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thisphantomlife · 8 months

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Songs Hozier has covered

Bowie - Changes, Young Americans (see also Trinity Orchestra section)

Prince - I Wanna Be Your Lover, Raspberry Beret, Jungle Love

James Carr - The Dark End Of The Street

The Beatles - Blackbird

John Lennon (Donny Hathaway version) - Jealous Guy (at the goldenplec block party with Zaska)

Ariana Grande - Problem

Warren G - Regulate (mashup with Problem)

James Blake - Retrograde

Tom Waits - Strange Weather

Florence and the Machine - Cosmic Love

Stevie Wonder - Living for the City, As

Sting - 7 Days

The BeeGees - To Love Somebody

Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (that thing)

Amerie - One Thing

Skip James - Illinois Blues

Muddy Waters - Catfish Blues

Van Morrison - Caravan, Sweet Thing, Domino, Brown Eyed Girl, Saint Dominic’s Preview

Bill Withers - Ain’t No Sunshine

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know

Demi Lovato - Sorry Not Sorry

Led Zeppelin - Whole Lotta Love

Fun - We Are Young

Paul Simon - Bridge Over Troubled Water

Sam Smith - Lay Me Down

Destiny’s Child - Say My Name

Britney Spears - Toxic (snippet)

The Band - The Weight

Otis Rush version of Willie Dixon and the Big Three Trio - My Love Will Never Die

The Talking Heads - Burning Down the House (Instagram live messing around with friends)

The Staple Singers - Let’s Do it Again

The Weather Forecast 🤪

Ed Lewis - I Be So Glad When the Sun Goes Down (Instagram snippet)

Mavis Staples - Eyes on the Prize

Jackie Wilson - (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher

The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby

Traffic (song originally by Traffic, Andrew covered the Joe Cocker version) - Feeling Alright

Christmas Songs - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Winter Wonderland, Santa Claus is Coming to Town (with others at the Xmas Eve Ball 2015)

Traditional Irish songs - My Lagan Love, The Humours of Whiskey, I Am Stretched On Your Grave, The Rolling Wave (on the low whistle), The Parting Glass, The Lonely Jig (on the low whistle)

(Live) Collabs - that are not Andrew’s own songs

Alvin Youngblood Hart - Illinois Blues

Maren Morris - The Bones, My Church, Girl, The Tree

Annie Lennox - I Put a Spell on You (Screamin Jay Hawkins cover)

Tom Odell - Another Love

Noah Kahan - Northern Attitude

Allison Russell - Requiem, Stop Dragging My Heart Around (Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty cover)

Brandi Carlile - The Joke, Walk On (U2 cover), The Weight (The Band cover)

Jamala - Walk On (U2 cover)

Mavis Staples - The Weight (The Band cover), Keep Your Eyes on the Prize (with Our Native Daughters, Jason Isbell and Phil Cook)

Boygenius - Salt in the Wound

Alana Henderson - Ae Fond Kiss (poem by Robert Burns)

U2 - When Love Comes to Town

Tori Kelly - Blackbird (the Beatles cover)

Mumford and Sons - Guiding Light, Awake My Soul, With a Little Help From My Friends (Beatles cover, with other artists)

Lake Street Dive - Everyday People (Sly and the Family Stone cover)

Rachael Price - Rental Love

Victoria Canal - Swan Song

Elwood (his dog) - Don’t Go Breaking My Heart (Elton John and Kiki Dee cover, Insta snippet)

All the artists at Love Rocks NYC 2022 - Like A Rolling Stone (Bob Dylan cover), Feeling Alright (Traffic cover)

Brian Kennedy (and others) - I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free (Nina Simone cover)

His Dad - The Weight (The Band cover at MSG)

Zaska, Wyvern Lingo, Loah - Sir Duke (Stevie Wonder cover)

Eabha McMahon - Bright Blue Rose (Jimmy McCarthy cover)

Brittany Howard - Feeling Alright (Joe Cocker version cover)

Joan Baez - We Shall Overcome, The Weight (The Band cover)

Christmas Eve Busk 2015

Bono, Glen Hansard - When Love Comes to Town, Every Breaking Wave

Glen Hansard, Imelda May - The Dark End of the Street (James Carr cover)

Christmas Eve Busk 2017

Glen Hansard, Coronas, Imelda May, Liam O Maonlaoi - So This is Christmas (John Lennon cover), The Aul Triangle

Music Groups

Nova Collective - (original songs) Tuile, Closer, Quick Bossa

Zaska - (original songs) In Your Own Sweet Time, Different Light, She Gunk Gunk Dunk A Funk, Oh Yeah

Anuna - with Andrew on lead vocals: The Raid, La Chanson de Mardi Gras. With Andrew in the choir: Jingle Bells, An Uaithne

The Wiggles - Cherry Tree Carol with Anuna

Trinity Orchestra - songs covered with Andrew on lead vocals

~ Queen - Somebody To Love, Don’t Stop Me Now

~ Arcade Fire - My Body is a Cage

~ Pink Floyd - Time, Breathe, Comfortably Numb, Shine on You Crazy Diamond, Money

~ Michael Jackson - Earth Song, Black or White, Smooth Criminal

~ David Bowie - Heroes

*This list may not be complete. It only contains songs that can be found online.

Please let me know if any songs are missing so I can add them 🫶

I’ve not included the songs he sang snippets of on that Song Association interview

#hozier #hozier covers #hozier collabs #list of songs Hozier has covered

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applesfallingfromblondehair · 2 years

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The 1975 (BFIAFL): a sad song about being young and stupid

Happiness: possibly the best mashup of all 75 hits that could ever exist

Looking For Somebody (To Love): a boppy future single, except it's about incels and school shootings

Part Of The Band: Matty reminiscing about drugs and cancellations, some of the best lyrics he's ever written

Oh Caroline: someone on twitter described it as 'Toto meets The 1975 meets 70's romcoms' and I couldn't agree more

I'm In Love With You: poor Matty (part 1)

All I Need To Hear: poor Matty (part 2)

Wintering: possibly the simplest yet greatest Christmas song ever written?

Human Too: dropping the sarcasm and every other mask, lying bare and begging for forgiveness

About You: Robbers (Matty's Version) (2022 Version)

When We Are Together: poor Matty (part 3)

being funny in a foreign language, ladies and gentlemen

(five stars)

#the 1975 #being funny in a foreign language #new album #matty healy #george daniel #ross macdonald #adam hann #dirty hit

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7grandmel · 5 months

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Todays rip: 19/04/2024

i love(d) you

Season 6 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips: Volume FF Also on: Now That's What I Call Quality! 3

Ripped by vvsvlogs

youtube

Requested by oetaboy and an anonymous reader! @oetaboy (Ask Box)

I'm sure this rip's been a long time coming for many - I know it has for me. I've had i love(d) you sitting in my drafts as far back as in March, but truthfully it's...daunting, to write about. Requested by two readers. Close to 200 thousand views on YouTube, and recently featured prominently in popular Clone Hero YouTuber Acai's "The Quality of SiIvaGunner" series. And the rip itself being an emotional gutpunch in a season filled with them, from a ripper who's already gutpunched me plenty with Wham! Into Dreams and The Paragoomba and the Wiggler. vvsvlogs, Vivi, I ask this with the most sincere gratitude possible - why must you do this to me?

Minecraft as a game has its emotional hooks in at least two generations of people - that much I think we're all aware of. A sandbox filled with endless possibilities, community, friends, individual stories of survival or of great creative endeavors, all wrapped in C418's hauntingly beautiful score, one I've discussed many times before with Fell From a High Place (Reprise), M-O-O-G City and Every Mob Wants To Rule My World. All of these rips are beautiful, yet they're all aiming to play with Minecraft's sound in some way - the former two rips are arrangement of its music with other games' instrumentation, and the latter rip is a melodyswap playing Everybody Wants To Rule The World. They all play on my senses in their own ways, they're all rightfully impressive - but nothing hits quite the same as Minecraft's own music, on its own terms. i love(d) you isn't aiming to impress or amaze - but it lands a full-on critical hit on one's heart through leveraging everything that's kept Subwoofer Lullaby alive for so many years.

I've talked plenty about my musical illiteracy, and so I hope it doesn't come as a surprise that I've never really listened to world-renowed singer Billie Eilish. She's been on the radio, I've heard Bad Guy, but it was never a name I gave much more thought beyond seeing her discussed online from time to time. You can imagine the absolute awe I was in when I clicked on i love(d) you when it first went up, already expecting an emotional hit due to the Minecraft song used, only to get goosebumps from Eilish's vocals alone. i love you is the penultimate song from Eilish's debut studio album, the very same that Bad Guy was featured on - yet compared to that track's bass-heavy, almost seductive energy, i love you feels remarkably personal, with little more than an acoustic guitar and piano accompanying the openly emotional vocal performance. It's sincere in a way I don't hear enough music be, as if a diary translated into song, much the same emotion that Because I Love You conveyed yet with even greater magnitude due to the vocals in play.

i love(d) you, uploaded for 2022's valentines day, wields both of these forms of love - the connections many of us have to one of the most impactful games ever made, and the unfiltered emotion of i love you - to create something unabashedly beautiful. Mashups aren't a novel concept, mashups are nothing new - yet one glance at the comments tells me that I'm not alone in finding this rip in particular to have struck an incredibly sensitive nerve. Because there's a beauty to Minecraft that I think many of us oft forget about. It's a game that we all cherish, yet also one that's very easy to have left behind: we have adult responsibilities, we have school, we have other, shorter, more concise games, we have social media, we have friends, we have blogs...the solemn beauty of playing the game itself is, for many viewers like myself, not much more than a memory, something that can feel ever so difficult to recreate without feeling as if something's wrong.

We...I'm...not a kid anymore.

There was nothing about i love(d) you's concept that necessitated it to be more than just the mashup. There rip had no need for visuals that'd help convey the edit like with Plantasia 2 or Luna, mi Amor, no need to tickle the funnybone like with SUNGORE or the hundreds of other YTPMV rips on the channel. Yet, halfway through the rip, to the tune of Eilish's soothingly reverberating vocals, the background begins to change, not to a bit, not to a reference nor easter egg...but to Minecraft. To where all of this attachment began - to a far-off view of the game's beautiful landscapes as the sun begins to rises. That digital world that looks different for every player, yet the same in everyone's hearts - that place that, no matter how many years pass, how long its been since we last played, we all love. Its impact different to everyone, yet the feeling unanimous. It drives home how well the mashup works not just as a mixture of two deeply emotional songs, but as music tied to a shared experience: all of our Minecraft worlds looked different, all of our personal lives look different, but we've all played the game, and we've all had affection for it.

Every moment I spend thinking about this rip aches in some way. It's been well past two years since it was first uploaded, yet it continues to follow me as the years go on, my mouse drawn to it any time it reappears in my recommendations. In being featured on 2024's Now That's What I Call Quality! 3, I think the team holds much the same sentiment - even as the months pass, i love(d) you is the kind of rip that'll never fall out of favor, never stop meaning things to people. And realizing that it was made by vvsvlogs, the very same vvsvlogs who's already made me far too emotionally vulnerable on here twice before, has only made it mean that extra bit more to me.

I'm not a kid anymore. I know that. But I'll always be grateful to SiIvaGunner, the people behind it, and those who follow it along with me, for being able to bring me back to that state of mind when I least expect it.

Thank you.

#todays siivagunner #season 6 #siivagunner #siiva #vvsvlogs #rip visuals #minecraft #minecraft music #c418 #subwoofer lullaby #minecraft alpha #minecraft beta #minecraft art #mojang #mineblr #billie eilish #acoustic #when we all fall asleep where do we go #Youtube

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choicesficwriterscreations · 5 months

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May Creator of the Month: Saibug1022

Each month, CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers or artists, and this month’s creator of the month is @saibug1022! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page. Past COTM's can be found here.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog Masterlist

How do you want to be known on Tumblr?

Salem, Sai, or saibug are all good! They/he pronouns

1- When did you start playing Choices? What was the first book you played?

I started playing Choices in 2017-ish, I don’t remember what my first book was for sure but I remember the first book I played that really drew me in and got me into the app was The Elementalists.

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I don’t think I really joined the fandom until…a few weeks after that mass cancellation announcement where they announced they’d cancelled It Lives 3, Elementalists 2, Nightbound 2, Hero 2, and RoD 2.

3- How did you pick your blog name?

Originally it was a mashup of my dead name and a sweet nickname from my childhood, so when I came out I just changed it to incorporate my new name instead :)

4- Pull up the first post in your archive, and tell us about it!

It was a repost of this screenshot and honestly I was right and should say it. Also this question taught me the archive feature existed so thank you that’ll come in handy lmao

5- Do you write fanfiction, create fan art, or are you one of those really gifted people who do both?

I write fanfiction! I am trying to learn and practice art so who knows what could happen in the future. Oh and I also do lots of edits :)

6- How long have you been creating for Choices and for any other fandoms?

If we’re talking my true origins I actually started writing by writing Supernatural x reader fics in like 2017, but I didn’t start writing the fics I write now until Sanders Sides in 2019 and then I finally got around to Choices in about 2022 lmao. 7- What is your favorite Choices book, and what is your favorite Choices book to create for?

My favorite book is probably ILITW which is probably obvious, but as for my favorite book to CREATE for that’s tied between It Lives Within and BOLAS.

8- Share your first Choices fanfic or fan art that you posted with us. Do you still like it, or would you change it if you were creating it today?

My first fic was for Nightbound, called The Wrong Engagement. I still like it overall but I think I’d definitely change some things. When I first started writing for Choices I was so so focused on trying to keep MC as vague as possible while still giving them some character, so the stories often came across as bland or even boring.

9- What is your favorite piece of fiction or art that you created?

My absolute favorite fic is actually something I don’t think I ever posted, but my favorite I’ve posted has probably gotta be a classic which is Val’s Resurrection. There are definitely some things I’d probably change now but it’s the longest fic I’ve written, still really holds up, and I’m really proud of the characterizations in it.

10- Do you have a fic/art that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to do well but found it could use a little more love?

Walls of Regret is probably my biggest fic ever and let me tell you when I posted and wrote it I did not expect it to do as well as it did but I’m so glad it did. I can definitely think of some fics I think people would really like that didn’t get much love, including pretty much everything from the Windverse, but I gotta say Let The Shadows Fall Behind You, which is a fic/scene from my personal ongoing project, a Hero and Endless Summer Crossover

11- If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why?

Angst, wholeheartedly, no hesitation. Angst is not only my talent but kind of what I’m known for. I actually kind of struggle to write fluff and ESPECIALLY smut. I’ve only done it a few times and it took days of me staring at the page for days and getting out maybe one sentence an hour.

12 - Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

Oh all of them. Every single MC has a little piece of me, whether it’s my experiences or my personality or my style or my interests or even the way I talk.

13 - What element of writing/art do you struggle with most?

With smut at least I get ideas. I struggle so much with even getting ideas for fluff. My favorite things is to dive into the emotions and pain and trauma PB dance around, and finding the beauty in the dark things. I defer to the other amazing writers on this app for the fluff and I consume their fluff fics like a drowning man

14 - Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

Two things off the top of my head. My concept for a Hero sequel which includes an Endless Summer crossover. I mentioned that earlier. The second is something fondly called Into the Rowan-verse which was where my two ILW MCs, Castor and Julian, get stuck hopping through the multiverse and meeting a bunch of other people’s MCs.

15 - If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to see your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you show them first?

It highly depends on the person and then from there I think I’d just show them my edits or character profiles because my fics you tend to need either full contextual knowledge or at least basic knowledge of the book.

16 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing or art? Are there any artists that influence you?

Published writers definitely Rick Riordan, he’s seriously influenced how I use character voices. But from the fandom my biggest inspirations right now are usually @aces-and-angels and @oh-so-you’re-a-nerd

17- Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series?

If I saw Into the Windverse does that count as cheating? But otherwise I’d die for my version of the It Lives Anthology (including ILW and Into the Rowanverse) to be made into a tv show with my headcanons, changes, and MCs.

18- Do you write original fiction or create non-fandom art?

I do! I have an entire book trilogy fully plotted out that I’m working on writing, plus just writing a bunch with my own OCs.

19 - What other hobbies do you have?

Pretty much just OC related things tbh. I watch tv a lot and YouTube, I play video games sometimes, and I listen to music ALL the time

#cfwc creator of the month #creator of the month #choices fic writers creations #saibug1022 #playchoices #choices stories you play

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year

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Down in the (link)dumps

On September 27, I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

Back when I was writing on Boing Boing, I'd slam out 10-15 blog posts every day, short hits that served as signpost and public notebook, but I rarely got into longer analysis of the sort I do daily now on Pluralistic. Both modes are very useful for organizing one's thoughts, and indeed, they complement each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

The problem is that when you write long, synthetic essays, they crowd out the quick hits. Back in May 2022, I started including three short links with each edition of Pluralistic, in a section called "Hey look at this" (thanks to Mitch Wagner for suggesting it!):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/01/reit-modernization-act/#linkdump

But even with that daily linkdump, I still manage to accumulate link-debt, as interesting things pile up, not rising to the level of a long blog-post, but not so disposable as to be easy to flush. When the pile gets big enough, I put out a Saturday Linkdump:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

All of which is to say, it's Saturday, and I've got a linkdump!

First up, a musical interlude. I've been listening to DJ Earworm's amazing mashups since 2005 and while I've got dozens of tracks that shuffle in and out of my daily playlist, the one that makes me wanna get up and dance every time is "No One Takes Your Freedom," a wildly improbable banger composed of equal parts Aretha Franklin, The Beatles, George Michael and Scissor Sisters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaboIeW1A_4

I defy you to play that one without bopping a little. I think it's the French horn from "For No One" that really kills it, the world's least expected intro to a heavy dance beat.

Moving swiftly on: let's talk about fonts. I remember when Wired magazine first showed up at the bookstores I was working at in Toronto, and my bosses – younger men than I am now! – complained that the tiny, decorative fonts, rendered in silver foil on a purple background, was illegible. I laughed at them, batting my young eyes and devouring the promise of a better future with ease, even in dim light.

Now it's thirty years later and I'm half-blind. Both my my decaying, aging eyes are filmed with cataracts that I'm too busy to get removed (though my doc promises permanent 20:20, perfect night-vision, and implanted bifocals when I can spare a month from touring with new books to get 'em fixed).

Which is to say: I spend a lot more time thinking about legibility now than I did in the early 1990s, and I've got a lot more sympathy for those booksellers' complaints about Wired's aggressively low-contrast design today. I'm forever on the hunt for fonts designed for high legibility.

This week, Kottke linked to B612, a free/open font family "designed for aircraft cockpit screens," commissioned by Airbus. It's got all the bells and whistles (e.g. hinting) and comes in variable and monospace faces:

https://b612-font.com/

B612 arrived at a fortuitous moment, coinciding with a major UI overhaul in Thunderbird, the app I spend the second-most time in (I spend more time in Gedit, the bare-bones text-editor that comes with Ubuntu, the flavor of GNU/Linux I use). A previous Thunderbird UI experiment had made all the UI text effectively unreadable for me, causing me to dive deep into the infinitely configurable settings to sub in my own fonts:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/UserChrome.css

The new UI is much better, but it broke all my old tweaks, so I went back into those settings and switched everything to B612, and it's amazeballs. I tried doing the same in Gedit, but B612 mono was too light for my shitty eyes, so I went back to Jetbrains Mono, another free/open font that has 8 weights to choose from:

https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/mono/

Love me a new, legible font! Meanwhile, a note for all you designers: the received wisdom that black on white type is "hard on the eyes" is a harmful myth. Stop with the grey-on-white type, for the love of all that is holy. This isn't 1992, you aren't laying out type for Wired Issue 1.0. Contrast is good, actually.

Continuing on the subject of software updates: Mastodon, the free, open, federated social media platform that anyone can host and that lets you hop between one server and another with just a couple clicks, has released a major update, focusing on usability, especially for people unfamiliar with its conventions:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/09/mastodon-4.2/

Included in this fix: a major overhaul to how you interact with posts on servers other than your home server. This was both confusing and clunky, and the fix makes it much better. They've also changed how sign-up flow works, making things simpler for newbies, and they've cleaned up the UI, tweaking threads, web previews and other parts of the daily experience.

There's also a lot of changes to search, but search still remains less than ideal, with multi-server search limited to hashtags. This is bad, actually. Thankfully, we don't have to wait for Mastodon devs to decide to fix it, because Mastodon is free and open, which means anyone with the skills to code a change, or the money to pay techies to do it, or the moral force to convince them to do it, can effect that change themselves:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/

Case in point: Mastoreader, a great new thread reader for Mastodon:

https://mastoreader.io/

Every time that guy who owns Twitter breaks it even worse, a new cohort of users sign up. Not all of them stay, but the growth is steady and the trendline is solid:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/of-course-mastodon-lost-users/

It's the right call: while there are other services that promise that they will be federated someday, promises are easy, and there's world of difference between "federateable" and "federated." As GW Bush told us, "Fool me twice, we don't get fooled again":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/06/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again/

One big difference between the kind of blogging I used to do in my Boing Boing days and the long-form work I do today is the graphics. When you're posting 10-15 times/day, you can't make each graphic a standout (or at least, I can't). But I can (and do) devote substantial time to making a single collage out of public domain and Creative Commons graphics every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

I am not a visual person – literally, I can barely see! – but my daily art practice has slowly made me a less-terrible illustrator. I got in some good licks this week, like this graphic for the UAW's new "Eight-and-Skate" work-to-rule program:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/21/eight-and-skate/#strike-to-rule

That graphic was fun because all the elements were from the public domain, or fair use. I love it when that happens. I've spent years amassing a bulging folder of public domain clip art ganked from the web and this week, it got a major infusion, thanks to the Bergen Public Library's Flickr album of high-rez scans of antique book endpapers. 86 public domain textures? Yes please! (Also, the fact that Flickr has one-click download of all the hi-rez versions of every image in a photoset is another way that it stands out as a remnant of the old, good web, not so much a superannuated relic as an elegant weapon of a more civilized age):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bergen_public_library/albums/72157633827993925

Speaking of strikes: there are strikes! Everygoddamnedwhere! After 40 years in a Reagan-induced coma, labor is back, baby. The Cornells School of Industrial and Labor Relations' Labor Action Tracker is your go-to, real-time observation post as hot labor summer turns into the permanent revolution. As of this writing, it's listing 968 labor actions in 1491 locations:

https://striketracker.ilr.cornell.edu

There's no war but class war and it was ever thus. Brian Merchant's forthcoming book Blood In the Machine is a history of the Luddites, revisiting that much-maligned labor uprising, which has been rewritten as a fight between technophobes and the inevitable forces of progress:

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

The book unearths the true history of the Ludds: they were skilled technologists who were outraged by capital's commitment to immiseration, child slavery, and foisting inferior goods on a helpless public. You can get a long preview of the book in Fast Company:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90949827/what-the-luddites-can-teach-us-about-standing-up-to-big-tech

Merchant also talked with Roman Mars about the book on the 99 Percent Invisible podcast:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/blood-in-the-machine/transcript/

If that's piqued your interest and if you can make it to Los Angeles, come by Chevalier's Books this Wednesday, where Brian and I are having a joint book-launch (I've just published The Internet Con, my Luddite-adjacent "Big Tech Disassembly Manual"):

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/chevaliers-books-8495362156

Where is all this labor unrest coming from? Well as Stein's Law has it, "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." 40 years of corporate-friendly political economy has lit the world on fire and immiserated billions, and we've hit bottom and started the long, slow climb to a world that prioritizes human thriving over billionaire power.

One of the most tangible expressions of that vibe shift is the rise and rise of antitrust. The big news right now is the (first) trial of the century, Google's antitrust trial. What's that? You say you haven't heard anything about it? Well, perhaps that has to do with the judge banning recording and livestreaming and not making transcripts available. Don't worry, he's also locking observers out of his courtroom for hours at a time during closed testimony. Oh, and also? The DoJ just agreed that it won't post its exhibits from the trial online anymore. You can follow what dribbles of information as are emerging from our famously open court system at US v Google:

https://usvgoogle.org/trial-update-9-22

If the impoverished trickle of Google antitrust news has you down, don't despair, there's more coming, because the FTC is apparently set to drop its long-awaited suit against Amazon:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftc-poised-sue-amazon-antitrust-163432081.html

Amazon spent years blowing hundreds of millions of dollars of its investors' cash, selling goods below cost and buying up rivals until it became the most important channel for every kind of manufacturer to reach their customers. Now, Amazon is turning the screws. A new report from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance details the 45% Amazon Tax that every merchant pays to reach you:

https://ilsr.org/AmazonMonopolyTollbooth-2023/

That 45% tax is passed on to you – whether or not you shop at Amazon. Amazon's secretive most favored nation terms mean that if a seller raises their price on Amazon, they have to raise it everywhere else, which means you're paying more at WalMart and Target because of Amazon's policies.

Those taxes are bad for us, but they're good for Amazon's investors. This year, the company stands to make $185 billion from junk-fees charged to platform sellers. As David Dayen points out, Amazon charges so much to ship third-party sellers' goods that it fully subsidizes Amazon's own shipping:

https://prospect.org/power/2023-09-21-amazons-185-billion-pay-to-play-system/

That's right: as Stacy Mitchell writes in the report, "Amazon doesn’t have to build warehousing and shipping costs into the price of its own products, because it’s found a way to get smaller online sellers to pay those costs."

Now, one of the amazing things about antitrust coming back from the grave is that just the threat of antitrust enforcement can moderate even the most vicious bully's conduct. Faced with the looming FTC case, Amazon just canceled its plan to charge even more junk fees:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/amazon-drops-planned-merchant-fee-ftc-lawsuit-looms-bloomberg-news-2023-09-20/

But despite this win, Amazon is still speedrunning the enshittification cycle. The latest? Unskippable ads in Prime Video:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-22/amazon-prime-video-content-to-include-ads-staring-early-2024

Remember when Amazon promised you ad-free video if you'd lock yourself into shopping with them by pre-paying for a year's shipping with Prime? The company has fully embraced the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further."

That FTC case can't come a moment too soon.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/23/salmagundi/#dewey-102

#pluralistic

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foxes-that-run · 7 months

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Paris

Music Videos

Paris is referenced in many songs and videos as a special place for Harry and Taylor, as well as the above from Begin Again and Falling

In Begin Again Taylor walks all over the banks of the Seine and on rooftops singing about her love. This was filmed 30 September on a weekend Harry was not seen, the following week they were seen together in London and rumoured to be dating. The video has a black 1966 Mercedes 230SL, Harry's had the same car in white.

Also see @cntfightmydemonsthyknowhowtoswim's brilliant post on the Taymoji's for Begin Again.

In Everything Has Changed the class is learning about Paris with the Eiffel Tower and Point Alexandre III bridge over the Seine shown.

Me! is also set in Paris (and London) Taylor and Brendon have a fight in French before Taylor storms out shouting "Ju Suis Calme!"

Performances

9 September 2019 - Taylor records City of Lover in Paris. Live setlist #7 was DBAC and #13 was Style, also played Love Story, Delicate, ATW, Red, Style and Shake it Off.

In the HSLOT visuals for What Makes You Beautiful Harry's House kisses the Eiffel Tower and falls in love. Harry said he loves Paris, then kissed his heart tattoo before What Makes You Beautiful while in Paris on 5 July 2022.

Lover Journal

Taylor also shared a Lover Journal (book 3) entry for March 16 2011, where in Paris, she said "My life is so beautiful right now. Every once in a while I have to remind myself to breathe and take in the view", later a Lyric in Paris and something Harry said on the Jonathan Ross show 16 November 2013.

The day after this journal entry Taylor played the 'Fearless/Soul Sister Mashup' for the first time, in Paris. Harry was MIA that weekend and then they were both in London. Soul Sister was Harry's Xfactor Audition. Post on that here and in Holy Ground.

Lyrics

Getaway Car opens with a Tale of Two Cities reference, the cities in the book are Paris and London

Canyon Moon includes a reference to Paris and Rome which Joni Mitchell refers to in a similar way in California and Carey

Paris includes "Taken by the view" which Taylor said of Paris in the Lover Journal and Harry repeated on Jonathan Ross.

#haylor #harry styles #taylor swift #Harry styles #haylor lyrics

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midnightsslut · 2 months

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I was reading all the discussion about cardigan, the love triangle and the 1 and idk I’m still not convinced that they have shades of Matty. I’m not opposed to the idea, but there’s just so much vagueness and connections that could be done with other songs that make it hard for me to think that’s for sure about him. Like for example the rosé being present boh in the 1 and maroon and we know for sure that maroon is about Jake since Taylor basically confirmed it twice with the tiktok like and the mashup with red. Like when I first heard maroon I immediately thought that there was maybe a connection with the 1, that most likely the muse of the song was the same. And with cardigan the fact that it ends with Betty saying that she knew James was coming back makes me think that the guy did in fact came back (I abstain myself from saying whether they got back together or not, Taylor says they do, but I’m open to the possibility they didn’t) and by the time she wrote and released the song her and Matty had not come back together, I mean it was literally confirmed last year when they started dating that they reconnected in 2022 and I see no reason why they would’ve lied about that

oh I’m not certain by any means. I literally flip flop hour to hour, and that usually doesn’t happen quite so extremely lol. I think the rosé reference is too little to go on tbh—I know she uses key visual images as symbols of different relationships, but rosé is also just linked to youth, wealth, having a good time, etc. i agree that they definitely reconnected in 2022, but there’s no reason why she wouldn’t have wondered about him before when she was miserable. like, she pretty much explicitly says she did on chloe et al. it’s not like she was in touch with jake, harry, or john when making midnights, but she wrote about them anyway. I just think that if there are multiple songs on ttpd about how she at least wondered about him a few times—yes, fortnight definitely comes after their reunion, but chloe doesn’t necessarily—and there’s a song she wrote about a film that was never made with someone who has a chosen family and meets women on the internet, it’s pretty reasonable that those two muses are linked. the love triangle/cardigan def has way more to do with joe than matty (again, specific imagery), but the 1 is a different matter, especially when you consider that she wrote it on the same day as hoax. she was going through a lot of turmoil in her life and resorted to daydreaming about a relationship that never really came to be. that’s exactly the story ttpd tells.

eta; a lot of songs on folklore probably aren’t about one thing only, but idk the 1 always felt kind of specific to me, and i could never pinpoint why (i know a lot of people disagree). she said hoax was unusual for her because it had multiple muses. she could’ve used that style of writing in another song she were the same day, but I’m inclined to think a ton of songs on folklore aren’t all that vague lol.

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wub-fur-radio · 10 months

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Scott Pilgrim vs. The Daleks

Soundtrack for an imaginary pop culture mashup of epic proportions (where everyone’s favorite 23-year old Canadian indie rock slacker saves Toronto from almost certain doom by taking on the baddest aliens in the Whoniverse with his unstoppable 8-bit video game-style fighting technique). Featuring 23 of 2023’s top indie/power pop/garage/punk/noise pop acts including Dot Dash, Versing, Alien Nosejob, the Exbats, Be Your Own Pet, Uni Boys, Guided By Voices, Bass Drum of Death Jacuzzi Boys, Woolen Men, and 13 more bands who know how to put the screw into a sonic screwdriver.

Apologies to Bryan Lee O’Malley, Kim Pine, Plumtree, The Doctor, the Daleks, and the Beeb.

▶︎🎶 Listen on Mixcloud

Running Time: 1 hour, 11 seconds

Tracklist

Tense & Nervous (2:02) — Dot Dash | Washington, DC

Distractions (1:56) — Versing | Seattle, WA

Flakin’ Out (3:27) — The Ific | San Francisco, CA

I'm Lost (3:13) — Alien Nosejob | VIC, Australia

I Don't Believe in Love (3:10) — Uni Boys | Los Angeles, CA

Brain Shock (1:39) — Pheromones | Italy

Rock 'N' Roll Boy (2:58) — The Mudd Club | Bristol, UK

Imaginary Girlfriend (2:14) — TV Party | Ventura, CA

Where Have All the Good Times Gone (2:29) — The Grip Weeds | Highland Park, NJ

Workin’ Too Hard (1:58) — Woolen Men | Portland, OR

Better At Love (2:49) — The Exbats | Arizona

Big Trouble (3:02) — Be Your Own Pet | Nashville, TN

I Used to Be Fun (2:36) — Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers | Canberra, Australia

Everybody's Gonna Be There (2:13) — Bass Drum of Death | Mississippi

Local Master Airplane (2:16) — Guided By Voices | Dayton, OH

Hot! Heat! Wow! Hot! (3:33) — Psychedelic Porn Crumpets | Perth, Australia

What Does Moon Think (2:57) — SIZ | Bordeaux, France

No Plan (2:42) — The Arrogants | Lille, France

Orange Juice (2:59) — Pop Crimes | Paris, France

Is It Really Any Wonder (1:44) — Strange Magic | New Mexico

On the Ropes (1:48) — Jacuzzi Boys | Miami. FL

Dead Cities (3:04) — Scream | Washington, DC

1999 (2:46) — Avions | Lyon, France Outro: Scott Pilgrim [Radio Edit] (0:38) — Plumtree | Halifax, Canada

All tracks released in 2023 except the last, which is from 2022, and the Outro, which was originally released in 1997.

#indie rock #power pop #garage rock #noise pop #punk rock #music mixes #scott pilgrim #doctor who

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sopheadraws · 25 days

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Thanks for the tag, @birdofmay!

Okay, so I don't actually have any playlists of my own; I entirely use playlists made by other people/generated by Spotify/actual albums, so I had to improvise. I stuck all six Spotify "Daily Mixes", my top 100 songs of 2021, 2022, and 202; my "On Repeat" playlist, and my "Repeat Rewind" playlist into a brand new playlist that contains 563 songs. I'm not good about favoriting songs, so I thought this was the fairest system. Some songs I don't actually know may come out of the Daily Mixes, so if that happens, I'll listen to it for the first time. Okay, cool.

1. Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran do a cover of the "Thriller/Heads Will Roll" Glee mashup.

Well, Taylor and Ed are two people, and this is a duet, so that's a good start. However, that's as far as my enthusiasm goes. Taylor has a *good* voice, however, she's not really a belter, which is all the "Heads Will Roll" part is. And Ed Sheeran covering Michael Jackson is not something that needs to happen.

2. The Warblers from Glee cover "I Feel Pretty/Unpretty"...also from Glee.

This is a song a female insecurity (arguably with lesbian undertones). I do not want an all male a cappella group involving themselves. Terrible idea.

3. Johnny Cash covers "Girl on Fire". Specifically the Glee arrangement.

This is so stupid that I love it. Johnny "Ring-Of-Fire" Cash covering a 2010s pop song about a woman being metaphorically on fire is hilarious to me. And the Glee arrangement is the icing on the cake.

4. Johnny Cash covers "champagne problems" by Taylor Swift.

Interesting that I got Johnny Cash twice in a row. Anyways, I think this just might work. I can't explain why. But it would.

5. Brittany from Glee covers "Million Reasons" by Lady Gaga.

Brittany can only really pull off heavily produced dance pop, and this song is a belting-heavy ballad. Sorry, Britt, but it's a no for me.

6. Simon & Garfunkel cover "obsessed" by Olivia Rodrigo.

I can't * f a t h o m * how this would sound. I am intrigued to hear it, but I sense it would be terrible. But, then again, Paul Simon is a musical genius and I could listen to Art Garfunkel sing anything.

7. Natasha Bedingfeld covers "Last Kiss" by Taylor Swift.

Natasha Bedingfeld is one of the never-heard-of-this-person-before-in-my-life musicians I warned you might appear on this playlist. Having heard one song, she's a generic pop artist. Sort of a Beyoncé vibe. I'm sure she'd do just fine covering Taylor.

8. Avril Lavigne covers "Operator" by Jim Croce.

Avril is another person I don't actually listen to (I actually know who she is this time). Uhh.. this cover would be wack, but I'm not sure if it's wack in a good or bad way.

9. Darren Criss covers "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" by Tracy Chapman.

(Yes, this was a DC original song, not a Glee cover.) Okay, so, having been on Glee, Darren knows how to do a killer cover, and I'm sure this would be no different. Kind of a tone deaf song selection on his part, however.

10. Olivia Rodrigo covers "Heaven Is A Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle.

I do know this song, and it's not *out* of my taste range, but I don't think I've ever listened to it on Spotify before, so. Anyways, I think this is the best combination I've gotten! I really want to hear this now! Best for last!

Well, Sina, and these the crazy combinations you expected from me? Very Glee heavy and most of the combinations would be horrid, which seems in character.

I would like to see what @doctor-whu @porcelainvino @wheresurboytonighthelookslikeenj @katyobsesses @angelhummel and @hevanderson get if you want to try :))

#tag game #image #described #music #taylor swift #ed sheeran #glee #johnny cash #lady gaga #simon & garfunkel #olivia rodrigo #natasha bedingfield #avril lavigne #jim croce #darren criss #tracy chapman #belinda carlisle #philosophie of mind

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