A perfect mix of music and dancing that is actual dancing. I have said it before, but I believe this song will be the most played song this summer. (via BoingBoing)
And you might also like this one:
Daft Train
Reply
Mad Men meets Daft Punk
(via Kottke)
Jon Stewart on Tim Cook’s Congressional testimony
Market share v. profits
John Kirk has posted a terrific piece describing how large swaths of tech reporters seem unable to focus their “analysis” on anything other than market share. While Android’s world-wide market share is larger than Apple’s iOS, the higher market share is meaningless if the much higher profitability of iOS continues. After all, profits are the goal of businesses.
The article is worth a full read.
Disclosure: I am long AAPL.
Related articles
- On market share (ben-evans.com)
This should be fun to watch
According to Bloomberg, Google is considering making an offer for the crowed-sourced maps app created by Waze. Facebook has reportedly already offered more than $1 Billion for the company.
If Bloomberg is correct, then it might be a good time to pop some popcorn and watch the fireworks.
Economics quote of the day
Austerity has failed in the UK and it has failed in the eurozone. Its failure was predictable and, by some at least, predicted. It turned a nascent recovery into stagnation. That imposes huge and unnecessary costs, not just in the short run, but in the long term, as well: the costs of investments unmade, of businesses not started, of skills atrophied and of hopes destroyed.
This is not, as many seem to believe, a debate about the short term versus the long term. It is a debate about both the short and the long term, because what we do in the short term shapes the long term. What is being done here in the UK and also in much of the eurozone is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.
– Martin Wolf in the Financial Times (paywalled), via Andrew Sullivan.
Related articles
The stress of weddings
Random Access Memories
Daft Punk’s new album, Random Access Memories, is now out. I love it, but it certainly is a change from their earlier efforts. Instead of being more or less pure electronica created from samples, the album features various artists playing real instruments (including Nile Rogers, who created the disco group Chic and, believe it or not Paul Williams). My favorite song so far is “Get Lucky” the first single from the album.
Sasha Frere-Jones reviews the album in the current New Yorker. Here is an excerpt:
Daft Punk’s fourth studio album, “Random Access Memories,” is an attempt to make the kind of disco record that they sampled so heavily for “Discovery.” As such, it serves as a tribute to those who came before them and as a direct rebuke to much of what they’ve spawned. Only intermittently electronic in nature, and depending largely on live musicians, it is extremely ambitious, and as variable in quality as any popular album you will hear this year. Noodly jazz fusion instrumentals? Absolutely. Soggy poetry and kid choirs? Yes, please. Cliches that a B-list teen-pop writer would discard? Bring it on. The duo has become so good at making records that I replay parts of “Random Access Memories” repeatedly while simultaneously thinking it is some of the worst music I’ve ever heard. Daft Punk engages the sound and the surface of music so lovingly that all seventy-five loony minutes of “Random Access Memories” feel fantastic, even when you are hearing music you might never seek out. This record raises a radical question: Does good music need to be good?
Ken Tucker also reviewed the album on NPR’s Fresh Air.
Daft Punk has also released podcast with a series of short videos highlighting the various musicians who worked with them on the album. Well worth a look.
Related articles
- The best song from Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ is not even on the album (dangerousminds.net)
- Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (thetimes.co.uk)
- Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories hailed as ‘amazing’ and ‘bliss’ after iTunes stream (metro.co.uk)
Apple quote of the day
What I really wanted to ask is why the hell do I have to keep updating apps on my iPhone all the time?
– John McCain, at yesterday’s hearing about Apple’s tax planning.
Religious quote of the day
This ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy … The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!
…
We all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.
– Pope Francis.
What a breath of fresh air following the doctrinaire and rigid Pope Benedict. And compare the tone to this statement of Catholic “truth.”
(via Andrew Sullivan)
Rand Paul strongly defends Apple
At this morning’s hearing on Apple, and before Apple representatives even testified, Senator Ran Paul blasted the efforts of other senators, who appear to be shaming Apple.
Good for him. Of course, Tim Cook and the other representatives from Apple were extremely gracious.
Privacy quote of the day
We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.
- Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, quoted in The Atlantic. (via The Quotation of the Day Mailing List)
The birth of the Oklahoma tornado
Jimmy Kimmel at UNLV
Jimmy Kimmel compares his commencement address at UNLV to President Obama’s at Morehouse College:
1986 in twelve minutes
(via Andrew Sullivan)