I have a friend who loves Detroit.
He likes to break into the old derelict buildings.
He wears the post apocalyptic decay like a mohawk.
In Detroit, industrial music is redundant.

When you read the history,
it was not the automotive industry that destroyed that city.
It was the racism.

As you drive into town from the airport,
you pass neighborhoods with decently sized houses,
some are burned out,
black marks lick the wood above window frames,
evoking chaos nights when hundreds of homes were ablaze.
Halloween!

People still live in those neighborhoods.
People still live next door to those burnt out houses.
Children grow up playing night guns in those yards.

Why does it all feel vindicating?
Why is it all so fucking cool?

Because if the people who tell us what to do have failed,
that means that there is something for us to do.

We all yearn to be necessary.

---

The act of becoming an adult
involves identifying things that you care about
and taking responsibility for them.

It doesn't really matter what you take responsibility for,
because the need is everywhere.

It is the act of committing to something,
whatever it is,
that turns you into a man.

Getting to decide what to care about
is the greatest luxury that you will ever experience.

Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1

♫ Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1 [piano] ♫ - YouTube

Wow, it looks like MTV has posted the Liquid Television series from the early 90s -- possibly all of it! Good quality, too.

Liquid Television! | jwz

I cannot emphasize the boost I think it would give the economy if we had a system that said to people whose homes are worth less than the mortgages that you can write down your mortgages to the value of your home if you can make the payment. Or you can extend the mortgage out and lower the interest rate.

Bill Clinton: How to fix the economy - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog Term Sheet

The cables being published are not the most sensitive ones. Those are usually “captioned” with markings that limit their distribution (limdis, exdis and nodis are the most common captions, but there are others for special topics). Captioned cables are not routinely shared interagency, so the low-level Defense Department type who leaked these did not have access to the more restricted material.

This has always been obvious, and yet many people acted as if the sky was falling and demanded radical over reactions that continue to cause problems today.

Guest Post: A Diplomat’s Guide to Reading WikiLeaks | Threat Level | Wired.com

The 2005 bankruptcy bill continues to have totally awesome positive impacts on our economy!

Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) have introduced the Fairness for Struggling Students Act of 2011 in the U.S. Senate. Representatives Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), John Conyers (D-Mich.), and George Miller (D-Calif.) introduced the related Private Student Loan Bankruptcy Fairness Act of 2011 in the House of Representatives. Both bills would restore the ability to discharge commercial student loans in bankruptcy proceedings, reversing a 2005 change to the law for borrowers who find themselves unable to make payments on their loans.

These bills should be a rallying point for Occupy Wall Street.

Congress Proposes Relief for Student Loan Borrowers - Student Loan Ranger (usnews.com)

Young people in America are bombarded with the message that they won't find meaningful employment without a degree (and sometimes a graduate degree).

Meanwhile, universities have increased their fees to astronomical levels, far ahead of inflation, and lenders offer easy credit to students as a means of paying these sums.

The loans are backed by the government, and constitute a special form of debt that can't be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can be doubled, tripled, or increased tenfold through usury penalties for missed payments.

The economic distortion field around higher education needs more study.

Essays on the trap of US student debt – Boing Boing

In the first act, bankers took advantage of deregulation to run wild (and pay themselves princely sums), inflating huge bubbles through reckless lending. In the second act, the bubbles burst — but bankers were bailed out by taxpayers, with remarkably few strings attached, even as ordinary workers continued to suffer the consequences of the bankers’ sins. And, in the third act, bankers showed their gratitude by turning on the people who had saved them, throwing their support — and the wealth they still possessed thanks to the bailouts — behind politicians who promised to keep their taxes low and dismantle the mild regulations erected in the aftermath of the crisis.

Confronting the Malefactors - NYTimes.com

On Saturday, visitors to the Rock Poster Society’s 13th annual Festival of Rock Posters in San Francisco will need to take a number to get any face time with a soft-spoken artist named Emek, whose psychedelic-steampunk screenprints are some of the hottest pieces of paper in the rock poster world.

Moments when I wish I still lived in San Francisco usually involve art shows.

Where Hard Rock Meets Pop Art - NYTimes.com

When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.

Steve Jobs’s Best Quotes - Digits - WSJ