Some link-blogging for the last Friday of the year. Enjoy!
Certain types of humor can be timeless and Carlin, despite having died in 2008, gets recirculated for his incisiveness. Itzkoff looks at why both side of the political spectrum have embraced (some might say co-opted) the comedian’s takes.
That Carlin’s work endures long after him is not only a testament to his talents; it’s a sign that his frustrations, which he expressed humorously but felt authentically, still resonate with audiences, and that the injustices he identified in American society persist to this day.
2. Vivid by Living Colour (Pitchfork) — Stuart Berman
Thirty four years since its release, the lapsed time provides a perspective on Living Colour’s debut album that wasn’t available to critics in the moment. And it has aged well.
It’s [“Cult of Personality”] one of rock’s greatest Side 1/Track 1 opening salvos. But given that rock radio was still pumping out pop-metal trifles like Winger’s “Seventeen” and Poison’s “Nothing But a Good Time” in 1988, it’s easy to understand why Vivid’s mainstream incursion moved in slow motion.
3. NFT Tax Loss Harvesting
What to do with those NFTs that you bought at the height of recent mania? The doodles and GANpuke that were going to usher in enlightened decentralized ownership and access to communities? Most people are self-HODLs, because there’s no buyer, no market and no reason to sell. But if you wanted to try and unload them for huge losses in hopes of taking a take write-off, well, there are services to help you. Warning it might not be as easy here in the US.
4. Whatever Happened To…
Friends Star Matthew Perry (GQ, Chris Heath)
Movie Actor Brendan Fraser (GQ, Zach Baron)
Two amazing profiles, each with their own types of pain.
5. The Troubled Investments VC Firms Tried to Erase (The Information)— Kate Clark
If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Kate Clark covers some examples of investors not just disappearing a startup logo from their website, but removing over-the-top blog posts and other ‘we’re proud to have backed…’ tributes when it turns out that maybe they should have been so proud.
I’m of two minds on this (and appreciate the media holding us accountable). On one hand these websites are marketing vehicles, not newspapers of record. So if you think of it as a storefront and not the New York Times, well of course you’re going to rotate the merchandise and present yourself in the best light. That said, on some of these blog posts I wish that they’d preserve them (even if they remove the active link from the site itself) and write a ‘correction’ intro that talks a bit about what they learned from the failure. That would be really impressive introspection.