magpie 57/ when toddlers dance to the Supremes
Let’s start with something joyful for a bleak week.
You may recall the viral clip from 7 years ago where Pharrell Williams, nearly in tears, tells an awkward young Maggie Rogers "I have zero, zero notes".
I'm not tracking new music - hell even the cover images for Dad rock and Dad rap playlists look like me - but I like her stuff a lot. New Yorker has an expansive article about her journey, which made me smile inside and out.
In the video for “Alaska,” she strides through a forest at dusk, wearing jeans and a baggy zippered sweatshirt, her hair down, no visible makeup, periodically twisting and jerking her body in a way that reminds me of both the best modern dancers and my toddler when she hears the Supremes.
Also buried in the article is a reference to Gogol Bordello, an absolutely whacky band you should appreciate, if only to inspire you to start wearing purple.
A clever analysis looked at the volume and types of entrepreneurship occurring after Occupy Wall Street. In this paper they show that the occupy movement led to the founding of more microbreweries, among other ‘community focused businesses’.
I don’t have access to the full paper, which I assume is sterling scholarship, but this is the internet so I won’t hesitate to react anyway: is there a sadder way to describe the state of leftist politics? All the promise of starting a revolution and all we got out was aggressively bitter beers with punny names. Via
When people tell you who they are you should believe them. Admiral Mike Studeman, who was a senior US military official in indo-pac and now a military-think tank person, writes quite an essay about how the world is ignoring “obvious” signs that China’s preparing to invade Taiwan.
My own confirmation bias wants me to ignore this but because I got this from Ben Qiu, who I take very seriously, I take it seriously too.
20% sour grapes and 80% WE F@*#%^ TOLD YOU SO: The deaths of effective altruism. It’s a vicious and snarky takedown of the former philosophy and charity ‘it kids’ of the past few years.
Unsurprising that Sam Bankman Fried’s pet philosophy was full of charlatans, excesses and no proof that their ‘data driven approach to impact’ ever y’know, made impact. via