Weekend Reads: Batman, Bandcamp, Deep Listening, Static Websites
Recommended weekend reading material for March 28, 2020.
Every week, I compile a list of interesting, thought-provoking, and enjoyable articles, blog posts, and reviews. I hope you’ll find they make for good weekend reading material.
Finally: A definitive ranking of Batman’s comic book costumes throughout the years.
The costume is so iconic and effective that, like the hero who wears it, it’s had countless variations over the years, with 11 distinct, defined looks in the mainstream DC Comics. That leaves the question, though: They might all draw from the same iconic well, but while all of them are Batman, only one of them can be The Most Batman.
Last week, Bandcamp waived their normal platform fees to help raise more money for musicians impacted by COVID-19.
The numbers tell a remarkable story: on a typical Friday, fans buy about 47,000 items on Bandcamp, but this past Friday, fans bought nearly 800,000, or $4.3 million worth of music and merch. That’s more than 15 times our normal Friday, and at the peak, fans were buying 11 items per second.
As I’ve said before, Bandcamp is my absolute favorite music service.
Pitchfork recently asked 32 musicians about what they’re listening to during our current pandemic. Those asked include Angel Olsen, Mount Eerie’s Phil Elverum, Caribou’s Dan Snaith, and Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner.
Now I’m no expert, but here’s a self-quarantine activity that I fully endorse and plan to do myself: deep listening.
Clear your schedule for the next three hours. Choose three full albums, whether from your collection or your streaming service of choice. Put them in an ordered queue as though you were programming a triple feature.
If you’re disappointed that Disney’s Mulan has been pushed back due to the coronavirus, here are 5 female-led martial arts movies to watch in the meantime.
We’ve chosen films that share historical settings as well as certain themes with the legendary tale of Hua Mulan: Women dressing up as men in order to pursue their martial ambitions comes up a lot, as do romances between warriors in disguise. Epic sweep, light-hearted comedy, stunning cinematography, and magnetic performances that make expert fight choreography look effortless are also in abundance.
Come Drink with Me is an absolute classic. And I’m glad to see Wing Chun on the list. It’s silly and zany, and utterly delightful. (Plus, you can never have too much Michelle Yeoh.)
And here’s a list of 11 nerdy things you can watch and read during this time of social distancing. Some of the items include CBS All Access, the new streaming service Quibi, and Audible.
If anyone knows what it takes to survive being isolated, it’d be a guy who spent a year in space.
But I learned some things during my time up there that I’d like to share — because they are about to come in handy again, as we all confine ourselves at home to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Here are a few tips on living in isolation, from someone who has been there.
Some of his recommendations include following a schedule, finding a hobby, and keeping a journal.
If it feels like time has no more meaning during these pandemic days, you’re right — but maybe not for the reasons you thought.
As it turns out, this warping of time has an explanation rooted in how our brains record memories during times of extreme fear and stress.
This one’s for my fellow web developer: websites should be static now more than ever.
I’m thinking here of sites for places like health departments (and pretty much all government services), hospitals and clinics, utility services, food delivery and ordering, and I’m sure there are more that haven’t occurred to me. As much as you possibly can, get it down to static HTML and CSS and maybe a tiny bit of enhancing JS, and pare away every byte you can.
Finally, I’ve been on a bit of a post-punk kick lately. So I highly recommend the following albums: Nostalgia by SPECTRES (Bandcamp), Outnumbered by The Foreign Resort (my review), and Difference & Repetition by Topographies (my review). And I’d be remiss if I didn’t encourage you to check out Fine China’s latest single.
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I’ve been interested in carrying out the deep listening experiment. What are your three albums that you would pick (besides the post-punk ones you mentioned)?