High Five! (02-Sep-25)

Five links that I found interesting for one reason or another

High Five!

• Parastatic — Concrete Reborn - A concept album about Brutalist architecture? A big tip of the hat to Turn & Work for highlighting this band, because this is certainly a different concept for an album to be centered around, one that could easily fail, and yet…check the link at the beginning of this entry.
  
• Good Ideas Are Popular - An interesting entry about how elites have more sway over democracy than the people as a whole, as well as interesting statistics on the favorability of socialism and capitalism. As a democratic socialist, I am clearly biased, but an interesting read, nonetheless.
• Bliss Foxx — Eat Sleep Freak - Ooh! This is the kind of female-fronted punk rock that I can really get into. I don’t know much about this Portland, Oregon band, but based on this taste I am going to check them out. And yes, this is my second link to the Turn & Work blog (can you tell I just added them to my blogroll?) in this list. I try not to do that, but both bands were really good. Sometimes you have to break the rules.
• 1988-1991: Pop’s interstitial period - Um, no. It’s an interesting piece, but the premise is completely wrong because it ignores both Chicago house and Detroit techno rising to prominence, dance music’s influence on rock (see EMF, which is mentioned in said article, but also blur, The Happy Mondays, The Soup Dragons, The Stone Roses, Carter USM, Jesus Jones, etc.), as well as seminal albums released by The Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, New Order, and OMD during this same period. In short, it’s only interstitial to those people that didn’t follow those types of music. Again, interesting article, but the author is wrong, unfortunately. This is fine, I am often wrong as well, but it does have me considering whether I should write a rebuttal. We’ll see.
• AI doesn’t belong in journaling - Found this here, and I have to say, I agree. FWIW, it doesn’t belong in blogging, either, but some people are writing just for content, not because they are writers and therefore are compelled to write. The whole point of journaling is to write down your thoughts, your memories, while they are fresh. It’s human and organic, and definitely not for AI.

Thanks for reading!

High Five is a regular feature of this blog with an irregular schedule; just five links to things I found to be interesting.

© 2025 Michael A. Diaz