Premise

State of the World 2012

• #150: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Thu 12 Jan 12 15:50
  I experience music every day, but I don't listen to it the way I did in, say, 1970. I don't have that focus, it's background music, like I'm in my own movie. The music I hear in passing is diverse and pretty inconsistent. Fragmented. Top 40's all hip-hop (some of it very good), the local public radio station has drifted into pop and […]
• #149: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 12 Jan 12 14:31
  http://blissout.blogspot.com/2011/12/11-for-11-metronomy-english-riviera.html*That's music critic Simon Reynolds doting over the with-it obscurities that a guru of his ilk would be into these days.*I'd have to admit that "the most interesting thing in music" that I saw last year was Simon Reynold's book "Retromania," which […]
• #148: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 12 Jan 12 14:23
  Well, the Anthropophage of Hoxditch is still in the music biz and Tweeting her tousled head off.cibellecibelle Cibelle, La Sonja K!>< ^ […]
• #147: Gail Williams (gail) Thu 12 Jan 12 13:29
  Are the artists themselves responsible for the faster move to the decadent form? Perhaps there is less viable social pressure against selling out by allowing bad versions of your own work to go forth? Interesting observation. [Read entire topic] […]
• #146: From Julian Bond (captward) Thu 12 Jan 12 12:24
  E-mail from Julian Bond:I'm curious if Bruce has seen anything particularly interesting in the arts and music this time around. Last year we had Anthropophagic Syncretism which turned out to be a Hipster Chanteuse transplanted from Sao Paulo to Hoxditch[1]. Anything comparable floating around in 2012?How about Lana Del Rey, apparently famous for being m […]
• #145: from Walt Dangerfield (captward) Thu 12 Jan 12 10:09
  And again:This dead media is starting to turn ripe:I noticed locally that the roadkill on the highway isn't getting picked up either. [Read entire topic] […]
• #144: From Walt Dangerfield (captward) Thu 12 Jan 12 10:09
  Walt Dangerfield via e-mail:"Like, if they were ever alone on a desert island, with no one watching their stock prices, then they'd scratch their own skins till they bled."This is pretty much the view of economics duo Bichler & Nitzan who argue that all capital today is financial in nature, and that all finance is measured through differen […]
• #143: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 12 Jan 12 08:21
  It's always a revealing question, how any society thinks its ultra-rich people are "supposed to behave." What behavior by an ultra-rich person can successfully avoid envy, hatred and a scolding from the general populace? Statistically speaking, there are always gonna be at least a few ultra-rich people around. They're a social reality, th […]
• #142: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 12 Jan 12 08:19
  There's something intriguing about living in a society where rich guys are Posh Punks who really do feel that they have No Future. Especially when they behave that loudly obnoxious punk way: spitting on the middle-class, stage-diving into SuperPACs... Making life up as they go along, with crazy, "go rogue," do it yourself, tea-party politics, […]
• #141: Bruce Sterling (bruces) Thu 12 Jan 12 07:37
  People don't go into Occupy camps so as to live in tents; they go there to annoy and harass one-percenters. Pursuing a tent-based lifestyle is not some brand-new design problem.It's pretty common for people who run refugee camps to find the inhabitants getting radically politicized. Not because camps are bad, but because they're better than wh […]