech stocks and then high growth stocks, like... AMC or Gamestop completely untethered to reality.

Crypto taking over the world. Crypto crashing. 

All this amidst a global pandemic and record-low interest rates (which has led to inflation rising faster than anyone expected...)

The entire economy feels like one giant meme. None of it makes any sense. Some are calling it a superbubble... predicting that we are going to see a complete collapse of U.S. housing, equities, and bonds all at once. That may be the direst of takes, but if you start looking around... something feels off. NOTE: I lack a basic understanding of economics, global markets, and maths... but like Roman Roy, "I'm dumb, but I'm smart," and it's very difficult for to me understand how this isn't a bubble. 

... but they said we were going to the moon!

Nike Internal Memo

 

Nearly 50 years ago, Rob Strasser, Nike's first Chief Marketing Officer, put out this internal memo called “Principles.” PDXMonthly an article on him back in 2016 — “Meet the Man Who Reinvented Nike, Seduced Adidas, and Helped Make Portland the Sports Gear Capital of the World.” In another memo (in 1983), he wrote: “Individual athletes, even more than teams, will be the heroes; symbols more and more of what real people can’t do anymore—risk and win.”

Alexander Calder

Composition (Pyramids and Sun on Target), 1973

This is Water by David Foster Wallace

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. That is being taught how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the "rat race" — the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.”

Sony PSP Advertising (2004)

In 2004, Sony created 30 mannequins to advertise the new PSP (PlayStation portable). They scattered the mannequins throughout Tokyo. Each mannequin was named and had an extensive backstory.

The Cover Uncovered: How Spiritualized created the art for 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space'

The history of Spiritualized's 1997 album art and their approach to making music as a form of therapy –

The title of the album was taken from Jostein Gaarder’s 1991 philosophical fiction novel Sophie’s World from the line: “Only philosophers embark on this perilous expedition to the outermost reaches of language and existence. Some of them fall off, but others cling on desperately and yell at the people nestling deep in the snug softness, stuffing themselves with delicious food and drink. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ they yell, ‘we are floating in space!’ But none of the people down there care.” This context of philosophers feeling perhaps a tad lonely in their pursuit of knowledge is reflected in the lonely tone of the music throughout the album.

If you are feeling lonely and worthless, however, fear not, Spiritualized produced the cure through not just sound, but vision too. The marketing for this album coupled with the novel and quite frankly astounding music made for an incredible work of art. The cover art for the album was a triumph due to its intense simplicity which draws the eye in an unexpected manner. The artist Mark Farrow was inspired by the words “music is medicine for the soul” which he recalls Pierce saying when they first met to discuss the aesthetic direction for the album. With this, Farrow set about designing the sleeve in a way that made the album appear like a medical product... [read more]

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Smoking is Cool
“Part of it is that it almost feels like a rejection of wellness culture, which is very stupid,” she said. It feels good, she said, to reject all that.

After the Beanie Baby bubble burst
What happens when the frenzy ends and the world doesn’t value your valuables? A cautionary tale for all you dorks collecting those lame ape cartoons.

On the Internet, We’re Always Famous 

What happens when the experience of celebrity becomes universal?

CD Sales Have Increased for the First Time in 17 Years
Adele’s 30, three albums by Taylor Swift, and more contributed to the newfound interest in the physical format

Rick Rubin: The Invisibility of Hip Hop's Greatest Producer

How ‘feature bloat’ is driving the chip shortage

“People are used to seeing new phones every year, and automakers are trying to keep up with consumer electronics,” Williamson said. “They’re pushing to develop completely new cars in two years or less. And that means using building blocks that are maybe intended for laptops and not necessarily custom-built for automotive applications.”

The Strokes – Hard to Explain Live on SNL (2002)

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