The Underground – Need To Know
Everything you need to know about in this weekly series: One of the biggest bands in the world returns to their roots, this generations Twilight Zone, defeat procrastination with this new technique, how Steve Jobs could’ve been saved, and a must-read comic book series that will blow your mind.
At Social Underground we go beyond the mainstream stuff and see what’s underneath the surface. What should we get into, listen to, read, eat or watch? If there is something in our culture that needs attention, dammit, we will bring it to your attention. With The Underground, we mean to do exactly that: Show you the underground things that you need to know about: Books, music, television, movies, comedians, art, and whatever else we can find to get you into something you never knew about.
Don’t you remember the time you heard that first song from your favorite band? You made the decision to jump head first into that first album and then delve deeper into them. Now, you don’t remember a time where you haven’t listened to that band. If you play guitar, you don’t remember the time where you didn’t know how to play. We want to bring you new stuff that you didn’t know you need in your life to the point where you can’t remember not knowing about it. That’s The Underground.
1. Muse goes back to their hard rock roots from their new album Drones titled “Psycho.” Muse is probably one of the most innovative bands in the world today. Their live shows are nearly a religious experience because you can’t really explain it to people who haven’t seen them in person.
Their past few albums have been good, but they have had too many elements to them that you just couldn’t rock out to hard enough: 3-part movements that you probably only listened to when you were trying to relax, or one instance where a song was dubstep which almost led me to throw my iPod into the Detroit river.
Here is their new song “Psycho.” I suggest you turn the volume up.
New Drones album release date is set for June 8th, 2015. The new official “Dead Inside” single debuts sometime in March or early April.
DRONES TRACK LIST
Dead Inside
[Drill Sergeant]
Psycho
Mercy
Reapers
The Handler
[JFK]
Defector
Revolt
Aftermath
The Globalist
Drones
2. Black Mirror is a UK show that must be watched immediately. As a kid, I watched old episodes of The Twilight Zone and was scared, intrigued and generally amazed that these stories weren’t all made into single films.
This television show has that same feel. Each story is different. They’re thought-provoking, futuristic, down to Earth, and sometimes genuinely terrifying. This show is so good that after watching the episode “The Entire History of You,” Robert Downey Jr. optioned it to potentially be made into a film by Warner Bros. and his own production company, Team Downey.
I can’t think of a show better to binge-watch on Netflix than this one, but don’t! Watch one episode a night at least. Let the episode sink in so you can really think about it.
3. How to defeat procrastination by scheduling high/low-density fun. I know a little thing about procrastination. I’m a writer and there are usually deadlines for most things that I do. In college, I’d get an entire semester to complete a project, and like most college students, I’d wait until the last week to spend hours and hours doing last-minute work just to complete it. I had the entire semester to do it but PROCRASTINATION!
This instructional video describes how you can compartmentalize all the things in your life in a sort of to-do list in your daily or weekly activities. It’s spot-on and may have you change your habits in your daily life. Don’t mix looking at Facebook and Reddit when you’re doing your taxes. Schedule a time to do your taxes at one point during the day so that you have your time scheduled later to play some games or meet up with your friends. Focusing all your energy on one project will leave even more time to enjoy yourself later.
Let this video break it down for you:
4. More truths about how unwise Steve Jobs has come out, according to Tim Cook. Many Apple super-fans think that Steve Jobs was the smartest man alive. Wrong impressions include that he invented the personal computer, the tablet, the smartphone, and so on. The truth is that he had some ideas, but many were taken from previously invented ideas, but he marketed them better and had a better feel for mass functionality.
One tragic part of his life is that he died from Pancreatic cancer. It was treatable, however, he went on to take the alternative medicine approach. Jobs tried cure himself through acupuncture sessions, drinking special fruit juices, visiting “spiritualists,” colonics, and other treatments he found on the internet. In Walter Isaacson’s, much-anticipated authorized book, it says Tim Cook offered to save his life, but was shut down by Jobs.
On March 13th, 2015, Tim Cook said he was yelled at by Jobs when he offered him part of his liver early on.
Mr Cook found out that he, like Steve Jobs, had a rare blood type, and guessed that it might be the same.
According to the book, he went through a series of tests and discovered that a partial liver transplant was feasible.
But when he shared the news with Mr Jobs, the dying Apple boss reacted angrily, according to the book.
“He cut me off at the legs, almost before the words were out of my mouth,” an excerpt says.
“‘No,” he said. ‘I’ll never let you do that. I’ll never do that.'”
“Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them,” Mr Cook added. (Via BBC)
Jobs was diagnosed with the cancer in 2004, but it wasn’t until 2009 that he finally received a liver transplant. As you know, he waited too long to receive modern medical treatment to treat his disease. It’s sad to know that he could’ve lived longer, but relied on phony alternative medicines that couldn’t do anything for his disease.
5. The new VeinViewer projects your veins onto your skin so your Doctor doesn’t have to keep missing with the needle. Have you ever had to go to the Doctor and have an IV put into the vein on your hand? Have they missed more than once to where it can become torture? Well good news! There’s technology to make it easier.
The VeinViewer was developed by the Christie Medical Holdings company, and uses near-infrared light to detect the location of a patient’s vein so that nurses won’t make “Whoops, sorry.” a permanent phrase in their terminology.
Harmless near-infrared light is projected onto the skin and then absorbed by blood, but reflected by surrounding tissue. VeinViewer captures that information, processing it through a computer to create and then project a full field digital image of the patient’s vein pattern. The HD (high definition) image is projected directly on the skin; no patches, no gels, just the LED projection. And VeinViewer does it in real time.
Our exclusive focal indicator lets you know you are at the correct distance to ensure image quality and accuracy.Multiple exclusive ASSESS™ Plus imaging modes allow you to adapt the projected image to meet your patient’s needs and your own preferences.
VeinViewer can help clinicians assess the venous pattern of any patient regardless of age, skin tone or size.
Check out the VeinViewer in action below:
6. The comic book series Y: The Last Man is one that you can’t miss even if you’re not an avid reader.
Y: The Last Man was the first adult comic that I got into after years of not reading anything but one-off graphic novels. I used to watch the NBC show Chuck, and noticed — in what I believe was the pilot — a huge Y: The Last Man poster above his bed. His character was meant to be geeky, but still a cool dude. I Googled what the poster was about, and the more I read about it, the more I had to get my hands on it.
Written by Brian K. Vaughan (LOST, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, EX MACHINA) and with art by Pia Guerra, this is the saga of Yorick Brown—the only human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantly kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome. Accompanied by a mysterious government agent, a brilliant young geneticist and his pet monkey, Ampersand, Yorick travels the world in search of his lost love and the answer to why he’s the last man on earth.
I bought the first volume online, and when it arrived, I read it all in one sitting. I then bought the rest of them because I had to have them. What was great about the series is that it has a great ending. I then started reading The Walking Dead, but as it went on it on, I saw that there was no ending in sight, and the point of them trying to keep on living got repetitive and pointless. That’s what makes this series so great. It knew where it was going, and all the in-between arcs was fantastic.
Pick up Y: The Last Man on Amazon.com today. You won’t be sorry for it.
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.