…you don’t go to the party.

  FRESH AIR From Rosie, the Jetsons’ robot maid, to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s cyborg in The Terminator, popular culture has frequently conceived of robots as having a human-like form, complete with “eyes” and mechanical limbs. But New York Times tech reporter John Markoff says that robots don’t always have a physical presence. “I have a very broad definition of what a robot is,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “A robot can be … a machine that can walk around, or it can be software that is a personal assistant, something like Siri or Cortana or Google Now.” Markoff, the author […]

The year was 1989, the place was Chestnut Cabaret, they played this song and for four minutes and four seconds everything was all right in the universe. Didn’t last, of course, nothing does but that doesn’t change the fact that Eleventh Dream Day were always too good for this world. Play this irresponsibly loud while breaking something. And then try to tell me otherwise. Just try. ELEVENTH DREAM DAY PLAY JOHNNY BRENDA’S ON THURSDAY AUGUST 20TH

FAILE, Brooklyn Museum, Saturday 4:13 PM by MEGAN MATUZAK

THE FREE THOUGHT PROJECT: A 61-year-old Pennsylvania man, Jim Osche likes to go out into public and sing as a means of relieving stress. On Friday, however, Osche’s stress relief would be met with police brutality. As Osche walked down the sidewalk in front of Shula’s Steakhouse in downtown Allentown, the restaurant guests seemed to be pleasantly receptive. Many of them pulled out their phones to record this cheerful man giving his rendition of Beach Boys, Barbara Ann. After wrapping up his song, though, Osche was met with police violence instead of applause. Osche seemed to be agitated by the […]

  NEW YORK TIMES: “This is a company that strives to do really big, innovative, groundbreaking things, and those things aren’t easy,” said Susan Harker, Amazon’s top recruiter. “When you’re shooting for the moon, the nature of the work is really challenging. For some people it doesn’t work.” Bo Olson was one of them. He lasted less than two years in a book marketing role and said that his enduring image was watching people weep in the office, a sight other workers described as well. “You walk out of a conference room and you’ll see a grown man covering his […]

TAME IMPALA PLAYS THE TOWER THEATER ON OCTOBER 5TH PREVIOUSLY: We pull up on a wooded hill overlooking the sprawling campus of middle/high school that [Tame Impala singer/guitarist/songwriter] Kevin Parker attended.  “There’s actually a mental institution right across the road,” says Parker, pointing off in the distance at a warren of grim-looking buildings, some are walled off and have bars on the windows. “It’s called Gray Lands. My stepbrother went there, actually. He’s paranoid schizophrenic from weed and acid and crystal meth. Actually, my stepmother blames the drugs, but I think it would have happened anyway. He started acting more […]

Let’s get real for a second. A majority of the people reading this right now, at one point or another, have found themselves in a situation where you have killed half a bottle of whiskey, it’s 1 am and for whatever reason you are watching some overcooked, spray tan of a human being with impossibly perfect teeth aggressively “preaching” and going off about seeds on an obscure channel. You don’t know why on earth you are there (hint: it’s the whiskey) but that Televangelist is really doing it for you. It is so for one specific reason: it turns up […]