Reading

Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 23:00

Jazz pushes boundaries. It has ambiguity. It makes people think. That’s why they hate it. And if you’re a jazz musician, this could be an issue. You never know when someone will have heard too many notes and become violent. Luckily, there’s a lot you can do to protect yourself.

Jazz Music

This is your first line of defense. Your music should do a good enough job of keeping would-be listeners/attackers away. No one goes looking for jazz on purpose. But you might find yourself playing jazz in a public space, like a bar or some awful gazebo. When you surprise someone with jazz, they can become angry. Your free-playing will confuse them. Their search for a coherent melody will drive them into a violent psychosis, or what musicologists call a “jazz-chosis.” But don’t soil your slacks yet. Your music isn’t your only weapon.

Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 22:12
. ‘Rigorous’ and ‘precise’ economic models cannot be considered anything else than unsubstantiated conjectures as long as they aren’t supported by evidence from outside the theory or model. To my knowledge, no in any way decisive empirical evidence has been presented. No matter how precise and rigorous the analysis, and no matter how hard one […]
Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 20:51

‘We live in an attention economy…with the attention I can get more fame and monetise,’ says 24-year-old Harrison Sullivan (known as HSTikkyTokky online) early on in Louis Theroux’s latest Netflix documentary, Inside The Manosphere, which explores the growing network of ultra-masculine online content creators. ‘I coach boys how to be fucking boys. How to make […]

Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 10:31

“Gregg Phillips, President Trump’s appointee overseeing disaster response, insists he was once teleported from his home to a Georgia Waffle House.”
Yahoo News

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Pete Hegseth: Frat party to a bathroom floor

Stephen Miller: Transylvania to Washington, DC

Tulsi Gabbard: Russia to the Fulton County Election Office

Linda McMahon: Friday Night Smackdown to your child’s public school classroom

Greg Bovino: 1942 Germany to present-day America

JD Vance: His marital bed to a Raymour & Flanigan

Sean Duffy: Real World/Road Rules Challenge set to the Department of Transportation—and very likely back again

Markwayne Mullin: Anger management class to Rand Paul’s front yard

Pam Bondi: Epstein Island to the document-shredding room

Russell Vought: Hell to Earth

Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 08:00
Dass die Kritische Theorie, nicht irgendeine, sondern die in Frankfurt entstandene, nur im ständigen Hin und Her zwischen Kant und Hegel fortzuführen sei, wussten beide vom ersten Moment ihrer Begegnung an; ihr Pakt lag darin begründet, dass sie sich über die Zentralstellung dieser philosophischen Konstellation einig waren. Beide teilten von Beginn an auch die Überzeugung, […]
Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 04:01

Oh my god, hi! I’m thrilled to see you here, especially so soon after I sent you the link to my short story draft. If you’re just taking a peek, no worries. I don’t expect any notes right away.

But I am going to start a timer to see how long you linger here, not-so-subtly disguised as Anonymous Kraken. The length of your stay reveals the extent of my draft’s power to pull the reader in. So even before you’ve given me any notes, you’re already saving me from downward spiraling into self-doubt. Thank you!

Oh dang, you left after just twelve seconds.

That’s okay. Maybe you had to go because your cat started a kitchen fire. Or maybe you clicked the link by accident and were like, “Whoops, this definitely isn’t the URL to activate my twenty dollars in Kohl’s cash.” Or maybe you opened the doc and saw that it’s yet ANOTHER tale about a girl and a horse that everyone underestimated, and you couldn’t X out of the tab fast enough. Just kidding—I know not everything is about me and my silly writing project.

Created
Tue, 24/03/2026 - 02:17
They try to explain business cycles solely as problems of information, such as asymmetries and imperfections in the information agents have. Those assumptions are just as arbitrary as the institutional rigidities and inertia they find objectionable in other theories of business fluctuations … I try to point out how incapable the new equilibrium business cycles […]
Created
Mon, 23/03/2026 - 23:16

For fifteen years or so, I’d been kicking around the idea of resurrecting the artist-apprentice model that reigned in the art world for hundreds of years.

Again and again, I’d heard from young people who lamented the astronomical and ever-rising cost of art school. For many college-level art programs, the total cost to undergraduates is now over $100,000 a year. I hope we can all agree that charging students $400,000 for a four-year degree in visual art is objectively absurd. And this prohibitive cost has priced tens of thousands of potential students out of even considering undertaking such an education.

For years, I mentioned this issue to friends in and out of the art world, and everyone, without exception, agreed that the system was broken. Even friends I know who teach at art schools agreed that the cost was out of control, and these spiraling costs were contributing to the implosion of many undergraduate and postgraduate art programs.

Created
Mon, 23/03/2026 - 23:00

As many of you know, something really important is happening, and it’s critical that we all stay informed. There’s a reality star/influencer whose name includes the words Paul, Taylor, and Frankie in an order that is both confusing and ultimately irrelevant. What’s important is that she did some stuff, and now all hell is breaking loose.

You’re probably thinking: “I don’t care,” or “There are more important things happening,” or “This is an intentional distraction orchestrated by our algorithmic AI overlords.”

Maybe it does feel like I’m being fed this content against my will, but that’s only because I’m paying attention to what’s happening in the world. And sure, those things are really important, but we also invade other countries all the time now. Keep up. Maybe we’ll have midterm elections, maybe not. Who knows?

But this stuff with the Mormon wives? It’s happening right now, and it’s a doozy.

Created
Mon, 23/03/2026 - 21:50
And Now for the Weather Today is set to be agreeably alliterative  across an assortment of areas although the occasional metaphor  may cause some faces to cloud.  Idioms will be coming down like stair rods in northern regions, while the south  may experience the odd outbreak of similes, like an unexpected shower of arrows.  In coastal, littoral, and…