You may remember Anamanaguchi as the band who dropped a song last year called “Lorem Ipsum” (for this, we love them). This year they’re releasing a series of singles, the latest of which which is a cover of American Football’s 1999 emo song, “Stay Home.” When the original sings, “That’s life, it’s so-so/ So emotional/ So stay home,” it’s about introversion, which now feels like an embarrassing relic of the Garden State era. But emo, the update is not: Anamanaguchi deletes the lyrics (thank God) and translates the AF’s wistful guitar and brush-stick cymbals into a laser-filled electronic soundscape that feels altogether more urgent than anything that happened in the ’90s. Listen here and enjoy living in the future for once.
Rome has always maintained its tourist sites with tourism revenue— in a normal year, visitor spending accounts for 13% of the region’s GDP (that’s a lot!). Of course, this is not a normal year. So where do you turn when your cash flow is off? Corporations, of course. The city of Rome has just entered into a deal with a consortium of Italian companies who have promised to funnel cash into monument maintenance for the next two years. Under this agreement, brands can bid to sponsor different sites, and in return they’ll be allowed to brand the spaces with their logos and publicity materials. Beyond being gross, there’s the problem that private funds tend to get dirty, so the state risks having to grapple with Sackler money, or BP money, or Weinstein money. I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it— that bridge, of course, brought to you by Fendi.
You don’t need me to tell you that Amazon is profiting massively from the pandemic, but this article makes you realize that it’s also replacing the government’s normal labor response in a time of crisis. To remind ourselves of what’s normal, in WWII, the government fueled the creation of an entire shipbuilding industry. After the war, hoardes of new jobs were created around government-built houses for returning vets. Now during World-War-Covid, there’s no major government hiring spree. Instead, Amazon has hired on average 1,400 people A DAY to cater to a country left to fend for ourselves. Incidentally, all of that hiring makes Amazon an even more powerful force within and against the government, since it employs so many people in virtually every state. After all that election rigamarole, maybe it’s good old Jeff who won the referendum after all.
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