Note: title should say "Week 26", not 25.

My best of 2024 (so far) playlist is updated regularly and can be found here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDJeO4dNUaIn2mN9hFpBK1szGAA07d8pq&si=ZVqklnxTIwkgAQKq
#music

https://youtu.be/gN3tuitU3ac
5. Peel Dream Magazine – "Lie in the Gutter". With this song, Peel Dream Magazine hits that same sweet spot that Stereolab used to be able to reach back in the '90s. If you were there, you know the one. #music

https://youtu.be/t9TbTMrr6JY
4. Allegra Krieger – "Never Arriving". I keep picturing a scenario involving Allegra Krieger, a lost track by members of Fleetwood Mac and Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, and possibly a time machine, to explain the felicitous existence of this song. #music

https://youtu.be/MFUMy1hwdwg
3. Local Natives – "Camera Shy". This song hooked me with that flanged guitar that pulses through it (much like "Help You Ann" by The Lyres hooked me with it 40 years ago), and the rest of the package delivers on that promise. #music

https://youtu.be/UWgA0HVs2Ys
2. Lutalo – "Ocean Swallows Him Whole". Lutalo is a Vermont-based indie folkie; here he picks up the hypnotic sonics of UK indie rock for this slinky, stuttering track. "Ocean's going to see who you were all along". #music

My Top 5 Songs of the Week (2024 Week 25):
https://youtu.be/0rFVVzavii0
1. MJ Lenderman – "She's Leaving You". I love Lenderman's melodic hooks and his laconic singing. Waxahatchee's Katie Crutchfield sings harmony and, as on her song "Right Back To It", they sound amazing together. "It falls apart / we all got work to do." #music

I get that Biden is not an ideal candidate. He wasn't an ideal candidate in 2020 either. He remains the only viable choice for preserving what's left of democracy and buy us time to develop better options for ourselves.

And who would it even be? I'm sure we could all come up with a short list of candidates we'd prefer, but I doubt there's a single candidate who could both satisfy enough Democrats to unify the party *and* get a national campaign up to speed at this late hour (especially without the advantage of incumbency).

Yeah, there's a mechanism for replacing him now, but how is it going to play for the DNC to overturn the express will of Democratic primary voters and choose somebody that none of them voted for and hasn't proven themselves as a viable national candidate through the primary process?

Democrats spent the first part of this year going through the best available process for deciding whether to replace Biden as their nominee. It's called "the primaries". Only three people bothered to run against him, one of whom explicitly ran on Biden's age. None of them polled higher than 15% and Democratic voters in all 50 states overwhelmingly chose Biden to be the nominee.

Instead of using AI to steal jobs and intellectual property from artists, they should use it to design a smoke alarm that can tell the difference between “the house is on fire” and “dad’s heating up tortillas on the stovetop again”