Daily Archives: December 23, 2019

A Christmas Carol on BBC review: Guy Pearces Scrooge is cruel, but still kind of hot – The Irish Times

Posted: December 23, 2019 at 4:50 pm

Everybody knows the story of A Christmas Carol (BBC One, Sun, 9pm): Its an indelible classic about one brave iconoclast, an irreligious captain of enterprise and profaner of mint sweets, whose vigorous work ethic and high expectations of those around him marks him out among the bleating, lock-step sentimentalists of mandatory Christmas cheer.

Yet, in a stinging critique of how the individual must be ground down by mass-mentality and conspicuous consumption, Charles Dickens has his free-thinker hounded, bullied and psychologically tortured by three vengeful spirits. Finally, tragically, he succumbs: shaken, hysterical and penny-tossing, he joins the throng of the merrily mind-washed. Its basically Orwells 1984 in reverse. God bless us everyone!

Hey, if youre going to reimagine A Christmas Carol, at least have some fun with it. In Steven Knights dark and gritty retelling of the Christmas staple, though, Dickens gets the Peaky Blinders treatment, but with neither the excitement nor the fun. Bah! Humdrum!

We begin in a snowy, grey graveyard, where an aggrieved urchin full of hatred with an even fuller bladder unleashes a gush of scorn upon the headstone of one Jacob Marley (Stephen Graham). The camera plunges into the ground, down inside the coffin with him, to find Marley conscious, perturbed and vociferously aggrieved by the trickle. The inscription clearly reads, Rest in Peace, he complains, blinking away the drops, before the screen thickens into a frost that bears the title. Chilling

Cut to London, 1843, where streets crowd with extras yelling street hawker things with the accents and volume of a hundred exasperated John Bercows. Here Ebenezer Scrooge (Guy Pearce, severe, curmudgeonly, but still kind of hot), rations out four coal pieces for his sole employee Bob Cratchit (pained, class-conscious, but still kind of hot), while demonstrating various signs of conservatism, nihilism, autism, and depression. How many Merry Christmases are meant, he muses, mostly to himself, and how many are lies?

Truth, though, spills from the mouths of Cratchit, another purgatorial blacksmith who begins Marley on his quest, and the Ghost of Christmas Past (Andy Serkis), who has decided to try out an Irish accent. This corresponds, to some degree, with a stridently postcolonial critique of Scrooge and Marley, no longer merely overlords of a counting house, but imperial industrialists whose workers have died in in vast numbers in factories from Manchester to Bombay to Honduras.

Thus is Scrooge given a scowling socio-economic historical context. And, with his compulsive counting, helpless verbalising and his nephews understanding that hes just in pain, thus is he given a glum modern psychology. Filmed in profound darkness, thus is he also very hard to see past the glow of your Christmas tree lights. And, with all of these embellishments, thus is one of Dickenss rare pithy works padded out to three hours across three episodes.

How padded? Well, by the end of the first instalment, Scrooge has not yet received the Ghost of Christmas Past, which is to say weve barely covered the novellas first 26 pages worth of plot. In that time we have so elaborated Scrooges backstory as to make him, essentially, a corrupt mass murderer and the epitome of all the sins of British industrial capitalism.

Now, I dont know how radical Knight intends to be, but it would take more than three visitations to push that kind of protagonist even close to redemption. So why bother? God damn him, everyone!

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A Christmas Carol on BBC review: Guy Pearces Scrooge is cruel, but still kind of hot - The Irish Times

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Uncut’s 50 best new albums of 2019 – Uncut.co.uk

Posted: at 4:50 pm

50 SHANA CLEVELANDNight Of The Worm MoonHARDLY ARTIts title inspired by Sun Ras The Night Of The Purple Moon, the second solo LP from the La Luz singer and guitarist moulded the interstellar jazz auteurs cosmic bent to her own fingerpicked acoustic guitar. As wonky chord sequences echoed Syd Barretts solo work, and pedal steel and synths provided an eerie, psychedelic air, Cleveland sang of grief, dreams and nameless terrors in the Californian darkness.

49 STEPHEN MALKMUSGroove DeniedDOMINOWhile last years Sparkle Hard was Malkmuss most accessible effort to date, here the songwriter explored his more outr interests with this basement electronic album. Despite a troubled gestation, Groove Denied turned out to be a laidback triumph: its laptop production was hazily vintage, reminiscent of early Cabaret Voltaire and Human League, while its inspired tracklisting gradually took the listener from machine-tooled abstraction to more traditional, guitar-based songs.

48 LIZZOCuz I Love YouNICE LIFE/ATLANTIC2019 found Minneapolis-based singer/rapper Melissa Viviane Jefferson propelling her whipsmart rhymes, bodypositive message and occasional flute solos into the mainstream, with third album Cuz I Love You reaching the Billboard Top 5. A savvy, boisterous antidote to moody rap nihilism, the album placed Lizzo firmly in the lineage of Outkast and Missy Elliott, with the latter turning up to anoint her successor on the irresistible Tempo.

47 NRIJABlumeDOMINOThe debut album by this Domino-signed supergroup exemplified why the new wave of British jazz has been such a breath of fresh air. Despite featuring a number of the scenes major players saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Cassie Kinoshi, trumpeter Sheila Maurice-Grey, trombonist Rosie Turton and more it never felt like anyone was queuing up for a solo, instead striving to fashion a supremely harmonious blend of 70s astral jazz and contemporary global flavours.

46 LAMBCHOPThis (is what I wanted to tell you)CITY SLANGUnder Kurt Wagners tutelage, Lambchop are an object lesson in how a band can evolve gracefully. The work begun on 2016s FLOTUS exploring the possibilities of electronica was sustained on the immersive, thought-provoking This (is what I wanted to tell you), which navigated a path through the organic and the electronically adjusted, aided by sometime Bon Iver drummer Matt McCaughan, Calexico trumpeter Jacob Valenzuela and Nashville veteran Charlie McCoy.

45 SLEAFORD MODSEton AliveEXTREME EATINGIts getting shitter! Sleaford Mods a raw and uncompromising duo remain a difficult band for horrible times. Unsubtle but penetrating observers of the UK, Jason Williamson and Andrew Fearn here presented a bleak, if occasionally tuneful, world informed by our toxic domestic politics, without ever actually being sucked into the mire. Check the promo clips of the singer putting the bins out and walking disdainfully around the neighbourhood of Eton College itself.

44 ROBERT FORSTERInfernoTAPETEWhen Robert Forster announced the release of a new Go-Betweens boxset last month, he did so safe in the knowledge that his latest album stood shoulder to shoulder with the work of his celebrated former band. Inferno brought his customary wit and elegance to bear on a set of wonderfully pithy songs about ageing, family, climate change and the artists place in the world.

43 WH LUNGIncidental MusicMELODICJames Murphy has taken a lot from Manchesters musical heritage, but WH Lung reversed the flow with their strong debut album. With the group originally intended as a studio-only outfit, Joseph E, Tom S and Tom P paid painstaking attention to the eight songs on Incidental Music, carving their sparkling electronic rock with one eye on New Order and the other on Berlin-era Bowie.

42 FAT WHITE FAMILYSerfs Up!DOMINOA remarkable turnaround for Britains scuzziest band, whod previously lost their way attempting to live up to their dissolute reputation. But relocating to Sheffield, they mainlined some of that citys synthpop sleaze, adding strings and sax to produce a compelling album of dank disco cabaret, with deliciously murky lyrics to match.

41 BILLIE EILISHWhen We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?DARKROOM/INTERSCOPEThe years pop phenomenon, courtesy of Bad Guy a record of such creepy delivery and intention it threatened to darken the skies at a radiant Glastonbury Eilish had no problem extending her vision to a full album. Here, production by her brother Fineas OConnell gave off a padded-cell ambience, which well suited songs falling somewhere between 90s R&B, Dr Dre and Nine Inch Nails.

40 VAMPIRE WEEKENDFather Of The BrideCOLUMBIAOnce, they tapped out bookish Afroindie from the confines of a Columbia University dorm room. But Vampire Weekends fourth album was a genuinely cosmopolitan effort. Six years in the making, it gleefully mashed up all manner of musical styles the glorious Harmony Hall alone veered from 70s folk rock to 90s gospel house, via Gilbert & Sullivan but at the heart of it all, singer Ezra Koenig remained charmingly vulnerable.

39 BONNIE PRINCE BILLYI Made A PlaceDOMINOWill Oldham has been busy over the last decade, reworking his own catalogue and paying homage to his heroes. I Made A Place, however, is something else: his first collection of new, selfpenned songs since 2011s Wolfroy Goes To Town. A continuation of his work rather than a reinvention, this is a stately, sophisticated set of country-rock songs, the likes of This Is Far From Over certainly a match for those of his songwriting idols.

38 75 DOLLAR BILLI Was RealTAK:TILIn 2016, Rick Brown and Che Chen issued a debut Wood/ Metal/Plastic/ Pattern which purported to come from Brooklyn, but which seemed to have emerged from a different continent altogether. Three years on, their second, larger record expands on that initial promise. Alive with Tuareg guitar electricity and longform drone, I Was Real proposes a kosmische of the earth: capable of easeful travel across great distances, while always retaining something solid underfoot.

37 THE MURDER CAPITALWhen I Have FearsHUMAN SEASONWhile they match fellow Dubliners Fontaines DC for fire and fury, The Murder Capital processed their anger through a more angular post-punk sound on their debut album. Rhythms stutter la Joy Division or early Cure, while vocalist James McGovern sounds, at times, like a young Ian McCulloch; Dont Cling To Life and the lengthy Green & Blue are as epic and dramatic as the Big Music of the early 80s, helped along by Floods atmospheric production.

36 DAVEPsychodramaNEIGHBOURHOODStreatham rapper David Dave Omoregie may have capped a triumphant year with a starring role in Top Boy 3, but his debut album Psychodrama the recipient of this years coveted Mercury Prize was no generic gangster chronicle. Sounding preternaturally wise, he tackled racial inequality, mental illness and domestic abuse over brooding strings and needling piano, although the slinky Location proved he could still cover the rap bases.

35 STURGILL SIMPSONSound & FuryELEKTRASimpson has never been one to stand still, creatively speaking. His first album, High Top Mountain, was a traditional country effort but since then he has moved away from heartlandcourting endeavours. Sound & Fury presented another big shift in direction for Simpson this time with anime visuals, strutting disco-boogie, grunge and pulsing modern blues joining the party. However nuts Sound & Fury became though, Simpsons commitment to heartfelt songcraft remained reassuringly intact.

34 FONTAINES DCDogrelPARTISANMy childhood was small/But Im gonna be BIG! The opening declaration of Fontaines DC singer Grian Chatten is alive with the irrepressible momentum of the young band going places. This debut, sure enough, surges onward through post-punk styles big and small, from The Fall to REM, to Prolapse and Idlewild. Always energetic, generally cathartic, occasionally see Television Screens in particular revelatory, they alight on moments of thundering lyricism quite their own.

33 THE RACONTEURSHelp Us StrangerTHIRD MANBack after an 11-year hiatus, Jack White and his co-conspirators picked up where they left off with Consolers Of The Lonely. Thats to say, anyone fearing the kind of indulgences White brought to last years solo album Boarding House Reach will have enjoyed the more conventional rock leanings of Help Us Stranger. The vibe was uncluttered and exuberant including a cover of Donovans Hey Guy (Dig The Slowness) while the attendant tour was among the years live highlights.

32 KIM GORDONNo Home RecordMATADORAfter the serious noise of her Body/ Head project, we were probably unprepared for the vibrancy and colour (even jokes) of No Home Record. Working with art-pop producer Justin Raisen, Gordon framed her Mark E Smithlike observations (see for details especially: Air B&B) within compositions which vaguely alluded to her past as the first lady of US noise, while never leaning on it to help her determine her future.

31 MICHAEL KIWANUKAKiwanukaPOLYDORThis expansive third album from the British-Ugandan singer fulfilled the early promise of his previous efforts. Full of beguiling melodies, affecting lyrics, sharp playing, rich arrangements and sympathetic production, Kiwanuka confidently delivered multiple pleasures. Strings wash, choirs purr, and the balance of analogue and electronic overseen by Kiwanuka, Brian Danger Mouse Burton and hip-hop multiinstrumentalist Inflo was expertly maintained. Kiwanukas references Isaac Hayes, Marvin Gaye are given psychedelic goosing, as on first single You Aint The Problem.

30 JESSICA PRATTQuiet SignsCITY SLANGThe epithet LA-based singersongwriter tends to conjure up notions of sun-kissed escapism, but Jessica Pratts enchanting third album was more Muswell Hill than Laurel Canyon. Her plucked guitar and strange, waiflike voice was gilded with occasional flute, piano and creaky synths that made it all sound like a tape reel discovered in someones loft, untouched since 1967 or perhaps even 1667.

29 TRASH KITHorizonUPSET THE RHYTHM Post-punks not dead! After a fiveyear rest to pursue other projects among them the very good Shopping and Bas Jan Rachel Aggs, Gill Partington and Rachel Horwood reconvened for this fine third album. For sure the trio fluently speak the language of 1980: spare production, articulation of every note, songs called things like Dislocate. More impressive, though, is how Aggs guitar flourishes and the sparing use of sax and piano make it all more than the sum of its parts.

28 JENNY HVALThe Practice Of LoveSACRED BONESFollowing on from her Blood Bitch album, a high-concept investigation of blood, from menstruation to vampire movies, the seventh album by Norwegian artist Hval turned love into a kind of visitor attraction. A work of immersive, textured synthesiser and billowing trance, The Practice Of Love was paced like a DJ set, incorporating stunning drops in tempo see the spokenword contributions of Vivian Wang on the title track and thoughtfully ecstatic highs.

27 THE NATIONALI Am Easy To Find4ADSomething of a surprise, coming hot on the heels of 2017s Sleep Well Beast, the bands eighth studio album was inspired by a collaboration with filmmaker Mike Mills. As a consequence, I Am Easy To Find saw the band expand to include a cast of female vocalists (including former Bowie bassist Gail Ann Dorsey) guiding and redirecting the songs away from Matt Berninger. It paid off: I Am Easy To Find continued The Nationals uninterrupted creative trajectory.

26 ANGEL OLSENAll MirrorsJAGJAGUWARThough this Asheville-based singer-songwriter has always reinvented her sound, moving from earthy folk to raw post-punk to lusher pastures, her fourth record proved to be her most extreme transition yet. Here, industrial synths and scything avant-garde string arrangements collided to bring a dramatic, gothic grandeur to Olsens ruminations on lost love and emotional isolation. Above the turbulent arrangements, her voice provided a mighty and quivering constant.

25 NEIL YOUNG WITH CRAZY HORSEColoradoREPRISEA timely reunion marking the 50th anniversary of Youngs first record with Crazy Horse Colorado also found Nils Lofgren, newly promoted to full-time member, adding appropriate musical lift and heft to proceedings. There were customarily heroic jams like Milky Way but also a vein of melancholia, as best heard on Olden Days, that helped underscore the losses Young experienced during a difficult 2019, including his former wife Pegi and long-serving manager Elliot Roberts.

24 THE SPECIALSEncoreUMC/ISLANDThe bands first new material since they reformed 10 years ago, Encore is at its best when it not only honours The Specials past a mournful trombone solo or a dive into the ska vaults but pushes in new directions, too. A cover of the Equals Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys, for instance, offers imposing taut funk. Elsewhere, Terry Halls soul-bearing reports of his struggles with mental health add poignancy, while the socio-political barbs reinforce their role as vital cultural commentators.

23 ALDOUS HARDINGDesigner4ADThree albums in and New Zealander Hannah Aldous Harding remains impressively tricky to pin down. Recorded with utilitarian precision in Bristol and Wales, aided by John Parrish and Huw H Hawkline Evans, Designers brisk, catchy folk-pop initially felt like a startling contrast to the heavy drama of previous album Party although a sense of unease seeped through into the albums crespuscular second half.

22 LEONARD COHENThanks For The DanceCOLUMBIAYou want it even darker? How about this from beyond the grave work put together sensitively by Cohens son Adam? Compiled from late-doors studio recordings and then complemented by performances by the likes of Beck, Feist and Cohens sometime vocal partner Jennifer Warnes, the tone ranges from deep wisdom and finality (The Goal) to the wryly seductive (Her nipples rose like bread, Len whispers on The Night Of Santiago). A slim but essential volume.

21 RHIANNON GIDDENS feat FRANCESCO TURRISIThere Is No OtherNONESUCHOf the projects Giddens has been involved in since 2017s Freedom Highway, There Is No Other might just be the finest. A collaboration with Italian multiinstrumentalist Turrisi, it addressed the other of the title through its examination of Islamic influences on Western music: thus the title track mixed banjo with Middle Eastern percussion, Giddens impassioned vocals meshed with lute on Ten Thousand Voices, and a take on Ola Belle Reeds Gonna Write Me A Letter highlighted the blues explicit links to Africa.

20 BRITTANY HOWARDJaimeCOLUMBIAThis striking solo debut from the Alabama Shakes singer swapped stirring Southern soul for something more intimate and experimental. Marshalling a small group of skilled players, including jazz pianist Robert Glasper, she explored Prince-style purple funk, neo-soul and even electropop as a backdrop for moving ruminations on race and relationships.

19 PETER PERRETTHumanworldDOMINOPerretts sudden, miraculous reappearance back in 2017 with his first solo album proper, How The West Was Won, was one of the more surprising returns of recent times. Fortuitously, Humanworld was every bit as good as, and at points even better than, its predecessor. Made with his sons Jamie and Peter Jr joining him on guitar and bass, Humanworld foregrounded Perretts gifts for compressing all the drama of lifes ups and downs into simple, unpretentious pop.

18 JENNY LEWISOn The LineCAPITOLLewiss fourth solo album evoked the expensive sounds of prime Fleetwood Mac, and featured some of the finest players of that hallowed era, from Ringo Starr and Jim Keltner to Benmont Tench and Don Was. On The Line was resolutely not a period piece, however, its sumptuous production only serving to better highlight the bleeding edge of Lewiss lovelorn ballads, from the wayward Taffy to the deliciously lugubrious Hollywood Lawn.

17 MODERN NATUREHow To LiveBELLA UNIONA move from inner London to the fringes of Epping Forest encouraged Jack Cooper to abandon Velvets wannabes Ultimate Painting and focus on this inspired urban-rural hybrid, driven by tight motorik rhythms but rich with the cadences of British folk rock. Effusive sax breaks from Sunwatchers Jeff Tobias sealed the deal.

16 SHARON VAN ETTENRemind Me TomorrowJAGJAGUWARIts been a busy time of late for the New Jersey native motherhood, acting and a counselling degree while further changes were in evidence on this, her fifth studio album, which found Van Etten edge away from guitar towards piano and vintage synths. The results were often gloriously catchy the Springsteen-esque Seventeen though elsewhere songs like Jupiter 4 evoked the pulsing drones of Suicide and the dissonant hiss of Memorial Day shared the corrosive atmospherics of Lows Double Negative.

15 BON IVERi,iJAGJAGUWARHis Wisconsin wood cabin long since overgrown, Justin Vernons fourth Bon Iver album was an experiment in musical crowdsourcing, finding starring roles for everyone from Bruce Hornsby to former Spank Rock rapper Naeem Juwan. Continuing the revelatory exploded view songwriting approach of 2016s 22, A Million, but with real musicians and singers taking the place of samples and effects, it found thrilling new ways to convey moments of soaring, communal joy.

14 RICHARD DAWSON2020WEIRD WORLDFor his follow-up to Peasant, Newcastles folk auteur turned his keen eye on 21st-century life, singing of racism, soul-sucking jobs, homelessness and mental illness: Its lonely up here in Middle England, he laments on Jogging. To match the coarse subject matter, Dawson swapped the harps and strings of Peasant for electric guitar, drums and synths; Black Triangle, then, recounts the desperation of a UFO obsessive over wailing metal, while the gruelling Fulfillment Centre dissects damaging consumerism over Tuareg rhythms.

13 OH SEESFace StabberCASTLE FACEAs in life, as on record. Manic intensity is the John Dwyer way, his energies for keeping Oh Sees on an unforgiving schedule of writing, playing and recording mirrored in the brisk-tempo garage motorik that is the stuff of Face Stabber. Always different, always the same, here the band occupy some reassuringly familiar space to last years Smote Reverser: their thundering double drummers are the propulsion for their turbulent passage into guitar orbit.

12 JULIA JACKLINCrushingPOLYVINYLThe slacker thrills of Dont Let The Kids Win, Jacklins 2016 debut, did little to suggest the depths of raw emotion that the Sydney-raised songwriter would plumb for its powerful follow-up. Jacklins extraordinary voice, wracked lyrics and the slow, sparse electric pulse suggested early Cat Power or Low, with Head Alone a demand for space, both emotionally and physically, and the closing Comfort a cautious resurfacing after romantic and touring troubles: Ill be OK/Ill be alright

11 CATE LE BONRewardMEXICAN SUMMERFor her fifth solo LP, Carmarthenshires Cate Le Bon left behind the acidic guitars and tumbling krautrock of 2016s Crab Day for a softer bed of pianos, marimbas, saxophones and synths. The result, mostly written in isolation in the Lake District while Le Bon was studying furniture-making, was a slow-burning triumph, a grower that took many listens to reveal its enigmatic, intoxicating centre.

10 WILCOOde To JoydBpmThroughout their storied 25-year career, Wilco have consistently questioned themselves and their creative purpose. So Ode To Joy their 11th studio album found Jeff Tweedy and his co-conspirators once again recalibrating their sound and direction. Ode To Joy stripped everything back to its key components, favouring a hushed, spacious palette on which Tweedy could transmit his songs about mortality, love, the state of the world and more. Also: their Wilcovered CD for Uncut was pretty amazing, we humbly thought.

9 BIG THIEFUFOF4ADThe quartets second album of the year, Two Hands, also picked up some appreciation from our writers, but their superb first LP of 2019 made the biggest impact. Adrianne Lenkers songs, from the weightless Cattails to the ominous Jenny, were never less than stunning, but they were elevated by the sensitive, sinuous arrangements: one moment Big Thief could sound as folky and rootsy as a campfire singalong, the next as expansive and airy as the cosmos high above.

8 BILL CALLAHANShepherd In A Sheepskin VestDRAG CITYAfter Dream Rivers spacious meditations on the natural world, six years later we find Bill Callahan keeping things within four walls. Bliss would be overstating it Callahan is too nuanced a writer for that but this is a record far more domestic than watery. Now a husband and father, here Callahan admits us further than ever before into his private world. The sound is as intimate as the sentiment, even if the record occasionally hints at strange currents beneath the tranquil surface.

7 BRUCE SPRINGSTEENWestern StarsCOLUMBIAA change of pace from the sturm und drang of the E Street Band, the longdelayed Western Stars found Springsteen at his most autumnal and meditative. The songs were bleak narratives and lingering pen-portraits of fading actors, injured stuntmen and jaded lovers ruminating on their unhappy lot. The lush orchestrations and ambitious, sophisticated arrangements felt closer to 60s West Coast folk-pop than Springsteens usual beat. As a consequence, Western Stars was an unexpected and welcome stylistic detour.

6 JOAN SHELLEYLike The River Loves The SeaNO QUARTERThe Kentucky singer and guitarist has quietly proved herself to be one of the finest songwriters of recent years, and her sublime fifth album was naturally entrancing. Recorded in Iceland with her adept collaborators Nathan Salsburg and James Elkington, with a little help from Will Oldham and a few local musicians, these 12 acoustic tracks are gossamer-fine, sometimes profound and utterly timeless.

5 LANA DEL REYNorman Fucking RockwellINTERSCOPEA thematically rich record crazy love during end times Norman Fucking Rockwell positioned the singer-songwriter somewhere between Eve Babitz and Carole King. Over baroque piano ballads and dazzling folk, the albums narrators found themselves adrift in Del Reys deeply seductive vision of California, populated by neer-do-wells and fly-by-nights. References to Laurel Canyon, Dennis Wilson and CSN cast a retro haze; but Norman Fucking Rockwell is very much Del Reys own vision. Witness Venice Bitch, the nine-minute epic that crowned this elegant and complex album.

4 THE COMET IS COMINGTrust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep MysteryIMPULSE!Having put a rocket up the jazz scene with last years incendiary, politically charged Sons Of Kemet album Your Queen Is A Reptile, Shabaka Hutchings channelled that fervour into the return of his cosmic synthnsax outfit, The Comet Is Coming. As with the best spiritual jazz records, Trust In The Lifeforce was equally blissful and raging, both out-there and in-here the most intoxicating collision of beats, jazz and apocalyptic visions since DJ Shadow discovered David Axelrod.

3 PURPLE MOUNTAINSPurple MountainsDRAG CITYI spent a decade playing chicken with oblivion, revealed David Berman in the opening number of what was tragically to prove Purple Mountains first and last album. Day to day, Im neck and neck with giving in. We know now that oblivion won. But Bermans generous final act was to give hope to others by excavating the darkest recesses of his psyche with such eloquence and humour, all set to his unique brand of endearingly louche country-rock.

2 NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDSGhosteenGHOSTEEN LTDIf Skeleton Tree loosened the moorings, then Ghosteen found Cave boldly cutting the rope, severing all ties with the glowering caricature of old. Instead, this was an epic, dreamlike odyssey through grief and towards hope, accompanied by migrating spirits and galleon ships, sick babies and Jesus freaks, all engulfed in whirls of analogue synths and spectral, multi-tracked voices. As he sang, Its a long way to find peace of mind but it was a journey that enriched us all.

1 WEYES BLOODTitanic RisingSUB POPLast year, our Albums Of The Year poll found seasoned veterans like Low and Yo La Tengo discovering new sonic methods to convey their apprehension and sense of displacement during these complex times. Similarly, our 2019 survey shows how many of our other core artists have also grappled with ways to articulate their responses to an increasingly tumultuous world. For Wilco, Lambchop, The Specials and Brittany Howard, for example, their albums during 2019 mixed both personal and political themes with uplifting results.

The same is true, too, of Weyes Bloods Natalie Mering whose fourth album Titanic Rising, released in April, confronted the problems facing us all head on. Her 2016 LP, A Front Row Seat To Earth, had begun to consider our planets fate; but the themes that recur in Titanic Rising proved to be weighty: climate emergency, the decline of natural resources and the struggle to find emotional connection in an increasingly technological world. For the front cover of Titanic Rising, Mering submerged an entire bedroom, complete with teddy bear and laptop. Show me where it hurts, she whispered at the end of opener A Lots Gonna Change; you could be forgiven for thinking she was addressing Earth itself.

Weyes Blood ushered in 2019 with Andromeda a swooning update of early-70s West Coast pop, filled with sci-fi wonderment, where Mering transformed her earthy quest for love into a celestial concern. The rest of Titanic Rising, meanwhile, is an exercise in baroque post-modernism, full of lavishly orchestrated and structured compositions. Titanic Rising also showcases Merings remarkable alto part Judy Sill, part Nico that lies between folk and torch singing. There is a dignity and otherness at work here: her voice sweeps robustly over swelling crescendo of Something To Believe, while A Lots Gonna Change finds her delivery softer and more intimate. By the end of the year, Mering was sharing the stage of the Hollywood Bowl with Lana Del Rey and Zella Day, singing three-part harmonies on a cover of Joni Mitchells For Free. An indication, if you need one, of Merings breakthrough with this remarkable, transcendent album.

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Uncut's 50 best new albums of 2019 - Uncut.co.uk

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For Push Button Press, Post-Punk Angst Is Still All the Rage – New Times Broward-Palm Beach

Posted: at 4:50 pm

If you thought the era of New Wave that swept across the Atlantic in the 1980s and 90s from the UK to the U.S. had passed, you are sorely mistaken. Push Button Press is holding up the flag high for all the goth kids out there that refuse to let go of their angst and skepticism and don their black platform shit-kickers with pride.

Push Button Press have come from the underground and smuggler dens of Ybor City, descending onto this world like a dark cloud of truth here to wash away our contentment. They are a rebuke of the sunny pop records that young suburban artists cultivate; they are the knife in the darkness that cuts away the bullshit and exposes the depths of our feelings.

With their first EP release in 2018, titled Spectacle 1, they have solidified themselves as the champions of youth everywhere who dont view the world through the rose-colored spectacles that our parents thrust upon us. They dont write songs about lies and empty aspirations; their songs touch on many of the same pillars of society that bands like Joy Division and the Cure wrote about.

Push Button Presses single Night Out paints the landscape of South Florida nightlife that many will never see, but most know its there. Lyrics like the chorus Take a walk with me/See the bricks beneath our feet/Its not too far to throw by now, which express this want to rage and break society instead of going through another night of mindless imbibing. I can carry the weight for one more night/I can bare the horror one more time. Push Button Press delves deeper into this feeling of pointlessness and the horror of the nothingness that is the songwriters existence. Its sentiments like these that speak to the disaffected youth of a glutenous culture.

Its as if they are past fighting the weight of the surrounding mirage that we call life and have decided to simply speak truthfully about the longing that people have and the waste that we have all become. Reading this, one may think that Push Button Press is seeing something that isnt there, but their music suggests its more likely you have simply decided to look away and pretend their nihilism isnt founded.

Push Button Press is signed to Cold Transmission Music, a German record label; if there is anyone out there that understands artists like Push Button Press, its Germans. Ten minutes in Berlin would make anyone realize this fact. Its tracks like the song 5 C that write about the end of the world. Its the idea that the world is spiraling out of control and natural disasters are tearing at our civilization, and we simply ignore whats happening by denying science and stopping all discourse by turning a blind eye.

Artists like Rob Smith of the Cure would be proud that a genre of music he helped foster into a tidal wave during the Cures time at the top is still alive and kicking because artists like Push Button Press refuse to stop writing. Their synth-heavy music that echoes both nightmares and dreamscapes has a profound impact on the listener. The voice of singer Jim Walker adds so much post-punk style too, that sometimes when you listen to Push Button Press it feels like you are being transported back to the 90s and all the grunge and attitude that comes with the era.

The song Mire and the Sea (S Y Z Y G Y X Remix) is a crowd favorite of Push Button Press, and is played in clubs all over South Florida. The pulsing sensations and the rolling goth thunder that is the drums of Mire and the Sea makes it a truly amazing remix. After spending a year of my life living in Berlin, this song would be a perfect example of what can be found in the nightlife scene out there. A city known for having the greatest nightlife in the world would find the remix to Mire and the Sea as a truly dark and perfect situation for the dancing german hoards that enter nightclubs all across the country on a Thursday night and often dont leave until Monday morning.

One of the really great things about New Wave is that unlike so many rock n roll acts, the idea of remixing a record is a popular way of collaborating. You wouldnt normally see someone like Neil Young or the Who choosing to have a DJ or producer remix their tracks, but with New Wave and the whole post-punk/goth scene, the idea of remixes work really well because of the synth heavy choices many groups make with their music. The other remix on PBPs EP is for the track Dream of Fire, produced by Icy Men. The song is a track that feels like desperation, a desperation for others to force upon the singer their idea of what a dream should be. With lyrics like They put the dream in my arm, its as if hes explaining that the dream is a drug that poisons our mind and we get addicted to the dream.

So, if you are looking to get a dose of raw synth post-punk, then do not miss out on Push Button Press on Friday. Their album Spectacle 1 is a conceptualized record that plays great live. You can get all dressed up in your pleather platform boots and smooth on your black eye shadow (totally acceptable for men and women), and prepare to dance to some truly spectacular music that will have you thinking about the bully in your freshman class and how one day you will show him.

10 p.m. Friday, December 27, Respectable Street, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach; 561-832-9999; sub-culture.org/respectable-street. Cost is $8 at the door.

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Steve Sanders: Mayor Pete, McKinsey and dishonesty on the left – Indianapolis Business Journal

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Early in his career, Pete Buttigieg worked for 2-1/2 years as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co. That history is being mined by Mayor Petes lefty opponents to create dishonest attacks that exploit peoples lack of understanding of how providers of professional servicesconsultants, lawyers, accountantsactually work.

Media outlets and some of his criticsespecially his rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Elizabeth Warrenhad been demanding that Buttigieg release a list of the McKinsey clients he worked for, and he has done so. The list includes Best Buy, an insurance company, a supermarket chain and several federal agencies.

Buttigiegs work for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan has generated the most attention. Ten years ago, the insurer raised premiums and laid off 10% of its workers. But those decisions can hardly be pinned on a nerdy junior associate whose three-month assignment, according to Buttigiegs campaign, involved analyzing things like rent, utilities, and travel costsespecially since the layoffs occurred two years after Buttigieg left McKinsey.

Still, the outrage machine cranked up immediately, and a Politico headline captured the unscrupulous nihilism of the whole imbroglio: The left nukes Buttigieg over McKinsey work. Wrote a blogger on the progressive site Common Dreams, Buttigieg helped an insurance giant increase profits at the expense of workers. According to The New York Times, the client list is likely to provide ammunition to those in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party who have sought to tag Mr. Buttigieg with the pejorative Wall Street Pete.

Many people believe a clients conduct should be imputed to any lawyer, accountant or consultant who works for them, and Mayor Petes critics are doing their best to stoke such misconceptions. But that is not how business works. Entry-level associates in particular have little control over their assignments and clients. You work under a partner, who has the authority to make actual decisions and recommendations. As another former McKinsey associate wrote on the website MarketWatch, You have absolutely zero power and very little influence.

To be fair, Buttigieg once touted his McKinsey work for the insights it gave him about management and problem solving. He probably overstated the scope of his experience.

Contrast Mayor Petes low-level McKinsey work with Warrens longtime side hustle while she was a well-paid law professor, earning almost $2 million representing some of the same types of corporate interests she now rails against. Unlike Buttigieg, Warren had complete freedom to choose her projects and clients, and, owing to her stature, more power to influence their behavior.

When I was an associate at a large law firm, I was assigned to write a brief arguing that a lawsuit against our client, a railroad that had contaminated some land, should be dismissed. I did not choose the client, and the argument I developed involved a perfectly legitimate application of relevant law. Yet if I ran for office today and the matter came out, the line of attack would be (cue ominous music and stock video of toxic waste), Sanders believes dirty, disgusting polluters shouldnt being held accountable.

And so it goes with Mayor Pete. From the snarky attacks and indignation, you would think he had ordered those Blue Cross layoffs personally.

These portrayals of Buttigiegs short, wonky, unglamorous stint as a management consultant are irresponsible. They demonstrate that some on the Democratic leftwho demand ideological purity and scorn the more analytical, pragmatic politics of someone like Buttigieghave the same situational relationship with facts and candor as the Trumpian right. Progressives should be better than that.

__________

Sanders is professor of law at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington. Send comments to [emailprotected]

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‘Mr. Robot’ Is the Defining Show of the 2010s – VICE UK

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How much trauma can you take? To what degree can an individual change society for the better? What would that change even look like? Is the world, increasingly chaotic and painful as it seems to be, worth living in? These are all questions posed by the fourth and final season of Mr. Robot, which will provide a cultural gavel bang for the 2010s with its last ever episode on Sunday.

A drama about a hacktivist group called fsociety whose goal is to erase the worlds debt, Mr. Robot began as nihilistic commentary on late capitalism; Fight Club for the Anonymous age, striking a similar balance of psychological distress and revolutionary ideas communicated through medicated monologues about why we should fuck society. Its less topless and self-serious than Fight Club, which is primarily a critique of male violence. Instead, Mr. Robot is concerned with the human cost of wealth inequality on all sides.

Its a fitting show to wrap up the decade. Airing from June 2015 to December 2019 just before the US presidential election put Donald Trump in the White House to just after the UK election that gave Boris Johnson a landslide majority Mr. Robot has overseen the Wests greatest lurch towards the right since the 70s. Whether its a rise in the number of billionaires, the near total eradication of the welfare state, the fact that our collective heads of state look like a sentient piece of Bristolian street art or the culture of distrust fostered by clashes between social and traditional media, the 2010s has been entirely reflected and in some cases foreshadowed by Mr. Robot.

For the first two seasons, the show seemed to align with reality in terms of the stakes. Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a cybersecurity engineer and the leader of fsociety, spends his spare time hacking pedophiles and miscellaneous strangers he views as deserving of comeuppance. He also hacks his therapist, who accuses him of playing God without permission, and his childhood friend Angela in an attempt to cancel her student debt. Elliot suffers from social anxiety disorder, clinical depression, delusions and paranoia.

Carly Chaikin as Darlene. Photo courtesy of USA Network

Its later revealed that he has an alternate personality known as Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) seen on screen as a separate character assuming the form of his dad. His sister Darlene (Carly Chaikin), also a member of fsociety, is equally damaged but not delusional, making her the more reliable narrator. In the beginning, the stakes seem pretty low: a small group of lonely hackers against the most powerful forces in the world, but they rise over the course of the series, eventually transcending the battle for wealth equality entirely and entering more philosophical territory.

Fsocietys ultimate goal is to set in motion the single biggest incident of wealth redistribution in history by targeting E Corp an international mega-conglomerate that owns 70 percent of the global consumer credit industry. The hack, referred to as Five/Nine, was designed to destabilise the financial markets, destroy all financial records and redistribute wealth in America. They pull it off at the end of season one, but things immediately go to shit. E Corps EVP of Technology shoots himself in the head on live TV after stating the situation is hopeless. Everyone involved in fsociety is picked off by the FBI, leaving only Elliot and Darlene.

Mass unemployment, homelessness and civil disobedience turn New York City into a ground zero of tents and burning rubbish. Hard cash becomes obsolete and the Chinese government bails out E Corp to create a digital currency called Ecoin, making people even more reliant on E Corp than they were before. Anger leads to destruction which leads to chaos. Most anarchist narratives depict the struggle to throw off the old world order. Mr. Robot goes beyond that to wrestle with the even greater problem of starting over.

After Five/Nine ostensibly makes things worse, fsociety shifts their focus onto the Deus Group an elite cabal of billionaires run by Zhi Zhang (BD Wong), the Chinese minister of state security. The plan this time is to target the groups members individually and transfer everything out of their accounts. Again, they manage to pull it off. In episode 10, Darlene sits on a park bench and transfers all the money they stole from Deus Group to the public, like Robin Hood in heart-shaped glasses (trust me when I say it brought a tear to my eye after I watched it approximately ten minutes before looking at the UK exit poll).

When the money gradually pops up in peoples Ecoin wallets, Dom an FBI agent initially tasked with investigating Five/Nine, whom Darlene becomes involved with looks at her phone and asks: Did everyone get this much? What started as nihilistic commentary on late capitalism eventually becomes a utopian fantasy. While season two showed us the consequences of quite literally blowing up one target and hoping for change, season four showed us what it would be like to actually win.

Of course, its not quite as straightforward as that. Winning becomes an increasingly confusing prospect as the concept of heroes and villains, good and bad, collapse in on each other. The most significant sub-plot running through Mr. Robot is that of Zhi Zhang, who is the public-facing persona of Whiterose a transgender woman who leads the Chinese hacker group the Dark Army. Long positioned as the final boss, Whiteroses cause becomes more sympathetic as Elliot goes increasingly off the rails (Whiterose refuses multiple times to kill Elliot off while Elliot seduces a Deus Group-adjacent woman, who then tries to kill herself, in order to pull off the final hack). Eventually, they meet in the middle.

BD Wong and Jing Xu as Zhi Zhang and Wang Shu. Photo courtesy of USA Network

The penultimate episode features an emotional conversation in which Whiterose and Elliot exchange worldviews. Whiterose believes she is acting out of altruism. Forced to live publicly as a man her entire adult life, she sacrifices everything including her partner to bring order to the worlds chaos. Elliot, on the other hand, is a lone wolf motivated by his own fear of people. Whiterose believes people are inherently good, trying their best when theyve been dealt a bad hand by a world unfit for us. Elliot believes they are mostly bad, saying people that Ive loved, people that Ive trusted, have done the absolute worst to me. Ahead of the finale, were left with a blue pill / red pill conundrum. If you were offered everything you thought you wanted stability, sanity, a timeline in which you were not hurt by the ones you love would you take it?

Generally speaking, most decades tend to be responses to the ones before them. In reaction to 90s counterculture full of nihilism and slackers, the 00s doubled down on aspirational lifestyles and the fetishisation of wealth. The most watched shows were teen dramas like The O.C., Dawsons Creek and Gossip Girl, or reality shows like The Simple Life, Big Brother and Jersey Shore (et al): total escapism in the lives of the rich and famous, or the spectacle of working class people elevating themselves into those lifestyles.

Watching a show like The O.C. back today is a wild ride, with any common ground felt with Bright Eyes-loving Seth or tragic Marissa melting into the background of their huge fucking mansions and people writing half-a-million dollar cheques like theyre handing over 2.50 for a McMuffin. If the 00s were about escapism, then the 2010s were the decade reality caught up. Relatability previously a valueless currency as people watched TV either to look up or down is now the only thing that matters.

Rami Malek as Elliot. Photo courtesy of USA Network

The growing divide between the one and 99 percent has been baked into post-Occupy American TV this decade, to the point that Vogue coined an inequality entertainment trend in 2015, citing shows like Silicon Valley, High Maintenance and Show Me A Hero alongside Mr. Robot. Sadly the same cant be said of the UK, where were still stuck on the middle-class whimsy to poverty porn binary. A few shows like Derry Girls, Chewing Gum, This Country, My Mad Fat Diary have worked to subvert that, portraying average people with comedic empathy, but they operate within narrower contexts. By and large, we dont do wider commentary on wealth inequality. Im not sure how much that actually matters (although it's worth saying that, with politics and the media being the way they are, there is a greater need for pop culture to communicate ideas that help people make sense of things). A TV show won't make radicals of us all, but its certainly the most tapped into the zeitgeist. In that sense, it often feels more comforting than escapism at a time when turning a blind eye seems to be the bewildering default.

In a 2017 interview, Sam Esmail, the shows creator described Mr. Robot as a period piece of today, which rings true. The world is so heavily influenced by technology and it has started to feel like its not on solid ground, he said. The world has become unreliable, unknowable. Facts are vulnerable and things you have come to rely on are no longer there. Its an overlap that Im not going to be so bold as to say I predicted, but that was what I was thinking about when I constructed the character of Elliot.

As always, its hard to know what exactly will happen in the finale on Sunday though Esmail has said the clues have been there all along, and the Mr. Robot subreddit has gone into hyperdrive trying to piece everything together. But either way, the point has largely been made already. In the penultimate episode, Elliot counterbalances his hatred of people in his monologue to Whiterose with a call to arms: Were all told we dont stand a chance, and yet we stand. We break, but we keep going, and that is not a flaw. Later in the episode, when it seems like Elliot about to die, his final words are Its an exciting time in the world.

That might be hard to believe at the moment, especially in the UK. In a post-election blog for Verso, Lorna Finlayson writes: It is difficult to hope now. We knew the system was closed. It was more closed than we knew. But if theres any broad takeaway from Mr. Robot, its that change doesnt happen immediately with a bang. You cant change society unless you change people. Its unclear what the general public in Mr. Robot actually want, but its interesting that the show has moved away from anger and towards more empathetic dialogue when reality has done the opposite. Regardless of what happens in the finale, the overall tone of Mr. Robot been one of galvanising optimism. Even when faced with the most insurmountable demons, both internal and external, the central characters doggedly pursue their convictions.

Even if you dont buy into its earnestness, you cant argue with its bittersweet irony. As much as Mr. Robot is the definitive show of the decade, its also an apt parting message that the revolution is something to be observed from the couch, as streamed on Amazon Prime.

@emmaggarland

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Book Review: After Extinction edited by Richard Grusin – USAPP American Politics and Policy (blog)

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What comes after extinction? In After Extinction, editorRichard Grusin brings together contributors to address this question by considering extinction within cultural, artistic, media and biological debates. This is a timely contribution to contemporary discussions regarding the future of our planet, writesAnda Pleniceanu, that will leave readers with a renewed perspective on the relevance of the humanities to understanding our present environmental and humanitarian predicament.

After Extinction. Richard Grusin (ed.). University of Minnesota Press. 2018.

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After Extinctionis a timely contribution to contemporary discussions regarding the future of our planet. The volume, edited by Richard Grusin, comprises nine papers from a conference inspired by the question of what comes after extinction? While many of the contributions are informed by ecological discussions, in the book the notion of extinction is treated more broadly and includes the extinction of languages, cultures and many non-material aspects of life on Earth.

Due to its connections to fields outside of ecology, the notion of extinction becomes strongly associated with that of the archive, making possible a more substantive inquiry that leaves the reader with a sense of scope that the repeated slogans of disaster, prevalent in popular culture and media, do not provide. In fact, I would argue that, besides the obvious topic of extinction, the question that runs through the book is this: what can the different fields of the humanities contribute to the present environmental and humanitarian context? Or, to put it in utilitarian terms, what do the humanities have to offer to a world in crisis?

As this book is based on an interdisciplinary conference, the above question comes with its very own supplement, an unspoken deliberation on what the humanities actually are in the twenty-first century. Each chapter, I would argue, offers a distinct approach to answering this inquiry, and, in the end, the reader is left with a renewed perspective of the humanities, of their continued relevance and of the power of critical, interdisciplinary and historical research, but also of some of the limitations that inevitably appear when the boundaries of knowledge are pushed.

Although the contents of the book are not partitioned into sections, the nine chapters could be split into two groups, with the first five offering a more speculative examination of the different aspects related to extinction and the last four providing a more dissecting approach, with each chapter based on a specific and current area in scholarship. The two sections complement each other, and overall the book is useful for both those who are only starting to get to know the field and those who are already familiar with it and looking to engage in more depth.

The first article, by William E. Connolly, criticises the gradualist, linear and human-exceptionalist aspects of sociocentrism. Instead, he proposes a nonlinear, contingency-based model of entangled humanism that opposes both aggressive nihilism the conservative and belligerent reaction to any evidence that threatens faith and familiarity, resulting in carrying on with business as usual and passive nihilism incapable of taking any counter-action whatsoever due to an excess of doubt, which also results in business as usual. Connolly is insightful in articulating the problems that appear when evolution is projected along a continuous and gradual line of development, which leads to species extinction events being conceptualised in terms of the anthropic principle. If humans are taken to be the crowning glory of the evolutionary line, then extinction events are merely meant to reinforce the supremacy of the survivor. To counter this view, Connolly looks at two extinction events one 250 million years ago that wiped out the majority of life on Earth, and the more recent extinction of the Neanderthals to put into perspective our current era of climate change.

Combining elements of object-oriented ontology and posthumanism, with a pinch of Deleuzian spiritualist enchantment, Connolly calls for human agents to recognise an entangled and fragile world by expanding our capabilities to experience said world. This is to be achieved by, for example, becoming attuned to the vultures in India, whose population is endangered:

Their extinction will shut down a symbiotic relation whereby humans provide cattle for them [the vultures] to scavenge, the scavenging protects the populace against disease, the cleaned bones provide the poor with items to collect and sell as fertilizer, and the feral dog and rat populations are kept within manageable limits (18).

It would be an understatement to call this argument problematic, as it fails to consider that when issues of class, race and gender are taken into account, the rhizomatic assemblage becomes knotted rather than smoothly entangled.

Jussi Parikka asks what kinds of time imaginaries sustain our understanding of the extinction horizon, or how we conceive the future in temporal and political terms. The chapter draws on the Finnish artist and philosopher Erkki Kurenniemis vision of a post-planetary future as a grand archival project where the Earth-dwellers become fixed curiosities as well as on the book The Collapse of Western Civilization by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. Parikka relies on the device of the chronoscape, whereby the concept of the posthistorical refracts into multiple historical and temporal ecologies that are not merely linear directions but atmospheres of time (39). It is unclear, however, what this device is supposed to achieve in more concrete terms other than, echoing Connollys article, a supposedly rejuvenated imagination via a totalising entanglement of everything.

In the third chapter, Joanna Zylinska compellingly draws the event of extinction closer to the present. She juxtaposes photography and fossilisation as two practices of impressing softer matter onto a harder surface and describes photography as containing an actual material record of life rather than just its memory trace (52). The author then considers what happens to human thought and art if we take extinction not only as real and present, but also, in light of the material traces it produces, as generative.

Zylinska cautions against a view that ends up smuggling back the (usually white, straight, male) human into the debate under the umbrella of its supposed nonhuman perspective (53), which, in my opinion, comes at the right time in the book and offers a balancing perspective after the first two chapters. Zylinskas exploration of photography as nonhuman technicity, while poetic and speculative, is well-grounded in theory and in examples taken from the works of four contemporary photographers who also explore the different aspects of extinction.

Joseph Mascos contribution to the volume provides a critique of the currently popular practice of conceptualising the planetary future using the geological term Anthropocene. He remarks that this concept has had a great impact on the humanities over the past few years, where it has been used both as an era and a qualifier linking water, air, land, society, culture, the humanities, Schelling, feminisms, megafauna, and bats as Anthropocenic subjects (74). While recognising the concepts significance, Masco raises multiple concerns, noting that the geological term rings somewhat uneasily when used in the humanities. One of his most discerning points is that, as we lack the understanding and the narrative to conceptualise the current environmental crisis, the tropes used for dealing with climate change are often drawn from the era of the Cold War and its nuclear imagery, which is a complete misrepresentation of the slow yet cumulative development of industrialism and its consequences.

Cary Wolfes text is an inspiring deconstructive exploration of extinction based on a series of photographs of fourteen dead California condors who perished due to lead poisoning. The photographs were part of Brynds Snbjrnsdttir and Mark Wilsons exhibition Trout Fishing in America and Other Stories (201415). I was very sceptical when, at the beginning of the chapter, Wolfe laid out the main themes in a personal (and characteristic) fashion: I felt a powerful resonance between Derridas explorations of death, mourning, responsibility, and the concept of world [] and the condor photographs (109). However, this is one of the most moving chapters in the book as Wolfe, by the magic that is Derridean spectrality, turns the perspective of the reader from a personal engagement to an expanded sense of the world and the archive as a scene of responsibility. Reading this chapter, one is left thinking that supposedly dated fields in the humanities, such as deconstruction, have at least as much to offer as the most cutting-edge approaches.

Opening the books second part, which focuses more directly on the political, Nicholas Mirzoeffs contribution identifies the Anthropocene as a term rooted in the history of slavery and colonialism. He starts by asking: What does it mean to say #BlackLivesMatter in the context of the Anthropocene? (123) Echoing Zylinskas criticism of the so-called neutrality of the nonhuman and universalist turn in the humanities, Mirzoeff cautions against turning away from issues of race and colonialism. His argument is that the scientific notions of the geological era, and the Anthropocene in particular, are largely determined by another natural concept that of the distinction of races among humans and the colonial history that is often erased in discussions of humanity, the world and the planet. Mirzoeffs argument is convincing and troubling: it shows the importance of proceeding with a lot more caution when naturalising discourses of extinction and negating, or at least sidestepping, their bloody histories.

Claire Colebrook starts her chapter by noting that the idea of extinction implies the questions of what life is worth living? and what is worth saving? She connects the notion of extinction with that of disability, arguing that humans intrinsic dependence not only determines existence but informs and orients extinction as well. Criticising the utilitarian aspect of liberal politics and tracing its origins to the Greek idea of the rational and capable subject, Colebrook argues that the very question of whether a life is worth living is offensive in the military sense of the term, as an attack aimed to exclude those who do not fit a narrow idea of the normal (153). Extinction and its salvation, by having to measure the importance of those who die and live, itself becomes associated with genocide. Colebrooks chapter is lucid, compelling and clearly argued. I would urge everyone to read it, whether theyre familiar with the philosophical language deployed by Colebrook or not.

Ashley Dawsons contribution shows a few ways in which mainstream environmentalism uses the extinction crisis towards neoliberal ends. Dawson paints a grim picture, whereby extinction narratives are co-opted by biocapitalism further strengthened by Silicon Valleys California Ideology (185) that celebrates the emancipatory potential of Big Data and Big Tech in its acceleration towards infinite growth and expansion. While the intensifying exploitation of natural resources is ongoing, Indigenous populations (Dawson specifically discusses the peoples of the Amazonian Basin) and, generally, the populations of the Global South suffer the brunt of the damage wrought by biocapitalism. As a solution, Dawson argues for an anti-capitalist movement against extinction, one that must be framed in terms of a refusal to turn land, people, flora, and fauna into commodities (195). While offering a sobering analysis of green capitalism, the chapter falls, towards the end, into generalised talk of anti-capitalist resistance, reminiscent of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negristyle rhetoric. As previous contributions in the book point out, totalising concepts are the easiest to co-opt, often to the most violent ends.

The closing chapter by Daryl Baldwin, Margaret Noodin and Bernard C. Perley analyses the problematic aspects of extinction discourse from the viewpoint of endangered language communities and the colonial histories that brought them to the brink of extinction. The authors show that extinction, as related to these communities and their languages, has behind it a long and violent history of displacement and invasion, and that languages suffer enormous harm when their natural context is destroyed. They argue that, in order to address the extinction crisis of Indigenous languages, documentation is not enough; rather, linguistic and cultural revitalisation must take place. Instead of documenting frozen language fragments, the authors propose the concept of emergent vitality, which focuses on diversifying and expanding language and culture by reintegration and continuity. This concept brings the focus back to the community of speakers and their wellbeing rather than isolating morsels of language after its extinction.

In the end, After Extinction offers not only an expanded understanding of the concept of extinction, but also provides an excellent overview of the state of the humanities today. While cutting-edge approaches to scholarship that intend to reinvent the entire university along with the whole world (of which speculative realism-inspired research is only one example) have their place to stimulate and renew theory (and, perhaps, the imagination), we should not be so quick to dismiss the methods and scholars of the past. Dated approaches, from old-school critical debunking of popular discourse to hermeneutics and deconstruction, still have relevance today, as clearly shown by the chapters in this collection. By combining the old and the new, the speculative and the historical, the humanities have the capacity to provide insights that are not available via quantified, empirical and naturalised explanations. In the face of possible extinction, a variety of intellectual weapons to oppose the forces of reckless capitalism and reactionary politics can only be a welcome development.

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Note: This article gives the views of theauthors, and not the position of USAPP American Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

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Anda Pleniceanu Centre for the Study of Theory and CriticismAnda Pleniceanu is a PhD candidate at the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism in Ontario, Canada. Her dissertation project attempts to rethink subjectivity via the concept of radical negativity.

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Once, America Had Its Own Parrot – The New York Times

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When European settlers arrived in North America, they were stunned to discover a gorgeous parrot.

The face of the Carolina parakeet was red; its head was yellow, its wings green. Measuring a foot or more from beak to tail, the parakeets thrived in noisy flocks from the Atlantic Coast to what is now Oklahoma.

I have seen branches of trees as completely covered by them as they could possibly be, John James Audubon wrote in 1830. When the parrots landed on a farmers field, they present to the eye the same effect as if a brilliantly coloured carpet had been thrown over them.

Within a century, the Carolina parakeet was gone. In 1918, the last captive died in a Cincinnati zoo. After a few possible sightings in the wild, the species was declared extinct.

Today, scientists are left with little information about the bird. But now a team of researchers has sequenced the genome of a specimen that died a century ago. The genome offers clues to how the Carolina parakeet became Americas native parrot millions of years ago, and how it disappeared.

And the research, published in the journal Current Biology, may help scientists save other birds from its fate.

The new study was led by Carles Lalueza-Fox, an evolutionary biologist at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. In 2016, he was invited to examine a specimen preserved in a private collection.

The parakeet had been collected by the Catalan naturalist Mari Masferrer i Rierola sometime in the early 1900s. He did not record where he killed it.

Researchers had previously harvested bits of DNA from Carolina parakeets, but in recent years Dr. Lalueza-Fox and other experts have developed tools powerful enough to attempt to reconstruct all of the birds DNA its entire genome.

The researchers drilled a piece of bone from the specimens leg and discovered billions of genetic fragments.

The fact that we have a sample in such good condition is quite surprising, said Pere Gelabert, who worked on the project as a graduate student with Dr. Lalueza-Fox. There are a lot of human samples that are 100 years old that have no DNA.

But how to assemble the fragments? The scientists needed to find another genome to serve as a guide. They chose a living relative, the sun parakeet of South America.

The sun parakeets DNA is so similar that the scientists were able to use it to organize the genetic fragments of the Carolina parakeet, producing an accurate reconstruction of the entire genome.

Josefin Stiller, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Copenhagen, analyzed the genome to create a family tree for the Carolina parakeet. She and her colleagues determined that the Carolina parakeets lineage split from that of sun parakeets about 3 million years ago.

Dr. Stiller believes its no coincidence the Isthmus of Panama emerged around that time. Once North America and South America became connected, many species traveled from one continent to the other.

Maybe the Carolina parakeet was one of these exchanges, she said.

As the birds moved to temperate forests, they adapted. Dr. Lalueza-Fox found over 500 genetic mutations that likely altered the biology of the species.

He was struck by the fact that they liked to eat the spiky seed pods of cocklebur plants. The seeds are loaded with enough toxins to kill a grown man, but Dr. Lalueza-Fox found particular genetic mutations that may have allowed the birds to resist the poison.

The Carolina parakeet genome also offered clues to the history of the species. If the bird came from a small, inbred population, it would have ended up with many identical pairs of genes.

But the new genome indicates that the population had suffered no major crashes over the past million years. Even in the last few generations before extinction, there was little inbreeding.

Whatever killed the Carolina parakeet was something quick that left no mark in the genome, said Dr. Lalueza-Fox.

Beth Shapiro, a paleogeneticist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was not involved in the new study, said this pattern has been observed in two other bird species that have recently gone extinct: the passenger pigeon and the great auk.

Only a catastrophic blow delivered by humans could have wiped out those thriving populations, she said: These data underscore the devastating impact that we can have on other species.

But its not clear precisely how we finished off the Carolina parakeet.

Kevin Burgio, a research scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, N.Y., and his colleagues have been reconstructing the extinction by analyzing hundreds of historical records.

The Carolina parakeet may have been divided into two subspecies that had little contact, he has found. One subspecies lived mainly in the Midwest, while the other was in Florida and parts of neighboring Southern states.

Both populations were thriving as recently as 1800. But by the end of the 19th century, the bird was in trouble.

The Midwestern population crashed first; Dr. Burgio estimated that it became extinct in 1913. The Southern population held on for another three decades, finally disappearing between 1938 and 1944.

Did loggers chop down the parakeets forests? Did farmers shoot them all? Dr. Burgio leans toward another explanation: He suspects a disease drove the birds extinct.

Carolina parakeets may have been attracted to farms by the cockleburs growing there as weeds. The parakeets came into contact with chickens, he speculated and picked up a poultry disease.

Dr. Lalueza-Fox and his colleagues found no signs of bird viruses in the Carolina parakeet they studied. But since its just one specimen, Dr. Burgio argued, scientists cannot rule out a parakeet plague.

Recent scientific advances have led some scientists to ponder the possibility of reviving extinct species. The Carolina parakeet is one candidate for de-extinction.

Knowing its genome brings that possibility a step closer to reality. Someday it might be possible to engineer cells from sun parakeets, rewriting bits of their DNA to match that of Carolina parakeets.

But the necessary gene editing would be an enormous challenge. You have to face a list of 500 changes in protein-coding genes, Dr. Lalueza-Fox said.

And before scientists could even attempt it, they would need to know more about how the birds lived and how they became extinct.

If it was disease, whos to say that disease is not still there? Dr. Burgio asked. You spend tens of millions of dollars to get a few hundred Carolina parakeets, you let them out, and then they run into a chicken and all die.

Thats not really a good use of peoples time and money.

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Once, America Had Its Own Parrot - The New York Times

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As If By MAGIC, Scientists Modulate Almost All ~6000 Genes in the Yeast Genome – Technology Networks

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Genomic research has unlocked the capability to edit the genomes of living cells; yet so far, the effects of such changes must be examined in isolation. In contrast, the complex traits that are of interest in both fundamental and applied research, such as those related to microbial biofuel production, involve many genes acting in concert. A newly developed system will now allow researchers to fine-tune the activity of multiple genes simultaneously.

Huimin Zhao (BSD leader/CABBI/MMG), Steven L. Miller Chair Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Illinois, led the study. Zhao and his research team described their new functional genomics system, which they named multi-functional genome-wide CRISPR (MAGIC), in a recent publication in Nature Communications.

Using MAGIC, we can modulate almost all ~6000 genes in the entire yeast genome individually or in combination to various expression levels, Zhao said. Zhao leads an interdisciplinary research group at Illinois Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB) that aims to develop sophisticated synthetic biology tools to support biological systems engineering; MAGIC is one of the latest steps in streamlining such work in yeast.

The C in MAGIC stands for CRISPR, the acronymic that has come to stand for a type of molecular system used to edit DNA. The full name, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, refers to DNA sequences that enable bacteria to protect themselves from viruses. Key sections of these sequences help specialized molecules produced by the bacteria to recognize and slice up viral genomes, effectively disabling them.

Researchers design their own DNA sequences that work within CRISPR systems to precisely edit the genomes of living things. The molecules originally borrowed from bacteria have been tweaked so that they can have one of several effects on the gene toward which they are targeted, either increasing, decreasing, or completely eliminating gene activity, according to the way that cuts in the genome are made and repaired.

Until now, though, there has been no easy way to use more than one of these editing modes simultaneously. Researchers could explore the effects of different changes but could not easily combine them, as if playing improv in a jazz trio in which only one instrument could be playing at any given time.

We have developed the tri-functional CRISPR system which can be used to engineer the expression of specific genes to various expression levels, Zhao said. In other words, MAGIC allows researchers to bring two or all three instruments into the music session at once. When combined with the comprehensive library of custom DNA sequences created in Zhaos lab, his group can explore the effects of turning up, turning down, and turning off any combination of genes in the yeast genome simultaneously.

Exploring this genomic harmonizing, the synergistic effects of multiple simultaneous edits, will allow researchers to better understand and to enhance complex traits and behaviors of useful microorganisms. For example, Zhaos group used the MAGIC system to look for combinations of edits that helped their yeast strain tolerate the presence of furfural, a byproduct of cellulosic hydrolysates that can limit the survival and activity of yeast cells used for cellulosic biofuels production. The resulting engineered furfural tolerant yeast strain could produce more biofuels than the parent yeast strain in fermentation.

Zhao and his group introduced sequences from their MAGIC library into yeast and looked for yeast cells that could withstand high levels of furfural. They found that some of surviving cells had taken in MAGIC sequences that altered the activity of genes known to be involved in tolerating furfural; the involvement of other genes was discovered for the first time by this experiment. The team was able to integrate one of these effective MAGIC sequences into the yeast genomic DNA and then test how further sequences might enhance tolerance.

We were most excited about the ability of MAGIC to identify novel genetic determinants and their synergistic interactions in improving a complex phenotype [like furfural tolerance], particularly when these targets must be regulated to different expression levels, Zhao said. Because MAGIC allows researchers to examine how different genetic changes might work in combination to produce an effect, the new system can lead to clearer analyses of how different biological processes are involved in a trait.

Zhao said that among several technical challenges of the work was the development of a screening method that could be carried out efficiently at a large scale, a capability he hopes to expand to other scientific questions and other organisms.

These challenges should be addressed in order to apply MAGIC to other eukaryotic systems such as industrial yeast strains and mammalian cells, he said.

Reference

Lian et al. (2019) Multi-functional genome-wide CRISPR system for high throughput genotypephenotype mapping. Nature Communications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13621-4

This article has been republished from the following materials. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.

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As If By MAGIC, Scientists Modulate Almost All ~6000 Genes in the Yeast Genome - Technology Networks

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Human genome editing is here. How should it be governed? – American Medical Association

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Gene editing is inexpensive, simple and becoming more widely used inclinical applications.One example is clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPR)genome editing, whichis an efficient tool to introduce changes in DNA.Germline editing promises efficiency in eradicating many diseases, but ethical and legal questions persistabout unknown, transgenerational and global consequences.

TheDecember issueof theAMA Journal of Ethics(@JournalofEthics)features numerous perspectives ongoverning human genome editingand gives you an opportunity to earn CME credit.

Articles include:

How Should Physicians Respond When They Learn Patients Are Using Unapproved Gene Editing Interventions?Responding to patients violating U.S.health commerce regulations can be critical when they buy and use unproven interventions.

Using the 4-S Framework to Guide Conversations With Patients About CRISPR.Empathic communication skills help motivate understanding of safety, significance of harms, impact on succeeding generations, and social consequences.

What Should Clinicians Do to Engage the Public About Gene Editing?Clinicians should have a working understanding of gene editing, controversy surrounding its use, and its far-reaching clinical and ethical implications.

How ShouldCRISPRedBabies Be Monitored Over Their Life Course to Promote Health Equity?Transnational monitoring efforts should focus on safety, defining standard of care, and promoting just access to innovation.

In the journalsDecemberpodcast,AMA Senior Policy AnalystSean McConnell,PhDwhose work focuses on genomics and precision medicinediscussesgene editing and CRISPR technology.

ScottJ.Schweikartisa senior research associate for the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs and legal editor for theAMA Journal of Ethics. On the podcast, hediscusses what prudent governance requires.

Listen toprevious episodesof the podcast, Ethics Talk, or subscribe iniTunesor other services.

TheAMA Journal of EthicsCME module, Prioritizing Women's Health in Germline EditingResearch,isdesignated by the AMA for a maximum of1AMA PRA Category 1 Credit.

The module is part of theAMA EdHub, anonline platformthat brings togetherhigh-qualityCME, maintenance of certification,and educational contentinone placewithrelevant learningactivities,automated credit tracking and reporting forsome states and specialty boards.

Learn more aboutAMA CME accreditation.

The journals editorial focus is on commentaries and articles that offer practical advice and insights for medical students and physicians.Submit a manuscriptfor publication. The journal alsoinvitesoriginal photographs, graphics, cartoons, drawings and paintings that explore the ethical dimensions of health or health care.

Upcoming issues of theAMA Journal of Ethicswill focus onculture,context andepidemic containment, and onglobal burden of cancer inequality.Sign upto receive email alerts when new issues are published.

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Human genome editing is here. How should it be governed? - American Medical Association

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CRISPR: Are we the Masters of our Own Genomes? – The Times of Israel

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CRISPR, kick-starting the revolution in drug discovery or A year after the first CRISPR babies, stricter regulations are now in place. read some of the recent headlines. CRISPR, a new gene editing technology, is making waves around the world and Israel is no exception. The Israeli startup eggXTt is preparing to use CRISPR-tech to mark chicken eggs by gender in an effort to reduce waste in the poultry industry, and research labs at institutes around the country regularly make use of CRISPR-tech to make groundbreaking discoveries in the biological sciences.

But how does CRISPR actually work, and what are the limitations of this new technology? CRISPR is often touted by scientists and science journalists as a pair of molecular scissors allowing us to edit our genomes at will in a point-and-click fashion. Although it is tempting to believe these buzzwords, they are not particularly accurate, and can be misleading for the public and policymakers considering the potential impacts of this new technology. After all, our DNA is not a tiny Microsoft Word document that can be altered however we see fit. In this article we will dive into exactly what CRISPR is, what it can and cannot do, and why we might not be seeing designer CRISPR babies for a few more decades (or centuries).

First of all, CRISPR is not a pair of molecular scissors. It is a system of proteins that evolved in bacteria to protect them against viruses. Proteins can take all shapes and sizes, and CRISPR proteins look something like the wire cleaning scrubbers you can find in many kitchens. The oft-mentioned analogy that CRISPR are molecular scissors is doubly misleading, because scissors imply that someone (ie: scientists) are somehow wielding them in a precise manner to cut and paste DNA as they please. This gives the false impression that scientists are the sole possessors of CRISPR knowledge, bestowing upon them the power to alter our genomes at will.

In reality, CRISPR proteins slide along DNA strands, recognizing specific areas by their unique feel. More specifically, the proteins move along the DNA until they find a spot on the DNA that matches perfectly with their recognition site, and then they squeeze down and cause the DNA to break at that point. This is similar to how your handprint fits well into its imprint in the sand. When you think about the wide variety of proteins in the human body (over 100,000) it makes sense that few other proteins would make the same match (a rubber duck or iron nail would not fit well into your handprint either). When the CRISPR proteins move along the DNA, they are only able to make the DNA break at these specific points. Scientists are able to take advantage of this tendency of CRISPR proteins, and can manipulate them to make breaks in DNA at the area they want removed or altered in their experiments. The CRISPR system also consists of a few other components, including a set of guide RNAs that help the CRISPR proteins match up with the DNA of their choice.

Unfortunately, CRISPR proteins are not perfect, and DNA is a very long and repetitive molecule, so it is possible for mistakes to occur. Other areas of DNA may look the same to the CRISPR proteins due to similar or identical sequences, causing the CRISPR proteins to break the DNA at undesired places. Recent research has noted that CRISPR can have a high frequency of off-target DNA breaks, up to 50% in many model systems. These issues mean that once CRISPR is released into a living organism it is sometimes hard to predict where these off target effects will occur. The challenge of off-target effects is one of the reasons CRISPR babies are likely a long way off. As a result a number of institutions and many scientists, including the World Health Organization, have called for a comprehensive ban on genetic modifications to reproductive or germline tissues. Despite this, a team of researchers in China recently managed to create a set of genetically altered twins, resulting in significant controversy. The ethical questions surrounding CRISPR in humans are another compelling reason to wait, particularly because edits of germline tissues like eggs and sperm could result in permanent changes to the human genome.

Another issue with the CRISPR system is that it needs to be inserted into living cells using a viral vector. This means the CRISPR system has to be translated into DNA, coded into a type of non-deadly virus, and injected into cells, which then produce the CRISPR proteins themselves. These viral systems are never 100% successful, and sometimes only enter 15-20% of all cells, which is not ideal for medical-grade treatments.

Despite these barriers there are several medical treatments in development using CRISPR-tech to address difficult-to-treat diseases. One of the most advanced is a CRISPR-based treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), a rare and incurable muscle degenerative disease predominantly affecting children. DMD is caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene and is always fatal with an average patient lifespan of 26 years. Recent studies in mouse models and human heart cells in petri dishes have shown that CRISPR can cause reduction in muscular degeneration symptoms, which are the hallmark of this disease. Because DMD is caused by mutations in one specific region in the genome, scientists and clinicians can take advantage of CRISPRs targeted DNA-breakage effects to chop the affected section out of the genome by targeting two RNA guide probes, one to each side of the mutant piece of DNA. In most cases simply excising the mutant piece of DNA is not sufficient to remove symptoms of a disease. However, in this rare case removing the mutant DNA section allows for a partial improvement in some muscle cells, which is why this treatment has shown promise for clinical applications.

Many of the future CRISPR-based treatments will need to insert a new, healthy piece of DNA in addition to removing the mutant DNA. This is obviously many times more difficult as in addition to mitigating risk from off-target CRISPR effects, it will also be necessary to reduce the risk of the new piece of DNA inserting into the wrong portion of the genome and causing undesirable effects. Nevertheless, trials are now underway to translate this treatment method to the clinic in studies investigating the use of CRISPR for Sickle-Cell Anemia, Cystic Fibrosis and non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Although the major benefits of CRISPR-tech are likely decades away, CRISPR is already having significant impacts in the scientific, medical and biotech spheres. As long as this technology is used responsibly, we have much to gain from a world where we could one day become the masters of our own genomes.

This is an article in the series Science & Technology in the Holy Land, a regular column on innovations in science, tech, start-ups and futurism by Jamie Magrill, an MSc, Biomedical Sciences Candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Jamie Magrill is a scientist-scholar and world-traveler with an interest in entrepreneurship and startups, particularly in the biomedical and philanthropic fields, an MSc in Biomedical Sciences Candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Masa Israel Journey alum.

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CRISPR: Are we the Masters of our Own Genomes? - The Times of Israel

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