January 6, 2019
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How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation
“I couldn’t figure out why small, straightforward tasks on my to-do list felt so impossible. The answer is both more complex and far simpler than I expected.…”
January 5, 2019
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Top 30 Albums of 2018
A bit of background from my 2013 preamble for those new to my lists:
I do this more for me — as a way of discovering new music — than for you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to get as much joy from these amazing artists as I did this year. My list-making secret is to start a “long list” of albums I like at the beginning of the year. I keep adding when something strikes my fancy and use the year-end holidays to figure out which ones really made the cut.
For those interested, my previous Top 30 Albums are still online:
- Top 30 Albums of 2010
- Top 30 Albums of 2011
- Top 30 Albums of 2012
- Top 30 Albums of 2013
- Top 30 Albums of 2014
- Top 30 Albums of 2015
- Top 30 Albums of 2016
- Top 30 Albums of 2017
I feel this was another good year for music although I didn’t find as many of the mainstream releases inspiring this year. Kacey Musgraves is probably the only chart hit on the list. And really only one straight-up rock band this year – She Drew The Gun.
I’ve made a concerted effort to listen to women more. More female musicians, authors, directors, commentators, etc. It’s been very fruitful and is reflected in this list. 17 of my Top 30 are by women or bands with women in them.
And now, my Top 30 Albums of 2018! Enjoy!
Note these are in alphabetical order. I could never rank-order these — it would change daily.
- Freedom by Amen Dunes
- Streams of Thought Vol 2 by Black Thought, Salaam Remi
- First Flower by Molly Burch
- Broken Politics by Neneh Cherry
- Chris by Christine & The Queens
- Knock Knock by DJ Koze
- Some Rap Songs by Earl Sweatshirt
- Everything is Recorded by Everything is Recorded
- Quilt Jams by Elsa Hewitt
- Hive Mind by The Internet
- Uniform Clarity by Jim James
- The Horizon Just Laughed by Damien Jurado
- Con Todo El Mundo by Khruangbin
- Correspondence by Jens Lekman and Annika Norlin
- Double Negative by Low
- All The Things That I Did… by The Milk Carton Kids
- Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves
- Being Human In Public by Jessie Reyez
- El Mal Querer by Rosalía
- If Only There Was A River by Anna St. Louis
- Revolution of Mind by She Drew The Gun
- Compro by Skee Mask
- Sink by Sudan Archives
- Superorganism by Superorganism
- Love, Loss and Auto-Tune by Swamp Dogg
- The Hex by Richard Swift
- Devotion by Tirzah
- Isolation by Kali Uchis
- Bottle It In by Kurt Vile
- Nothing Is Still by Leon Vynehall
My 2019 list will be my 10th and I’m thinking I’ll look at the 300 albums I’ve recommended this decade and do a Top 30 of my Top 30 along with my annual list. Stay tuned!
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“Lisa Larson-Walker Each month in 2018, Future Tense Fiction —a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination about…”
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Top 10 Design Flaws in the Human Body – Issue 24: Error – Nautilus
“T he Greeks were obsessed with the mathematically perfect body. But unfortunately for anyone chasing that ideal, we were designed not by Pygmalion, the mythical…”
January 4, 2019
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‘Pete the Groin Crusher’ has crushed 10,000 patients’ groins ‘without even a sweat’ | We The People
“Meet Pete Schiavo, a hemostasis tech at Pennsylvania Hospital who manually applies pressure to the femoral artery in patients’ groins, or the radial artery in…”
December 31, 2018
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Thought
One of my greatest regrets is that I ever found Louis C. K. funny.
December 28, 2018
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The Trouble With Designing a Book When Its Author is in Jail
“As a senior designer at Alfred A. Knopf, I feel incredibly lucky. Odds are, if I’m passed a manuscript to read, I will love it. And when I’m assigned a novel by…”
December 27, 2018
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Review
Ready Player One (2018, Steven Spielberg)
I kind of liked the book while I was reading it, but I’ve grown less and less fond of it as time’s gone by. The book is problematic in many ways and I was willing to overlook that for the hit of nostalgia. The movie tries to address some of this but ultimately is just as empty a shell as the book. Eye candy yes, but I’m not that interested in eye candy right now.
December 25, 2018
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Review
Roma (2018, Alfonso Cuarón)
Absolutely stunning. One of my top pics of the year. I’m a huge fan of Cuarón and he did not disappoint.
December 24, 2018
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Review
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Frank Capra)
I’ve probably seen this over 25 times now. And I don’t tire of it.
December 22, 2018
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Review
Bird Box (2018, Susan Bier)
People seem to be divided on this one. I enjoy “light horror” like this. It’s not really that scary and deals more with people’s ability to triumph over adversity. The ending is a bit hokey but hey, I’m okay with that. And I really like Sandra Bullock and I’m thankful when she’s in something that isn’t mindless schlock.
December 21, 2018
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Review
White Christmas (1954, Michael Curtiz)
It is a long-standing tradition that I watch this lovely holiday music with the girls Christmas Eve. This year we did an early Christmas Eve as my youngest was off to Florida for the holidays, but it was still wonderful.
December 20, 2018
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Review
Ghost Stories (2017, Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman)
An entertaining British indie flick. It’s been on my list for about a year and I finally managed to get to it. Not exactly a traditional Christmas tale though. 🙂
December 12, 2018
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“Every week, Spotify releases two-track EPs through its Spotify Singles program, recorded at various Spotify Studios locations around the world. It’s a foray…”
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How Amazon Prime will change the way our cities look – The Boston Globe
“After decades of banishing retail stores from residential neighborhoods, the nation’s real estate developers, city planners, and the general public finally came…”
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“MIND Headlines suggest that the genetic marks of trauma can be passed from one generation to the next. But the evidence, at least in humans, is circumstantial…”
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Widows, Black Panther, Suspiria, and the Year of the Elevated Genre Film
“Photo: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photo by Fox Searchlight To refer to Steve McQueen’s Widows as “a heist movie” almost feels wrong. Sure, it has a heist in it;…”
December 9, 2018
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Review
My Cousin Rachel (2017, Roger Michell)
Gothic romance/thriller with Rachel Weisz sounded like a good idea, but it didn’t really grab me as I’d hoped. Maybe too faithful to the original?
December 8, 2018
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Review
Happy As Lazzaro (2018, Alice Rohrwacher)
This made me very happy. Other than the fact it was artsy, I didn’t know anything about this when I watched it, and that made it even better because I had no idea where it was going to go at any given moment.
December 1, 2018
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Memetic Tribes and Culture War 2.0 – Intellectual Explorers Club – Medium
““My friends, this election is about more than who gets what. It is about who we are. It is about what we believe, and what we stand for as Americans. There is a…”
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“Let me describe what I hear as I sit in a coffee shop writing this article. It’s late morning on a Saturday, between the breakfast and lunch rushes. People talk…”
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Criminal Incompetence | Inside Higher Ed
“About a year ago, one of my distant relatives found himself in trouble with the law, and not for the first time. He had allegedly stabbed somebody in the course…”
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Listening While Feminist: In Defense of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” – Persephone Magazine
“Editor’s note: Please enjoy this featured post from our archives. I’m a pretty voracious consumer and critic of American popular culture. I’m one of those 3 rd…”
November 24, 2018
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The Pre-Internet Phenomenon of Boys Hiding Their Porn in the Woods – MEL Magazine
“I grew up in a New Jersey suburb called Basking Ridge , so named, we were told in elementary school, by the British Presbyterians who bought — cough — the land…”
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The Apophenic Machine — Real Life
“Image: Detail from The Test by David Delruelle. Think of a network graph. A simple one with just a few nodes and connecting lines spidering out. It makes…”
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The Most Misread Poem in America
“Everyone knows Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”—and almost everyone gets it wrong. Frost in 1913. From The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem…”
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NASA Learns More About Interstellar Visitor ‘Oumuamua
“An artist’s concept of interstellar asteroid 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) as it passed through the solar system after its discovery in October 2017. Observations of…”
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Why Standing Desks Are Overrated
“Supported by The New Health Care They’re not cures for anything, and standing is not exercise. Standing at a desk may offer some conveniences, but it’s not a…”
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“Introspective is the odd album out from Pet Shop Boys’ fabled “imperial phase”. It’s also, says David Bennun, the best thing they ever did Here’s a thing I…”
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The pop culture references that separate millennials from baby boomers
“Have you heard of Post Malone? If so, you probably aren’t a baby boomer. According to data collected by the polling company YouGov, only 17% of US baby boomers,…”