Today’s song is More, by Low. It’s about how difficult it is to dismantle structures of gender-based oppression. It’s also fantastic. The way the distorted riff plays against Mimi Parker’s clean, high tone just works. The whole album, HEY WHAT, is strange and filter-heavy, the culmination of a long journey from their slow, quiet origins, which had sprung, in the mid-1990s, from the inspirations of “Eno, Joy Division, and the boredom of living in Duluth.“
Bonus track: Speedy Ortiz, “No Below.”
More than what it should have cost
In the past few years, Walgreens and other retailers have closed quite a few locations, blaming gangs of shoplifters. They now admit they were lying about it, just like I told you they were.
All of what I didn’t have
- Excellent profile of the contractor who takes down Confederate statues in Virginia.
- An organic chemist discusses illegal drug manufacturing trends.
- Noah Smith on how the 1950s are seriously overrated.
- Trends in drone warfare.
- From 2020, a profile of Californian flooding caused by atmospheric rivers.
- An analysis of how Tokyo gets public transit right (TLDR: density).
- When you’d rather give your constituents asthma than housing.
Joy
- SNOOT.
- If I fits, I sits.
- Lake Erie, Christmas Eve 2022 (not cute, but very interesting).
Secretly Ironic 