Album Review – Chain of Islands EP

Synth music often belongs on a spectrum between hardcore electronic tones and cheesy ’80s pop.

Music at the more electronic end can be brain-meltingly intense (Com Truise is a good example), while music of the pop variety can be lyrically sickly sweet, and it doesn’t take long to get tired of the same drum-machine cowbell sound that should have long ago been deleted from everyone’s samplers (check out Sunglasses Kid if you are, for some reason, curious).

I love music at both ends of the spectrum, for different reasons. The brain-melting tonal stuff can be a fun experience, alone in the dark with good headphones. And the super-cheesy catalogue has some real gems; from lovingly-crafted pastiches of ’80s culture and sounds, to genuinely catchy and well-produced tracks that could be mistaken for a fresh single from Spandau Ballet.

But Synth music that can sit between these two extremes, and offer a balance of synth-y extravagance with the classic sound of ’80s optimism.

This balance has always been the hallmark of Brothertiger, outfit of US artist John Jagos. His recent EP, A Chain of Islands, is a perfect example of how well Brothertiger can merge the sounds of the ’80s with modern synth.

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Angry Diaries #1 – violence is peaceful

After some recent reflection on my social media use, and prompted by some great advice from friends and family, I’ve decided to stop being so angry on social media.

It can make me come across as smug and prejudicial. And it’s probably not the most constructive way to react to all the hate and injustice around us.

In the past, when I’ve taken breaks from social media, I’ve noticed the positive effects on my mental health. I deal with what’s right in front of me, without losing sight of my values.

But being able to be angry is very important to me. If you’re not angry in this world, you’re probably not looking at the big picture – or you have a very selective view of humanity.

So I’m going to try this: When something makes me angry, I’ll try to write about it in these anger diaries before making a post on social media.

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Why my incel pal still owes $1000 to charity

Content warning: lots of misogyny, sexual assault, racism, violence.

I have spent quite a lot of time engaging with incels (“involuntary celibates”) on Reddit in the past. Their highly misogynistic, often racist, and downright petulant worldview is a perfect storm of wilful ignorance, blind hatred, and childlike tantrum-throwing.

Incels, for those who don’t know, are a disparate community of women-haters who believe that women are both worthless objects and also the most important things in the universe. Incels believe that all men deserve love and affection from the women who they find most attractive, and that the best way of going about receiving that affection is to rape and murder them.

Although incels deserve nothing more than total ignominy and dismissal, I was fascinated by the blind rage and pig-headedness of the average incel opinion I saw floating around on Reddit. I eventually started talking to a few in private messages, trying to learn about their lives and offering a compassionate response, letting them know that there was a way out of their destructive ways of thinking (Yes, I know – misguided and maybe plain wrong, but I wanted to try).

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There is no LSD

This is a long story. It has two perspectives.

(1) I woke up one morning, took a moderate dose of LSD, had a psychotic break that lasted three days, and have continuing psychological issues as a result of the experience.

(2) We are all being constantly expelled from Divine Source, like loose clay from a spinning potter’s wheel, and enter deeper into illusion the further from Source we are flung. There was no LSD, there is no me, I am alone and lost, forever.

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Remembering the Tiananmen Massacre

Thirty years ago today, the 1989 Democracy Movement in Beijing reached its end. Using tanks and bullets, the Chinese government massacred as many as 10,000 peaceful student protestors in Tiananmen square and across Beijing over several days in early June.

Students who feared the direction of the authoritarian Chinese state had spent several weeks camped out in Tiananmen square, at the centre of Beijing, demanding freedom of the press and accountability for government officials. Protests spread across the city, until in early June the government mobilised thousands of troops from all over China and marched towards the square – a process lasting several days and costing many lives.

Although protestors had managed to slow the advance of the troops, and in some cases had convinced soldiers to lay down their weapons, the military reached the square in the early morning of the 4th of June. Hundreds of students had already been slaughtered.

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The Weirdest Thing About the Poker in Casino Royale

Poker is rarely portrayed accurately in films. And that’s not really a big deal, considering that poker is not usually the driving force of a film’s plot, and is more likely used as a dramatic tool or maybe even just as a vehicle for a joke.

But even in films where the poker is central to the story, for some reason it’s a game that filmmakers struggle to get right.

Even in the cult classic poker movie Rounders, starring A-listers Matt Damon, Ed Norton and John Malkovich, there are laughable moments – most notably main character Mike’s story of a successful preflop 4-bet against Johnny Chan (following an hour of not playing a single hand) that is supposed to indicate his innate poker prowess, but instead shows that the writers probably haven’t played much live poker before.

So if a movie all about poker doesn’t get the poker right, what hope do other films have?

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Why right- and left-wing views are not equally valid moralities

This will be short and is purely my opinion. You have been warned.

A line I’ve often heard in discussions about right- and left-wing views is that both perspectives are grounded in social benefits.

This line holds that right-wing views are about ‘protecting the group’ – the right-leaning morality is about keeping our family safe. It defends us from outside threats.

Meanwhile, left-wing views are about ‘protecting the outsider’ – the left-leaning morality is about opening our arms, lowering our defences, and treating those less fortunate like human beings rather than burdens or obstacles.

So this right/left dichotomy is framed as a necessary balance between building stable, safe, happy groups and opening those groups to outsiders.

The problem is that this interpretation of right-wing morality assumes a bunch of stuff.

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Bigotry requires being an utter dolt, unsurprisingly

Iain M Banks. His writing could vary from the bitterly poetic – such as the story of the passionate and tragic sexual relationship between an aristocrat brother and sister (A Song of Stone); to the purely silly – such as the alien humanoid who medically enhances his body to be covered in functional penises (The Hydrogen Sonata).

Yes, say what you will about Banks; but he certainly didn’t like to limit himself.

Despite the range of his imagination, one concurrent theme throughout all Banks’ science fiction novels – and in much of his ‘mainstream’ fiction – was egalitarianism.

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The Noumenon-Numinon Nominum

The terms “Noumenous” and “Numinous” have both been used to describe the psychedelic experience, despite having etymologically distinct origins.
 
Noumenon is a term popularised by Kant to be contrasted with the term “phenomenon” – interpreted either as meaning “that which is thought” (as opposed to “that which is perceived”), or as the “unknowable nature of things.” It is derived from the Greek “noûs” meaning “mind.”
 
Numinous means “spiritual, mystical or religious in nature,” but can also be interpreted to mean a form of knowledge that can only be evoked through direct experience (rather than rationalisation or objective learning). It is derived from the Latin “numen” meaning “a deity or spirit residing over a place.”
 
These two words could arguably be sorted into the same Nominal (derived from the Latin “nomen” or “name”) category, since they both describe common facets of the psychedelic experience.
 
The “Noumenon-Numinon Nominum”