Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images © 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved. ‘Is that true? Because that sounds crazy’: Joe Rogan discovers how electric vehicles can cause more pollution than gas cars March 19, 2024 Comedian Joe Rogan was admittedly surprised to learn that electric vehicles can be a greater detriment to the environment than gas-powered ones. Rogan, who noted that he actually drove to his recording session in an electric car, said on episode 2119 of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that he had just read that the environmental impact of electric cars “is actually worse overall than the environmental impact of a traditional combustion engine.” “Is that true? Because that sounds crazy,” he added. The podcaster referenced a resurfaced study reported by the Wall Street Journal that was published by Emission Analytics in 2022. “Electric vehicles release more toxic particles into the atmosphere and are worse for the environment than their gas powered counterparts,” Rogan read from the New York Post. “Today most vehicle-related pollution comes from tire wear — whoa — heavy cars drive on light duty tires most often made with synthetic rubber made from crude oil and other fillers and additives. They deteriorate and release harmful chemicals into the air,” Rogan continued. As Rogan discovered in real time, the study concluded that tailpipe emissions are not the main driver behind pollution. Instead, tire wear emissions are actually the main cause of car pollution to the tune of 1,850 times greater than exhaust emissions. “Tailpipe particulate emissions are much lower on new cars,” the study explained, noting that vehicle mass and aggressive driving increase the particulate emissions a car produces. Electric vehicles are 30% heavier than gas-powered cars, causing tires and breaks to erode faster. Coupled with increased torque, this can spell trouble for an EV’s pollution rates. Even the weight of a battery alone can result in 400 times more emissions than tailpipe exhaust, the study noted, citing a half-ton battery for an EV. Rogan later noted that there had been “brake dust everywhere” when cleaning his own car. He also recalled learning in years prior that brake dust was a significant polluter in congested cities. However, a “gentle” electric car driver, with the benefit of regenerative braking, can “more than cancel out the tire wear emissions from the additional weight of their vehicle” and achieve lower tire wear than a poorly driven gas-powered car, the study added. Guest James Lindsay pointed to another significant environmental detriment from the EV market. The mathematician posited that there is a rather significant gap between sales of new and used electric vehicles. “Besides getting the materials to make the batteries is that they’re not reusable. There’s no used EV market, nobody wants to buy a used one. And then replacing the batteries if they wear out is a disaster.” A report from early 2024 seemingly confirmed Lindsay’s hypothesis, at least in the European Union. In Germany, which has the most electric vehicles in Europe, used EVs only make up 1.58% of new ownership registrations as of November 2023. This was an increase over 1.23% in 2022. Groups from Italian and Spanish markets reportedly place their used EV registration rates at less than 1%. Factors contributing to the poor sales of secondhand EVs reportedly included the higher purchase price, a perceived lack of charging stations, and the fact that the consumer worries about the driving range of plug-in cars. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here ! Want to leave a tip? We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today. Want to join the conversation? Already a subscriber? more stories Sign up for the Blaze newsletter By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content that may sometimes include advertisements. You may opt out at any time. © 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved. Get the stories that matter most delivered directly to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content that may sometimes include advertisements. You may opt out at any time.
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Groom is left horrified by his new wife’s ‘mean girl’ prank on his MOM
Groom slams his ‘mean girl’ wife as a ‘bully’ after she pranked his mother on their wedding day by RUINING her makeup – then branded him a ‘mama’s boy’ when he chastised her for it The unnamed man, from the US, took to Reddit’s Am I The A**hole thread He explained that his mother and his bride-to-be had never seen eye-to-eye But the groom was left furious when his wife ‘decided to f**k with’ his mother A groom has slammed his ‘mean girl’ wife after she pranked his mom on their wedding day by using hideous orange makeup. The unnamed man, believed to be from the US, took to Reddit’s Am I The A**hole thread to ask if he was in the wrong for ‘expressing discomfort about my wife and her friends pranking my mom on our wedding day.’ He explained that his mother and his bride-to-be had never really seen eye-to-eye and that the couple ‘avoid’ her for the most part. But the groom was left furious when he found out that his wife had ‘decided to f**k with’ his mom on their wedding day by ruining her makeup. An unnamed man, believed to be from the US, took to Reddit ‘s Am I The A**hole thread to ask if he was in the wrong for ‘expressing discomfort about my wife pranking my mom’ The groom began: ‘My mom hasn’t been the greatest in the past. She can be really rude and was catty. ‘She didn’t get off to a good start with my wife due to her own rude and self centered behavior, but I took my wife’s side and laid down boundaries. ‘My mom gets that she can’t be rude these days. I fully get my wife will never like her, mom probably won’t like her either, and we all just avoid each other for the most part. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It makes me sad as I used to be close to my family, but [my] wife comes first.’ He continued that the couple’s wedding was ‘nearly a perfect day’ apart from one minor issue that spilled into a family feud. ‘My mom had a fairly large, very noticeable food coloring stain on her cheek. Obviously she wasn’t happy about this and wanted it covered,’ the groom explained. Elaborating further in the comments, he dished that the food dye mark came from getting cake smeared on her face by her husband during his birthday party that had taken place during the rehearsal dinner. ‘She never does her own makeup and knows very little about makeup. The makeup artist was a friend of my wife’s, and knew all the drama about my mom,’ the groom continued. The groom was left furious when he found out that his wife had ‘decided to f**k with’ his mom on their wedding day by ruining her makeup (stock image) ‘She told her she would try but the makeup would have to be darker to hide it. She and my wife giggled ahead of time and decided to f**k with her.’ The disgruntled groom said that the scheming duo made the makeup ‘super dark and orange.’ ‘My mom has fair skin so it looked ridiculous. My mom seemed to believe her that nothing lighter would cover it and just removed all the makeup and went on with her big pink blotch.’ The man said that he had initially forgotten about the incident until his new wife had been showing friends their wedding pictures after the pair returned from honeymoon. ‘Her friends all began laughing about what they did to my mom. This was the first time I heard about it and I said that was kind of mean girlish. My wife gave me a look. ‘Her friends kept saying it was funny and my mom is dumb and got what she deserved. At this point I got annoyed and said they acted like middle school bullies and they should be embarrassed. ‘Whatever my mom had done in the past, she was not the problem on the wedding day. ‘This might be way too far, but I said at least she laughed it off and moved on with her spot. They would have spent the whole day insecure and worried about Instagram.’ He concluded: ‘When they left my wife became very upset and said I should be on her side 100 per cent not 95 per cent and that I humiliated her by speaking to her friends like that. She accused me of being a mama’s boy.’ Elsewhere, the Reddit user ended up cutting ties with his mother and family. The user took to the comments and provided more context: ‘I had the perfect childhood. That doesn’t just disappear over night. I miss them everyday and I still can’t believe this happened. The post was quickly flooded with comments as most readers appeared to be on the groom’s side – branding him NTA (Not The A**hole) ‘I don’t like what my wife did, but my mom will not be around my grandkids if she can’t respect their mother. She has been informed and said, ‘ok,’ and maybe she’ll get grandkids from my sisters.’ He continued: ‘This is the most gut-wrenching, soul-sucking thing I’ve ever been [through] – to just have a family one minute and now I can’t talk to them. ‘That isn’t as easy as Reddit wants people to believe and if it does happen, it has to be when I’m ready. Even my wife admits she couldn’t do it in my shoes.’ The post was quickly flooded with comments as most readers appeared to be on the groom’s side – branding him NTA (Not The A**hole). One person wrote: ‘NTA. You were correct. Your wife was acting like a middle school bully, not an adult. And being her husband does not mean you support her blindly – it means you have the courage to tell her when she is going down a bad path. ‘This is not being a mama’s boy – this is being a good and moral human being. If she wants you to be behind her 100 per cent, then she needs to act like a grown-up.’ Another person said: ‘NTA. What your wife did was cruel and came from an ugly place. It was beyond unkind. It was downright mean. You spoke the truth and your wife didn’t like how she looked when you held up the mirror.’ A third person commented: ‘That wasn’t a prank – it was an extremely cruel act. Standing up for your mom doesn’t make you a mommy’s boy. Tbh, I find her behavior worrying and wonder what else she could do.’ Someone else added: ‘NTA. Your wife sure is one though. If there’s already a difficult relationship then what she did just made it worse and giggling about it with her friends at dinner just makes it worse. She is a bully.’ ‘NTA. But the fact that your wife tried to humiliate your mother makes me wonder how much your wife is responsible for the bad blood between them both,’ another wrote. One person simply said: ‘NTA. Your wife may not get along with your mother but what she did was cruel and uncalled for. What a nasty mean girl!’ But others disagreed and did believe the husband was in the wrong – particularly after reading his additional comments Another person added: ‘NTA. Your wife isn’t willing to let things die down, despite your mother trying. This is classic schoolyard bullying antics. Your wife needs to grow up.’ But others disagreed and did believe the husband was in the wrong. One person wrote: ‘Edit: YTA, based on your comments. Original: NTA but you married your mother. I can guarantee your wife will behave like your mother as she ages. ‘They don’t get along because they are so similar and I may even go as far as to say your wife is WORSE than your mother.’ A second person added: ‘After reading your replies and comments about this, sounds like you already took your wife’s side. Your comments are weird and contradictions. ‘You’re saying your mom is a wonderful mom and you were raised in a wonderful family, blah blah blah. But your mom doesn’t like your wife so you cut contact with the family that raised and loved you. I’m glad you did. ‘They don’t deserve an ungrateful person like you. Go live your life with your perfect wife. You deserve each other. YTA.’
Micah Nelson on Joining Neil Young and Crazy Horse: ‘I’ve Been Rehearsing for This My Whole Life’
Micah Nelson on Joining Neil Young and Crazy Horse: ‘I’ve Been Rehearsing for This My Whole Life’
From a certain perspective, Micah Nelson‘s entire life has been building up to the Neil Young and Crazy Horse tour this summer, where he’ll be taking over for Nils Lofgren as the group’s new guitarist. As the youngest son of Willie Nelson, Micah, 33, has been exposed to Young’s catalog for longer than he can even remember. “Neil’s music always sort of being around in the periphery,” he tells Rolling Stone . “I grew up going to Farm Aid every year, so he was always this sort of figure, and the music was there. It’s just always been part of the soundtrack of my life.” Shortly after his 13th birthday, he got the chance to see Young play with Crazy Horse for the first time at his father’s Fourth of July Picnic in Spicewood, Texas. The seven-song set left him forever changed. “Neil was like this psychedelic scarecrow, just lurching around and wielding this crazy feedback,” he says. “They were just on a train of sound, and they would get in their little huddle and powwow. It was one of those moments where you get memories from the future. It just felt so important and profound and deep.”
He got the chance to join that “train of sound” in 2014 when Young asked Micah and his brother Lukas to play “Rockin’ in the Free World” with him at Farm Aid. It was the start of a five-year journey where Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real (with permanent special guest Micah Nelson) became Young’s primary backing band on concert stages around the world, and in the studio for 2015’s The Monsanto Years and 2017’s The Visitor.
Nelson basically learned Young’s entire catalog during this time, but he was part of a large ensemble. This time around, he’ll have a more prominent role alongside Young, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina. That trio has been playing together solidly since 1968, and he’ll be younger than his three bandmates by nearly 50 years.
We hopped on Zoom with Nelson to talk about the upcoming tour, his long history with Young, his dad’s tour summer tour with Bob Dylan, and why he took a very unusual shower shortly before our chat.
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What are you up to? I was just showering with a tree branch. I’ve been learning how to make primitive bows and traditional long bows and Penobscot bows. And on my hike today, I found some really good bay laurel staves that were really nice and straight. So I cut them. And I recently learned that if you steam them or if you put them in a hot shower or pour boiling water on them, it’s easier to take the outer bark off of it. I thought that was a funny, novel experience today — showering with a tree branch. Tell me what Neil Young’s music meant to you as a kid. Neil was always just kind of this being, this overarching energy in my life, and that music is always there. But it would kind of come and go in cycles. I would sort of venture off into these other worlds, and then he would come back into my life in these moments that always were so prescient, so synchronized, and exactly what I needed at that moment to remind me about rock & roll, and rawness and just honesty and songwriting and how that transcends everything else in production or sonics…All that shit. There’s just something so primal and primitive about Neil, especially when he is with Crazy Horse. I saw them at Golden Gate Park at the Outside Lands Festival in 2012, it was a full circle moment and just sort of a slap in the face. It reminded me what I felt like I’d gotten too far from. What age were you when you picked up Zuma and On the Beach and really learned his catalog? I was probably 14, 15. I loved all the Sixties, Seventies rock bands, and Neil was top three. And I could recite every guitar solo in my head. I could play along to “Cortez.” Those early teenage years were very formative musically, as they are for everyone. And all that music was profoundly impactful during that time, and then came back again for me later in my early twenties, especially. Related You first played with him at Farm Aid in 2014. Was that planned out or just a spontaneous thing? It was pretty spontaneous. I don’t know if it was that year or the year before, but I remember my band Insects Versus Robots played. We played early in the day and we didn’t think anyone was really watching us. But right when we got off stage, Neil was there, and he was like, “That was fuckin’ awesome.” And I was like, “Whoa.” And he grabbed me, and Tony Peluso, the drummer, and brought us on his bus. We just hung out and nerded out about music and all kinds of stuff and connected. I’d sort of peripherally seen Neil at Farm Aid leading up to that, but that was the first time where I felt like Neil recognized me and was like, “Oh, we’re friends now, and you’re a weird artist too, and let’s stay connected.” I think it must’ve been the next year where maybe an hour, half an hour before his set, he invited me and [Lukas] on the bus and said, “You guys want to come up on ‘Rockin’ in the Free World’?” Neil’s very spontaneous like that. It’s one of those things where he’s always going with what he’s feeling in that moment. And I think that’s part of why we love him, and why he’s kept this torch burning of raw, real rock & roll music. If everything’s planned out all the time way in advance and you know exactly what’s going to happen, rock & roll can’t really happen. There’s a “no safety net” kind of thing that has to be there. There’s got to be an element of chaos. I think that’s one of the things that he and I connected on initially. We both kind of thrive on chaos. Chaos is how we learn. Things quickly went from a single song at Farm Aid to you guys being his new backing band. Tell me about learning to play all his songs before the first tour the next year. That was in my rehearsal space in L.A. for five days straight, just learning as many songs as we possibly could. And it helps that we’re big fans for life, and we knew so many of the songs by heart. But he’s got a bajillion songs, and so many of them that I had never even heard. And so we worked a lot to get a list of 100 songs down. And then by the end of the next couple of years touring with Neil, he’d introduce new songs all the time to learn and play. And so that list grew to more like 200 songs. I saw you guys at the Capitol Theater in 2018 where Neil called for “World on a String” and it was clear none of you had ever played it before. Yeah, any of the Tonight’s the Night Stuff , he would, I think deliberately not tell us that that was going to happen because part of the sound and the spirit of that record is how loose and sloppy it is. If you’re too good, then it doesn’t work. It’s not the right vibe. “Speakin’ Out” came out of nowhere one night. And that’s a lot of chord changes. He might have, in an offhand comment a couple of days before maybe said, “Oh, do you guys know this one?” And we’re like, “Oh yeah, we’ve heard that one. We love that song.” But he never was like, “Let’s rehearse it and play it.” If he mentions any song, you better go and learn it because he might whip it out in a day, in a week, just in the middle of the show. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve learned a song in the moment that I’d never played before, or even cut my teeth on an instrument that I’d never played before with Neil on stage in front of 20, 30,000 people. That’s amazing. That’s the kind of chaos I’m talking about. That’s the best way to learn something is if you have no other choice but to figure it out. Did you see any of the Crazy Horse shows with Nils after Poncho retired? Yeah. I saw one of them at the Fox Theater in Bakersfield. It was great. I loved it. I thought it was awesome. But Nils has another job obviously. Fans would ask Neil on his website what he’d do if he wanted to tour with Crazy Horse while Nils was out with E Street. He said he wanted to give you the job. Were you aware he was saying this ? Well, actually, I think it was maybe that show at the Fox Theater. I remember we were hanging out before the show, and he mentioned just about how Nils might have to go out with Bruce. And he’s like, “I might give you a call.” I was like, “You got my number.” I would cancel just about anything I had going on to play with Neil and Crazy Horse. It’s like if you had asked me at 15, “What band in your wildest vision would you love to play with and be in?” It would probably have been Crazy Horse. It’s just very, very surreal to end up here. Friends would send me these messages. I wasn’t paying full attention, but they’d be like, “Hey, Neil mentioned that he wants to play with you.” This is actually very typical of how the communication system works in Neil World. It’s like I’ll learn about an entire tour or some other pretty important detail via my wife Alex [Dascalu-Nelson]. And she heard it through Corey [McCormick], the bass player’s wife, who overheard him talking on the phone with Bob, Neil’s piano tech who had heard it through… You better kind of pay attention because you’re going to look on your phone and there’s going to be a show announced that you’re a part of, and then you’ll get a call from Neil. Not always, but that is sometimes how it goes, which it can be infuriating, but it’s also pretty funny. And I’m used to it at this point. How much warning did you get about the Roxy shows this past September? I definitely knew it was going to happen a while before it happened. Neil had called me in maybe January of last year, and asked me to join Crazy Horse. And then it wasn’t until September that we actually did something. He wanted to originally only tour with this model of being able to control the quality of food that gets sold at the venue and the whole Ticketmaster bullshit, and be able to treat fans better than they are, and try and make it solar powered, and a little more sustainable.
He started getting momentum there, and I think he had some wins, but hit a lot of roadblocks too. But ultimately, we knew nothing was really going to manifest for several months. And the first thing ended up being the Roxy shows, which was a great benefit for Painted Turtle and the Bridge School. We raised a lot of money for them. And it was a cool sort of 50 year anniversary of Tonight’s the Night at the Roxy. When did you learn you were playing Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere and Tonight’s the Night straight through? About a week before. He said, “Oh, hey, we got Nils back.” So I had already kind of started learning all Nils parts on guitar and I was like, “Okay, this is what I’m going to be doing.” And then, “Oh, great, we got Nils. Okay, cool. He can play all his original stuff.” And Neil says, “Listen to the Ben Keith stuff.” I don’t know how to play the pedal steel. I had never played the lap steel. So I’m like, “Okay, shit, I can probably fake this on my Telecaster with some delay and a volume pedal.” So I started learning how to kind of fake the parts and get the spirit of the parts down. And then once we got there, Bill Asher was tech’ing at the time and he said, “Hey, I’ve got this lap steel that I made. It’s got palm benders on it, so it sounds more like a pedal steel. You can make it bend to the fifth or the fourth or whatever.” I was like, “Yeah, I’ll try it out.” And that was two days before the show.
I basically spent the next 48 hours learning Ben Keith’s parts on the lap steel with the palm benders and doing the best I can. And thankfully this is Tonight’s the Night where the guys making this record were fucked up out of their head. This is drunk Ben Keith. And so I was like, “Okay, I can fake this.” But I also ended up falling in love with that instrument, and it was so much fun. And this is the story of me and Neil. He pushes me all the time to be better. And those types of experiences where you’re under pressure of making the music as good as it can be, I think have made me a better musician and a better person. In all the years of Crazy Horse, it’s just been Danny Whitten, Frank “Poncho,” Sampedro, Nils, and now you on guitar. It must be insane to process that. I try not to think about it too much. I think about it as my friend asked me to join his awesome band, and I really love his band, so I said, “Fuck yeah, let’s do it.” And now I get to play in my friend’s awesome band. And if I go beyond that, it’s like you can’t spook the horse. I almost don’t want to talk about it too much. How was that private gig in Toronto where you did Ragged Glory straight through? That was great. He did a concert movie for it. I did some of the animations for it. But yeah….It was this this tiny little grungy club, and it was fuckin’ awesome. I love Ragged Glory , that whole record. I mean, who knows what Neil’s going to want to do on these tours? But it was fun doing these full album shows. You can live in that time and place for the whole show. We didn’t play “Mother Earth.” That’s the one song we didn’t do from Ragged Glory , but we did everything else. And then I think we did “Rockin’ in the Free World” and “Cinnamon Girl” as the encore. Up until Roxy in September, he’d never played a classic album show. He likes to keep it novel. He’s like, “I did the thing where I play whatever random songs, and now I’m going to try this thing where we play the full album.” Not because someone told him that’s what everyone’s doing and that’s what you should do. But because he woke up one day and said, “Oh, that would be fun.” When you’re up there and you’re doing a song like “Cinnamon Girl” or “Cortez the Killer,” are you trying to play them like Danny and Poncho originally did? Are you just playing them like yourself and not worrying about it? Yes. [ Laughs ] I think that I would say yes to all of those things. I think they can all be happening simultaneously. I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I feel like it’s an honor to be recognized by Neil and Billy and Ralph, and to be welcomed into their history. That music, it’s always been part of my heritage, but now it’s part of my lineage. And of course I’m going to pay tribute and honor Danny and Poncho, and be true to the sound of Crazy Horse. But at the same time, Neil wouldn’t have asked me to join the band if he didn’t want me. That makes a lot of sense. So there’s a little corner pocket in there that all of us can live together. I want to bring Poncho and Danny’s spirit into the space with us, through me, as much as I can. And being myself, I think is the best way for that to happen organically. And not thinking too much about it. If you think too much about it, you’ll spook the horse, and then you’re not playing. You’re thinking. On Neil’s website he mentioned the possibility of playing “Words” or “Danger Bird.” I don’t go on there every day. Sometimes he says things to me and I don’t know if they’re public or not, and so I try not to jump the gun. But man, I hope we do play “Danger Bird” and “Words.” I love those songs. There are periods on the schedule where the E Street Band is off tour. Might Nils sit in for some shows if he’s around? I sure hope so. That would be great. I know that he would be welcomed if that was the case. It would just expands our song list, really, of the stuff we can do. This is getting pretty dorky, but were you guys technically Crazy Horse or the Santa Monica Flyers at the Roxy? Neil called you both at various points. I guess we were both. The Santa Monica Flying Horses. Are you still working on the animated Trans movie? I finished that so long ago. You’d have to ask Neil when it’s coming out. Last time I heard, it was going to be on Archives III. And so whenever that box comes out as a physical thing, the animated film will be along with that, I believe. How do you feel when you look at the list of upcoming tour dates. It’s more consecutive shows than he’s done in many years, and he’s already talking about Europe too. Is that overwhelming on any level? Oh, I just feel excited. I love playing with Neil and Ralph and Billy, and hopefully Nils can join us here and there. It’ll just be nice to get back out there with Neil again doing the thing. We have such a great time. I think I’ve played over 100-something shows with him in the past, and we weren’t sure if it was ever going to happen again. Those guys are getting old and Covid happened and it sounded like Neil wasn’t really going to play. And so I just think it’s miraculous and a great gift to still have Neil and Ralph and Billy, and to be able to ride again.
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Speaking of great summer tours, your dad is going to spend the summer on the road with Bob Dylan. I’m going to definitely try to get out to some of those. It reminds me of when I was a teenager, I was playing in my dad’s band and we did a summer tour of AAA ballparks across the States. It was my dad and Bob. I remember Bob would burn hundreds of sticks of Nag Champa [incense] in buckets filled with sand. You know how smell is linked to memory more than anything? Now, any time I smell Nag Champa I flash back to that tour. And this one is going to be great. Someone said that Bob is doing it because he just wants to be where Willie is at all times. So many fans are really looking forward to the Neil tour this summer. If Poncho and Nils can’t make it, I cannot think of anyone on earth better for the job. You were born for this. That’s how I feel. I’ve been rehearsing for this job my whole life.
‘One time, we achieved levitation’: Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman on magic, mysticism and mourning
There are many crazy stories about Jaz Coleman. There was the time he went missing and resurfaced living a nomadic existence in Western Sahara. He has claimed to have seen a UFO – actually seven orange orbs, one bearing the image of a stick man – in central London. Once, he was so annoyed by a Melody Maker review that he stormed into the magazine’s offices and dumped rotting liver and maggots over the reception desk. Today, though, video-calling from Argentina, he is reflective and emotional. “I’m still in terrible shock,” says the 64-year-old from behind dark sunglasses in the South American daylight. “It’s been an incredibly difficult time for everybody around Killing Joke.” He is talking about the death of Kevin Walker, better known as Geordie. The hugely influential guitarist and band co-founder died in Prague in November, also aged 64, after a stroke. Playing a semi-acoustic Gibson ES-295 – an instrument once used by Elvis Presley’s guitarist Scotty Moore – but downtuned a tone, with heavier strings and a delay effect, Walker gave the band’s post-punk-industrial-dance hybrid a beautiful intensity which Coleman once compared to “fire in heaven”. His mesmerising guitar-playing propelled numerous albums into the UK Top 20 and gave them a bona fide hit single with 1985’s Love Like Blood. Their admirers range from a younger industrial generation to Metallica and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. “Geordie was a national treasure,” says Coleman in his first interview since Walker’s death. But he reveals that concerns about Walker’s health had mounted for some time. “A year ago, a doctor taking care of him said to me, ‘When it comes, it will come really fast. So I want you to brace yourself.’ Of course I didn’t take it to heart, because I thought Geordie was indestructible.” This month Coleman embarks on a spoken word/Q&A tour, which he knows will now be overshadowed by his bandmate’s death. But there is one question he is not ready to answer: “I’m asking people not to ask about the future of Killing Joke, because I’m still in mourning.” Walker had been Coleman’s “constant companion, at every single gig and recording” since 1978. Coleman and drummer Big Paul Ferguson had initially tried to complete the lineup by summoning bandmates in a black magic ritual, but the flat they held it in subsequently burned down. So they recruited Walker and bassist Martin Glover (AKA Youth, later a prolific record producer) by the more conventional means of an advert in weekly music paper Melody Maker. “Geordie rang up and said ‘I’ve never been in a band before,’” says Coleman, allowing himself a tiny smile. “‘I’ve only ever played in my mum’s bedroom, but I’m the best guitarist ever.’” The Cheltenham-born, classically trained Anglo-Asian singer and synth player, and the County Durham-born guitarist who was a Siouxsie and the Banshees fan, rarely agreed on music. But both were well-read and bonded over politics, philosophy and spirituality. “I’d had a considerable occult library since I was seven,” Coleman explains. “Geordie was a master Kabbalist” – a believer in esoteric Jewish mysticism. “We shared an interest in all that side of things.” Thus, Walker accompanied Coleman on one of his most celebrated adventures. In 1982, Coleman turned up in Iceland, telling reporters he was fleeing the apocalypse, although his subsequent explanations have varied from studying ley lines to setting up a marijuana-running operation. “There’s an element of truth in all of them,” he grins, “but I went to Iceland because I wanted to find a part of me that was missing.” As he tells it now, during a gig in Reading they’d had the “collective experience of playing in a magnetic field which meant everything slowed down around us”. Keen to further explore such geomagnetic energy, they went to Iceland to conduct ritual experiments in volcanic power centres. “Many crazy things happened,” the singer says. “One person working with us was struck by lightning twice and survived, and one time, from what I could see, we achieved levitation.” Magically or otherwise, Coleman found his missing part in Iceland, and decided to start a parallel career as a composer (he says he now sells more classical albums than Killing Joke albums). And in more recent years Coleman and Walker had socialised less, after the former gave up drinking. “Killing Joke has always been like a dysfunctional family,” he explains. “We all love each other deeply, and we’re periodically evil to each other. I had three vicious fights with Geordie. The last time we did so much damage to each other that we both ended up needing stitches. He was making the tea afterwards and went, ‘Do you think we’re drinking too much?’” Shortly afterwards, in January 2006, Coleman made a vow to stop. “I have a 100% success rate with my system,” he says. “Because the solemn vow is that if you fall off the wagon, you invoke death.” Coleman still has the empty tequila bottle which Walker drained during his final Killing Joke performance, at the Royal Albert Hall last May. He has filled it with flowers. “He would not stop drinking two bottles a day. He’d start two hours before a gig and as soon as he went to the loo, I’d half empty the bottle and refill it with water.” Coleman sighs, softly. “We’d been doing that for 20 years. I’ve got a vendetta against alcohol because ultimately it cut short the life of my friend.” After Walker’s death, Coleman had to get out of Prague, where they’d both been living – he also has a farm in New Zealand, and is now drawn to the “creativity and chaos” in Argentina. However, he is disturbed that almost 60% of the population live in poverty and warns that the UK is headed the same way, blaming “the succession of governments culminating in the current prime minister, whose wealth in contrast to what people are suffering really is obscene. In the US, too, 80% of citizens are two paycheques away from homelessness.” Warning of impending global chaos or disaster has been Coleman’s stock in trade ever since the likes of 1979 debut single Turn to Red or 1980 classic Wardance. But if anything, his vision of the future is now even more dystopian. “The economic bubble is about to burst in ways we’ve never seen in our lifetimes,” he insists, predicting famine, warfare and a widening gulf between an elite and a growing underclass. The tensions between nations is another favourite subject. Having lived near the Ukraine border and worked with orchestras in Russia, he felt war brewing. “People in Russia were always keen to talk to me about how as a nation they feel encircled,” he says. “But another reason I left Europe is because of the push towards conflicts and the lack of diplomacy everywhere. Like a lot of people, sometimes I simply cannot bear to watch the news. We spend more money on weapons of mass destruction than we do our health systems. We’re 90 seconds away from midnight on the Doomsday Clock, but people don’t seem bothered.” He fears that we could tumble into nuclear conflict by accident, “because complex defence systems are being run by artificial intelligence and when one AI system misreads another it leads to catastrophic decisions”. He is not the first musician to voice fears about AI, but warns: “It’s the first step to transhumanism, so some people will be able to download an IQ of 600-plus and access life extension programmes, but most of us won’t. So there’ll be two types of humans in the future that will look visibly different to each other.” This seems wild, sci-fi stuff, but he points out that 1982’s Empire Song predicted the Falklands war – it was released two weeks before Argentina invaded – and that his songs contain “prophesies; warnings for humanity”. Walker’s final recordings with the band appear on the 2022 EP Lord of Chaos, which came after a particularly difficult two years, including a “near-death experience” for Coleman amid a diabetic coma in Mexico in 2021. Life in Killing Joke is certainly never dull, but he says that in one of their final conversations, the guitarist had told him that he didn’t want to continue with the original lineup. “I tried to reason with him,” Coleman says. “Then he died.” Walker was the second Killing Joke musician to die prematurely. Paul Raven, who replaced Youth for several years before all four founder members reunited in 2008, died aged 46 in 2007. “But I believe in reincarnation and the ancestral spirit,” says Coleman, “which is to say that Raven and Geordie are together. There are times that I can hear them, so when it comes to the future of the group, their will will be taken into consideration.”
‘Happy Birthing Parent Day’: JK Rowling trolls gender ideology proponents with funny Mother’s Day message | Blaze Media
Samir Hussein/WireImage via Getty Images © 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved. ‘Happy Birthing Parent Day’: JK Rowling trolls gender ideology proponents with funny Mother’s Day message March 11, 2024 J.K. Rowling trolled radical leftist gender ideology proponents with a Mother’s Day message on Sunday, which was the date on which the U.K. marked the occasion this year. “Happy Birthing Parent Day to all whose large gametes were fertilised resulting in small humans whose sex was assigned by doctors making mostly lucky guesses,” the writer quipped in a post on X. In another post, Rowling wrote, “Devastated and bewildered that my embrace of inclusive language has angered its most enthusiastic devotees, so let’s just say: Happy Mother’s Day to all females who’ve raised children.” Rowling, who authored the “Harry Potter” book series, is outspoken on her views of the transgender movement and in emphasizing the importance of protecting females and female spaces from males who claim to identify as females. “Like every other gender critical person I know, I believe everyone should be free to express themselves however they wish, dress however they please, call themselves whatever they want, sleep with any consenting adult who wishes to sleep with them, and that trans-identified people should have the same protections regarding employment, housing, freedom of speech and personal safety every other citizen is entitled to,” Rowling has noted. “But this isn’t nearly enough for the dominant strain of trans activism, which asserts that unless freedom of speech is removed from dissenters, unless trans-identified men are permitted to strip away women’s rights, with particular reference to single sex spaces like rape crisis centres, prison cells, hospital wards, changing rooms and public bathrooms, until we all bow down to their neo-religion, accept their pseudo-scientific claims and embrace their circular reasoning, trans people are more oppressed, and more at risk, than any other group in society,” she wrote. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here! Want to leave a tip? We answer to you. Help keep our content free of advertisers and big tech censorship by leaving a tip today. Want to join the conversation? Already a subscriber? Alex Nitzberg is a staff writer for Blaze News. alexnitzberg more stories Sign up for the Blaze newsletter By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content that may sometimes include advertisements. You may opt out at any time. © 2024 Blaze Media LLC. All rights reserved. Get the stories that matter most delivered directly to your inbox. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, and agree to receive content that may sometimes include advertisements. You may opt out at any time.