Smog
The 10 Best Indie and Alternative Steely Dan Covers
Once upon a time, Steely Dan were hipsters. As frontman Donald Fagen explained in his 2013 book, Eminent Hipsters, he and Steely Dan co-founder Walter Becker grew up as aficionados of pre-rock ’n roll cool, studying jazz and Beat Generation writers. During the band’s original 1970s run, they were fixtures in the Village Voice critics’ polls even as their music gradually became smoother, slicker, and more popular. “We were kind of on the cusp of the counterculture and whatever happened afterwards,” Fagen told SPIN in a recent interview about the band’s new live album, Northeast Corridor. Over the past half-century, Steely Dan have been heroes and villains in equal measure — subversive iconoclasts to some, banal elevator music hacks to others. Even as they’ve played the role of establishment...
Iran’s smog, blackouts made worse by power-sapping crypto mining
Outages have been compounded by cryptocurrency mining, which uses banks of high-powered computers. Cities across Iran have been cloaked in thick layers of toxic smog and darkened by blackouts, as the alleged use of low-quality fuel and power-sucking cryptocurrency mining deepen the country’s hardships. Tehran’s Hamshahri newspaper, the country’s most-read daily, ran the headline, “20 Days Living in Smoke,” on Wednesday over a photo of the capital covered in smog. Power plants have been forced to switch to burning low-grade fuel oils to generate electricity because high levels of domestic consumption have led to natural-gas shortages, the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency reported. Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh denied earlier this week that any of Iran’s power stations are us...
