ICE is planning a $100 million domestic spy program. The US is pumping up our unaccountable masked secret police force loyal to Donald Trump personally. This is fine.
Why Things Become Popular, With Chuck Klosterman
Chuck Klosterman’s most recent book, “Rock*,” imagines an alternate history of 20th Century music where the Beatles fade into obscurity and Velvet Underground became the biggest mainstream rock band in history.
The Velvet Underground are “kind of ground zero” for the idea that there are, on the one hand, bands for critics and serious music fans and, on the other hand, commercial bands. And often the critics and superfans don’t take the megabands seriously. And over the last 20 years those two kinds of bands have converged.
Of course this conversation is about a lot more than pop music.
Klosterman talks with podcast host and fellow journalist Derek Thompson about fame and popularity, culture, contingency, why things become popular and the decline of reading.
It’s a fascinating conversation, like when you go into a bar and start talking with a stranger who has a million fascinating things to say about history, philosophy and pop culture, and you end up talking for hours and then you probably never see the guy again.
HPE’s self-driving network now fixes 70–80% of potential issues without human help, says networking boss Rami Rahim. Humans still need to handle active attacks and anything touching regulatory requirements, Rahim told me. My latest on Fierce Network.
I received this in email this morning. I’m looking forward to skedaddling up to Los Angeles to improve my wardrobe of baggy cargo pants and food-stained T-shirts.
What to Do If Someone Puts a Suitcase in Your Overhead Bin — It has never occurred to me to think that an overhead bin is assigned to the seat below it. I look for a bin above my seat or a couple of rows ahead so I can get on and off the plane faster (and out of the way more quickly of everybody else getting on and off the plane).