November 30
“doing a Sontag but without the severity”
A Portrait of the Artist as an Amazon Reviewer is an essay [archive link] by Oscar Schwartz about Kevin Killian, poet, fiction writer, and incredibly prolific Amazon reviewer. A selection of his reviews has been published as a book. Amazon has an extensive sample. His Amazon user profile has only a small selection of reviews, but here’s a handful if you want to see what the fuss is about: MacKenzies Smelling Salts, Devotion (Why I Write) by Patti Smith, and Advil. If you want to read more of his two thousand plus reviews, you can go digging with the Wayback Machine or buy the book.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
Shooting enemies in a virtual Ukrainian landscape may seem like a surprising way for soldiers to relax, but “I always clearly understand where the game is and where it is not,” said Ihor.
Gävlebocken 2025 - Tufty, Yet Birdless
As the seasons turn and winter once again dusts Scandinavia with her snowy kiss, from the security of its bunker comes the shambling, tufty beast that is the Gävlebocken (Live Feed). Firm favourite of arsonists and jackdaws alike, will the Goat make it through to New Year, or will it be be set ablaze, pecked apart, or subject to even more esoteric destruction? [more inside]
Why don’t we have a Matt Levine for every industry?
You have a filter with many layers: you need areas which fulfill a stringent set of conditions for such an educational newsletter, and you need a very unusual sort of individual, someone who is expert in the area and has preferably gotten their hands dirty, who is good enough to work professionally in it, but who also is capable of explaining it well, at a beginner level, many times, endlessly without burning out or getting bored, because of their intense interest in the area (but again, not quite intense enough to make them go do it instead of write about it).Each step here filters out most candidates, and by the end, there’s just not that much left. from Why So Few Matt Levines? [Gwern Branwen]
November 29
Footprints of two types of ancient human relatives
Footprints suggest two types of ancient human relatives walked side by side 1.5 million years ago. Newly discovered fossil footprints indicate two different ancient human relatives walked upright around a muddy lake in Kenya.
A machine for inducing nostalgia for a brief period not too long ago.
IMG_0001: "Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives. [...] I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly." [more inside]
Is the internet becoming an infinite − and useless − library?
An 83-year-old short story by Borges portends a bleak future for the internet? A July 2024 paper published in Nature explored the consequences of training AI models on recursively generated data. It showed that “irreversible defects” can lead to “model collapse”. So how bad might this get? Fiction writers have explored some possibilities (via The Conversation)
Art But Make It Sports
Black Friday & Holiday deals for small press books
A roundup of deals on small press book deals, like Haymarket Books' 40% off sale on all titles and 5 for $55 Book Bundles on stuff like freeing Palestine, fighting fascism, border politics, prison abolition, and reproductive justice. Many more under the fold. [more inside]
Mysterious Death of an Arctic Explorer
The Murder Mystery Linking a Bird Specimen at the National Museum of Natural History to the Mysterious Death of an Arctic Explorer.
In 1871, a naturalist aboard the U.S.S. Polaris collected scientific specimens — and possibly poisoned the ship’s captain. (Smithsonian Magazine.)
"There was some kind of entrapment lingering in the conversation"
"How to Bury a Gentile" is a "short vaguely historical vaguely spooky ghost story about Jews and burial rites". "There is absolutely something in the Talmud about this and I’ve just forgotten it, because I’m an idiot and I’m half asleep and there is a goy on my doorstep asking me to go out to the cemetery with him at midnight to bury a man whose name he won’t tell me." It's a bit sad and a bit funny and a bit sweet.
Not a game for nervous, excitable children
More elaborately-staged murder parties without published rulesets preceded it, but "Murder in the Dark" was a parlor game where three or four players took on the roles of victim, murderer, and detective(s) while the remaining players were generally just themselves as they all acted out a pretend murder--usually in the dark, and sometimes with an "Assassin"-like procedure--followed by an investigation in which the detective(s) asked questions and made accusations with the goal of discovering which player among them was the murderer (or in some variants, who among them will have been the murderer retrospectively). from Murder in the Dark: light roleplaying and social deduction from the 1930s to the 1980s [via MeFi Projects]
November 28
They came to Columbus, and what happened next, they did not see coming.
“We do this all over the U.S., and we’ve never been attacked like this" Residents of Columbus, Ohio express their displeasure to a group of visiting Nazi protesters
These aged care homes are doing things from lion dances to banh mi
From lion dances to banh mi, these aged care homes are doing things differently.
Demand for culturally appropriate aged care is booming as some migrant communities shake the taboo of placing elderly relatives in professional care. With more than a third of Australians over the age of 65 born overseas, demand for linguistically and culturally appropriate care is continuing to grow.
Alaska’s Turkey Prop 🦃 ✈️
“They were telling me that a squirrel for dinner did not split very far between three people,” Keim recalled. “At that moment, I thought ... ‘I’m going to airdrop them a turkey.’” [more inside]
20 Red Panda Cams
Peach of a Speech
Brother of Bride Wedding Speech (standing ovation) [June 2023] In which a very good and charming speech is given in a room full of friends and family, all of whom are quite attractive and wealthy, at an extremely gorgeous wedding. It is a mesmerizing nine minutes. Opinions may vary. [more inside]
A readable feast
Those aren't pillows!
An oral history of the greatest Thanksgiving movie ever made from Jason Bailey for Vanity Fair. Article from 2022, the 35th anniversary of the release of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. [more inside]
Body camera footage as country cop wrangles lizard into paddy wagon
Body camera footage as country cop wrangles lizard into paddy wagon. A police officer says he found a large crowd gathered on a West Australian street after residents had climbed onto a shed roof to escape a 2 metre (6.5 feet) goanna. The goanna was later released into suitable habitat further away from human housing.
An exceptionally unexceptional life
“When I find myself dipping into the dark, I know that I can call up a Nelson town on the computer, and I begin to do the research, and I begin to conduct the interviews, and I start reaching out to people, and it just brings me back.” Then it is onto the next town, the next dot on a map, where Nelson is waiting for him. from In every Nelson he visits, Jeff Truesdell finds the man he loved [The Nelson Star]
Nelson Photographs LoveStory
November 27
it made me laugh, anyway
"How to Ethically Jerk It to Caitlyn From Arcane Even Though She’s a Cop", from the humor site Hard Drive.
When you wish upon a bin
Tiger quoll trashes New South Wales couple's bathroom
Tiger quoll trashes New South Wales couple's bathroom. This story is from 2016, but I just saw it and it was too good not to share.
Not actually sponsored by Trader Joe's as far as I know
Every year before Thanksgiving break, my kindergarten teacher friend asks her class how to make the Thanksgiving dishes and then sends out a recipe book with their verbatim instructions. [more inside]
Best of the old web
Exhausted from election 2024 and tired of re-litigating the 2016 primary? Perhaps you'd enjoy re-visiting The Race for the Whitehouse 2004 or 2000 in their original web 1.0 glory. Too soon? The 1996 websites for the Dole/Kemp and Clinton/Gore campaigns are still online. Too political? Maybe you want to play Star Ship Titanic (1998) or Space Jam (1996), both preserved in high resolution 1024x768 perfection. Or relax with zombo.com (1999), spork.org (1996) and milk.com (1994). These are all reminders that Cool URI's don't change on the WWW project (1991).
Rack up
Hovering between dimensions, occupying space without truly filling it
The Menger problem would be their first time moving beyond school workbooks with answer keys. “It was a little bit nerve-racking, because it was the first time I was doing something where truly nobody has the answer, not even Malors,” said Nazareth. Maybe there was no answer at all. from Teen Mathematicians Tie Knots Through a Mind-Blowing Fractal [Quanta] [more inside]
Funny Books: Classic (?) Edition
The Center for Fiction has a list of six classic novels that bring the laughs. Esquire's list of 45 of the funniest books ever written suffers from recency, but does include a classic or ten. A handful of writers reveal in a Guardian article their favorite funny books. Goodreads has you covered with 1415 Funniest Novels of All Time (some of which I assume are dreck, self-published, AI content, or whatever).
Scents and sensibility
The Art and Mathematics of Genji-Kō “ There has never been a group of people in any time or place who were so keen to display their sophistication and refinement. It wouldn’t do to merely put out a few sticks of incense - no, you would have to prove that your taste was more exquisite, your judgement more refined, your etiquette more oblique. You could of course merely invite some other nobles over for an incense appreciation party, make a few cutting but plausibly deniable remarks about a rival, maybe drop a few lines of poetry linking the incense to the current season. But if you were really on the ball you’d be looking for a way to simultaneously humiliate your rivals, flirt with your love interest, and impress people in a position of power. They didn’t just perfect cultured refinement - they weaponized it.
Only under such conditions could something like Genji-kō (源氏香) arise. It is a parlor game played with incense” [via]
The Invisible Man
A first hand report on homelessness in the US by someone who can really fucken' write.
underground, in your veins
Some 700 yards deep in Colombia’s richest gold mine, private security guards crouch behind sandbags, trapped in a failing battle with a drug-trafficking gang that has commandeered 30 miles of tunnels worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A Drug Gang Stole 3 Tons of Gold in a Scam So Perfect It’s Still Going (WSJ, archive) But Colombia is not alone in having its mines taken over: Over the past several weeks, the zama-zamas at Stilfontein have been locked in a standoff with police, who surrounded the entrance to the mine shaft and blocked off their food supplies in an attempt — in the words of one cabinet minister — to "smoke them out." South Africa's illegal gold miners are locked in an underground standoff with police (NPR). (previously)
Why do I need ID to get ID rules?
Intrepid civil rights agitator Edward Hasbrouck encounters Kafka at the gates of the TSA. Turns out reading a law is harder than you'd think: cross-country travel, recursive incorporation by reference, and uncomfortable benches. (Spoiler: he never got through the gates.)
Steve Albini Way
In honor of the street outside Steve Albini's Chicago recording studio being named Steve Albini Way, Jeff Tweedy, Fred Armisen, and the Mekons’ Jon Langford and Sally Timms performed as the Belmont Adjacents, also known as the Electrical Adjacents. More about the event from Rolling Stone here, and watch the unveiling here.
The whole idea of fully focused, rapt attention is a modern construction
I remember going to the Uffizi 20 years ago, and tourists were walking around like zombies taking video footage of the entire experience, not pausing to look at the work. I’m in favor of tolerating hybrid spectatorship, where you look at the work and maybe take a photo as well. Obviously, going too far in either direction is also not great: If you’re only experiencing something through mediation, why are you there? And the “slow looking” movement comes across as pretty conservative—it’s excessively reverential and technophobic. I want to make a case for both being possible, for being with your phone as a way of close looking. from Looking at Art Will Never Be the Same Again [The Nation; ungated] [more inside]
November 26
How much COF-999 would you need to reverse global warming?
This New, Yellow Powder Quickly Pulls Carbon Dioxide From the Air, and Researchers Say 'There's Nothing Like It' - "Scientists say just 200 grams of the material could capture 44 pounds of the greenhouse gas per year—the same as a large tree." [more inside]
Leonardo is very insistent. There are no lines in nature.
Ken Burns' most recent documentary is on Leonardo Da Vinci, exploring his life and works. 4 hours, split into 2 parts, free to stream through mid-December via PBS [US only, sorry!]. Part 1 / Part 2 (Content warning for Part 2 - Depictions of human dissection). Some neat extras from the PBS website: 3D models of Leonardo's inventions, High-res gallery of some of Leonardo's work featured in the doc, UNUM interviews with various professionals talking about Leonardo and how he relates to their field.
Sixteen insect species photographed for the first time
Sixteen insect species photographed for the first time by citizen scientist. Phil Warburton is one of millions of citizen scientists around the globe helping fill the gaps in knowledge for entomologists by taking photos of insects that weren't possible a generation ago.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Over six years after my previous post about it, author D. Aviva Rothschild has finally completed the second half of The Keys Stand Alone, sequel to With Strings Attached, the epic fantasy novel starring The Beatles - the whole series can be bought at Amazon or Lulu. (Previously, including links to free portions.) [more inside]
In the hall of the mountain king
Peer Gynt-inspired quilts If you like classical music, patchwork quilting, or in-depth explanations of creative design process, you will absolutely love this blog series about 4 Peer Gynt-inspired quilts. BONUS: The Melbourne-based artist (and musician/computer geek) Deborah Pickett was inspired by this painting based on Ravel’s Boléro.
Jim Abrahams 1944-2024
Shirley, you can't be serious. Abrahams, a film director and writer behind hit slapstick comedies like “Airplane!,” “Hot Shots!,” the “Naked Gun” series and more, died Tuesday, his son Joseph confirmed to Variety. He was 80. [more inside]
enshittified legislation
Annabel Crabb deliciously skewers the Australian Government's latest social media legislation in
With its social media ban, parliament delivers a performance piece of legislative enshittification that rises to the cultural moment (Australian ABC) [more inside]
Harris to remain in power this time?
Ireland heads to the polls on Friday with the expected incumbents expected to continue in power. [more inside]
Is that enough to account for all human bias?
This blog post is a bit ... different. Normally, a blog post is a static document, and the direction of communication is from the screen to the user. But this piece requires you to interact. You're not just reading the content; you'll actually change the story of the blog post as you interact with it. This makes the piece a bit more experimental, but hopefully, also much more interesting! from An Inverse Turing Test
A pop song in classical dress
Charges for LastPass, MailChimp, Okta, and Twilio hacks
Brian Krebs: Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles this week unsealed criminal charges against five men aged 20 to 25, alleged to be members of "Scattered Spider," a hacking group responsible for dozens of cyber intrusions at major U.S. technology companies between 2021 and 2023, including LastPass, MailChimp, Okta, T-Mobile and Twilio.
Bad Influence
One Amazon influencer makes a living posting content from her beige home. But after she noticed another account hawking the same minimal aesthetic, a rivalry spiraled into a first-of-its-kind lawsuit. Can the legal system protect the vibe of a creator? And what if that vibe is basic? [more inside]
"This has turned out to be a popular war"
The 1991 Gulf War did not inspire a lot of protest music. Some of the higher-profile entries include 'Give Peace a Chance' (Yoko Ono, Lenny Kravitz, Sean Lennon, and others), performed on The Arsenio Hall Show on January 21, 1991; Tony Orlando & Dawn's 'With Every Yellow Ribbon (That's Why We Tie 'Em)'; and 'Voices that Care' (co-written by David Foster, who also wrote 'Tears Are Not Enough,' the 'We are the world' of Canada)--a making-of documentary debuted on February 28, 1991. This is also the day that fighting in Desert Storm ended. (An aside: although Slayer's 1990 'War Ensemble' was intended as an anti-war song, at least one contemporary source reported the Army using it as psych-up music.
Canada's Troubadour Sweetheart*, Joel Plaskett
Joel Plaskett has been a touring and working musician since he was 19 years old, starting with his band Thrush Hermit. From solo work to his more rock inflected project, Joel Plaskett Emergency, this Dartmouth, NS native has been steadily putting out material. I love Joel and I wanted to share his stuff with you. (Also, I am seeing him again tonight as an early birthday gift.) [more inside]
Unless, of course, the wish is granted.
The Hanged Man. A short and haunting tale on Reddit's nosleep.