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My life has gone off the map, it seems. Possibly also off the rails.
At the frame shop there is so much beauty, it can’t be real. Maybe this is the afterlife, I think. Or purgatory. ... When my boss stomps up from his frame-building cellar and sees me, he always barks: Are you still here? Which is literal, because I’m new and only working part time, but also existential because how am I still here—or back here? It’s been a year since I returned to Chicago, but it still doesn’t feel like real life from Don’t Bleed on the Artwork: Notes from the Afterlife by Wendy Brenner [Oxford American; ungated]
Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
You could call them “sky flowers,” but that doesn’t really make sense either—after all, the faded blue behind each squiggle is water, not sky, and the squiggles themselves don’t represent solid objects in any tangible, meaningful way. But they look right. The reds and greens and yellows add life and color in a way that a flat blue might not. Those odd shapes, suspended motionless with no clear reason or value, establish a tone. There are a lot of things that don’t make sense on SpongeBob SquarePants. But there’s a clear and coherent vision that runs through the entire show, from the design of SpongeBob’s kitchen-sponge body down to the squeaky-balloon sound of his footsteps. It’s a perspective, and a warm, specific, crazy little world. Of course it has sky flowers in it. What else would be up there?Today marks 25 years since the original broadcast of "Help Wanted" -- the pilot episode of marine biologist Stephen Hillenburg's educational comic that became a delightful romp of "relentless optimism and fundamental sweetness", a hothouse flower of inventive and absurdist imagination, a cultural touchstone for multiple generations, and one of the most iconic and beloved animated franchises of the 21st century. Are you ready, kids? [more inside]
How to Identify Cinematic Themes & Visuals of Ancient China
Part 1: From the S Dynasty to the Chin Dynasty. Part 2: From the Chu-Han contention, through the first Chinese golden age of the Han dynasty, to the Warring States, and the Northern and Southern dynasties. To clarify, this YouTube series is NOT about the actual history, but how Chinese history is interpreted through Chinese cinema. This is a continuing series from Accented Cinema. Previously from AccentedCinema. For those interested in the actual history, he recommends Cool History Bros.
Roofman
Fish performs Misplaced Childhood for its 20th Anniversary
Shockingly, the 20th Anniversary of Marillion's album Misplaced Childhood is over twenty years ago! Anyway, FISH - Return To Childhood 20th anniversary tour of misplaced childhood [3h12m] is an odyssey, with Fish's solo career dominating the front half and a full playthrough of Misplaced Childhood and a rundown of other Marillion songs in the second half. It's a really delicious feast of this particular style of prog rock. If you're a fan of early eighties Genesis and don't know about Marillion/Fish, check this out. It's what you're looking for. [more inside]
Claire Re-Recreates
Remember back in 2017-2020 when everyone was aglow with the warmth and camaraderie of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen? And then, well, Milkshake Duck happened. But not all is lost.... [more inside]
A Pretty Good Series On The Reform Party
As part of Secret Base's Patreon based restructuring, Internet video troubadour and oddity explainer Jon Bois has ressurected his long defunct Pretty Good series with a three part video on the rise and fall of Henry Ross Perot's political party/personal vehicle - the Reform Party. [more inside]
Utah Hockey Club
The long, strange, ridiculous saga of the NHL team formerly known as the Arizona Coyotes. Emily Kaplan and Greg Wyshynski of ESPN chronicle the poor decisions, bad luck, and outright chicanery that led to the NHL forcing the owner of the Coyotes to sell the team, which is moving to Utah.
hear that whistle blow
Biden administration forgives $6.1 billion in student debt for 317,000 former Art Institute students [more inside]
The reason so much of news media sucks is they aren’t writing for you.
Ken Klippenstein resigns from The Intercept. In his announcement released through his newsletter, Ken details some of the machinations between the management class controlling journalism, and the journalists out there trying to do the work.
Klippenstein will continue publishing his work independently along with legendary editor and national security researcher William Arkin, as well as FOIA specialist Beth Bourdon.
Endangered Ocelots May Be Expanding Their Range in Texas
Endangered Ocelots May Be Expanding Their Range in Texas. DNA testing of an ocelot killed in 2021 raises the possibility that the creatures may be roaming outside their established South Texas territory, which is currently their only stronghold in the country.
“Merely a best-selling author in these parts, a rock star in Paris.”
Paul Auster, the prolific novelist, memoirist and screenwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with his postmodern reanimation of the noir novel and who endured to become one of the signature New York writers of his generation, died of complications from lung cancer at his home in Brooklyn on Tuesday evening. He was 77. [NY Times; ungated] [more inside]
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
Palm OS and the devices that ran it - a retrospective on the popular PDA and precursor to the smartphone.
Hundreds of properties bought after Queensland floods start new life
Hundreds of properties bought after Queensland floods start new life as green space. The collective size of the new green space being added to Brisbane's suburbs in the wake of 2022 floods is the equivalent of about 25 rugby league fields.
The deal is he's not as relevant
Jerry Seinield is a Lazy Hack Out of Touch with the Real World - and Who Can Blame Him? Paste Magazine's brief riposte to the New Yorker's Jerry Seinfeld interview in which Mr. It's About Nothing feels that comedy has been killed by "the extreme left" and "P.C. crap."
"Deny, deny, deny. That’s how you hit your numbers."
A Doctor at Cigna Said Her Bosses Pressured Her to Review Patients’ Cases Too Quickly. Cigna Threatened to Fire Her. Nurses in the Phillipines are doing the initial reviews, and making major mistakes. Cigna wants their reviewing doctors to take about four minutes to check the reviews and decide if warranted, or if it should be approved, and penalizing doctors who do the work to know what's really going on. [more inside]
Robbi Mecus, Who Fostered L.G.B.T.Q. Climbing Community, Dies at 52
A New York State forest ranger who worked in the Adirondacks, she died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. (SLNYT gift link) [more inside]
Re-light my fire
A discovery about how a circular trough filled with lighter fluid can create looping mini-flames leads to a fascinating set of experiments and an explanation of excitable media. [more inside]
Wynton Marsalis - South African Songbook
The Jazz Lincoln Center Orchestra feat. Wynton Marsalis [1h43m] "The South African Songbook is a musical celebration of South African democracy, 25 years after apartheid's end. With special guests Nonhlanhla Kheswa, Melanie Scholtz, Vuyo Sotashe, McCoy Mrubata, Nduduzo Makhathini and Thandi Ntuli." [more inside]
The Battle for Attention
Nathan Heller on the secretive Order of the Third Bird: There is a long-standing, widespread belief that attention carries value. In English, attention is something that we “pay.” In Spanish, it is “lent.” The Swiss literary scholar Yves Citton, whose study of the digital age, “The Ecology of Attention,” argues against reducing attention to economic terms, suggested to me that it was traditionally considered valuable because it was capable of bestowing value. “By paying attention to something as if it’s interesting, you make it interesting. By evaluating it, you valorize it,” he said. To treat it as a mere market currency, he thought, was to undersell what it could do.