Why, Peter Suderman wonders, are music reviews so often positive, while film reviews seem to be equally split between hosannas and hatchet jobs? Peter suggests it has to do with the different cultures that have grown up around movie and music reviewing—which in one sense almost has to be true as a proximate explanation, but […]

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Woah.

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I’d been meaning to write something along the lines of this post by Yglesias for a while: Conservative pseudointellectuals who want to convince you they have some special scholarly insight into The Muslim Mind by invoking taqiyya as, more or less, a synonym for lying. Now, granted, I only took one undergrad course on Islam, […]

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Naomi Klein, call your office: “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” [Rahm] Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

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Figure I should cross-link this post at Ars, since my modal political geek reader probably cares more than my modal tech geek reader about my picking a fight with Michael Lind.

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Kerry Howley points out that people who treat “libertarian” and “feminist” as antonyms are, by and large, really fucking dumb: For some reason, various libertarian-leaning men are only capable of acknowledging the limiting nature of social norms when those norms result from recent political action. We all worry that universal surveillance breeds passive adults with […]

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I”ve just been channeling my blogging Chi into the newborn Law & Disorder. Here’s what I’ve been doing there, in case (for some crazy reason) it’s not in your feed yet: More presidential cabinet speculation porn A galaxy of tech stars are being named as possible candidates for Chief Technology Officer in the Obama administration. […]

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Feel free to add your own suggestions in comments: Black Swan  —  Thom Yorke Succexy —   Metric I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free  —  Nina Simone Sick Of You  —  Lou Reed Lip Service —   Elvis Costello Nothing Much to Lose  —  My Bloody Valentine Cake Parade  —  Georgie James […]

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Ezra Klein and Rachel Maddow absolutely nail this: A four, five, or six hour line at the polling station is just a poll tax exacted in time rather than dollars.  That’s not to say we should holler “disenfranchisement” every time there’s a bit of a queue at the booth, or even that it’s obvious which […]

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