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Because its easy to like “indie” music like that because it’s all a facade. Getting into real indie rock music is an imposition, not a fashion. You can’t find their albums anywhere. They never tour. They aren’t on Saturday night live or Conan.
Ha ha. The past few years a lot of new music has felt that fashion/blog hype was higher on the priority list then then the music. listened to part of an interview with Lana Del Ray-who is one of those commercial mainstream indie artists. She talked about the recording process for her album. It sounded like her album was made by committee of a few different producers, sound engineers, and beat makers. She said something along the way of how she flew to New York and told a guy to make her a beat that sounds sounds a certain way and then have another producer clean it all up for her. I could only find a snippet of the interview:
Lana Del Rey on describing her sound:
JENNY ELISCU: …With other people that you work with, what sort of references do you give them? Sonic references? Visual references?
LANA DEL REY: I keep it really clear. I talk a lot about Thomas Newman’s score for American Beauty. That was a soundtrack I really was inspired by. Girogio Mirto, I talk about the orchestral work he’s done. Think Thomas Newman score for American Beauty meets early Bruce Springsteen “sex Americana.” And put them together, but place it in Miami and have me singing it. That’s what I tell them.
http://satelliteradioplayground.com/2011/12/07/sirius-xm-radio-nasdaqsiri-lana-del-rey-performs-new-music-on-siriusxmu-sessions/
If I was given a good bank roll and access to top producers, sound engineers, musicians, and beat makers, I could make some catchy songs too.
On a tangential note, I have heard a couple songs by St. Vincent. I thought that they were polished and poppy but I didn’t really get into anything that I have heard. Their songs sort of lacked soul. The other day, I heard a live version of Cruel by St. Vincent on the radio. St. Vincent’s live sound was great. They had this minimalist early post punk vibe from the late 1970’s i.e. rocky, dirty, and dance orientated. I would easily listen to an entire album that sounded like that.
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For the first time in a couple weeks I wasn’t the only cashier on the lumber end of the store today. That was nice, because I had someone to talk to while the store’s traffic was slow this morning. I had one of the few good conversations that I have had at work today. Most of my coworkers only want to talk about video games or reality TV; I don’t have much to say on either of those two subjects. Today at work I found out that one of the new cashiers that I haven’t talked to much, used to be an assistant manager at Manifest Records in Charlotte. Then he got married and moved to Greenville. We had a nice music talk for a while today. He knew Christopher and Franklin. We talked about how much fun Aa and The Intelligence are live. He knew Chris from Lunchbox Records. He likes free form jazz, so we talked about Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman for a while. Then shitty hardcore bands and fun house shows we have been to. Then we made fun of the young kids (He called them the pitchfork kids) for liking all the super poppy indie music like MGMT, Phantogram, and Lykke Li. People who’s idea of indie rock was formed from exposure to punk and noise bands have a hard time grasping how indie bands can sound remarkably similar to top 40 commercial radio bands and still be considered edgy.
Elite Wall Street Donations Jumped 700% in the Last 20 Years
By
Banks “frankly own the place,” Sen. Dick Durbin famously said of Washington during the debate over financial regulation in 2010. And when it comes to total contributions for big donors, you can see what he’s talking about (FIRE = the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector):
Most of the FIRE growth is coming from the securities and investment sector, followed by real estate, Lee Drutman writes at the Sunlight Foundation, elaborating here:
In 1990, 412 of the 1,091 elite donors from the finance industry came from the securities and investment industry, followed by 328 from real estate; by 2010, it was 2,178 from securities and investments, followed by 1,468 from real estate. In 1990, elite donors from securities and investments contributed $6.1 million and elite donors from real estate contributed $4.6 million. In 2010 elite donors from securities and investments contributed $84.0 million, while real estate donors contributed $44.5 million.”
So, in a 20-year period when the financial sector’s share of the economy expanded by a third, from 6% to 8.4% of GDP, donations from this particular group increased by 700%.
Source: The Atlantic
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You are not addressing the argument that the article was highlighting. Equality in the tax laws is the issue. The wealthiest people in America are not paying their proper share of taxes; capital gains should be taxed as income liked they used to be just a few years ago.
This is America where our highest ideals are equality under the rule of law. The facade on the outside of the Supreme Court building reads: Equal Justice under Law. The very low tax rate on dividends, capital gains, and other financial items is this way from years of big money from wealthy donors and groups lobbying for special status. This is a kick in the face to the idea of equality under the law. Compared to the entire population of the USA, a small group of people are not being treated equal under the laws. They are being treated as a special privileged group. When it comes to rule of law in a democracy a privileged group is a serious problem that is as big a failure as a group that is being institutional discriminated against.
Romney’s yearly income is the amount of money that many people dream of getting by winning a state lottery . If you won the lottery, you would still have to pay more taxes on you winnings than what Romney paid on his income.
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http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/romneys-tax-bill-european-style/?smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&seid=auto →
We spoke with tax experts in Germany, France and Britain about how much tax they would expect a citizen of their countries to pay on an income similar to Mr. Romney’s. The short answer is, millions more.
None of our tax advisers, all of whom deal with wealthy clients, wanted to be identified, and they cautioned that there was no way to give more than a ballpark estimate without studying Mr. Romney’s tax forms in more detail themselves.
But for the sake of a simple comparison, let’s start with France, which has a top income tax rate of 48 percent, and a capital gains tax rate of 19 percent. (All income is also subject to a 13.5 percent social security tax that helps to pay for things like pensions, unemployment insurance and health care; in the United States, by comparison, the top ordinary income rate is 35 percent and the capital gains rate is 15 percent. Only the relatively small Medicare tax is applied to all earned income, while in 2010 and 2011 Social Security tax applied to only the first $106,800 of wage and salary income.)
In Paris, the hypothetical M. Romney’s effective tax rate would probably have been in the neighborhood of 35 to 40 percent, including the social security tax. While much of his income derived from capital gains, his dividends, interest and income from his private-equity holdings would mostly be taxed at ordinary income rates. At 40 percent, his bill would have been about $8.6 million. (France also gives generous tax credits for large families, but M. Romney’s five children are all adults now, so that would not be of much use.)
In the United States, Mr. Romney paid $3 million in income taxes on his 2010 income of $21.6 million, for an effective rate of 13.9 percent. His Social Security and Medicare tax bills would have been trivial by comparison.
In Britain, income tax rates top out at 50 percent. But most likely, a top London tax lawyer told us, the effective rate would be significantly lower, since Mr. Romney’s income from capital gains would have been taxed at 18 percent to 28 percent.
So, he said, an educated guess would produce an effective tax rate for Mr. Romney of ‘‘probably 30s rather than 40s.’’ At 35 percent, the tax on Sir Mitt’s $21.6 million would add up to about $7.6 million.
In Germany, high-earning workers pay individual income tax rates of up to 45 percent, though our adviser — a lawyer in Frankfurt with a top international firm — noted that an additional ‘‘solidarity surcharge’’ is tacked on top of that for an effective top rate of 47 percent. Mr. Romney, however, would benefit from the lower rate applied to private capital investments: 25 percent, with the solidarity surcharge bringing it up to about 26.4 percent. With most, but not all, of his income treated as capital gains, Herr Romney would probably pay about 30 percent, or $6.5 million.
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Evolution Is Still Happening: Beneficial Mutations in Humans
Besides the terrible title, this was an interesting article:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/40500?page=all
Source: bigthink.com
Link reblogged from Give Me Something To Read with 62 notes
The Behavioral Sink →
So what exactly happened in Universe 25? Past day 315, population growth slowed. More than six hundred mice now lived in Universe 25, constantly rubbing shoulders on their way up and down the stairwells to eat, drink, and sleep. Mice found themselves born into a world that was more crowded every day, and there were far more mice than meaningful social roles. With more and more peers to defend against, males found it difficult and stressful to defend their territory, so they abandoned the activity. Normal social discourse within the mouse community broke down, and with it the ability of mice to form social bonds. The failures and dropouts congregated in large groups in the middle of the enclosure, their listless withdrawal occasionally interrupted by spasms and waves of pointless violence. The victims of these random attacks became attackers. Left on their own in nests subject to invasion, nursing females attacked their own young. Procreation slumped, infant abandonment and mortality soared. Lone females retreated to isolated nesting boxes on penthouse levels. Other males, a group Calhoun termed “the beautiful ones,” never sought sex and never fought—they just ate, slept, and groomed, wrapped in narcissistic introspection. Elsewhere, cannibalism, pansexualism, and violence became endemic. Mouse society had collapsed.
Source: cabinetmagazine.org
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Today, I had a third coworker ask me where I was originally from before I moved to Greenville.
Quote reblogged from The Economist with 86 notes
One sure giveaway of quack medicine is the claim that a product can treat any ailment. There are, sadly, no panaceas. But some things come close, and exercise is one of them.
Source: economist.com
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