Sprezzatura

Trigger warnings, lads. If you don't wanna hear about blokes being cunts, look away now. 2016 was " Rock's not dead, it belongs to rap now ". 2017 was " Rock's not dead, it's the perfect reaction to [Brexit/Drumpf] now ". 2018 is "Rock's not dead, it belongs to women now." Towards the back half of the decade, lots of female artists and female-fronted bands came to the fore in a way they hadn't really in previous decades of rock and indie music. This isn't to say there weren't any women in bands before, but they were either well spread out or ghettoised into 'riot grrrl' or ' Lilith Fair shite'. 2018-ish is when you could confidently say that the biggest indie rock acts about - St. Vincent, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, and so on - were pretty much all women. How'd that happen, and why should you be arsed? This is, weirdly enough, kind of an outgrowth of emo, and it is thus instructive to read " Wh...

( note: i wrote this all in one go and then came back and added links/explanation to shit I couldn't remember cause i though it'd be funnier that way ) Okay, so you remember cable? It was like Twitter but with significantly less ability to melt your brain. Anyway, my dad had Telewest - remember Telewest? It was one of the cable providers that became Virgin Media in like 2006 along with ntl: and a third one that I shan't bother looking up. ( edit: hey, turns out telewest was originally called croydon cable big up the ends. Also the third company in the merger was fucking virgin lmao I hate being a moron ) Anyway, my dad had Telewest cable, and the EPG - you know, the guide thingy - was structured in the usual way. Like 100-200 was "General Entertainment" - your BBC1s, your Sky 1s, your DMAX+2s. The big boys. 200-300 was like "weird alternative entertainment" channels. Documentary channels like Nat Geo and Military History; Men and Motors; whatever the fu...

And so, finally, to Cracked. The great thing about Cracked is that there are actually a lot of different reasons why its Google Trends graph looks like this: There's a lot to unpack here. Let's get to work. Reason #1 - Business Idiocy I was recently laid off but at least there isn't a fire moving towards my home here in Westwood. Now to take a sip of water, go outside and — Daniel O'Brien (@DOB_INC) December 6, 2017 The conventional wisdom behind the fall of Cracked is the fact than in late 2017, their parent company, E.W. Scripps, fired everybody talented. This happened to come down very heavily on the side of the video production team that produced things like After Hours and Some News. On the face of it, this seems like a pretty succinct explanation. Firstly, we know how dumb companies can be , so "they fired their whole staff" doesn't even sound like much of a stretch. Secondly, to be more charitable, there was a big realisation at the e...

I think I said in an earlier post that Gamergate was when everything fell apart. I was wrong. It was Atheism+. I'll be honest, this article is only tangentially about Atheism+, because I can't really begin to bring myself to read up on Internet drama from 6-7 years ago, let alone make you lot read it, but does anyone else even remember this shit? Or is it just me? I Let's backtrack a second. I'm not particularly religious. I make the odd reference to the Bible from time to time, and I say masha'allah and oxala too (at the end of the HSBC post , for example), but that's not because of strongly held beliefs - it's just the culture I was raised in. I think Quakers are pretty cool (they seem like the least problematic sect of Christianity at least, and we all love oats, sweets , and not going to war), and Laughing Stock is definitely the greatest album of all time; I suppose all this makes me culturally Christian, but you still won't catch me in c...

WAAAAHHHH I MISS BEING SEVEN WHEN THE ONLY INTERNET I USED WAS THE CBBC WEBSITE there now you don't have to read the post, you're free :) Some housekeeping before we begin. Firstly, here's Alan Shearer taking like one sentence to say what I took a few paragraphs to. Secondly, in case you were worried , Freedman DID pull the trigger and bring in Batshuayi . David, this internet thing will never catch on... 🤦‍♀️ #davidbowie @timberners_lee pic.twitter.com/XKoSBVqZGU — BBC Radio 6 Music (@BBC6Music) January 13, 2019 To business, then. When I first had the idea to blog, I thought this post would come a lot later, as a sort of grand finale, but it's come to my attention that I can't do a lot of what I want to in the near-future without explaining what I believe. Perhaps I will do something a lot more in-depth, more well-researched, and less bluster-and-bullshit focused in future, but hopefully this will suffice. Samzdat has to walk us through Plato and ...