The Offline Report

Movie director and author John Waters is championing his position as the "Pope of Trash" through a sharp cultural turn that would do away with his feifdom all together were it not for his leadership. "Total Trash Productions", the event planners behind an annual music festival in Oakland for which Waters MC'd, is undergoing sensitivity training, the SF Chronicle reports : Marc Ribak and Amy Carver of Total Trash Productions severed ties with the festival’s former namesake Burger Records after dozens of women took to social media to share their experiences of sexual coercion by older musicians from a long list of bands on the Southern California garage rock label, including the East Bay punk band SWMRS, which features drummer Joey Armstrong (son of Green Day singer Billie Joe Armstrong), the Buttertones, Cosmonauts, the Growlers and the Black Lips, among others. Waters told Marc Maron this week that while he himself is a liberal, "I fear liberal censo...

April 28, 2021 Making a Virtue Out of Neglect: How Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism Exacerbates Big Tech’s Absentee Ownership Problem:     balkin.blogspot.com Creation of First Human-Monkey Embryos Sparks Concern:     wsj.com "And the case of Brandi Levy, who at 14 years old let off some steam in a profanity-laden social media post in 2017 aimed at her school, her team and 'everything,' may wind up as one of the court's most important decisions on student speech in a generation."    usatoday.com   📰 "'This fix is a one-line thing where you remove a line that logs sensitive information to the system log. It doesn’t impact the program, it doesn’t change how it works, ' said Joel Reardon, co-founder and forensics lead of AppCensus. 'It’s such an obvious fix, and I was flabbergasted that it wasn’t seen as that.'"    themarkup.com   📧 "A sure sign of the increasing number of resellers vying for product...

As told to Marc Maron : YYM: Interesting that you say that. The other thing that I believe deeply is that um we're all capable of both the most vile acts in the world as well as the most trancendental ah, human achievements. Right? And it's not that there are good people and bad people. No we ARE the people. We contain that. And depending on how we happen to be born or constructed or nurtured these different aspects will come out. ... and so if there's anything I can do in music it's not to say I'm playing for good ppl or bad ppl or rich ppl or poor ppl or green ppl or purple ppl Rather it's to actually celebrate the deepest of what, you know, humans, are. It's our humanity. You know.. Let's forget all the names and categories and whatever When we're sitting in a room together we are one and with the vibrations in the air molecules that the sounds are making it's touching all of our skins and entering into us ... It turns whatever is th...

From Why Do Historians Still Have To Go To Archives? in Contingent Magazine: Archivists are also the only reason researchers have useful access to materials in the first place. Any historical collections you use in an archive probably started out sitting in boxes, waiting for an archivist to map out exactly what was in there, make decisions about how to order and preserve that material, and write a guide to the collection—often the most valuable thing an archive can provide in digital format. And when I say “waiting for an archivist,” I really mean “waiting for the archive to have the time, money, and staffing to be able to process the materials it wants to make available to researchers.” This experience and expertise is part of why visiting an archive is valuable for scholars. When I visit an archive, there are files I know I am going to look through, but many times an archivist recommends additional files. They help researchers make connections between their subjects, helping u...

From 'On the Media' we hear how QAnon infiltrated the yoga and "wellness" communities via Instagram to recruit new members. Yoga teacher Seane Corn decided she couldn't be neutral. ------------------------------------ Further Reading and Listening: "In this moment of growth, one community in particular has found itself prey to QAnon: the yoga, wellness, and spirituality world, where skepticism about vaccines has intersected with the rapid spread of disinformation online to create a toxic stew known as 'conspirituality,' a term popularized by a podcast of the same name that tracks the convergence of conspiracy theories and 'faux-progressive wellness utopianism.'"    wnycstudios.org This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

We will always have privacy, Eric Schmidt. I don't care that you led a commission to produce a report that says privacy will 'effectively disappear'. You will still close the door to the bathroom stall when you engage with a toilet. And you'll duck out from the crowd on many other occassions. We've always had privacy and always will have it. ------------------------------------------ Further Reading: Covid-19 Fuels Inequality, Political Divide, Authoritarianism World-Wide, U.S. Intelligence Analysts Say Quadrennial Global Trends report also warns privacy will ‘effectively disappear’ and synthetic media will ‘distort truth and reality’:     wsj.com This work by AJ Fish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License .

"...because life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you. How do I know this? I don't. But I'm making sound, and that's the important thing. That's what I'm here to do." Yes it's Jim Carrey all right. Sometimes I think that's the only thing that's important, really, you know? Is just, letting each other know we're here, you know? Reminding each other that we're part of a larger self. ...I used to think Jim Carrey is all that I was.... just a flickering light a dancing shadow the great nothing mascarading as something you can name. Seeking shelter in caves and foxholes, dug out hastily. An archer, searching for his target in the mirror. Wounded only by my own arrows. Begging to be enslaved. Pleading for my chains. Blinded by longing. And tripping, over paradise. CAN I GET AN AMEN? You didn't think I could be serious, did ya? I don't think you understand who you're dealing with! I have no limits. He ...

Welcome to our world! We have to check email, slack, text messages and voicemails. And don't forget to login to twitter to check DMs and separately login to NextDoor to check for replies from people who could have stopped by to say hello and annoy you but in light of today's lifestyle, an annoyance would be so welcomed. Without idle chit-chat these platforms all feel like WORK. And it's a reason remote work is driving people to consider quitting, according to the Miami Herald : Some of the reasons why at-home offices proved to be busts are communication over too many platforms (41%), a “significant uptick” in online messages with co-workers (34%), insufficient IT support (34%), and general confusion due to spotty communication between different teams across a company (32%). That was linked to from an article in the Atlantic titled The Hidden Toll of Remote Work . The author who teaches said once in-person classes resumed, he felt more energetic and more optimistic. Hi...