the alchemist's vinyl set on the anthony valadez show, kcrw.
28 minutes of soul sample heaven.

* the new new.

Long-form articles like this still feel important.
The New Yorker shines a light on civil forfeiture.

A few gems:

Unlike criminal forfeiture, which requires that a person be convicted of an offense before his or her property is confiscated, civil forfeiture amounts to a lawsuit filed directly against a possession, regardless of its owner’s guilt or innocence. One result is the rise of improbable case names such as United States v. One Pearl Necklace and United States v. Approximately 64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins.

...

“It was an area of the law that was under the radar and very prone to abuse,” Rulli told me when we met at his clinic, in a wing of the law school with a separate entrance and an air of potted-plant competence reminiscent of a doctor’s office.

The Wall Street Journal sold six years ago for $5 billion; the WaPo is selling for 1/20th of that. That's the direction the newspaper business is headed. It is becoming a boutique business for extremely rich people— a way for them to luxuriate in the prestige, and cultural respect, and political influence that newspapers still command, to some extent. How this shit will turn out is anyone's guess.

Update: As WaPo reporters begin considering the conflicts of interest that will come along with having Bezos as their boss, here is a special one for the paper's vaunted national security desk: Amazon recently landed a $600 million contract to build an entire cloud computing system for the CIA. The company is reportedly staffing up on engineers with top secret clearance. Does Jeff Bezos have top secret clearance? That would be something that the Washington Post might want to think about, considering how much reporting their journalists have done on the topic. A huge CIA contractor is now Dana Priest's boss. Think about that.
via.

the basics: smooth transitions.

discovery cockpit 360.

don't get turned all inside out over it.

lucky number 8 brings many 元

ps: middle row left - probably the best-ever related video suggestion

the graven image.

tintypes in afghanistan.