Heather D. Heyer died standing up for what she believed in.
Friends described her as a passionate advocate for the disenfranchised who was often moved to tears by the world’s injustices. That sense of conviction led her to join demonstrators protesting a rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.
Contributor to this website, Craig Manning, has released his new record, Life in the Rearview Mirror, on Bandcamp.
Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day has shared a post regarding the events in Charlottesville over the weekend:
Omaha!! what a show! I love the heartland. nothing makes me feel more inspired than hearing an arena singing together.. so many thoughts today.. my heart feels heavy. I feel like what happened in charlottesville goes beyond the point of anger. it makes me sad and desperate. shocked. I fucking hate racism more than anything. music and social justice have always gone hand and hand with me. we wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for “the time they are a changing” .. some people don’t agree. the spirit of green day has always been about rising above oppression. and sticking up for what you believe in and singing it at the top of your lungs. we grew up fearing nuclear holocaust because of the cold war. those days are feeling way too relevant these days. these issues are our ugly past.. and now it’s coming to haunt us. always resist these doomsday politicians. and in the words of our punk forefathers .. Nazi punks fuck off.
Kendrick Lamar once again has the number one album in the country:
Lamar’s Damn. climbs 2-1 on the latest Billboard 200, clocking a fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 1, and its first since the May 20-dated tally. The set earned just under 47,000 equivalent album units (down less than 1 percent) in the week ending Aug. 10, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 11,000 were in traditional album sales. The bulk of Damn.’s figure comes from SEA units — 31,000. (The album is the week’s most-streamed title on the Billboard 200, with 46.2 million on-demand audio streams generated by its songs.)
Bon Iver has canceled the all inclusive concert vacation in Mexico. Full refunds will be given.
Maybe we should just put a pause on these for a while?
Bleachers’ new mini-documentary, Can’t Take it With You, is up on Apple Music.
Mike Mictlan of Doomtree has set up a GoFundMe to cover medical costs after a Diabetic Ketoacidosis occurrence:
Last week I had to be rushed to the hospital. I had been feeling very sick for the past few days from what I thought was chronic stomach issues, but as things rapidly got worse we decided to head into the ER where I was diagnosed with DKA (Diabetic Ketoacidosis) due to several months of untreated, unknown diabetes. I was then quickly moved to ICU where I stayed for four days while attempts were made to normalize my potassium levels and blood pressure, as well as start my body on insulin. I was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic and later sent home to begin adjusting to all the changes that are needed to manage this disease.
We desperately need to fix healthcare in this country.
mewithoutYou have announced new tour dates to celebrate the 15 year anniversary of [A–>B] Life. There is also some limited edition merchandise and vinyl up for order.
Conor Oberst sat down with Noisey:
“People don’t like to hear it because it’s like, oh, you’re complaining about being famous, but it’s just straight-up objectification,” he says, noting that his celebrity is relatively small in comparison to some famous people he knows. “In their head, someone makes you an object. They disregard your humanity and they expect you to accept it, I guess because you’re getting paid.”
Taylor Swift testified in a Denver court Thursday, saying that she was “completely sure” former radio host David Mueller sexually assaulted her during a 2013 press photo. Swift appeared on the stand for roughly an hour, CNN reports, after her mother Andrea Swift also testified about the alleged incident.
“It was a definite grab … A very long grab. He grabbed my ass underneath my skirt,” Swift said on the stand. She called the 2013 incident “horrifying and shocking.”
Glamour has more:
McFarland suggested Swift could’ve taken a break from her concert meet-and-greet if she was so shaken up by Mueller’s alleged assault. (Swift previously said she was distressed by the incident but carried on with her schedule because she didn’t want to upset her fans.)
Swift’s reply: “Your client could have taken a normal photo with me.”
SoundCloud has taken $170 million in new funding and now have a new CEO, Billboard reports:
The struggling digital music service today secured a fresh round of funding that assures SoundCloud will remain independent, even as a new executive team takes over to steer the service into the future.
The Raine Group, a boutique merchant bank, joined with the Singapore-based investment company Temasek, in leading a $169.5 million investment round that infuses SoundCloud with much-needed cash.
Former Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor succeeds founder Alex Ljung as chief executive, and Michael Weissman, another former executive at the video platform, was named SoundCloud’s chief operating office
Beck talked with Rolling Stone and mentions his new album, Colors, will come out in October:
“I suppose the record could have come out a year or two ago,” says Beck, sitting in a conference room of a trendy downtown New York boutique hotel. “But these are complex songs all trying to do two or three things at once. It’s not retro and not modern. To get everything to sit together so it doesn’t sound like a huge mess was quite an undertaking.”
Aimee Mann performed “Patient Zero” on Conan last night.
On Thursday, two independent research teams described their work deleting ant genes. Two papers chronicling the first mutant ants appeared in the journal Cell, along with a third study that altered ant behavior using an insect brain hormone.
Claude Desplan, a New York University biologist and an author of one of the studies, said that, as far as he could tell, these ants are “the first mutant in any social insect.”
This is how it starts.
Green Day have parted ways with their manager Pat Magnarella. Variety is reporting they have signed with Jonathan Daniel with Crush Music:
According to a source, the trio — comprised of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool — is set to sign with Jonathan Daniel at Crush Music, home to Sia, Fall Out Boy, and Lorde, among others.