Utamu

“His 2nd album in 2016 inaugurated a collab that has endured: Inflo, Danger Mouse, who founded Gnarls Barkley & has worked with Norah Jones, Black Keys, Adele & U2. Inflo & Danger Mouse helped Kiwanuka create even more spacious tracks, w/ subtle details & extended dramatic arcs.”

@michaelkiwanuka has his own vision of success as a songwriter. “The highest compliment is if I walked down in the tube & someone was busking a song of mine. If someone was busking ‘Small Changes’ & it was moving pple—that’s the hardest thing to achieve. That’s utopia for me.”

@michaelkiwanuka: “A song can make you hear or understand things you don’t know how to say. Think of songs as ways to communicate w/o convo. Music heals me. That’s what I try & do.” “Maybe it’s an immigrant thing—you’re always trying to discover yourself.” nytimes.com/2024/09/12/art…

@ezraklein: “If Dems felt the full force of voter fury in midterms, they would've spent intervening 2 yrs doing everything in their power to quell it or find a candidate who'd answer it. But they didn’t. W/ barely 100 days b4 Election Day, it was too late. nytimes.com/2024/11/10/opi…

“Much higher tariffs cld meet with opposition from Trump’s high-tech backers & donors. Unlike most GOP initiatives, tariffs work by imposing short-term costs in prices in order to achieve long-term gains in jobs. It’s another round of inflation that might endanger GOP coalition.”

“Stepping into the WH & governing is a very different. What DJT is promising for 2nd term, the actual choices he makes about policy & the makeup of that coalition do not appear to be the building blocks of a durable majority coalition. They have great potential for a crackup.”

@JohnBJudis & Ruy Teixeira: “Realignments depend on several conditions. The opposing party must be in disarray, as @GOP was in 1932. Dems are certainly in a funk, but they were in a funk after 2016 & came back to win House in 2018 & presidency in 2020.” nytimes.com/2024/11/13/opi…

@JamesFallows: “Is this boosterism? Of course. But it is also an important constant in the American story, and California’s. I’d bet on it again.”

@GavinNewsom: “The best minds in the world call CA home bc they’re liberated from the constraints of conformity & tradition. CA has figured out a way to make it work time & time again, decade after decade.”

@JamesFallows: “Never mind 1/8 Americans still lives in CA —a pop. > than 21 US states combined & its economic output is bigger than any entire non-US country except China, Japan or Germany.” wired.com/story/californ…