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Liner Notes (February 14th, 2020)
Another week has come and gone. In this week’s newsletter, I do the same as every week: go through the music and entertainment I consumed over the last week and make bad jokes. You’ll find early thoughts on New Found Glory, Soccer Mommy, and my love for season three of Mr. Robot. Plus, a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed this week, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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Liner Notes (February 7th, 2020)
This week has thoughts on new music from Hayley Williams, Green Day, and much more. There’s also my usual media diet rundown, which includes my high praise for Atypical, and a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed this week. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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Liner Notes (January 31st, 2020)
This week’s newsletter has my first impressions of the new album from Brian Fallon, the results of trying some new apps and rearranging my home screen, and my regular media diet rundown. Plus, there’s a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed this week, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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Liner Notes (January 24th, 2020)
This week’s newsletter has my thoughts on new music from Hayley Williams, All Time Low, and a tremendous new pop-punk band not many have heard of. I also share my favorite app discovery in a while and my usual media diet rundown. Then, there’s a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed this week, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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My mom found a letter I wrote to my dad to get four bucks to see a movie when I was a kid. On a typewriter. I have so many questions, first of which is why I was calling myself Mantis and why my callsign signature had balls on it?! ~~~ MANTIS ~~~00~~~
Liner Notes (January 17th, 2020)
This week’s newsletter looks at new music from The 1975, Green Day, and Fickle Friends. There’s also my usual media diet rundown and a playlist of ten songs that I enjoyed this week. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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Liner Notes (January 10th, 2020)
This week’s newsletter goes navel-gazing at our best of 2019 lists, looks at some new music I enjoyed this week and goes through my regular media diet rundown. There’s also a playlist of ten songs I liked, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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Jason Tate’s Top Albums of 2019
I’ll always remember 2019 as the year I got married; however, it ended up being a pretty incredible year for music and entertainment as well. As we finish up this decade, I reflect back on just how many of these lists I’ve made. It’s a yearly tradition that I enjoy because it allows me to no only reflect on the past year and reevaluate everything I listened to and consumed, but it creates a little snapshot in time that I can re-visit in the future and remember what I was enjoying and listening to during that moment in time. I thought it was a good year personally, wrapped around a tough year globally. Thank you to everyone that reads this website on a daily basis; I hope you enjoy my list and maybe find something new to love.
The staff compiled best of 2019 list can be found here.
Liner Notes (January 3rd, 2020)
Welcome to the first newsletter of 2020. In this week’s newsletter, I share my start of the year routines and resolutions, share some fun party games we played on New Year’s Eve, talk about what music I’m anticipating this year, and go through my usual music and media diet rundown. There’s also a playlist of ten songs I enjoyed this week, and this week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
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Film Freak Central’s ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ Review
Now consider how this possibility for kindness and sacrifice, nursed and carried through the bulk of The Rise of Skywalker (and introduced in The Last Jedi, which is, of course, this third trilogy’s second, moral act, just as The Empire Strikes Back is the first trilogy’s), is betrayed at the end with a murder/death/kill of the most graphic variety. It’s a riff, the third one I counted that references Raiders of the Lost Ark, on Nazi and Nazi sympathizer faces melting before the glory of Old Testament vengeance. There’s a lot of talk in these films about how the Jedi religion is ever only for defense–how it’s about taking the path of love, knowledge, and acceptance no matter how difficult (and it’s extremely difficult), rather than the dark path of retribution and fear. And here’s The Rise of Skywalker, at the end of it, reenacting the same cycle of retributive violence that presumably left the film’s bad guy the same bad guy as the bad guy for all the other films. He, this dark Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), even boasts that it was always him behind every bad thing. He’s another serpent in another Jungian basement, his creature design modelled on, of all things, Leviathan from Hellraiser II. If he’s an archetype, he’s Legion. He is every bad thing. The solution the franchise’s own mythology suggests is to accept that there must be a balance between opposite energies; the temporary feel-good sop is that the good guys kill the bad guys.
One of the best articles I’ve read yet on The Rise of Skywalker.
2019 will always be the year I got to marry my best friend and start our life together. Now that 2020 is here I’ll try and keep the wedding photos to a minimum. 😜
The Best Reverse Image Search
Aric Toler, writing at Bellingcat:
The first and most important piece of advice on this topic cannot be stressed enough: Google reverse image search isn’t very good.
As of this guide’s publication date, the undisputed leader of reverse image search is the Russian site Yandex. After Yandex, the runners-up are Microsoft’s Bing and Google. A fourth service that could also be used in investigations is TinEye, but this site specializes in intellectual property violations and looks for exact duplicates of images.
Liner Notes (December 27th, 2019)
The last few weeks of the year are always a little strange in the music industry and online, everyone is basically in hibernation. This week’s newsletter is a recap of my holiday week so far and has some recommendations, a few brief music thoughts, and my weekly media diet rundown. This week’s supporter Q&A post can be found here.
If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox each week (it’s free and available to everyone), you can sign up here.