Navigating Stuckness

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

Talented artist, writer, speaker and thinker Jonathan Harris beautifully and heartbreakingly describes the familiar feeling of “stuckness” (and everything that goes along with it) in his most recent essay. Chapter by chapter Harris writes about life events and how they affected and motivated (or, indeed, de-motivated) him. It’s universal, the way that “the low points are actually thrilling because the high points are about to …

Beat This: Four Tet

A Twitter-shaped short story, Google's new Nest, Four Tet's "Thriller" and more in our weekly look at the web

The brainchild of legendary East London grime photographers Tim and Barry, the Beat This series on their remarkable network, Don’t Watch That TV, challenges top electronic music producers to create a track in under 10 minutes. Each episode shows how artists like Toddla T, Manny from Teklife, Melo-X and more make a beat from start to finish, with the camera capturing emphatic head nodding, various …

Leonard Cohen: Songs of Leonard Cohen

Chairman Mao's love for Leonard Cohen, Pacman and Peso in North Korea, William Onyeabor remixed and more in our weekly look at music

This week’s PrivateJam comes from Red Bull Music Academy’s resident DJ, record collector and go-to music historian Jefferson Mao—aka Chairman Mao. With Mao’s encyclopedic knowledge of hip-hop and impressive interviewing skills with the likes of Dåm-Funk and DJ Premier, we were curious to know what Mao listens to when away from the decks. “I’m absolutely not any kind of authority on Leonard Cohen,” he says, …