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Holy moly! A second charity album and this one from Fugazi featuring recordings they did in Chicago at Electrical Audio Studio with Steve Albini back in ā92.
In addition to the stellar cast of musicians involved, renowned filmmaker and Academy Award Winner Jonathan Glazer acted as Creative Director for āHELP(2)ā, working with Academy Films to assemble a team of brilliant creatives and overseeing the filming and art direction for the project.
If thereās one album you pick up today on Bandcamp Friday, it should probably be this one. Following in the footsteps of the ā95 Brian Eno- produced HELP, proceeds from HELP(2) go to to benefit humanitarian efforts to aid, protect, and educate children in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Ukraine.
If these 23 old heads are having to gig for Uber and Amway at 80-years old, whatever pension they are getting from the NBA isnāt enough. Just give these guys $1k-a-month to help meet their basic needs, at least. The NBA just signed the biggest tv deal ever and canāt scrounge around the couch cushions for $2.7 million (which would cover $1k/month for 23 players for ten years)??? Hell, put $2mil in a savings account and between interest and guys passing away, it should be more than covered.
āThe system ingests 100-plus data streams simultaneously,ā Habib notes. The result is a constantly updating map of global tensions: conflict zones with escalation scores, military aircraft broadcasting positions through ADS-B transponders, ship movements tracked through AIS signals, nuclear installations, submarine cables, internet outages and satellite fire detections.
This is incredibly cool.
The visual is stunning, and the whole idea of just having a dashboard of all major events happening across the globe is insane.
From conflicts to extreme weather and other major events; having a complete view pulling from so many sources and doing multiple source checks is awesome. Clicking into one provides points of context, headlines, key developments, facts and figures, and more.
To top it off, it was built by a musicāstreaming CEO in India, which is wild to me.
I just learned that friend of the Variable, Lucas, developer extraordinaire, developed the Monologue app for iOS, taking the initial concept and prototype that was vibe-coded based on the Mac app and turning it into an absolutely killer iPhone app. Still not a huge fan of the extremely AI bullish Every, but knowing that a developer like Lucas, who puts time, care, and attention into everything he does, is working on it now means this app should progress and only improve for the better. Iāve now switched to it from SuperWhisper for all my transcription needs.
The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is āground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.
Honestly, I really love this idea. Itās so easy to just fall into doom scrolling and go down a never-ending rabbit hole. So forcing some kind of decision-making to continue is a good idea, given some of the addiction weāve seen arise from these types of apps.
Iāve also been thinking defaulting to an algorithmic timeline should be nixed. If a user wants to make that decision and switch over, let āem. But even on Instagram, where you have the following feed, you have to switch to it every single timeāthat should be the default. Then you can switch to a discover feed or the algorithm or whatever if you so choose.
Or maybe Iām just a weak human being with no self-control. But both could be true.
Status is the definitive nightly briefing that informs readers about what is really happening in the halls of media power.
A newsletter about the history behind todayās politics. Click to read Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson, a Substack publication with millions of subscribers.
Jason Kottkeās daily links and commentary on art, science, technology, design, film, and culture since 1998.
