{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Middle of Culture","title":"Music Palooza Episode","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4240,"description":"Peter and Eden kick off a chaotic week — Eden's dealing with the Shiny Hunters ransomware attack on Canvas (the university LMS that runs basically everything, currently being held hostage for the second time) while Peter is just weary from step counts. The bulk of the episode is a genre-spanning music deep dive: Eden assigns four critic-darling albums neither of them would normally reach for (Robyn, Ella Langley, Wendy Eisenberg, and Mandy Indiana), Peter assigns one desert-island pick Eden hasn't heard yet. Between the new releases, a Diablo 4 expansion, Cobalt lore, and the Dungeon Crawler Carl comic selling out on Free Comic Book Day, it's a very full episode.SHOW NOTESCanvas Ransomware Crisis — Eden, who works in university IT, breaks down the Shiny Hunters attack on Canvas, the dominant learning management system used by ~54% of schools. The attackers took the platform down twice, demanded ransom, and threatened to release data from 9,000+ schools by May 12th. Eden spent Free Comic Book Day week in Zoom calls, prepping faculty for a likely third outage.New Metal Releases — Peter covers recent drops: new Sevendust (pretty okay, Lajon Witherspoon sounds great), Draconian's Insomnolent Ruin (gothic death-doom, better than their 2020 album), and a Testament remaster of Practice What You Preach — which apparently had notoriously bad 80s mastering on every prior version.What Else Peter's Been Into — Currently watching The Good Place (season two, laughing out loud), reading the new MurderBot novella System Collapse (more existential ennui, building toward a Preservation vs. Barishastranza showdown), and very much hooked on Vampire Crawlers, a $10 roguelike deck-builder with a dungeon crawl structure that he calls at least as good as Slay the Spire.Free Comic Book Day at Eden's Shop — The comic shop where Eden works had its best day ever — beating last year's record by ~$3K. The Dungeon Crawler Carl issue zero sold out by 11:15 AM and was flipping on eBay for $30+....","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/3-7NX9uIL8RD1xA_7xTb80V-108Lf3xuEMQhLzvEbRA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9lZGY0/NzA4M2FmM2Q3Yjg4/NDczMzkzMTA2NTJk/NmQ1ZS5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}