Music can be a scientific laboratory. As the melody unfolds, the artists embark upon a musical experiment that really needs to be heard to be believed. This is a metal song, but it is submerged underneath 20,000 leagues of organic and spiritual evolution. At that depth, the echoes of an infinity of egos melt into a droning hymn to life, death, good and evil.
“One-third of the 3,863 reefs that make up the Great Barrier Reef — the largest, most extensive reef system in the world — went through a catastrophic die-off after a searing heat wave in 2016, according to a newly published study in the journal Nature. A bleaching event in 2017 devastated even more of that reef, and the cumulative effects have killed an estimated half of the magnificent system in just two years.”
It’s a quote from the article below, a work that fits in the “doom and gloom” category. But unlike articles about Planet X, the “unavoidable catastrophic” eruption of Yellowstone or the reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles, this is “real doom and gloom”. Corals around the world are dying at an alarming rate. This can lead to sudden, disastrous effects on the ocean ecosystem (and thus, the entire planet).
Now here’s a trip if there ever was one! This baby will take you away, far away and then even further away and when you think it’s done, it’ll take you another couple of Universes away and just when you thought you landed, it’s gonna take flight again and drag you another dozen Universes in X directions at once, where X is the number of multiverse dimensions you’re in, factorial!
Musically, what we have here is a steady and unstoppable flowing song of devious construction. Layers upon layers of deep, suggestive sounds are quietly shifting into existence. I’ve measured the song with my Spirit Buoyancy Meter and it scored a juicy 83 kiloquantiverses. Not bad, not bad at all!
Something big was set in motion in China. It’s called the Social Credit System. It leverages the latest in technology in order to build something akin to a criminal record, except that it’s updated much more frequently (possibly even real-time in certain cases). It doesn’t only cover crime, but pretty much any action that the government can track, online and offline.
As we know, China has an extremely well-developed tracking & censorship apparatus. Through the Social Credit System, even minor social offenses such as jaywalking or smoking outside designated areas can be turned into punishments that can seriously affect one’s life. In the article below you can find a rather shocking video (well, not entirely shocking to me since I suspected this was coming) about the country’s highly developed video surveillance system.
Let the soft and warm guitar throttle you down. Indulge in the soothing ear-massage offered by the gentle percussion. Quiet down and take a trip down the memory lane with what is probably Limp Bizkit’s most melancholic moment. It’s also one of their best songs and quite different from what this hip-hop-metal band usually puts out.
Every year or so, there’s one article/essay that stands out from everything I come across. This is one such work. It shows the correlation between violence and repressed sexuality, lack of affection towards children, sensory deprivation and various forms of social damage. It’s a long read, but you can also read just parts of it and I’d wager you’ll still be enriched by this amazing work.
Despite eagerly pulsing to life, the song’s moody and melancholic landscape is coming into shape less than 20 seconds in. The percussion really stands out on this one, but so is the dream’s voice. Together, they’ll cradle the morning crowds back to sleep.
Finally, thanks to the CLOUD act passed earlier this year, American companies have the right to spy for the government of the USA on pretty much anybody that uses American products. The act also indirectly opens the door for other governments that enjoy snooping in their citizens’ private lives. And guess what, major tech companies had no problem turning their back on their customers because (surprise!) the act will save them loads of cash:
It was bound to happen sooner or later. Of course, this is all done with ethics and responsibility at the forefront, in the glorious battle against organized crime. Even if I wasn’t sarcastic, this is, after all, yet another weapon in the USA’s cyberwarfare arsenal. And the walls protecting our private lives have already started to fall.
Dreamy Xtal is one of the first songs I ever heard from famous electronica producer Aphex Twin. It’s the opener of a slow, ambient album. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the melody has plenty of beat, but it’s all subdued under a clever (or lucky) distortion that makes it seem like we’re listening to an old recording, coming from far away. The masterful intertwining of a female vocals sample enhances that effect.
Like most parents, I’ll never forget the day when we found out we’re pregnant. Yes, we were pregnant. Throughout this story, I’ll be using several expressions that we’ve coined during my wife’s pregnancy. It was Crina who came up with “we’re pregnant”.
Then, it was me who forged the word withbaby, and you’ll get used to it, because my wife wasn’t pregnant (and this is the last time you’ll read this word here). Crina was withbaby. Language is powerful. Language matters. We don’t use cold, distant words to express giving life to our child.
And if “having been impregnated” sounds too scientific, there are even worse expressions for withbaby in other languages. In our own native Romanian, they call women withbaby “însărcinată”. Ad-litteram, it means “tasked”, as in “having been given a task” (the root is “sarcină”, which means “task”).
