“‘Mad Men’ in the public consciousness has come to represent exactly the kind of rose-coloured fantasy world the television series was intent on dismantling.”

(via Screw Rock ‘n’ Roll)

The Lagunitas Wilco Tango Foxtrot Ale: want! (with more jobs, naturally). Via.

The Ike Reilly Assassination - I Don’t Want What You Got (Goin On)

(free on Amazon mp3, at least for now!)

Randy Newman - I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It)

thepublics:

STREET FIGHTIN’ MAN

The guy was coming to shoot up Jack Rabbit’s house in the middle of the night. He’d already fired on other homes in the old east side neighborhood to scare residents he’d suspected of calling the cops on him. It turned out the gunman was a drug dealer, and when neighbors had called the cops on him, or had gotten in his way, he retaliated by shooting up their houses. Earlier that day, James “Jack Rabbit” Jackson — a retired Detroit cop — parked his car in front of the dealer’s house and pointed a video camera at him in a blatant effort to disrupt his business. It drove the guy away for the day.

Now he was coming back for Jackson. And Jackson was waiting for him…

BONUS: 100 Abandoned houses (Detroit)

What happens to these neighborhoods when their Jack Rabbits fade away?

Harry Nilsson - Me And My Arrow

So I was listening to some Blackalicious*, and I got to wondering who they were sampling, and it turns out Me And My Arrow had nothing to do with James Taylor (why did I think that?) but instead was part of the soundtrack to one of those hoary 70s animated specials with Ringo Starr in it, and that made me think about Thomas The Tank Engine, and Marx. So, uh, wherever we go, everyone knows, it’s me and my arrow.

*click through to listen. or go to lala. whatever: 

**Tumblr doesn’t seem to like the embedded .mp3 of Me And My Arrow above; you have to manually scrub forward to listen. Or go here.

purns:

“Books in the Age of the iPad.” Finally.

Craig Mod:

As the publishing industry wobbles and Kindle sales jump, book romanticists cry themselves to sleep. But really, what are we shedding tears over?

We’re losing the throwaway paperback.
The airport paperback.
The beachside paperback.

We’re losing the dredge of the publishing world: disposable books. The book printed without consideration of form or sustainability or longevity. The book produced to be consumed once and then tossed. The book you bin when you’re moving and you need to clean out the closet.

These are the first books to go. And I say it again, good riddance.

…

You already know the potential gains: edgier, riskier books in digital form, born from a lower barrier-to-entry to publish. New modes of storytelling. Less environmental impact. A rise in importance of editors. And, yes — paradoxically — a marked increase in the quality of things that do get printed.

more…

Not only is this article extremely well presented, it’s also one of the most optimistic yet sober takes on publishing and the iPad I’ve read.

fuckyeahchemistry:

Some women are lucky enough to see colors beyond what the rest of us can imagine.

Tetrachromats have four color receptors rather than the regular three, allowing them to see colors the rest of us can’t even dream about. Because of genetic issues, it is impossible that a male could be a tetrochromat, and it is in fact more likely for males to be minus one of the regularcolor receptors, making them functionally colorblind.

A tetrochromat would have another color beyond the standard green, red, and blue trichromats experience, a color somewhere between red and blue, which would allow a tetrachromat to experience millions of extra colors when mixed with other shades.

However, even with an extra color receptor, tetrachromats still do not see colors above or below the regular range of human beings, rather, they see extra colors within the range.

evangotlib:

rafimama:

A great song about Vegan Boys.

fleetfootedfox:

undergroundgaragesale:

iheartmyart:

54kan:suzukichiyo:t-s-k-b:

Huangshan (Yellow Mountains) (via Aaron D. Feen)

The other photos in Aaron Feen’s China set are pretty amazing, too.

In conclusion, the data appear to show that the real factor in goods job creation (or loss) is the relationship between productivity and production, which unfortunately leaves little room for protectionism (even sans the trade war implications that would create), as unless productivity falls precipitously we would see no net job creation from any such endeavor.

By the way, this all jibes with much of the Jacobs I’ve been reading. Cities and the Wealth of Nations has been wrenching around everything I thought I knew (or had been taught) about economics. The more I learn, the more a large national economy (*cough* essentially the aggregate of many separate urban economies *cough*) seems to behave like an incredibly complex biological system. That oldest of economic metaphors, the human body, really is perfect. We are ourselves meta-organisms, and so are our social/economic constructions.