The Atlantic

Will you pay more for those shoes before 7 p.m.? Would the price tag be different if you lived in the exurbs? Standard prices and simple discounts are yielding to far more exotic strategies, designed to extract every last dollar from you.

Read text version here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/05/how-online-shopping-makes-suckers-of-us-all/521448/

How Online Shopping Makes Suckers of Us All - The Atlantic - Jerry Useem

Trainings and workshops geared toward eliminating people’s hidden prejudices are all the rage—but most don’t work. Now the psychologist who made the case for "implicit bias" wants to cure it.
Read text version here: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/1857/11/unconscious-bias-discrimination-end/525405/

Is This How Discrimination Ends? - The Atlantic - Jessica Nordell

In the past decade, liberals have emphasized diversity over unity, and avoided inconvenient truths about immigration. It's time to address Americans' yearning for social cohesion.

Read text version here: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-democrats-immigration-mistake/528678/

The Democrats' Immigration Mistake - The Atlantic - Peter Beinart

A hotly contested, supposedly ancient manuscript suggests Christ was married. But believing its origin story—a real-life Da Vinci Code, involving a Harvard professor, a onetime Florida pornographer, and an escape from East Germany—requires a big leap of faith.

The Unbelievable Tale of Jesus' Wife - The Atlantic - Ariel Sabar

In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.

The Coddling of the American Mind - The Atlantic - Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Assertions about how trauma physiologically impedes the ability to resist or coherently remember assault have greatly undermined defense against assault allegations. But science offers little support for these claims.

This is the second story in a three-part series examining how the rules governing sexual-assault adjudication have changed in recent years, and why some of those changes are problematic. Listen to the first installment here: https://soundcloud.com/user-154380542/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-campus-rape-policy-the-atlantic-emily-yoffe

The Bad Science Behind Campus Response to Sexual Assault - The Atlantic - Emily Yoffe

The story of the Russian mob in Spain—and the detectives who spent years trying to bring them down.

Gangsters of the Mediterranean - The Atlantic - Sebastian Rotella

Decades before he ran the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort’s pursuit of foreign cash and shady deals laid the groundwork for the corruption of Washington.

Paul Manafort, American Hustler - The Atlantic - Franklin Foer

Falsehoods almost always beat out the truth on Twitter, penetrating further, faster, and deeper into the social network than accurate information.

The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News - The Atlantic - Robinson Meyer

A Warning From Europe - The Atlantic - Anne Applebaum

Chill Out Revolution – Downtempo Chill Out, Velvet Chill Out, Electro Vibes

Dive into the Waves

Recess

Sad Tone For The Truly Alone

Piercing melodic rumble from Honey Radar's Jason Henn. Heavy VU vibes as usual, mixing experimentation with analog layers, hypnotic dissonance, and a soft Nico-ish chorus. I once called him the Madlib of garage-rock for his propensity to collage styles and sounds. This is a new release, and it features a fading solo, cool and laid back like Saturday band practice. Stream at your own pleasure.

Jazz Pigs In High School

Stream EP

Jason Henn - "Kimono Photoshoot" (2020)

What a strange, odd, mixed-up year it has been.  The yellow spanner of Covid-19 really wrecked a lot of plans. I was all booked to travel to Estonia to record, but it had to be cancelled.   Very noticeable was the sunlight, perhaps it was because there was few jet trails, but when the day was cloudless the sunlight could be absolutely dazzling, it had the strange effect of making it feel like we were living in paradise.     Because of the restrictions I am so glad the woods is only within a moderate cycle distance from my home.  I am very fortunate that I have two fairly good places to record relatively close by.  I even found a wild sand dune area not even five kilometers away,  I hope to record more there in the future.   Disc 1 track 2 is from a much longer recording, it is probably one of the best recordings made during the 2020 season, I had made a few recordings, near the stream, then a bit less close, then a bit further away and another even further away, as I wanted a sound where the stream was a suggestion rather than really dominating the sound picture.  The Blue Tits nested in a cavity block in the wall of my home, there is an vent on the inside of the block, so I only needed to place the microphone up to that to get a fantastic close perspective recording.  
I include two recordings of the Blue tits as they sounded so different when I recorded them a week later.  Sometimes I would get great results by leaving the old Marantz recorder hidden in a bushy place while I go not too far away to record with the new recorder, I love how I had no idea of what it has captured for me, only later when the track loaded on the computer did I get to see if it captured anything worthwhile.  This was the case with Blackbird - alarm calls (Track 3 on disc 2).  I think the peaks came in at about minus six db.  This year was my first time to use Contact microphones and a Hydrophone.    
At the beginning of April my dad Desmond died, he was 89, a great age.  Apart from Covid, we could see he wasn’t going to live much longer, he had been deteriorating noticeably for months up to that.  Why then are the covers for the two discs so strange ?  
A birdsong production should have birds on it !   My dad was big into sun power and indeed wind power even long before it became popular.  Over by my workshop he had placed a few sun power panels on the wall, these were wired into a small room to a panel on the wall with six switches.  I thought it a good way to remember him by including a picture of part of his panel for disc one front cover.  I was going to include the six switches in the picture, but my heart of hearts said no, it didn’t look good, too much scruffy brown, but I include it in the zipped folder (If you are buying it on Bandcamp)so you can see what I am talking about.  I had almost chosen it, as it occurred to me one morning that the six switches are like the levels of lockdown (I hate that term, but I have to use it here) thankfully we didn’t have a level six, maybe that is like in a movie I saw where the authorities came and boarded up a house with the people still inside.  In the end I used the part of the photo with the meter.   
The butterflies . . . Dessie we call him, was always interested in butterflies, that is where I got my interest in nature, as a child he used to bring us for walks up along the canal to see the wild flowers and butterflies.  The picture comes from one drawer of his small collection of Irish butterflies he put together maybe around the late 1940’s or 1950’s ??  Very few of them are even in one piece now, this drawer just looked the part, it was all mixed up and spoiled like the year had been, the summer we never really had, at least not the way we wanted or had planned it.

A Strange Year - Disc One - (Album Sample)

African Desert is a collection of soundscapes recorded in the Namib desert. It covers a variety of locations, from sand dunes and canyons to desert pavement and rocky outcrops. Available at https://mindful-audio.com/african-desert/

Downloadable demo - all rights reserved. License agreement available at https://mindful-audio.com/eula

A Warning From Europe - The Atlantic - Anne Applebaum

TheAtlantic

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