Sponsor: Thanks to the Descendents

Descendents

Once again I’d like to offer my thanks to the Descendents for sponsoring Chorus this week. The band released their brand new album (and first in over a decade), Hypercaffium Spazzinate, about two weeks ago and you should definitely go give it a listen or pick it up. Do you like pop-punk? These guys are one of the first, and best, to ever do it. The new album is no exception. It’s full of fast, fun, and catchy pop-punk music.

Dates for their North American tour kick off September 15th in Minneapolis at First Avenue and wrap up November 12th in Portland at Roseland Theater. The full tour routing can be found below.

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Bon Iver Announces New Album; Streams New Songs

Bon Iver

Bon Iver will release 22, A Million on September 30th. Two songs are now up for your listening pleasure and pre-orders are as well.

22, A Million is part love letter, part final resting place of two decades of searching for self-understanding like a religion. And the inner-resolution of maybe never finding that understanding. The album’s 10 poly-fi recordings are a collection of sacred moments, love’s torment and salvation, contexts of intense memories, signs that you can pin meaning onto or disregard as coincidence.

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A Decade Under The Influence

For this week’s playlist I decided to celebrate some of the albums quietly turning 10 this year. The albums without anniversary tours, reissues, or major recognition. 2006 was a great year for music — it saw new releases from established acts like Yellowcard, Senses Fail, Brand New, Sugarcult, and debuts from bands like +44 (I’m still holding out for another album) and Cobra Starship (I will always love While the City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets).

You can check out the full tracklist below, and stream the playlist now on Spotify and Apple Music.

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Twitter: “A Honeypot for Assholes”

Twitter

Charlie Warzel, writing for Buzzfeed, with a massive condemnation of Twitter and their handling of trolls and abuse on their platform:

According to 10 high-level former employees, the social network’s long history with abuse has been fraught with inaction and organizational disarray. Taken together, these interviews tell the story of a company that’s been ill-equipped to handle harassment since its beginnings. Fenced in by an abiding commitment to free speech above all else and a unique product that makes moderation difficult and trolling almost effortless, Twitter has, over a chaotic first decade marked by shifting business priorities and institutional confusion, allowed abuse and harassment to continue to grow as a chronic problem and perpetual secondary internal priority. On Twitter, abuse is not just a bug, but — to use the Silicon Valley term of art — a fundamental feature.

If I had to venture a guess, I think an outside company buys Twitter within the next 8 months. I see the amount of fly-by bullshit in my @replies on a weekly basis and I know for a fact it’s not anywhere near what other people are getting. I hope someone buys them and makes a better community. Twitter could be, should be, a fantastic place online. It’s not.