This is from a very good article on the current state of the art world and deepish dive into the historical circumstances which led to this point. However, I strongly disagree with the author's frankly ridiculous statement that the art market is not to blame for the situation when everything he carelessly describes as "art" only exists within the narrow and corrupt confines of the elite galleries and institutions. It's like claiming the shitcoin market had nothing to do with the rise of FTX. There is a lot of great art being bought and sold in the four and low-five figure range by honest and passionate people. What the public is sold as the "art world" has nothing at all to do with this and most people intuitively understand that what they're selling is not art, no matter how hard the media tries to gaslight them into accepting it.

How much was Tucker worth to Fox, you ask? For reference, the dip last Wednesday followed the announcement they'd settled out of court with Dominion for nearly $800 billion.

Steve Hillage's Rainbow Dome Music is rightfully revered but Fish Rising is as much a masterpiece, sounding at times like a new age Van Halen. There's also a cool live clip floating around where Steve looks like Jesus dressed as Luke Skywalker (which is perfect given the new age gibberish lyrics) but the vocals don't quite soar the way they do here at 2:55 so I'm sticking with the LP version. #progstr

Struggling to reconcile my love of Nostr with my long and loudly-proclaimed "all social media is cancer" stance. Not sure I can summon the sophistry to square this circle and I might have to admit that I'm wrong about something.

I recently read the first Harry Potter book to my kids. It was weird to finally consume the product after years of observing the culture war surrounding it from the sidelines. Given how invested so many fringe progressives are in the HP world, I was staggered at how unapologetically English the whole thing was. From the ancient boarding school cutlure to the oh-so-twee names and salivating over toffees and Shepherd's Pies, and the fact that the poncy wizards all live in some sort of neo-Dickensian time-warp, it seems like a trad larper's wet dream. What on earth were they getting out of it?

Here's an interesting titbit buried in the footnotes of Wedny Painting's "Abberation In The Heartland Of The Real": one of the psychs attending to McVeigh while he was in prison was Dr Jolly West, a notorious MKUKTRA figure who also treated Jack Ruby while he was in prison for killing Lee Oswald. West also achieved notoriety for killing an elephant with LSD.

Happy Sunday, heathens! #gospel

Damn, Barry Humphries died. I wish I could find a good live clip of him as Sir Les Patterson in all his glory but sadly there are only TV appearances, which were incredibly tame by camparison. You'll just have to take my word for it that he was incredible.

Do people overseas actually like Bluey or is that yet another psy-op dumped on the Australian public to make us feel like we're cultural players on the world stage?