Chris Thiessen

"Nashvegas" used to be a sardonic joke. Now, it’s a reality threatening Nashville's soul, aided and abetted by our Council's Planning and Zoning Committee and their puppets at the Planning Commission. They are full-bore focused on making room for Vegas at the expense of NashNatives. People look at the zoning disasters and ask, "Are they really this blind and incompetent?" The truth is, they want you to think it's a huge "miss." That's why they look into the news cameras, totally "astonished" by the massive tax bills and displacement destroying our neighborhoods. Don't buy the fake surprise. They built the machine, they pulled the lever, and now they are playing dumb. The mechanics are working exactly as designed: more density - more inflation - more gentrification of NashNatives and BizNatives. @builttothink" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@builttothink @builttothink/note/c-253615095?r=m4noy&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@builttothink/… #NashPol #PropertyTax #NashvilleHousing

I love Nashville (and so much else about this place) with a fiery passion but days like today make me deeply embarrassed to say that I live in the state of Tennessee

@artwithinpod It’s top 3.

I don’t ask people about their thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi when I meet them, but when I’ve been getting along great with someone and we’ve become fast friends, invariably it always emerges eventually that they also love The Last Jedi

I had the pleasure of responding to Bad Bunny’s gospel this week! “Our resistance against oppression need not suck the vibrancy out of life. Joy and lament can exist alongside each other. Perhaps they must.” christiancentury.org/features/bad-b…

Because contemporary American Evangelicalism is primarily a right wing authoritarian social club & the costly signaling & credibility enhancing displays that are the currency in that club have far more to do with the culture wars & apologetics than with learning about Jesus.

@philvischer @MyDumbAlias @gplawhorn Im curious, do you see these comments (implying by the deletion that you did in fact find Bad Bunny et al to be degenerate) as different from the dehumanizing racism you condemned just days ago from the president?

@MyDumbAlias @gplawhorn Lyrics are nasty and there was too much sexualized dancing that I didn’t notice on initial viewing.

Hey, @philvischer, it looks like X lost your post about Bad Bunny. I just wanted to make sure you had a copy; you wouldn't want to forget what you said. Here you go:

@Jaclynkathleen_ @NESpower Looks like the third picture is here

@NESpower Any guesses where this is, gang? Since apparently that’s privileged information and we’re not allowed to know where they’re working?

@tealibrarian @NashSevereWx Same over in the Brick Church area. Nothing falling for at least 30 min

@NashSevereWx Nothing falling at all rn just over the county line into Sumner 🤞 It can stay like that unless it wants to go back to being snow.

We could use reports for the onset of freezing rain. Right now all we're looking for is a glaze of clear ice on surfaces. If you see it, let us know using #tspotter. These reports help NWS Nashville make decisions about warning and forecasting. Thanks!

“[@tylerthecreator's] Don’t Tap the Glass is, at heart, a call to live into such love–embodied in our movements, our relationships, and our willingness to risk looking foolish together as we dance to and from God." @cthiessen95 christiancentury.org/features/fear-…

Wrote about Superman christiancentury.org/features/when-…

@perpetua Wow, this has not been my experience at all

I feel like any music fan worth taking seriously has embraced the notion there's an overwhelming amount of excellent music of all kinds and you'll never know it all, while cinephiles are always like "there can only be 100 great movies and I must pick the CORRECT ones to like!!"

@CineMasai_ @hearingthingsco Been waiting to read this until I saw the movie tonight. Goddamn. Thank you for writing.

Over the weekend I saw Sinners and attended the memorial show for the late great Chelsea Reject. wrote about how both events were potent reminders of the power of Black cultural memory for @hearingthingsco *SPOILERS FOR SINNERS HERE YOU'VE BEEN WARNED* hearingthings.co/what-sinners-a…

@tinyengines Hey! 👋

Hey music writers who also write artist bios, let me know who you are!

@DavidDark The irony of calling anyone else smug and self-assured.

The thing where a sitting vice-president hops on God's internet to target a constituent by putting words in quotes and placing them in his mouth is wild. All on a government account. VP Vance, repent and be made whole. You don't have to live like this.

@TheAlanNoble Honest questions: have any progressive leaders shown themselves to be this vengeful and reckless in their policies? Are progressive leaders anti-Christian? Shouldn’t we first address the attack on Harvard, a school that does support Christian scholarship, as an evil in itself?

If this is done, don’t be surprised when the next progressive president takes tax-exempt status from Christian schools. What a horrible idea.

thinking "we have to protect our mother" about the earth after going on a vanity space flight funded by a billionaire whose company is destroying said planet is just so funny, she's got jokes

@brannonmc @DavidDark But how do you get yourself to create the massive body of work when your imposter syndrome keeps you from feeling capable of trying? 🤔

The secret to overcoming imposter syndrome is to create a massive body of work that you can point yourself to, as evidence that you know what you’re doing.

People who think art is a consumable that can be produced by machines forget that it is, in fact, an act of communication across time and space between mortal beings. It creates a relationship between them whose liveliness and dynamism probably has to do with the receiver consciously and unconsciously retracing the making of the piece and judging, based on abiding human commonalities, the motives and conditions of the creator. None of these factors come in to play with synthetic, machine-made art. That it feels compelling at all at this stage -- that it seems to bear traces of "personality" -- stems from our memory of real encounters with the works from which it derives and which it imitates.

Wrote about Lynch, mystery, and love for @ChristianCent! christiancentury.org/features/embra…

@AslansHowe @ahc Came here to say this. Almost all of what we call "pop music" (including rock, rap, etc.) is rooted in African diasporic musical traditions. The white church has been (to varying degrees) resistant to Black cultural influence and continues to draw more from European aesthetics.

@ahc I suspect it is because pop music is predominantly overwhelmed by Afro-Cuban accent on 2&4 rhythms, while the European American church has a heritage of classical western hymnody.

A genuine musical mystery: essentially no pop music is in 3 or 6, whereas a huge amount of Christian pop worship music is in 3 or 6. Any theories??