deathmtn

“What streaming service should I use instead of Spotify?” is a question I’ve been seeing constantly over the past few months.

Here’s my contrarian answer: What if there’s no ethical way to have unlimited access to every book, film, and record ever created? And moreover, what if that’s not something we should want?

What if we simply decided to consume less media, allowing us to have a deeper appreciation for the art we choose to spend our time with? What if, instead of having an on-demand consumer mindset that requires us to systematically strip art of all its human context, we developed better relationships with creators and built new structures to support them?

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Tapes make music-listening into an intentional practice that encourages us to spend time connecting with the art, instead of frantically vibe-surfing for something that suits our mood from moment-to-moment. They reject the idea that the point of discovering and listening to music is finding the optimal collection of stimuli to produce good brain chemicals.

More importantly, physical media reminds us that nothing good is possible if we refuse to take risks.

While right-wing politics has always celebrated sports, especially violent, hyper-masculine ones, jiu jitsu has taken center stage in conservative circles over the past few years. Joe Rogan talks about it on every podcast episode, when there’s time left after glazing hedge fund managers and promoting brain pills; Mark Zuckerberg began training as part of his “masculine energy” lifestyle; and Elon Musk claims jiu jitsu is one weapon in his hand-to-hand combat arsenal, along with full contact karate and “no rules street fighting.” (Only the monkeys who had their brains fried by Musk’s Neurolink believe that.) Following Trump’s inauguration, a cadre of MAGA-obsessed jiu jitsu practitioners and MMA fighters were personally invited to the Mar-A-Lago celebrations.

While 21st-century American conservatives have claimed the sport, the jiu jitsu-practitioner-to-fascist pipeline is nothing new. Helio Gracie, the patriarch of the aforementioned Gracie family, was a tried-and-true fascist. He was a member of Brazil’s Catholic fascist party (the Ação Integralista Brasileira) in the 1930s and wore the fascist uniform during high-profile fights and public events.

What makes jiu jitsu different from other sports is that conservatives frequently position the martial art as a model for their ideal society. In the below clip from his podcast, Joe Rogan claimed Mark Zuckerberg’s libertarian politics came from practicing jiu jitsu. (He also mentions he has terrible CTE, which people should remember when evaluating Rogan’s claims.)

"Happy People" was brilliantly filmed, but not by Herzog. In effect, he found it, and, with permission, appropriated it. The appeal to Herzog is clear -- the film presents yet another encounter at the end of the world.

It all began when Herzog was visiting a friend who happened to be watching a four-hour Russian TV documentary. It told the story of a village on the Yenisei River in the Taiga, the vast forest that spreads across Siberia. The focus was on the village's hunters and fishermen. These men include both ethnic Russians and native Siberian Kets -- the latter are, in effect, an endangered race, like aborigines in many lands.

Herzog was fascinated by what he saw and got in touch with the Russian director, Dmitry Vasyukov, to ask permission to edit the footage into a feature of about an hour and a half. Vasyukov agreed, and he and Herzog share directors' credit.

The original film was conceived by two of the hunters and fishermen, Mikhail Tarkovsky (nephew of famous filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky who himself worked in the taiga area, inspiring him to become a filmmaker), who has lived and worked in the area since 1981, and Gennady Soloviev, the woodsman who has been there the longest and who taught Mikhail. Both men are featured extensively in the film, Mikhail also being one of the cinematographers.

Tarkovsky has written and published numerous short stories about Bakhta and its people and the trappers and natives, which led to the idea for making the film series. Another film based on a novel by Tarkovsky, Frozen Time, has also been produced.[4]

Since the popularity of the TV mini-series, the village of Bakhta has become a tourist spot, with visitors arriving by river boat in the short summer months. Tarkovsky created a museum there that features artifacts and exhibits on the life and work of the trappers, fishermen, boat-builders, craftsmen, and villagers. The museum features a workshop to teach young people practical application on how to live off the land, and to pass down its traditions.[4]

Two months ago, a 9-year-old nonverbal autistic Cambridge student was assaulted en route to his out-of-district school in Southboro.The bus company, NRT, tried to blame the boy’s injuries on another student in the vehicle, until its security video exposed the lie. His own bus monitor had assaulted him. She claimed he was possessed by the devil. According to my conversations with the boy’s mother and her attorney, the second monitor in the vehicle concurred. Autistic students are all possessed by the devil, she allegedly said.

The committee moved on to another time-waster, an attempt by Mayor Simmons to foist on the next committee 17 revisions and amendments of the official rules. Of the changes that no one asked the Mayor to propose, Member Elizabeth Hudson said, “I was surprised to see this on the agenda last week and not receive a redlined version until two and half hours into the meeting today.” “This wasn’t nefarious in any way,” the Mayor replied.

The OCR regularly resolves dozens of racial harassment cases a year and did so even during Trump’s first administration. In the last days of the Biden administration, OCR workers pushed to close out several racial harassment agreements, including one that was signed by the district the day after Trump was inaugurated. With Trump in office, the agency has shifted to resolving cases involving allegations of discrimination against white students.

A seventh grader who describes herself as Afro-Indigenous said school employees witnessed her being pushed, kicked and ridiculed for having darker skin, then having water poured over her head by a boy to “baptize” her for “the sin” of being gay, using a slur. But the school, according to records, merely documented the incidents and then removed the boy from music class for the last weeks of the school year.

The approach to contemporary musical education is rooted in a system developed to train orphans and abandoned children in Renaissance Naples. The word conservatori meant "places to save children," and music provided a way for those who did not inherit a family trade to learn to compose, play instruments, and sing to make a living. The original con-servatory, Santa Maria di Loreto, founded in Naples in 1537, was immensely successful, training the composers Alessandro Scarlatti and Domenico Cimarosa. The movement spread, with Antonio Vivaldi teaching at the Ospedale della Pietà for orphaned and abandoned girls in Venice and composing concerti like the Four Seasons for the school orchestra.

Santos said the scores relate to what she called the school’s “retaliatory, toxic culture.” She says the culture explains the district’s opportunity gap and is “the reason why we’re not seeing [better] outcomes with students.”

Another Fletcher Maynard teacher who resigned in September cited the school’s divisive environment. Domenic Casselli, who taught Spanish at FMA for 11 years, said that the program had been thriving under the previous administration, but began to collapse under the leadership of current principal Bobby Tynes. Casselli said certain groups of parents have become “weaponized” by the FMA administration.

Where the frequentist interpretation struggles most, though, is in handling probabilities of one-time events. For example, if we want to say a certain politician has a 29 percent probability of winning the next election, how can this statement even be given a meaning in terms of frequencies? The election will happen only once, and even if we could imagine repeating it, à la Venn's imaginary coin flips, what conditions would have to change each time in order to produce different outcomes at all? If the election were held again, wouldn't all the voters vote the same way?

Today the animals are worth hundreds of dollars less after President Donald Trump cut his tariffs to reduce the cost of living by bringing more foreign beef to US dinner tables.
“I don’t really understand it politically, he has just alienated a bunch of ranchers,” said Bolton, who warned that allowing more foreign farm goods into the US would put Trump on a collision course with some of his most ardent backers.

Despite the challenges he and other ranchers are facing, Bolton said for now he would continue supporting Trump. “He is putting downward pressure on the beef price, but it’s not a forever deal,” he said. “I think he will adjust.”