• An article questioning mindfulness.
“Despite many grand claims, the scientific evidence in favor of the Moment’s being the key to contentment is surprisingly weak. When the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality conducted an enormous meta-analysis of over 18,000 separate studies on meditation and mindfulness techniques, the results were underwhelming at best.”
“Autechre have been demonstrating, for almost twenty-five years, that using paradigms modeled on the behavior of physically manipulated instruments is just unproductive. Any signal leaving a speaker is an analog, living thing, no matter how it is made.”
• An article and video on Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq.
“The sounds she cultivates from her disciplined practice are often described as wild and primal, sometimes frightening or ugly. These sometimes seem like euphemisms for something more overtly sexist or racist, like what critics really want to say is that Tagaq sounds ‘savage’ or ‘unladylike’ because she subverts expectations of how the female voice or just music in general should sound.”
