Really good americana type songs I've been listening to to avoid podcasts/politics.

To celebrate Dave Grohl's birthday, here's a thread of some of our favourite moments featuring the nicest fella in rock...
[📸: PA]

1. When he read the news on our Breakfast Show... ICONIC!

2. When he surprised his fans by busking on the street 😲

3. When he perfectly summed up the beauty of live music 💜

4. When he sang with Elmo and Big Bird on Sesame

This is a song called Alice’s Protocol. But Alice’s Protocol isn’t the name of the protocol: that’s just the name of the song. That’s why I called the song Alice’s Protocol.

1/

You can send anything at all
With Alice’s Protocol.
You can send anything at all
With Alice’s Protocol.
Send your files from A to B
Just don’t forget your private key
You can send anything at all
With Alice’s Protocol.

2/

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, two years ago at Thanksgiving, when my friend Alice wanted to send a file to her husband Bob.

3/

But Bob has a no-good scheming friend called Eve. Let me tell you about his friend Eve. She’s a no-good scheming friend of his, and she likes to listen through walls and under windows and around doors.

4/

So my friend Alice (you remember Alice?), she didn’t want no listening through walls and under windows and around doors, so she decided to encrypt her message with Alice’s Protocol.

5/

1. Very pleased that my article with @MBEGriffiths about the hostile environment policy has been published in the journal Critical Social Policy, after over four years of work on it. Thread on some of what we say.

2. We look at the origins, extent, operationalisation and impacts of the hostile environment in the labour and housing markets, public services, pricing, healthcare and education.

3. It is a policy over which, by design, the government lost control because it relies on third parties to implement it on the ground.

4. The modern policy has long antecedents but from around 2012 the approach was dramatically and recklessly expanded and any pretence at 'balance' by making immigration compliance easier was abandoned.

5. We argue the hostile environment was never an evidence-driven policy expected to achieve measurable immigration outcomes but rather an ideological policy propelled by a set of moral values.

I ran across a quote a long time ago, and it's stuck with me:

“Never, ever, think about something else when you should be thinking about the power of incentives.”
— Charlie Munger


This talk is both in transcript form and there's a YouTube audio of it as well.

I like this quote from Munger:

"I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I’ve underestimated it. And never a year passes, but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther."

So now, like a mad monkey who has just discovered the hammer, I will now go around using this tool of incentives and perverse incentives on everything. Maybe I'll get lucky and hit a few actual nails.

At root, I think the riots at the capitol are the result of a synergy of perverse incentives in politics, mass media, and social media, and they all contribute to a perfect storm of dysfunction. Maybe this is obvious to everyone, and I'm just catching up. But whatever. Here goes.

28 Recommended Books That Will Improve Your Writing And Freelance Business Right Now:

📖 On Writing by Stephen King

Stephen King’s classic will appeal even to those who avoid King’s renowned horror-packed tales. In this book, King discusses how he came to be the writer we know today.

📖 The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

Annie writes about how hard it is to write and how sometimes it is necessary to destroy paragraphs, phrases and words to re-form them as something even better.

📖 Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer by Bruce Holland Rogers

Word Work is packed with practical advice for overcoming procrastination, finding happiness in writing and even conquering writer’s block. It also covers how to handle rejection and success.

📖 Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Bird by Bird is an essential part of any writer’s toolbox. In this work, Lamott shares herself and her craft with readers, including anecdotes that tie the pieces together into all-around great writing.

Something that would help our field, it seems to me, is to separate the Music Director position from the Principal Conductor position at orchestras. If nothing else, you'd get a wider range of musical tastes/interests at the top, which would serve the institutions well.

I've also seen too many situations where big/biggish-name conductors shoot down an idea that has the backing of their orchestras' creative staff, because it's just not of personal interest to them. Conductor ego is a substantial source of regressive energy in classical music.

We have a *major* resource problem in the field of new music. There's not enough $ to go around, and definitely not enough to make the field truly open and accessible. In that light, we need to be strategic about targeting the spaces where new resources could come to the table.

I've long been critical of orchestras, but I've never said we should tear them down. Far from it. Orchestras are central arts organizations with access to community resources of all kinds, including but not limited to $. That's why they have to become true leaders in the field.

Do you know how hard it is for a new music organization to develop the kind of resource base that an orchestra has? A few have come close, but it's practically impossible, especially now, with so much arts funding having dried up and no new apparent boom on the horizon from tech$

OK. I'm about to read the #1776Report. I'll see you in Hell.

When a student's essay starts with a word jumble that says absolutely nothing, I know I'm about to have a bad time.

Our purpose is to provide easily regurgitated propaganda that prevents any need for critical thinking.

Hit 'em right off the bat with the positivist bullshit! Any competent historian will smell it on the first page.

Just read the words! You don't need to know the context. In fact, we'd strongly prefer if you never placed any historical facts into context.

1. Three years ago, I set out to write a book to understand what happened to the world, America, and myself as the undertow of history pulled us into the currents of nationalism and authoritarianism – and what we should do about it. I hope you’ll read it:

2. I travelled the world to learn the stories of individuals – dissidents, opposition figures, and young people making sense of it all. I found that the same things were happening everywhere in ways that let me understand better what’s happening in America.

3. I talked to Russians like Alexei Navalny, who told me his story and what motivates him to risk his life for a Russia that isn’t corrupt, that speaks to the grievances that Russians feel in their bones without enriching a cabal that has hijacked Russian identity.

4. I met with Hungarians who described how Viktor Orban transformed himself from an anti-Communist liberal to a far right autocrat, who pursued a playbook that is eerily similar to what the Republican Party has done in the US over the last decade. And what they’re doing about it.

5. I met with Hong Kong protesters and young people whose movement should be heard as a courageous and innovative warning about the future of technology-fueled totalitarianism encroaching on their city, identity, and the wider world. And learned how people are wrestling with that