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Favourites:

January 2021


by Liero Plantir
19/02/2021


This is just going to be a monthly post where I summarise my favourites from the various things across the site. It’ll include: albums, mixes, articles and books. It’s sort of for me to review the stuff I’ve been consuming but if you find anything of interest more power to you.


These are my five favourite albums I’ve listened to in month of January. I wrote some thoughts on each one if you’re interested.

The Collapse of Modern Culture
Urban Tribe

Select Works . vol I
Pontiac Streator


Mango & Patricia
Marino & Same O

Sc Trax
Mause

U Get Me
Futers


Mixes


These are my favorite mixes I’ve listened to this month, as well as some thoughts on each one.

CCL, D. Tiffany & Roza Terenzi @ HÖR BERLIN

This is an insanely good set from three insanely good artists. They have an amazing dynamic, and the selection is sublime. I would highly recommend, it’s my favourite mix I listened to in January by far.
Khotin Dekmantel Podcast 314

This is a gorgeous selection from Khotin which is a lot more mellow than the other mixes I’ve selected. It’s sort of a flowing journey of soundscapes taking you through a range of emotion from nostalgia to melancholy. His selection has a sort of warmth to it which comes across in his music as well. The mix is perfect for anytime of the day and will definitely make you feel better than you did previously.

DJ Swisha, Kush Jones, MoMa Ready & AceMo @ The Lot Radio

Another big mix by four insanely good artists. They have such a good dynamic and the tracks flow so well covering techno, house, breakbeat, electro and so much more. I think they have quite a few other Lot Radio sets together, so I’ll probably check them out because I think this is from a while ago, well 2019, which is an eternity ago.

Soundtrack To An Imaginary Movie Mix for Clash Magazine 320 – Djrum

Djrum is a bit of a genius and the concept for this mix is so good and so well executed. It’s from quite a while ago and I feel like there’s so much good Djrum material that I’m yet to discover which makes me quite excited. The selection is unreal and mixed unbelievably well so I would highly recommend because it’s quite the trip. There’s also a little interview to go a long with the mix.
Moodymann GTA Online

Probably one of the coolest people around, I’m not sure how anyone could hate this man. He looks even cooler as a GTA character, and this set is an eclectic soulful Detroit mix. I’ve listened so many times and I would highly recommend, best set on GTA by far. I’ve not listened to all of the others but let’s be honest.
024: Shadow

This is my favourite mix I did this month. I think they always turn out better when I stick to a theme/genre for a mix and the genre for this one was jungle which I haven’t mixed too much of before but I really love the selection.


Articles


These are my five favourite articles from the month with a few thoughts on each one.

1.
Secrets about people: a short and dangerous introduction to René Girard

I’ve been interested in the ideas of René Girard for a while, specifically mimetic theory and the ideas surrounding it. It’s such a fascinating topic which is constantly relevant and there’s various things written on it, but this is by far the best essay/post I’ve read on the topic. It’s written really well and is a great introduction and summary of the key points of Girard’s work. Apparently, Girard’s original work is quite hard to read for whatever reason, but I might tackle it at some point, however there’s a lot of good stuff written on the topic.

This essay covers a range of things including mimetic desire, conflict, hierarchies, religion and scapegoating to name a few. This is probably my favourite article I read this month and so I would highly recommend especially if you have some interest in the human condition.
2.
Avoid falling victim to the narrative fallacy

I’ve definitely fallen victim the narrative fallacy and thought about it before but I’ve never been able to explicitly define it or understand what I was describing until I came across this article. Essentially, it’s the idea that we sometimes ‘see events as stories, with logical chains of cause and effect’. I feel like I used to do this a lot after I’d read someone’s Wikipedia page and subconsciously attribute key events to the reasons to their success etc.

I haven’t read many biographies, but I feel like they’re the sorts of things where people really get caught up in this fallacy and manipulate it in a way to romanticise their own story. It’s quite an interesting fallacy because I feel like not being aware of it can easily lead you to distort your own reality and become convinced of other distorted realities quite easily. I guess some extremes are the fact that some people’s whole careers and livelihoods are made by inducing this fallacy, although does that happen with most fallacies? Interesting stuff would highly recommend.

3.
The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class

This is quite a fun read if you’ve watched the Office and the ideas are interesting to ponder. This ‘theory of social class’ essentially splits the Office characters up into three categories which are: losers, the clueless and the sociopaths. This is then mapped onto a ladder class system in which each category relates to one of three ladders. The losers are on the labour ladder, the clueless on the educated gentry ladder and the sociopaths on the elite’s ladder. These ladders relate to the real world and people climb up each ladder through money, detachment from reality and power respectively.

I can imagine that probably doesn’t do the article justice because it was rather poorly explained so I’d recommend you read the article if you’ve seen the Office.
4.
The tyranny of ideas

An insightful perspective on the way in which ideas win over people and how this basically creates constraints on reputation. Eghbal sees this as a sort of devil’s contract: ‘continue to make the same thing and you’ll be rewarded, but don’t stray too far from the original concept’. For instance, for many artists and creators we only really know their identity through the lens of the thing they produced for us. Therefore, if they meet an untimely death, we mourn them because their product is scarce and we can no longer get our fix.

5.
The Idea Trap

This is an interesting piece about economic growth and progression within a society and reminds me of some of the ideas developed in David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity. Caplan argues that the one of the most important facts about economic growth is that poor countries do not catch up to rich countries, on average. He attributes this to consistently bad policies and he states that ‘the least pleasant places in the world to live’ have three features: low economic growth, policies that discourage growth and resistance to the idea that other policies would be better.

He then goes on to talk about the other side to this cycle by presenting some ‘laws of motion’ which govern a country’s economic/political situation. It’s an interesting read and the concept of an idea trap where bad performance is not self-correcting is insightful to view from this perspective.


These are the books that I read this month which I wrote a few thoughts if you’re interested.


The Singularity Is Near
Ray Kurzweil

Nonsense
Edward Lear