SCALES #70: over & over
Hello!
SCALES is back for a third fourth (*checks the archive, raises eyebrows*) fifth season. In the spirit of hyper-specific television Wikipedia pages, a detailed rundown of the past and future newsletter:
- Season 1: #1–20, Feb 2017–Jul 2017
- Season 2: #21–40, Sep 2017–Apr 2018
- Season 3: #41–57, May 2018–May 2019
- Season 4: #58–69, Sep 2019–Jun 2020
- Season 5: #70–100*, Jan 2021–Dec 2021*
*Issues on order, timing of midseason break TBD
Season 4 petered out because, well, a variety of reasons. For one, you can imagine the result of an attitude of, “I feel neither equipped to address this week’s Situation in the newsletter nor comfortable pretending nothing is going on, so I’ll just give it a week and see how things are looking then”.
But now, Season 5! The goal is for the newsletter to exist in and engage with, however imperfectly, this world as we all try to muddle through to a better one. I hope you come along.
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Newsletters
Tabs is back. I had just been thinking about how Today in Tabs would fit in with the current newslettering ~moment~ and now—I guess we’ll see! Funny how a posture of knowing archness from five or so years ago transforms into nostalgia. For me, a foundational piece of understanding what a newsletter can be. BNet and Garbage Day have somewhat scratched the itch of, “What weirdness is happening online”, but not quite in the same way.
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Music
New Nilüfer EP. "Crash" features a descending—wait for it…—scale, repeating endlessly until statement transforms into mantra.
A.G. Cook reaches back to “Crimson and Clover” to contextualize his experimental pop, in the “A.G. Extreme Vocals” heptych of 7G.
The Onlies, S/T, “The House Carpenter”: timeless melody perfectly juiced by harmonizing vocals in peaks of the later stanzas.
Regardless of whether or not the “In a world” / “Inner world” punning is intentional, the Dirty Projectors track has been running through my head that way for months.
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Science
In terms of showing what inequities in PM2.5 exposure looks like to a general audience, I think this New York Times package, “Who Gets to Breathe Clean Air in Delhi?”, has a lot going for it.
An extraordinarily sensitive piece of reporting about prenatal testing for Down Syndrome and bioethics by Sarah Zhang in The Atlantic.
The interactive cameras and lenses explainer I wish I had in grad school.
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Year in Review
April 2020
May 2020
June 2020
July 2020
August 2020
September 2020
October 2020
November 2020
December 2020
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Thanks for reading! You can always forward to a friend/reply and say hi/subscribe.
—Adam