Weekend Reads: "Streets of Fire," Anime in Mexico, Twitter Blue, New Atheists
Recommended weekend reading material for June 12, 2021.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting and thought-provoking articles to offer you some enjoyable weekend reading material.
In Toussaint Egan’s opinion, Walter Hill’s cult classic Streets of Fire is “a forgotten proto-cyberpunk classic.”
Through the most unlikely of circumstances, Streets of Fire has continued to endure as a cult classic; a retro-contemporary noir-musical filled with memorable visuals and catchy rock ballads. Though having nothing to do with transhumanism or advanced technology, the film still hones in on that most enduring of cyberpunk locales: a dark, rain-slicked city rife with territorial disputes between oppressive law enforcement and lawless bikers and gangsters vying for control and power. It’s a fun movie; one you should definitely make the time to check out while it’s available.
I finally watched Streets of Fire earlier this week (it’s currently streaming on Netflix). I can totally see what it’s become a cult classic, but ultimately, it wasn’t quite my cup of tea. (When it comes to Walter Hill urban fairy tales, I’ll stick with The Warriors.)
That being said, I loved the idea of the film as well as its look and cinematography, and if the final musical number (“Tonight Is What It Means to Be Young”) doesn’t get you at least a little choked up, then you might just be dead inside.
Fergal Kinney interviews Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce about his 1995 masterpiece album, Pure Phase.
Pierce’s gift was for suspending musical ideas in a fuggy, opiated stasis, temporarily untethering fragments of rock & roll, Krautrock, electronica, gospel, the blues — or was it the greys? The dank pallor of the comedown is all over Pure Phase, the seven minute 'Electric Mainline' blinks like light filtering into a dark, smoke-filled room. It’s in this that the album achieves the high water mark of what an unnamed US rock journalist would term to Pierce ‘Stooges For Airports’. The band even briefly renamed themselves Spiritualized Electric Mainline, a druggy innuendo but also a literal description of the sounds Pierce found himself making.
Pure Phase is my favorite Spiritualized album thanks to songs like “The Slide Song,” “All of My Tears,” and “Spread Your Wings.”
Richard Villegas explores the influence of anime on Mexican underground culture and music.
Indeed, in recent years, nostalgia, nerdy humor, and innovation have resulted in a new subculture in Mexico’s underground, one that pops up everywhere from electronic music niches to campy queer circles. In 2019, Monterrey DJ and producer Nurrydog bookended his own EDC appearance with a reggaetón rework of the Neon Genesis Evangelion theme song, “Zankoku Na Tenshi No Tēze.” Step into any record store today, and you’re guaranteed to find a fully stocked J-pop aisle, the love for which has also stimulated a growing future funk scene nationwide. And right up until the Covid-19 pandemic sent nightlife into indefinite hiatus, the FrikiPerreo party series was rapidly gaining a cult following in Mexico City’s Zona Rosa district, with a unique blend of Top 40 hits, old school classics, and cosplaying drag queens.
Of all the artists mentioned in Villegas’ article, I’m most familiar with Macross 82-99 and his brand of infectious, joyful, and anime-inspired future funk. Suffice to say, I’ll be checking out the other artists in the coming days and weeks.
Twitter is rolling out a new subscription-based service, Twitter Blue.
The subscription will allow Twitter users to access premium features, including tools to organize your bookmarks, read threads in a clutter-free format and take advantage of an “Undo Tweet” feature — which is the closest thing Twitter will have to the long-requested “Edit” button.
Twitter Blue will initially launch in Australia and Canada, with more markets to follow. I think it’s good for Twitter to have a paid version, if only to reduce its reliance on advertising, but Twitter Blue’s offerings are pretty weaksauce. The only feature that sort of interests me is the “clutter-free format” for Twitter threads. But honestly, I don’t find it that difficult to read threads right now. And even if I do find it occasionally difficult, it’s not worth it to me to pay to fix it.
Law agencies around the world have arrested 800 individuals following a years-long sting operation involving a fake encrypted phone service.
According to public statements, the FBI and other agencies seeded secure Anom phones with suspected crime syndicates, gradually building a network of around 12,000 total (and 9,000 active) devices. The phones secretly siphoned 27 million messages between 2019 and 2021, resulting in Operation Greenlight / Trojan Shield — a large-scale bust that included seizing around eight tons of cocaine, 22 tons of cannabis and cannabis resin, 250 firearms, and $48 million in traditional currencies and cryptocurrencies.
For years, various law enforcement agencies have tried to get companies like Apple to install “back doors” into their software, with little success. (For what it’s worth, I fully support Apple et al.’s resistance.) So apparently, the next best thing is to build your own “private” messaging network and trick criminals into using it.
Remember when NFTs were the next big thing? We were told NFTs would give artists new ways of getting paid, improve the security of digital purchases, and level the playing field. Well, it seems the dream might be over.
NFTs were always about speculation, and interest in both the big-ticket art items and the cheaper collectibles is fading rapidly. Sales are plummeting. The NFT bubble has popped. Whether another NFT bubble rebounds in its place may depend in part on whether the above applications sound more to you like gem mint comic books or Pokémon cards (which retain value thanks to rarity and their association with legendary brands and nostalgia) or... Beanie Babies and Franklin Mint medallions.
Phil Torres bemoans the bigotry, sexism, and racism of “New Atheists” like Sam Harris, Michael Shermer, and Richard Dawkins.
New Atheism appeared to offer moral clarity, it emphasized intellectual honesty and it embraced scientific truths about the nature and workings of reality. It gave me immense hope to know that in a world overflowing with irrationality, there were clear-thinking individuals with sizable public platforms willing to stand up for what's right and true — to stand up for sanity in the face of stupidity.
Fast-forward to the present: What a grift that was! Many of the most prominent New Atheists turned out to be nothing more than self-aggrandizing, dogmatic, irascible, censorious, morally compromised people who, at every opportunity, have propped up the powerful over the powerless, the privileged over the marginalized.
Torres’ article is a healthy reminder that arrogance, hypocrisy, sanctimony, self-righteousness, and tribalism know no creed or (un)belief system. (And lest any of my fellow Christians be tempted to read Torres’ article with any amount of smugness, we still have a lot of work to do in cleaning up our own messes.)
One of the examples that Torres cites is Dawkins’ extreme utilitarian views concerning people with Down syndrome (i.e., it would be immoral to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome because doing so would only increase the overall amount of suffering in the world). This exchange with Brendan O’Connor is particularly illuminating.
David French writes about Russell Moore’s warnings to the Southern Baptist Convention and how Christians have responded to racism and sexual assault within their own ranks.
Do you consider that these incidents are now piled on top of a mountain of other church scandals, involving ministries from every single walk of Evangelical Christian life? Do you have at least the same response that you did to #MeToo? Are you at least as alarmed about moral rot in the culture and institutions of the church as you are about the culture and institutions of “the left”? Better yet, are you more alarmed by the challenges in the church—because, after all, we do claim a high calling on our lives?
Or have you decided that one of the real problems is that the media pays too much attention to church scandals and not enough attention to church virtues? Or have you decided that you’re going to care more about Hollywood or the media because Hollywood and the media are “more powerful” than the church?
One of the best sources for COVID-related news that I’ve found is Katelyn Jetelina, aka Your Local Epidemiologist. She, along with a group of other epidemiologists and scientists, have put together a handy guide to navigating kid-related activities.
Everyone’s risk threshold is different - with some being more risk adverse than others. So, we categorized activities by low, moderate, and high risk. Parents should also factor community-level vaccination rates, as well as current levels of COVID-19 transmission when assessing these risks. Further, if your child is high-risk… or you have high-risk individuals in your household (i.e. elderly, immunocompromised) your risk tolerance should be lowered.
Related: This should go without saying, but please, get vaccinated if you can.
Finally, here’s something that’ll bake your noodle: If the ancient Greeks didn’t have a word for the color blue, they might not have been able to see the color blue.
As the AsapSCIENCE video above explains, the evidence of ancient Greek literature and philosophy shows that since blue was not part of Homer and his readers’ shared vocabulary (yellow and green do not appear either), it may not have been part of their perceptual experience, either. The spread of blue ink across the world as a relatively recent phenomenon has to do with its availability. “If you think about it,” writes Business Insider’s Kevin Loria, “blue doesn’t appear much in nature — there aren’t blue animals, blue eyes are rare, and blue flowers are mostly human creations.”
From the Blog
Back in junior high, I was certain I was going to be a cosmologist or theoretical physicist when I grew up. (Why yes, I was a nerd. Why do you ask?) That never came to pass, but space still intrigues me, and few things in space are as intriguing as black holes. Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know — now streaming on Netflix — is a fascinating documentary about scientists’ attempts to learn more about this mysterious cosmic phenomena.
Black Holes: The Edge of All We Know is ultimately a celebration of science and human ingenuity at its best. That we can detect cosmic phenomena that occurred millions and millions of light years away from our own planet, that we can devise intricate mathematical equations capable of predicting and modeling some of the universe’s darkest and strangest forces — these are amazing, and humbling, achievements.
This post is available to everyone (so feel free to share it). However, paying subscribers also get access to exclusives including playlists, sneak previews, and podcasts. If you’d like to receive those exclusives — and support my writing on Opus — then become a paid subscriber today for just $5/month or $50/year.