January 2018 Archives
January 31
JimCoin™ : because CryptoWood™ is NOW.
Back on Jan. 19, 2018, MeFite bondcliff went and made a blockchain, and announced it via Twitter, demonstrating how he mined his coins or blocks or what have you. After 24 hours he had over 50 investors including some Big Names. Then Amy Szczepanski came along and forked the Jimcoin™ (literal) blockchain with International Coin (with actual fork) on Github. [via mefi projects and subsequent comments]
Let the Librarian Be
Public librarians are deeply committed to access. We believe the library should be open to all and we want patrons to feel comfortable asking for information about almost anything.... But this also makes our jobs a fertile ground for sexual harassment.
Extraordinary Pioneers: from BBC Archives
Ten short videos about people who were the first to think, do, or make something extraordinary. There's one about women's football. There's two about women pioneers in music. There's one on Clara Schumann and one on Mother Teresa. And five more about interesting topics.
A Press Conference With George Harrison.
A Box, A Tape, A Name: A George Harrison mystery. An archive recording from Voice of America has been found and aired on the BBC in the UK for the very first time.
On any other Tuesday
On the second Tuesday in June, I start to feel fluish ... What I know about the next week is mostly pieced together from what I’ve been told and what’s listed on some of the 100-plus insurance claims filed on my behalf. [more inside]
Big hair, big heart.
RIP Oscar Gamble, 68. Known for his giant afro and lefty power. The face of a popular Topps baseball card.
You Are A Kaleidoscope
"Get Out" is the first single from CHVRCHES upcoming third album. [SLYT] The Glasgow synthpop trio's currently untitled album is a collaboration with Grammy-winning producer Greg Kurstin, who previously worked with Adele's 25 album.
The music video contains a few easter eggs, for those who are paying attention. [more inside]
She makes a small point
phbptpbtptbbbptptptttbp
Watch, Listen, Learn
YOUTUBE IS FOR YELLING ...if you're not angry, you're doing it wrong.
Skincare
"Perfect skin has become the thinking woman’s quest. It’s normal today for people in certain circles to brag about spending most of their paycheck on serums. The latest skincare trends have a reassuring scientific cast: peptides, acids, solutions, and other things with clinical suffixes that are typically sold in small quantities for large amounts of money. But all of this is a scam. It has to be." The Outline: Skincare is a Con
and a rebuttal from Racked: "As with any popular thing, a backlash is inevitable. The one against skincare argues how gullible those who indulge in it must be." Skincare is Good and Also Works
and a rebuttal from Racked: "As with any popular thing, a backlash is inevitable. The one against skincare argues how gullible those who indulge in it must be." Skincare is Good and Also Works
More Victorian memento mori
Welcome to Monowi, Nebraska.
Losing everything
You're on the verge of losing everything - but you don’t understand why.
What it’s like to live in your particular physical body
Instead of The Political Thing tonight, I’d like to know one specific thing about what it’s like to live in your particular physical body On Twitter, Helen Rosner (newly-minted New Yorker food correspondent) asks about people's experiences in their own bodies - "It can be good or bad or neutral! about joy or pain or aesthetics!" The responses are funny and startling and sweet and sad, but they are all sincere and fascinating. [more inside]
31 years of washing
For my tailor I used to draw my suits, ‘cause he couldn’t speak English
Miles Davis has featured quite a bit on the blue But never for his paintings.
The 1983 album Star People featured his artwork on the cover and his art took a serious turn when he was in his 50's.
He collaborated with his lover the artist Jo Gelbard who relates a bit of their story and in 1998 there was this interview by Mike Zwerin. ''I used to draw Mickey Mouse and that airplane of his. Dick Tracy, he was easy, all I had to do was draw his nose. And Flash Gordon, I could do him. I did a drawing of Gerry Mulligan, that was in the '40s, looked exactly like him.". More paintings here.
The 1983 album Star People featured his artwork on the cover and his art took a serious turn when he was in his 50's.
He collaborated with his lover the artist Jo Gelbard who relates a bit of their story and in 1998 there was this interview by Mike Zwerin. ''I used to draw Mickey Mouse and that airplane of his. Dick Tracy, he was easy, all I had to do was draw his nose. And Flash Gordon, I could do him. I did a drawing of Gerry Mulligan, that was in the '40s, looked exactly like him.". More paintings here.
Basic cable now gives a fuck (or two)
Until last year, Syfy's policy — and the policy of USA, its corporate sibling — was that the word "fuck" had to be dipped (with one exception: an unmuted "fuck" in the Season 2 premiere of USA's Mr. Robot in July 2016). Syfy declined to put an executive on the phone to discuss the change in the internal rules, but a spokesperson said that when language — "fuck" specifically — is deemed important to the style or plot of a show, Syfy and USA now allow it. Any show with "fuck" airs with the TV-MA guideline, denoting that the program is meant for adult viewers.
Spectacular dinosaur stomping grounds discovered just outside D.C.
Some 110 million years ago, in the swamp that would become the Washington suburbs, a hulking, armored nodosaur trudged along a riverbank, leaving a telltale print in the mud. Offspring scrambled after it, while nearby, a long-necked sauropod squelched through the muck. . . . Millennia passed, an asteroid struck, the continents shifted, sea levels fell, mammals rose, humans climbed down from trees and launched toward the stars. Finally, on a summer day in 2012, a self-taught fossil hunter named Ray Stanford noticed the unmistakable shape of the nodosaur’s track[more inside]
"the Ghetto Gump"
Quincy Jones Has a Story About That Frank Sinatra. Michael Jackson. Ray Charles. Malcolm X. Elon Musk. Truman Capote. Buzz Aldrin. Prince. Tupac. Even Leni Riefenstahl. Quincy Jones has run with them all.
January 30
Internalised misogyny and Twilight
Dear Stephenie Meyer: I'm Sorry. Lindsay Ellis addresses the misogyny that underpinned a lot of Twilight criticism back in its heyday.
Molecular Redistribution
"The following conversation is one of a regular series of conversations that I have with my 13-year-old dog, Raika. Some of our conversations are funny and some are sad, but many will ring true for anyone who has the pleasure, and heartbreak, of owning a dog coming near the end of her life." [more inside]
best shirt for storing bats
#Review for Science "We lay-folk have long known that scientists use common objects for strange reasons — see NASA researchers sending rubber ducks into a glacier to track ocean currents, or environmental scientists floating tampons down streams to find pollution. But until now, we may not have understood the scope or, frankly, the grossness of the phenomenon."
Helen Dunmore Dun Gud
Author Helen Dunmore posthumously wins the Costa poetry prize. British author and poet Helen Dunmore has posthumously won the Costa prize for Book of the Year with her poetry collection Inside The Wave. Notably the inaugural winner of the Orange prize for fiction with A Spell Of Winter, she produced a number of novels, poetry collection and children's novels over her career.
As psychedelic as possible, under the circumstances
We're taking a meandering musical trip through late 60's musical Canada starting in Toronto's Yorkville, where hippies and draft dodgers like "Bill" (William Gibson) were gathering. In one attempt to make sense of it all, in 1968 the NFB (National Film Board of Canada) gave cameras to a group of kids and made Christopher's Movie Matinee - check out this great scene which refers to Yorkville and makes some timely observations. [more inside]
Tabasco, the burlesque opera from 1894, rediscovered and performed anew
26 years after Edmund McIlhenny, a Maryland-born former banker who moved to Louisiana first made and marketed Tabasco sauce, the condiment was so well known in the United States that a group of military cadets in Boston commissioned the production of the Burlesque Opera of Tabasco as a way to raise money to help build a new armory in 1894. But due to alleged conflicts between composer George W. Chadwickand producer Thomas Q. Seabrooke, after the opera’s initial run, it faded into obscurity and was largely forgetten about—until now. The comic operetta singing the praises of a famous Louisiana pepper sauce performed in full to the public for the first time in 124 years, in New Orleans. [more inside]
A story so extraordinary…
The Cabinet Files - In a second-hand shop in Canberra there were two heavy filing cabinets to which no-one could find the keys. They were purchased for small change and sat unopened for some months. When they were opened by a nifty driller they were found to contain a trove of documents, many of them classified.
Tailoring In Metal
Nothing remains of the Royal Armor Workshops at Greenwich. What does remain are many of the great masterpieces of the Greenwich armorers, which allow us to stand in the presence of great princes and knights long dead. For those who take the time to look, they live on in ways their makers could never have imagined-Tobias Capwell
“...sometimes it’s better to just pick a direction and swim.”
Subnautica gave me the experience I wanted from No Man’s Sky [PC Gamer] “There’s just one planet in Subnautica, home to an expansive ocean teeming with peculiar flora and fauna. Explore its depths and you’ll find fields of dancing kelp, caves illuminated by fluorescent fungi, bubbling thermal vents, and sandy plains sprinkled with glowing plants. It’s a diverse, vibrant setting, and feels truly alien. And while it may be unfair to compare quintillions of procedurally generated planets to a static, hand-crafted one, playing Subnautica gives me exactly what I wanted from No Man’s Sky: landing on another world, exploring it, and being surprised by what I find there.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
It never goes out of fashion
"Here, a sporty yellow Indian-make motorbike; there, a bullet box from the Savage Arms gun company. Here, an ad for Columbia Pictures’ The Great Sioux Massacre; there, scale models of the U.S. military’s Chinook, Kiowa and Apache Longbow helicopters. It’s a dizzying blizzard of pop cultural artifacts with nothing at all in common—save for their reliance on Native American imagery." At the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, a new exhibition called "Americans" showcases how "American Indian images, names, and stories infuse American history and contemporary life." Explore the interactive exhibition website here. [more inside]
No Human Being Is Illegal
“Perhaps best of all, mass amnesty is quick and effective. No more fussing around with some elaborate tiered system or stuffing millions of people through a decades-long bureaucratic hell that will cost the government billions. Just one quick step, and we can move on to other problems.” - The Case For Full Amnesty
“Being a white nationalist in an extremely diverse country is to effectively hate that country. Immigration haters want to destroy the oldest, most distinguishing, and most interesting characteristics of our nation in favor of an invented tradition of chintzy white bread garbage.” The Myth Of America’s Immigration Problem - Ryan Cooper for The Week
“Being a white nationalist in an extremely diverse country is to effectively hate that country. Immigration haters want to destroy the oldest, most distinguishing, and most interesting characteristics of our nation in favor of an invented tradition of chintzy white bread garbage.” The Myth Of America’s Immigration Problem - Ryan Cooper for The Week
"How do you solve a problem like Mariaaaa"
Yesterday a Tweet of an inked graphic of two nuns dueling, posted by @_ElizabethMay, became one of the top trending topics for the site. In a subthread a user provided a bit of context (it was the front page of a police blotter type paper), and the text of the article. Don't worry, no blood was shed! [more inside]
Drinking whiskey faster than water
The Cult of Mary Beard
How a late-blossoming classics don became Britain’s most beloved intellectual by Charlotte Higgins examines how Mary Beard went from being a Cambridge professor of classics to being the kind of celebrity who has poems written about her and is depicted in Lego. Twice.
Star Wars Posters of Soviet Europe
Let Margaret of Anjou Out
What are kids texting about these days ? Anarcho-communism, Classical Music, Age of Empires, Violins, Minimalist Syntax, Astrophysics, Deep Learning, Chemical Engineering, Zelda, The Rebellion, Neoliberalism, Javascript, Drums, The War of 1812, Paleontology, Optics, Decolonization, Silmarillion, The War of the Roses, Machine Learning, or the Victorian Era.
January 29
The Careful Rhetoric Of Misogyny
The Cut dissects exactly how Woody Allen publicly said terrible things to and about Diane Keaton as part of his presentation of her AFI Life Achievement Award in a way that made it very difficult for the media to call him on it.
"On the one hand, information wants to be expensive,"
We've failed: Pirate black open access is trumping green and gold and we must change our approach - Toby Green in Learned Publishing, distributed by Wiley [more inside]
Voynich manuscript deciphered?
Decoding Anagrammed Texts Written in an Unknown Language and Script "Since its discovery over a hundred years ago, the 240-page Voynich manuscript, filled with seemingly coded language and inscrutable illustrations, has confounded linguists and cryptographers. Using artificial intelligence, Canadian researchers have taken a huge step forward in unraveling the document’s hidden meaning."
DIY or Die in 1994
So it's 1994 and you're punk as fuck and nobody's gonna do it for you, so you wanna put together a show and need to know what bands and venues are around. Or you're a band and you want to set up a tour, or find a label, or maybe you just want zines and tapes from places outside your town. The internet's barely there, so it's a good thing you've got your grimy hands on the 1994 edition of Book Your Own Fuckin' Life, a full copy of which is being kindly hosted by the Internet Archive.
Too slow to be useful
What is the slowest music humanly possible? Adam Neely discusses what it means to go beyond the slowest subjective rhythmization (feeling the beat) of 33 bpm. The discussion climaxes with John Cage's As Slow As Possible (previ ously, 4' performance). He concludes with a summation of Gustav Mahler's 9th (technically 10th) and last symphony's last movement's last page by Leonard Bernstein. The Neely video description also provides a good rabbit hole.
Two Legs Good, Tank Treads Better
Because nothing says ‘I Love You’ like a sausage roll
In romantic Britain, Le Greggs, artisanal bakery of finest Christmas themed cuisine, are providing Valentines Day meals for the first time this year. The menu features béchamel toasted honey cured ham, your choice of signature puff pastry parcel, and Belgian dark chocolate brownie. Or perhaps a seasoned pork and puff pastry cheese slider and blue cheese en croute for starters? Bookings open on February 7th, while candles, waiter service and background classical music will come as standard. Perhaps invite someone famous? Restaurants in four cultural cities (London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Manchester) are taking reservations, plus Newcastle. Bon appetite! Post title, and a bonus: Steak Bake picture.
What Does It Mean to Die?
Virginia Woolf's Monk House Photo Album
Harvard has digitized Virginia Woolf's Monk House photo album. All (most) of the crowd is pictured, and just to set the internet in historical context, there are several cat pictures.
Indians abandon "Chief Wahoo"
The Cleveland Indians have agreed to remove Chief Wahoo from their uniforms, starting in the 2019 season. They'll continue to sell merchandise with the image, to help maintain their trademark.
Structural Loneliness
There are, broadly, two kinds of structural lonelinesses. One is the benign loneliness of the socially alienated, the other the malignant melancholy of the erstwhile master. [more inside]
The Secret to becoming Instagram Butt famous
Youtuber NerdCity and his Girlfriend Nicky venture out to make her famous on Instagramm by copying the style of popular Fitness models like Jen Selter.
The results might surprise you... [more inside]
“plenty of digital-only licensed games that have utterly disappeared”
Where do downloadable games go when they die? [Eurogamer] “A digital-only game based on licensed content is doomed to die right from the outset. At some point, months or years from now, that licensing agreement will expire - at which point the publisher can no longer sell the game. It will be summarily pulled from digital storefronts - sometimes with little or no warning - and is unlikely to ever resurface, unless the publisher is willing to negotiate those licensing deals all over again. Last December, a slew of Transformers games were suddenly removed from Steam and PSN (and later from the Xbox Marketplace) with no warning from publisher Activision. Among them was Transformers: Devastation by renowned developer PlatinumGames, which had only been released two years previously. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Marvel titles published by Activision have suffered a similar fate.” [more inside]
simply follow the medallions
"La Seine, immortalized by artists and adored by lovers dangling their feet over the quay, harbours a dark secret. Under the fifth and thirteenth arrondissements grumbles la Bièvre, the Seine’s younger sibling who was banished to the netherworld exactly one hundred and one years ago." Rozena Crossman, Hunting for the Lost River of Paris
"The love's gotta go somewhere"
After Robin Birdsong lost her son in 2007, she started Enchanted Farm Sanctuary (Instagram | Facebook) to help her cope with the grief. Ronnie the donkey also lost his son and refused to leave the spot where he died, so the farmer gave him to Robin, hoping for a fresh start. This is Ronnie's story.
winding graphs around circles
Remember January 29th, 2017
On January 29, 2017, around 7:52pm, a young white man entered a mosque in Quebec City in Canada and in the course of a few minutes, murdered Azzeddine Soufiane, Mamadou Tanou Barry, Khaled Belkacemi, Aboubaker Thabti, Ibrahima Barry and Abdelkrim Hassane. Five others were badly injured: Aymen Derbali, Said El-Amari, Mohamed Khabar, Nizar Ghlai and Said Akjour. [more inside]
January 28
Good news for stroke sufferers
An existing treatment for stroke is much more useful than previously thought. How much more useful? "“These striking results will have an immediate impact and save people from lifelong disability or death,' Dr. Walter J. Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said in a statement. 'I really cannot overstate the size of this effect.' A thrombectomy is an operation to remove large blood clots from the brain. Traditionally, the operation's effective time window was thought to be six hours. A recent clinical trial has determined that the window is actually up to sixteen hours for certain types of strokes. The study was terminated early due to its unambiguously good results.
Botany 2.0
The lost art of looking at plants "Plant biologists hope that, by combining new approaches to botany with data from genomics and imaging labs, they can provide better answers to questions that biologists have asked for more than 100 years: how genes and the environment shape the rich diversity of plants’ physical forms. "
It's a premise, Sam. Run with it.
It seems like a big oversight
The Global Heat Map, published in November 2017 by the GPS tracking company Strava (FitBit, JawBone, Vitofit), used satellite information to map the location and movements of subscribers to the company’s fitness service - including subscribers who were active-duty troops patrolling sensitive sites. WaPo picks up the story:
Nathan Rusen ... was inspired to look more closely, he said, after a throwaway comment by his father, who observed that the map offered a snapshot of “where rich white people are” in the world. “I wondered, does it show U.S. soldiers?” he said, and immediately zoomed in on Syria. “It sort of lit up like a Christmas.” (WaPo article by Liz Sly.)
Behold the power of a 12-string guitar
Melissa Etheridge's second album, 1989's Brave And CrazySide A: No Souvenirs [video], Brave And Crazy, You Used To Love To Dance, The Angels [video], You Can Sleep While I Drive [video] [more inside]
"Just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen"
Double, double, toil and trouble
'Fame proved toxic for the relationship': when comedy double acts split
“We have to be twice as careful when talking about difficult topics,”
Scientific Victory [Games by Angelina] “Last week a few games sites covered the fact that the Cambridge Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), a lab which investigates safety issues associated with things like artificial intelligence, had released a Civilisation V mod about the risk of superintelligent AI. Here’s what Rock, Paper, Shotgun quoted designer and CSER researcher Shahar Avin as saying about the project:
“We want to let players experience the complex tensions and difficult decisions that the path to superintelligent AI would generate,” said the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk’s Dr. Shahar Avin, who managed the project. “Games are an excellent way to deliver a complex message to a wide audience.”This is a blog post about why games are not always an excellent way to deliver a complex message to a wide audience.” [more inside]
January 27
quantum physics, traffic, chicken eyes, random matrices, and ...?
In Mysterious Pattern, Math and Nature Converge, Natalie Wolchover for Quanta
In 1999, while sitting at a bus stop in Cuernavaca, Mexico, a Czech physicist named Petr Šeba noticed young men handing slips of paper to the bus drivers in exchange for cash. It wasn’t organized crime, he learned, but another shadow trade: Each driver paid a “spy” to record when the bus ahead of his had departed the stop. If it had left recently, he would slow down, letting passengers accumulate at the next stop. If it had departed long ago, he sped up to keep other buses from passing him. This system maximized profits for the drivers. And it gave Šeba an idea. “We felt here some kind of similarity with quantum chaotic systems,” explained Šeba’s co-author, Milan Krbálek, in an email.[more inside]
Consciousness and Conscience
But even as Switzerland provides animals with increasing legal protections, some animal advocates say the rights currently afforded to animals don’t go far enough. […] Lauren Choplin of the non-profit Nonhuman Rights Project, which litigates for animals’ fundamental rights, told Quartz on Jan. 17, “in our view, the law hasn’t caught up to what we know about animal cognition, and it needs to.” Indeed, our evolving understanding of animal consciousness suggests that we have some uncomfortable philosophical and legal work ahead.[more inside]
Sex Toys For Your Voice
University of Alberta drama professor David Ley was trying to help an actor friend who had big gigs coming up fast, and muscle tension that had messed up her voice. Manual massage wasn't good enough. Medical supply shops offered nothing useful. They they checked out a "love shop."
“What do vocal folds do? They vibrate. What is resonance? It's sympathetic vibration, reciprocal vibration. So using vibration to create vibration shouldn't be a very big leap. . . . This is about how our bodies deal with vibration: The muscle will either tone up, or engage, to deal with the vibration, or it will release," Ley explains. "It's mainly about creating a flow of energy, and then it's really about release." [more inside]
More like Hello Stale
Twitter Jitters
Inside Social Media's Black Market. "The price difference has allowed Mr. Calas to build a small fortune, according to company records. In just a few years, Devumi sold about 200 million Twitter followers to at least 39,000 customers, accounting for a third of more than $6 million in sales during that period." [more inside]
Fanch, Hoop of Gomb, Beth Factory, Ben Sex, Bustles Muckson + more
Pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil.
The good guy/bad guy myth - Catherine Nichols
Virtually all our mass-culture narratives based on folklore have the same structure: good guys battle bad guys for the moral future of society. These tropes are all over our movies and comic books, in Narnia and at Hogwarts, and yet they don’t exist in any folktales, myths or ancient epics. [...] The ostensibly moral face-off between good and evil is a recent invention that evolved in concert with modern nationalism – and, ultimately, it gives voice to a political vision not an ethical one.
We are part of something far, far, bigger...
The new advert from the HSBC UK bank stars Richard Ayoade, features Nimrod by Elgar, and "contains products and brands that have become integral staples of British culture and lifestyle". Devised by J. Walter Thompson, "the 60-second spot positions the affable Ayoade as its Global Citizen." The ad is "entirely free from misguided jingoism", does not mention the B word and any comparisons to contemporary UK political trauma are totally and completely coincidental.
Flixable, a new, slim Netflix title search and browsing site
Flixable is a new, streamlined Netflix search site, built by redditor CrazedEll, which makes it easy to see what's new and what's leaving, separated by movies and TV, and is currently able to search titles available in Canada, Finland, Netherlands, United Kingdom and the United States. Alternative Netflix search sites: New On Netflix (for UK, USA, Canada, and NZ/AUS), Justwatch (also searches other services, but no country filters) [more inside]
Stuck in the Middle
Highway of Riches, Road to Ruin
Inside the Amazon's deforestation Crisis.
Highway BR-163 cuts a brutal path through Brazil’s conflicting ambitions: to transform itself into an economic powerhouse and to preserve the Amazon as a bulwark against climate change. Stephanie Nolen travelled 2,000 kilometres along the dusty, dangerous corridor, and found a range of realistic — and often counterintuitive ways — that the forest could work for everyone. [more inside]
Highway BR-163 cuts a brutal path through Brazil’s conflicting ambitions: to transform itself into an economic powerhouse and to preserve the Amazon as a bulwark against climate change. Stephanie Nolen travelled 2,000 kilometres along the dusty, dangerous corridor, and found a range of realistic — and often counterintuitive ways — that the forest could work for everyone. [more inside]
Don't Worry Darling, You Didn't Burn the Beer!
“In a parallel universe” is a series of fictional images, recreated from real ads in the mad men era, that question modern day sexism: showing it through a humorous light to spark a conversation through role play. By photographer Eli Rezkallah [more inside]
The Dreams of an Inventor in 1420
Cupcakes
Here's the Plan - Animated short film where a cat and dog couple decide to open a bakery. (slyt)
January 26
studied the natural world and able to replicate the aesthetic somehow
Their work would gain a small, dedicated following during the ‘80s and ‘90s but little else. Set against a backdrop of unprecedented economic growth in Japan, the music that emerged from the country during this period would benefit from this burgeoning wealth while also rallying against some of its consequences.On the resurgence of Japanese ambient composers from the '80s. Many listens inside. [more inside]
Envío
Envío offers information and analysis on Nicaragua from Nicaragua, on Central America from Central America, on the larger world we want to transform and on that other possible world we are working to bring about.
Assume any link is NSFW
"There were the trade schools—construction, agricultural—and emergency services. Then there were the jockeys and the stable boys, the theatre troupe, the nurses, and the members of the Russian women’s biathlon team." The New Yorker tells the story of Satisfaction, a 2002 song from Italian d.j. Benny Benassi for which some cadets at an aviation academy made a parody of the video which caused a governmental uproar and a threatened investigation because of illegal homoerotic content. But then... [more inside]
“At Lelystad airport ten thousand counterfeit video games were crushed.”
Images Resurface From 1994 Showing Nintendo Destroying Counterfeit Games With A Steamroller [Nintendo Life] “Nintendo games seem to be a particularly popular option for counterfeit product makers; the chances of finding a whole host of knock-off goods from any car boot sale or eBay search is scarily high. While we don't always see how companies such as the 'Big N' deal with such matters, these recently rediscovered photos show what is possibly the best method we could ever imagine. Enter the steamroller. Found by the archivists at Gamegeschiedenis (@gamegeschied), these images of counterfeit Nintendo products being crushed were reportedly taken in the Netherlands back in 1994. The photos featuring some lucky employee whose job was to go around stomping on the fake games in a Mario outfit stood out as a particular highlight to us, although that actually does seem like a good way to put across a strong message to potential fraudsters.”
"Awwwwwwwwwwww!"
my moms kindergarten class watching a chick hatch and then singing happy birthday to it
Twitter | ThreadReader
Twitter | ThreadReader
Sweaty Tacos, Mouth Bags, and Risotto with Smallpox
"From “chicken in her juice” to “chicken wok way” and “baba with old rum,” menu translations ran the gamut from slightly-dirty to just plain surreal. It wasn’t until I became a culinary translator myself that I realized just how hard this job is. ... [E]ven for fluent experts, food and menus are uniquely challenging to translate." South Korea has a task force; Bored Panda has receipts; Thrillist has more.
Queer Kid Stuff
AI-Generated Fake/Revenge Porn is Becoming Increasingly Easy to Do
This VICE article outlines a scary scenario: being able to easily take video footage of a celebrity, and attach their head to a pornstar's body in a porn video clip.
"An incredibly easy-to-use application for DIY fake videos—of sex and revenge porn, but also political speeches and whatever else you want—that moves and improves at this pace could have society-changing impacts in the ways we consume media. The combination of powerful, open-source neural network research, our rapidly eroding ability to discern truth from fake news, and the way we spread news through social media has set us up for serious consequences."
Disaster Tourism - an exploration of "dark travel"
Long form HuffPo (via Highline) article that explores, first-hand, the world of Disaster Tourism. Long, (mostly) well-written article with just enough self-awareness to ask some important questions.
Warning - a lot of drunken bro-ness, combined with hungover observations - but how else could one partake of such a trip?
Healthcare Is A Human Right
On Tuesday Jan 23rd, Senator Bernie Sanders held a Town Hall to discuss Medicare For All and the problems of the American Healthcare system “ The majority of the 90-minute town hall focused on laying out the pragmatic case for single payer: It costs less and it works better. The United States spends about 17 percent of GDP on healthcare, versus roughly 9 to 11 percent in other G7 industrialized democracies. But for all its spending, the United States lags far behind in outcomes.” (In These Times)
“The event was noteworthy not just for its substance -- 100 minutes' worth of wonkish discussion of the fine points of universal healthcare models from Canada, Norway and elsewhere -- but for the incredible audience it drew, more than a million people tuned into the livestream.” (Boing Boing) Direct link to video (1:39:58)
snarking in the face of oppression
Ski Director Warren Miller Dead at 93
Legendary ski filmmaker Warren Miller died Wednesday night at his home in Orcas Island, Washington. He was 93. [more inside]
the 80's called
"Finnish baseball" doesn't quite cover it.
Pesäpallo (aka pesis) is a bat-and-ball sport that was invented in Finland in the 1920s. It's sort of like baseball, except the pitcher stands a couple feet from the batter and then gets the hell out of the way after tossing the ball into the air. And there are other differences. You can learn the rules and see demonstrations in this video, or watch this entertaining and informative video about the history of the sport. [more inside]
She was once a true love of Bob's.
RIP Echo Helstrom Casey, 75. The original 'Girl From the North Country,' Bob Dylan's high school sweetheart has died.
She went and made a thingy from a little bit of stuff
That little plastic doodad that keeps the lid of the pizza box from sticking to the cheese is called a Pizza Saver and it was invented around 1983 by Carmela Vitale. Everyone sing along! [more inside]
JSNES
A JavaScript NES emulator , by Ben Firshman. Castlevania, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, and many more. Via kottke.
Searching for the lost crops of North America
Hunting for the ancient lost farms of North America (Annalee Newitz for Ars Technica) -- 2,000 years ago, people domesticated these plants. Now they’re wild weeds. What happened? One notable archaeologist and ethnobotanist in this field (heh) is Natalie Mueller, researcher (The earliest occurrence of a newly described domesticate in Eastern North America: Adena/Hopewell communities and agricultural innovation; Growing the lost crops of eastern North America's original agricultural system - both abstracts) and blogger, who investigates the Eastern Agricultural Complex in the American South with the Midwest. [more inside]
Hawker of Historical Hokum Funds Digital Home for Hermetic Hardcopy
The author of "The Davinci Code" is funding the digitization of 3500 historical documents on Hermeticism. [more inside]
PetrosyanXBlack Sun Empire
Two popular things in Russia are a long-admired comedian/writer/television presenter named Yevgeny Petrosyan, and a flavor of drum and bass called neurofunk. So naturally here's the mashup.
After Hours
But off-peakers are generally not hoping to be completely solitary in their pursuits; most people don’t want to be the only person in their step-aerobics class at two in the afternoon. Instead, they want to be one among a smaller, more manageable group than urban cohorts tend to allow. Subcultures offer the pleasure of being different along with the pleasure of being the same; variation becomes a passport to acceptance. The two people who encounter one another at the aquarium on a Wednesday morning appear to have more in common than the two hundred people who see each other there on a weekend. Like other choices that divide people into subsets, off-peaking allows its adherents to discover a kinship that may or may not reveal a significant similarity in worldview.
Frog of the Week
Every week for the last two years Gone Froggin has named a different species Frog of the Week. This week's is the Common Rain Frog. The blog has a bunch of other resources and regular features including a breakdown of frog and toad species found in each state, looks at the art of froggin, a Herper of the Week, and a Non-Frog Amphibian of the Week. You can also try your hand at figuring out whether this is a frog or a toad. [more inside]
January 25
Satanic Win for Religious Freedom
The Satanic Temple has successfully challenged part of Missouri's law requiring an ultrasound for abortions - while the case is still being heard, the Solicitor General agreed that the law only requires the woman be given the "opportunity" to hear the fetal heartbeat, and if she declines, no ultrasound is necessary. (The relevant law does not acknowledge that someone other than a woman might seek an abortion.) [more inside]
Marx Versus Bezos
Amazon Go and the Future - "For decades technology helped the industrial world work better; more and more, technology is replacing that world completely, and there will be pain. That, though, is precisely why it is worth remembering that the world is not static: to replace humans is, in the long run, to free humans to create entirely new needs and means to satisfy those needs." [more inside]
Hawai'i Karate Museum Rare Books
Extensive list of books in the museum's collection, starting in the 1920s. Click on a decade and a chart will come up with all the books from that decade, with title and publishing info, and a illustrations of a few pages.
Access + Ability
How Design for One Turns Into Design for All (NYT) discusses the Access + Ability exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. [more inside]
Ooga-chaka ooga ooga ...
Floey Owl
Crying with the Handsome Man
Even though numerous animal species shed tears, emotional crying is a uniquely human activity. Regardless of the reason behind it, many people believe that expressing one’s emotions in this way can be both cathartic and healthy. In Japan, entrepreneur Hiroki Terai has even adopted this belief as a business strategy. He is the founder of a group crying service that encourages people to cry together while a “handsome weeping boy” wipes their tears away. [more inside]
FIRE ZE MISSLES!
The cheese stands alone
The Sad Demise of a Village Cheese-Rolling Competition: For over 50 years, the villagers of Stilton, in Great Britain’s Cambridgeshire, have come together on May Day for a competition as cheesy as it is charming. But after months of discussion, the annual cheese-rolling competition is cancelled, organizers said in a Facebook post. They cited a lack of interest, rising costs for staging the event, and public drunkenness as some of the reasons for the cancellation. The demise of another cheese-rolling competition, previously.
Vince McMahon Is Making Football Great Again
Rumors had been circulating for a while now, but it's now official - Vince McMahon, through his new corporation Alpha Entertainment, is relaunching the XFL in 2020. In contrast to the previous incarnation, the nuXFL seems to be built around capitalizing on gaps in the NFL's system. [more inside]
Bling… in… SPACE!!!
"This is the water we swim in"
"At every turn, women are taught that how someone reacts to them does more to establish their goodness and worth than anything they themselves might feel."
PLATFORMERS! SIDESCROLLERS! METROIDVANIA!
How to play Trap Adventure 2, the cruel platformer blowing up on Twitter [Polygon] “Trap Adventure 2, a mobile platformer that released by developer Hiroyoshi Oshiba (aka “hiro!!”) in 2016, has recently been getting attention for its clever design and hilarious level of difficulty. The spike in popularity is largely thanks to a widely circulated Twitter video of the game, which throws vicious (and completely unfair) curveballs at the player. If you haven’t already watched it, please do so. It’s brilliant, but cruel.” [more inside]
Polyphonic: Video essays about music and pop culture
YouTube Channel Polyphonic has been releasing video essays about music for the past 6 months. They cover topics ranging from What Makes John Bonham Such a Good Drummer ,Kendrick Lamar's Literary References, The Dead Kennedy's use of Satire and the Pogues Fairytale of New York [more inside]
When you're going through hell, keep going.
Installment #*@&^% of the US political threads. This edition features fun at Davos, more Muellery, and DACA & CR continued.
what should have won / what could have won
"Just look at who’s won the most-coveted Grammy, album of the year, over the past three-plus decades. Or really, look at who hasn’t: Beyoncé, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, Mariah Carey, Kanye West, Radiohead, Jay-Z. What if the Grammy for album of the year — a prize whose responsibility to bottle the zeitgeist is right there in its name — regularly went to recordings that balanced innovation and timeliness in a way that made them widely resonant?" Repicking the Last 38 Years of the Grammys
Those bones can no longer speak for themselves.
"On a warm morning last September, a dozen Herero men and women paid a visit to the American Museum of Natural History, in Manhattan. The men wore dark suits and ties, like guests at a funeral. The women wore colorful dresses and hats, following a tradition from Namibia, their home country, in southern Africa. They had come to view relics of a tragic episode in their nation’s history, and to ask the museum, after almost a century, to give them back. Inside the museum, several curators led them to a private room upstairs. A table was covered with cardboard boxes, which the curators invited them to open when they felt ready. Inside the boxes were human skulls and skeletons." Daniel Gross writes for the New Yorker on "The Troubling Origins of the Skeletons in a New York Museum."
Good thing my roses have lice!
Man finds teensy eggs, man incubates teensy eggs, man hand-raises teensy bird. Hey, Metafilter! I heard you liked big dudes caring for tiny animals. Get ready for the tiniest animal that needs the mostest care. (It has a happy ending, I promise.)
bourgeois value
Outing the Inside
After we’re done shaking our heads at what they had to endure, we project onto our long-lived women artists a mystique that’s as old as history—that of the sorceress or the good witch. These women have a secret. We want them to tell us everything, but maybe they don’t want to. If we can gain access to their magical workshop, squeezing through a narrow corridor to find the door, we might be privy to some important mysteries. The veils will be unwound, and finally we will look life in the face and weep for all that was lost to get us here.[more inside]
In her long life, Louise Bourgeois experienced both extremes of the female artist story—marginalization, even invisibility early on, and decades later a fierce and passionate following by younger artists and curators
I am sick of half-hearted desserts. Bring me a proper pudding.
Guardian: "Part of the honourable tradition of British dishes with names to pique the interest more than the appetite (see also toad in the hole, spotted dick and cock-a-leekie), the Sussex pond pudding is sometimes claimed to be named for the dew ponds that pepper the South Downs..." Wikipedia: "Made of a suet pastry which encases a whole lemon, with butter and sugar, it is boiled or steamed for several hours." Recipes from the BBC, Independent, Baking Mad, Essex Eating and the Good Food Channel. Post title from an article in which the Sussex Pond Pudding is mentioned in several comments, a "This article was amended..." correction of heinous proportion, the Great British Bake Off pudding week, and selling Sticky Toffee Pudding to Americans (more).
Prepare to shuffle cards ... and die.
After a boardgame, Dark Souls moves into the Card Game space. Steamforged Games, makers of the Dark Souls Board Game, developed a Cooperative Card Game based on the popular series. [more inside]
January 24
Resisting the Resistance
Candidates Who Signed Up to Battle Trump Must Get Past the Democratic Party First: "The group’s town halls and protests began to draw eye-popping numbers of people and even attracted national attention. With their newfound confidence, Lancaster progressives looked toward local and federal elections. The national press was captivated by the upsets across the state of Virginia in November, but that same night in Pennsylvania, Democrats across the state in local elections knocked Republicans out of seats they’d owned forever. In June, one of their own, Jess King, who heads a nonprofit that helps struggling women start and run small businesses in the area, announced that she would be running to take out Republican Rep. Lloyd Smucker in Pennsylvania’s 16th District... It turned out the Democratic Party had other ideas — or, at least, it had an old idea. As is happening in races across the country, party leaders in Washington and in the Pennsylvania district rallied, instead, around a candidate who, in 2016, had raised more money than a Democrat ever had in the district and suffered a humiliating loss anyway." [more inside]
Brownout
With a provincial election scheduled for June 7 and the incumbent Liberal party reeling from voter fatigue and scandals after fourteen years in power, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader (and previous favourite to be the next Premier) Patrick Brown has resigned the party leadership after allegations from two women that he sexually harassed and assaulted them when both girls were only 18. Brown issued a trembling, teary statement earlier today then fled reporters at the scene. Within minutes of the statement five key members of the Brown campaign had resigned (although at least one appeared to be throwing stones from a glass house). [more inside]
More beats and pieces from Al'Tarba, French abstract/hip hop/beatmaker
If you want some weird music for ... whatever day this is, you might enjoy the madness of Al'Tarba, a self-described French abstract/hip hop/beatmaker, who's on YouTube with weird, dark and cinematic videos, as well as tracks and sets on Soundcloud, plus albums and EPs on Bandcamp, and a proper website to boot.
Ask an Ex-Fetish Artist!
"I started out with more standard niche fetishes- feet, bondage, your usual shit everyone knows about. But over time, word got out that as long as I was paid accordingly, I'd draw just about anything. And so the perverts came and my rent got paid. Here's a list of stories for y'all to choose what you'd like to hear first: 1) I want a salmon in that lady's vagina; 2) Bimbo the Magical Pony; 3) Put a bee cock on that dragon; 4) Cum golems R Us"
Tonight's the night we'll make history, as sure as dogs can fly
Prog-Lite band Styx scores their only #1 album with their 1981 release Paradise Theater [YT playlist ~40m], a loose concept album about the decline of America from the 60s into the emerging 80s. Side A: A.D. 1928/Rockin' The Paradise [video], Too Much Time On My Hands [video], Nothing Ever Goes As Planned, The Best Of Times [video] [more inside]
Hold the pickles, hold the..............................................
Having trouble grasping net neutrality? It is a complex subject, as we have already discussed (previously x 49). Well, fear not: Burger King, of all places, explains it. (SLAdWeek)
I Got Yer Sandwich RIGHT HERE.
Jade Hameister is a 16-year-old student from Melbourne who's just successfully completed the "Polar Quest" - skiing to both the North and South Poles, and across the Greenland Ice Cap, setting a record for being the youngest-ever such explorer. But - she also found the time for a fantastic sass back to her trolls. [more inside]
"If it's me and your granny on bongos, then it's the Fall."
RIP Mark E. Smith, one-off, legend, lead singer, song writer and only constant member of the Manchester band The Fall [more inside]
The Predatory Bank/The Public Bank
“No banking policy could properly address the drive that motivates predatory lending: that those with capital seek to multiply it without laboring themselves. Aggressively capping interest rates doesn’t stop—to return to the words of Gautama Buddha—the “pursuit of gain with gain.” The only way to fully take the predation out of lending practices is to remove the profit motive from financial services altogether.” Shark And Hound, predatory lending and loan sharks in America from the Gold Rush to Payday loans, and a possible way out. [more inside]
"how about a pug with piece of birthday cake on her head?"
@OfficerEdith: One of my purest joys is seeing animals wearing party hats. It's my birthday weekend, please indulge me, I need to see your pictures. Extra points if there's a second picture of said hat being destroyed. (previously; note that some hat-wearers are no longer with us) (the titular pug)
The phantom of the “distracted pedestrian” haunts America
"As it happens, the enormous legal privileges of car drivers are rooted in an earlier anti-pedestrian campaign dating from the early days of the automobile. Historically, city streets had been part of the public realm. Vendors, horse-drawn vehicles, playing children, and public-transit streetcars all used them, but the pedestrian dominated. Crossing the street on foot was a simple matter of walking from one side to another. Due to their mechanical power, fast speeds, and need for large amounts of physical space, cars upset this mix of uses and posed a new mortal danger to pedestrians exercising their right to mobility. So starting in the 1920s, automakers and their allies led a coordinated effort to “socially reconstruct” American city streets, as historian Peter D. Norton writes — shifting responsibility for maintaining road safety away from drivers and onto pedestrians." Who's Afraid of the Pedextrian?
“Saffron is much more expensive than cocaine,”
The Secret History of the World's Priciest Spice [National Geographic] “Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, going for up to $16 per gram—and with good reason. It comes from the dried bright orange-red stigmas of the flower Crocus sativus. But before you go digging up your spring crocus, know that this variety is special because it’s a triploid: it can’t grow in the wild or reproduce without human intervention. The gorgeous purple flower is painstakingly propagated and harvested by hand, and only on the morning it blooms. The more careful the cultivation, the higher the price. Iran produces 85 percent of the world’s saffron, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, thanks to its relatively dry, sunny climate and the agricultural knowledge passed down through generations of farmers. It likely was first discovered in Bronze Age Greece, yet it now grows throughout Europe and Asia.” [more inside]
Prairie home of troubling incidents and workplace relationships
Minnesota Public Radio News has released an independent investigation of Garrison Keillor's conduct. MPR News has been operating at arm's-length from its parent organization. It has unearthed "a years-long pattern of behavior that left several women who worked for Keillor feeling mistreated, sexualized or belittled" but does not detail the specific incident leading to the separation of MPR and Keillor. MPR's president Jon McTaggart also answered some FAQ yesterday about the situation.
maybe the real wall was the one through our hearts.
White House Chief of Staff John Kelly says that the President's border wall wall promise was 'uninformed' and that the United States is going to pay for it, apparently sparking a furious Trump to say his plan has "never changed or evolved." Even as Sen. Minority Leader Schumer withdraws offer on Trump's wall, but even the offer indicates How Democrats Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept Trump's Wall.
Easy enough since The Trump administration has already started building the border wall, and thanks to previous Presidents, Basically, Donald Trump’s Border Wall Already Exists [more inside]
Easy enough since The Trump administration has already started building the border wall, and thanks to previous Presidents, Basically, Donald Trump’s Border Wall Already Exists [more inside]
Tcuzu Joao
Of the more than 200 Jesuits buried in the church of St Paul in Macao, there is one in particular who stands out: João Rodrigues. His profound knowledge of Japan – a country where he spent 33 years of his life – of its people, language, and culture earned the Portuguese man the nickname Tçuzu (Japanese tsūji), or the Interpreter.
He did it for a bet
The wreck of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to bring human cargo to the United States, may have been found in the lower Mobile-Tensaw Delta, north of Mobile, Alabama. [more inside]
No finer tart
The Bakewell Tart, a "great British classic", is an example of English Midlands food, but not a Manchester one. It has a complicated history, was used in a tax case, is maybe or not related to the Bakewell Pudding, is quite sweet, more popular than Eccles Cakes, but is not a Manchester tart. Serve warm with cream, or watch Bezza and Paul eat it. Bakewell itself is a town in Derbyshire. Featured in the GBBO, smiling people oft hunt the tart in the town, while badgers prefer it at night (BBC). Variations from yonder lands include the Australian Bakewell Slice, the Canadian Butter Tart, a prune, raisin and Armagnac variety, the Cherry Bakewell, and the Ecclefechan (SFW) Tart. Or perhaps make a moist raspberry, mulberry or vegan cherry flapjack one.
Dee dee dee dee Dee dee dee dee ah-choo!
Noting the upcoming Olympics, here is the LSO performing Chariots Of Fire at the opening of the London Olympics featuring a rather distracted keyboardist. (SLYT)
Straight Outta Romford
The Floppotron (the musical instrument, not the Disney sequel)
Africa by Toto - - the latest classic song to be performed on the Floppotron, a musical instrument, nay entire orchestra, cobbled together by Polish musician and engineer Paweł Zadrożniak from 64 floppy drives, 8 hard drives, and 2 scanners. [more inside]
January 23
Slice & Reveal and Pluck & Reveal
Interesting ways of presenting something that then reveals something else. After dessert, there's a memo pad that is a sort of archeological dig, showing a bit more with each page plucked Architecture Landmark. There's this nascent website showing many other options using the same technique Triad Website
Sing Us A Song, You're Cthulhu, Man
The H.P. Lovecraft poem Nemesis has the same poetic meter as Billy Joel's Piano Man. So naturally, somebody had to take the poem and properly set it to music. Multiple someones. The most merciful thing in the Internet, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.
No Breakfast for Hip-Hoppers
MC Hotdog 熱狗 is a Chinese rapper. His slightly absurd, very catchy music video features people in animal masks. It features the group Soft Lipa 蛋堡 , who ups the ante with more absurd costumes. Whether you speak Chinese or not, you'll be nodding your head and clicking replay.
The problem of female speechlessness — my own, my friends’, my mother’s,
The secret female empowerment school known as The Academy "Urbaniak teaches what she calls “verbal martial arts,” practical techniques designed to interrupt that telltale moment of frozenness described with bafflement and shame by nearly everyone who experiences sexual assault, including the president’s alleged victims."
The Senate Needs a Nursery
There have been ten women who have given birth while serving in the U.S. House of Representatives; one of them was Tammy Duckworth in 2014. While she was on maternity leave, she decided to run for Senator. Now she slated to be the first member of the U.S. Senate to give birth while in office. Duckworth (D-Illinois), who turns 50 in March, is due in April. [more inside]
Shadows from the Walls of Death
Shadows from the Walls of Death is a macabre book of arsenic laden wallpaper samples that was produced in 1874 by a civil war surgeon and sent to 100 libraries around Michigan to raise awareness of the dangers of arsenic. Only 4 copies remain today (96 copies were destroyed by libraries out of concern for the wellbeing of customers) and the National Library of Medicine has digitized their copy in full.
RIP Ursula K. LeGuin, October 1929 - January 2018
Ursula K. LeGuin has died at age 88. The immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like “The Left Hand of Darkness” and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore.
The big swingin’ tool-belted, love-handled love machines
The Spike Manifesto. [Vice; very mildly NSFW] Spike TV--once The Nashville Network, now Paramount Network--aspired to be "The First Network for Men". But what was it really all about? Apparently, "loyal, reliable, confident, funny, action-oriented, unapologetic, testosterone-driven, non-preaching, celebratory, unpretentious, no bullshit." And, in the end, not completely without a sense of humor.
Those poor, poor skis
Sand dunes, volcanoes, waves, tropical forests, the Great frigging Wall of China - Candide Thovex skis it all (in this Audi ad). Another one.
Visualizing NES RAM with sparklines
5 Seconds of Donkey Kong exhibits plotter printouts of the contents of an NES emulator's memory with a sparkline plot for every location in memory whose value changes. [more inside]
Weird One Character Domain Superstore
Weird One Character Domain Superstore ... a dumb weekend project for Unicode / IDN domains which got out of control... [more inside]
you’re the one who paid to see sweaty men in underwear grope each other
East, West, Then Backward
When Georgia Invited 10,000 English Teachers Over and Carnage Ensued
When Mikheil Saakashvili – Georgia’s pro-Europe, anti-Russia president, who viewed Andy Garcia as the ideal figure to play him in a movie (Previously before his ...current escapades) – announced in August of 2010 that every schoolchild in Georgia would become “an English speaker” in the next four years, as part of an “educational revolution”, quite a few eyebrows were raised. Having brought in a series of widespread reforms in the wake of the 2003 Rose Revolution, which contributed to his approval rating of 67% at the time, ‘Misha Magaria‘ would not be deterred from his next big venture.
"Some of the Most Moving, Touching Lyrics Ever Put To Paper", John Lydon
The Bee Gees; they’re more than a flourish of falsettos. They’re not just teeth, tans, & tight trousers. There’s so much more to The Bee Gees than Saturday Night Fever & office parties. Look beyond the white suits & satin, The Bee Gees are pop royalty. Back in the ‘60s, The Bee Gees were pop balladeers, they were heartbreakers. From Pop to Soul to Disco, we walk the line between the nafness, the genius, and yes, The Joy of The Bee Gees.
How well do you know the world?
Rachel Morrison makes history!
"After 90 long years, another glass ceiling has finally been broken at the Motion Picture Academy. “Mudbound” cinematographer Rachel Morrison made history Tuesday by becoming the first female director of photography to receive an Oscar nomination."
Her previous credits include Fruitvale Station, Cake, Dope and Sound of My Voice. She also lensed Marvel’s Black Panther, which opens next month.
Freedom is coming tomorrow!
Rampolo Hugh Masekela, the anti-apartheid activist, trumpet player, and father of South African Jazz, has died in Johannesburg. [more inside]
How to undermine monopoly capitalism's control of our identities
Can blockchain protocols fix the internet? - "Why did the internet follow the path from open to closed? ... A closed architecture like Facebook's or Twitter's puts all the information about its users — their handles, their likes and photos, the map of connections they have to other individuals on the network — into a private database that is maintained by the company." (via) [more inside]
"Your family will be able to understand you"
How technology is changing the lives of people who can't speak - Guardian long read.
January 22
Continuously Refreshing Television
Disrupt the Street Tree, the Re-Oaking of Silicon Valley
"Three hundred years ago, to walk from the site of the modern-day Apple Campus in Cupertino to the bayshore site of the modern-day Google headquarters in Mountain View would take about four hours. You would start in an oak savanna at Calabazas Creek on the west edge of Tamien Ohlone tribal lands, walk west through oak woodland and chaparral to Stevens Creek, then turn north to follow the waterway through oak woodland and oak savanna, until the water fanned out into willow woodlands and the lazy water of the south Bay near the Ramaytush Ohlone village of Puichon." [more inside]
Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us.
"It's Not My Dog" is a music video about all kinds of charming dogs. "Cats Stealing Stuff" shows us just how devious cats are—so different from dogs.
More Than a White Trash Cook
Ernest Matthew Mickler embodies a certain kind of Southerner, and we can all relate in some way. This is a fascinating story of serendipity and family and queerness and food. I couldn't get the photos to show up for me so there are big empty spots, but just keep scrolling. If the photos do show up for you, great.
Whatd'ya do if you're young and white and jewish?
It's actually difficult to describe Shel Silverstein's 1962 album Inside Folk Songs. But if you're inclined to have a very odd half-hour or so, you might enjoy it. [YT playlist] (The humor is darker than you might think if you only know his poetry.) Side A: Bury Me In My Shades, Have Another Espresso, Bananas, Liz, You're Always Welcome At Our House, Civil War Song, Boa Constrictor, 25 Minutes To Go [more inside]
“...get a little positivity and listen to good music.”
Curtis Harding's Psychedelic Soul [GQ] “A veteran singer who cut his teeth over a decade ago doing backing vocals for Cee-Lo, Harding seems to do everything with soul: The way he talks about his passion for film, style, and music, is soulful. The ease with which he rocks a Saint Laurent jacket is soulful. Most importantly though, his music has soul in every note, every guitar lick. If soul is an "experience," unable to be confined by descriptors, the title track from Harding's new album, Face Your Fear, is an excellent illustration of it. The groove is slinking and relaxed, Harding riding the beat just behind the drums, delivering every word with an unwavering confidence, but also a very human tenderness. His voice never raises above a whisper, but the quiet energy he packs into every syllable will have you hearing his melodies in the back of your mind for days. It's the rare song that could soundtrack a wedding or a funeral, at once celebratory, sad, groovy, and of course, very soulful.” [more inside]
An oral history of London warehouse parties pre-acid house
Before acid house dramatically transformed British nightlife at the tail end of the 80s, there was the warehouse party scene. Terry Farley, Jay Strongman, Norman Jay (MBE), Soul II Soul's Jazzie B, Paul Trouble Anderson and more talk about the parties, venues, music and lifestyle of the London party scene up until the music began to change.
Plus: An oral history of one warehouse party on the cusp of the change, Hedonism, out in the terminally unfashionable London suburb of Alperton.
Plus plus: Drum n bass pioneer Jumpin Jack Frost talks to Casper Melville about growing up in sound system culture in London in the 70s and 80s and what happened when the rave hit.
Upstairs to the management floor, where it is still 1959
Last Saturday I visited the abandoned Coventry Evening Telegraph building . It’s an amazing place, vacated in 2012 but most of the interior untouched since the 1950s. Here are just a few of the photos I took. The site is being looked after by arts collective @CETpopup for the next few months ahead of the inevitable demolition / repurposing. Go & see it now, before it’s all lost. So let’s start the explore of a building that once had 600 people working on the evening daily. (SLTwitter photo thread)
The Man Who Made Black Panther Cool
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe
Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe [pdf] is a free book written to accompany a 2012 art exhibition of the same name at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The exhibit and book focus on "Africans living in or visiting Europe in what has been called the long sixteenth century, from the 1480s to around 1610. The exhibition and essays seek to draw out not only their physical presence but their identity and participation in society, as well as the challenges, prejudices, and the opportunities they encountered."
"This is definitely the let’s-get-the-fuck-out-of-here section."
Keep Your Hands on the Wheel and Don't Look Down, an Outside Magazine writer rides with the snowplow drivers on Colorado's infamous Highway 550.
To push the boundaries for wolf-kind
Pioneering female becomes first wolf in Belgium in a century "The first recorded wolf on Belgian soil for at least 100 years has made her bloody mark." So begins this article from the Guardian.
Q: How many dimensions are there? A: ?
The History and Future of Dimensions. Science writer Margaret Wertheim has written a whirlwind essay on the idea of 'dimension' that encompasses Aristotle, Renaissance artists, Cartesian geometry, relativity, and the strange constructs of string theory.
"Why? Just because it looks nice."
Bubbling Trains ~ Accessibility Fireworks ~ Roads of America ~ Gulf of Finland
Helsinki-based GIS enthusiast Topi Tjukanov makes lovely visualizations of e.g. road and traffic data.
Helsinki-based GIS enthusiast Topi Tjukanov makes lovely visualizations of e.g. road and traffic data.
The sound of a frozen lake: other-worldly, and twangy
This is what a frozen lake sounds like (Facebook video) - exploring the acoustics of ice-capped water, which you can experience by skipping a stone across the surface (YT - skip to 3m 43s) | Playing on ice and frozen water, previously
The thin green line
"When you are having your morning cup of tea before taking a jeep “safari”, some of them would have left for the day’s job, often four or five kilometres away, walking along jungle roads, possibly seeing the steaming dung heaps of an elephant or the pugmarks of a tiger that has gone by a mere half hour ago. He will pause for a bit, ears alert for a crackle of branches as an elephant shifts weight from one leg to the other, or wait for the cackle of jungle fowl. If the forest holds its silence, he will walk on to the waterhole that has to be cleaned or bushes by the side of the road that have to be trimmed. If he is back when you are having your evening cup of tea, perhaps, you could treat him to a cup, too." [more inside]
Prescription for healthier population: spend more on social services
"Spending more on health care sounds like it should improve health," said Daniel Dutton, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. "But our study suggests that is not the case and social spending could be used to improve the health of everyone," said Dutton, lead author of a study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
January 21
How Chobani Is Winning America's Culture War
Man of Culture: Chobani's Hamdi Ulukaya - "In 2012, Chobani opened its second U.S. production facility—the world's largest yogurt plant at 1 million square feet—in Twin Falls, Idaho. Again Ulukaya reached out to find workers from the local refugee center. Approximately 30 percent of Chobani employees are immigrants, speaking more than 19 different languages."
"still sounds better than the snare sound on St. Anger"
"Enter Sandman," but the drums are played with dildos (need I say NSFW?)
Mardi-Gras Dog Krewe
what is egg coffee?
Scandinavian egg coffee uses the egg whites to clarify, while Vietnamese egg coffee uses just the yolks to create a creamy texture. [more inside]
“Cryptocurrency can’t crash soon enough,” one gamer fumes.
It's a terrible time to buy a graphics card [PC Gamer] “Not too long ago we warned of a potential impending surge in graphics card prices. Unfortunately for those looking to upgrade graphics cards or buy a new GPU, that prediction has come true, and then some. Right now is the worst time in the history of graphics cards to buy or upgrade this all-important gaming component. I've run through the list of current generation GPUs, and I've even looked at previous generation GPUs. The price changes in the past two weeks are staggering.” [more inside]
Effective graphic design can help communicate your message
Floor Charts.com |
Join me as I archive government charts & props from Congress, the White House and more. (Avg. cost per chart: $20 - $60)
I Don't Think People Say "The Furtive Genius of Foxboro."
Perri-Air
Fresh air for sale Before long, Lam and Paquette had developed a small industry and others began to cotton on to the opportunity. There is now luxury air, cold-pressed air, 100% mountain air. There is air canned for the benefit of mothers (“Keep awake and command the household in a natural way.”) There is air for work. Air for kids. Air for grandparents. [more inside]
The Asparagus tells you to get out of Bitcoin
"She has made dozens of accurate predictions in recent years, including the demise of Gordon Brown, the credit crunch, and Oscar glory for British film The King’s Speech." In the Vale of Evesham, the paganistic rites of the Asparamancer have resulted in predictions for the year ahead. "...her unusual methodology came from her dislike of tea and her lack of success with broccoli..." 2018 predictions include a revival in books, that humanity will survive, the UK will do poorly in sport, and it doesn't look good for Theresa May's future. A recent prediction, that winter will bring wet weather and flooding in Britain, has proven to be astonishingly accurate. 'Mystic Veg', as seen on daytime TV, can also be found on Twitter; her predictions for the last two years.
The Limits of Empathy
People who study empathy have a thousand different terms and semantic distinctions when it comes to what empathy is and what forms it can take. “There are nearly as many definitions of empathy as there are scientists who study this phenomenon,” writes Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki. But most people agree that there is a distinction between empathy in the form of listening, and trying to understand someone’s experience—what many researchers call “empathic concern”—and empathy that takes the form of actually trying to take that experience on yourself—something called “personal distress.” (via RPS)
Cashing in the Coin
An accidental investor battles to cash out from the bubble of the century. "I tore through old boxes of odds and ends I’d hoarded over the years. I found the coin mixed in with some euro pocket change, with the unmistakable B with vertical slashes embossed on it. The coin itself was worthless of course, but the cryptographic private key printed on the back, underneath a tamperproof holographic sticker, was linked to an anonymous digital wallet holding 1.0 BTC. Discovering I hadn’t thrown it out brought a momentary wave of relief, followed by acute anxiety, as I realized the single coin in my hand could buy a new Ford Fiesta, and I had no idea what to do with it."
The West's Leftist Male 'Intellectuals' Who Traffic in Genocide Denial
There was no wave of mea culpas from the 'anti-imperialists' who denied the Bosnian genocide after Ratko Mladic's guilty verdict (Previously, Previouslier, yet Previouslier). That's because conclusive evidence, even criminal convictions, wont stop those war crimes deniers, who are now actively whitewashing Assads war crimes
Sun's coming up like a big bald head poking up over the grocery store
Things got a bit weird-but-fun in 1984 when performance artist Laurie Anderson released her album Mister Heartbreak [40m]. Side A: Sharkey's Day [video], Langue d'Amour, Gravity's Angel [more inside]
If you really care about something, you have to act on it
Before Roe v Wade, Jane was a network of women who provided abortions to Chicago women. The service was launched in 1965 by Heather Booth, then a 19-year-old student at the University of Chicago. Her friend's sister was pregnant and desperately wanted an abortion. Booth found a doctor who was willing to perform the procedure secretly.
"By the third call, I realized I couldn't manage it on my own," Booth says. "So I set up a system. We called it 'Jane.' " At first, Jane connected women with doctors. But eventually, the group's members started performing abortions themselves. With time, Jane grew into an all-women network with dozens of members, ranging from students to housewives.
African White-capped Hocky Owl
January 20
With a car, you put it in neutral. With a room, Neutral puts you in IT!
Room escape game developer Neutral (previously - I kind of know how you feel, phunniemee - I found out about this by randomly checking Bart Bonte's site) has returned from the unknown once more with his latest game, SIGN. (If you thirst for more, welcome to hell No1Game.)
Something's Happening at Tagruato.JP
In April of this year, Paramount will release the third movie in the "Cloververse," an incredibly loosely tied together anthology, which began with Cloverfield in 2008, and 10 Cloverfield Lane in 2016. As was the case with the first two movies, an alternate reality game set in the Cloververse has begun in the run-up to the movie. [more inside]
"Oh, it was such a hell of a smelly, noisy one"
Tired of the sanitised, filtered, and happy depictions of the everyday lives of her friends and family on social media, Kaviya wanted to talk about things and issues that not many like to discuss or even acknowledge in public. So, much in the vein of #100DaysOfHappiness and #100DaysOfExercise, the Mumbai-based artist decided to take up her own 100-day challenge on Instagram; but hers is #100DaysOfDirtyLaundry [all links NSFW, probably].
As gouda drum solo as possible
Han Bennink on the Cheese Kit Diptych. Part one of a three-part video documenting Bennink's performance at the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in 2005. Not only is edam good drummer, a käse is made for the relevance of humor in art. [more inside]
Commodious!
How many people have you had in your drawers? At one time? For a mere $235,000 you can have somewhere to store gargantuan hosiery. Roadside America rates it as "major fun" and really, how could it not be?
[via Boing Boing]
Dust Bowl Women & Iowa Porkettes
A women's basketball team in the Depression, and farmer's wives in the 60s Here's the link for the Iowa Porkettes: Farmers Wives Take Over
One summer I hitchhiked through Britain trying to find a harp-maker.
A Conversation with Judith Pintar, writer of the 1991 interactive fiction game Cosmoserve. Pintar and Jimmy Maher talk about the history of interactive fiction, game settings, identity and empathy and how she is using interactive fiction in teaching now.
“That letter destroyed my life. And it was worth it.”
Talia Jane (previously) reflects on the backlash & aftermath of the open letter she wrote two years ago about the low wages she was paid as a customer service employee at Yelp.
A Horror Movie for Every Day of the Year
Shaenon K. Garrity, the comic artist/writer behind Narbonic, Skin Horse, and the X-Files recap webcomic Monster of the Week, has a new project Horror Every Day, a sort of electronic tearaway calendar recommending a new horror movies tied extremely vaguely to anniversaries or holidays or some such, with nice illustrations and occasional content warnings. Occasional mild spoilers, I suppose. Previously Previously Previously
“It is unafraid to be corny, unafraid to be purple,”
‘It was an electric time to be gay’: Sarah Waters on 20 years of Tipping the Velvet [The Guardian] “What’s it about?” people sometimes asked me, when they had heard I’d written a novel – and I always had to brace myself, slightly, to answer. There was the awkwardness of explaining the rather risque title. There was the fact that I outed myself the moment I began to reveal the plot. And then there was the plot itself – because, oh dear, how lurid it sounded, how improbable, above all how niche, the tale of a Victorian oyster girl who loses her heart to a male impersonator, becomes her partner in bed and on the music hall stage, and then, cruelly abandoned, has a spell as a cross-dressed Piccadilly prostitute and the sexual plaything of a rich older woman before finding true love and redemption with an East End socialist.”
"Hi, I'm Max Keller. This is how I usually leave a bar."
Thirty-four years ago today, NBC premiered The Master (publicity still), a ninja action series starring Western film veteran Lee Van Cleef (as the ninja) and Timothy Van Patten, half-brother of Dick Van Patten, as his hot-headed young sidekick. Each week, Max and The Master drive into a new town (in Max's custom van) and end up protecting/rescuing a damsel in distress from greedy land developers, union-busters, crimelords and their thugs, a surprisingly high number of other ninjas, and the occasional terrorist. (Here's Van Cleef promoting the show on Carson.) Fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 know the show from Master Ninja I and II, repackaged video versions of the first four episodes. Cancelled after 13 episodes, the entire series is viewable on YouTube: [more inside]
From where the church used to be, 2 blocks south, 1 block east
ｔｈｅ ｅｕｃｈａｒｉｓｔ ｉｓ ｌｉｔ
ｔｒａｄｉｔｉｏｎａｌ Ｃａｔｈｏｌｉｃｉｓｍ｜ ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ ｜ ａｅｓｔｈｅｔｉｃｓ ｜ ｔｒａｄｗａｖｅ ｄｏｔ ｃｏｍ
｜ ＴＷＩＴＴＥＲ
｜ ｆａｃｅｂｏｏｋ
｜ ｉｎｓｔａＧＲＡＭ
｜ ｐｉＮｔＥｒｅＳｔ
An Homage to You Rudy
Two Tone was both a record label and movement that combined imported Jamaican Ska with homegrown British punk to form a uniquely British multi-racial, multi-ethnic musical (and sartorial) style that has gone on to have a worldwide impact. They also had complicated relationship with another UK youth culture at the time: skinheads.
Martin Luther King's intellectual, ethical, and political commitments
MLK Now - "In the year before King's death, he faced intense isolation owing to his strident criticisms of the Vietnam War and the Democratic Party, his heated debates with black nationalists, and his headlong quest to mobilize the nation's poor against economic injustice. Abandoned by allies, fearing his death was near, King could only lament that his critics 'have never really known me, my commitment, or my calling.' " (via) [more inside]
January 19
Winter Into Spring
Need a 45 minute break? Like, from anything? Here's piano artist (painter? poet? priest? alchemist?) George Winston's 1982 album Winter Into Spring [44m]: Side A: January Stars, February Sea, Ocean Waves (O Mar), Refletion [more inside]
Will they ride again?
The Sedona 5's Excellent Adventure On the morning of November 19, 1995, a federal budget stalemate between President Clinton and the U.S. Congress had forced the national park system to shut down, and the entire Grand Canyon had been closed to visitors for the past five days.”
Shut your mouth, 'cause we're about to toss some exposition your way...
“WATER BOTTLE IN RECTUM, DOES THIS TO REDUCE ANXIETY”
What Did We Get Stuck In Our Rectums Last Year? (2017 Edition). Sticking things in our rectums previously. [more inside]
You can call me Dr. Mom
The U.S. Fertility Rate Is Down, Yet More Women Are Mothers The increase has been especially steep among groups of women who hadn’t been having as many babies: those with advanced degrees, and those who never marry. Today, 55 percent of never-married women ages 40 to 44 have at least one child, up from 31 percent two decades ago, Pew found. [more inside]
If it fits I sit
Why Cats Love Boxes, According to Science! There's also a (captioned) video on Twitter, starring Artemis, a black cat, which are clearly the best cats. [more inside]
128 Story Songs
Kindness in Science
Should we steer clear of the winner-takes-all approach? Looking to build a more inclusive culture and environment, scientists in New Zealand held a 'Kindness in Science' workshop in Dec 2017. Nature interviews seven scientists to discuss what this culture-shift would mean for them. The essay by Emily Bernhardt that helped inspire the workshop is also a fantastic read ('Being Kind').
The NAS recommends a BAC of <.05
[S]tudies from countries that have decreased their BAC laws to 0.05 percent, such as Austria, Denmark, and Japan, demonstrate that this is an effective policy. In their 500-page report, Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem, the non-partisan National Academy of Sciences note that "Alcohol-impaired driving is an important health and social issue as it remains a major risk to Americans’ health today, surpassing deaths per year of certain cancers, HIV/AIDS, and drownings, among others, and contributing to long-term disabilities from head and spinal injuries." and make recommendations for broad changes, including lowering the BAC levels from .08 to .05 percent. [more inside]
“This place wants us dead.”
The Terror [YouTube] [Trailer] “Inspired by a true story, The Terror, from executive producers Ridley Scott, David Kajganich and Soo Hugh, takes viewers on a harrowing journey. The story centers on the Royal Navy’s perilous voyage into unchartered territory as the crew attempts to discover the Northwest Passage. Faced with treacherous conditions, limited resources, dwindling hope and fear of the unknown, the crew is pushed to the brink of extinction. Frozen, isolated and stuck at the end of the earth, The Terror highlights all that can go wrong when a group of men, desperate to survive, struggle not only with the elements, but with each other.” [more inside]
The Unexpected Consequences of Accidentally Buying a Counterfeit
Your Amazon Order Could Get You in Trouble With Customs. You wouldn’t think online shopping could get you in trouble with customs, but if you accidentally order counterfeit merchandise on Amazon it just might. If you plan on doing a lot of traveling, you probably want to double check your orders from now on. It just might get you kicked out of CBP's Trusted Traveler program.
One Dozen Jabberwocks
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Her Name Was Joanne, And She Lived In A Meadow By A Pond
This weekend Michael Nesmith and The First National Band begin a mini-tour of California venues, concentrating on performing their country-rock material from the early 70s. The FNB released three albums (Loose Salute, Magnetic South and Nevada Fighter) between 1970 and 1971. [more inside]
He's like "Your decisions in life are horrible"
Organizing So People Can Organize Themselves
“Worker centers—a catchall term for a broad array of local groups across the country—sprung up in the void left by the collapse of unions. They are a sort of one-stop shop of last resort for the problems of the working class. They organize campaigns for worker rights, wrangle with bad bosses, and more. And because worker centers have been at least somewhat effective in mitigating the horrors of life among the working poor, pro-business forces have long been anxious to undermine them.“ Walking The Floor of the Great Minnesota Activist Factory, Hamilton Nolan - Splinter.
Like a bridge over troubled water
As Macron says 'non' to a financial services deal and Boris tries to distract everyone with his bridge here's Everything you need to know about the Brexit endgame in five minutes
You think shooting on film is hip?
Northern Plains Native Americans: A Modern Wet Plate Perspective by Shane Balkowitsch, the only wet plate collodion artist in North Dakota. [more inside]
On the way in I collect my eleventh cup of tea of the morning
The London Time Machine
The Morgan Map of 1682 vs today. Compare London of 1682 with aerial imagery from today, street by street. [more inside]
January 18
Hans Moleman Productions presents, "Bear Getting Hit by Pipe".
“I shall compose some verses on the inconstancy of happiness”
Apply Chainsaw Gently
"Heathers" Official Red Band Trailer (YT), for the new Paramount TV show based on the 1988 black comedy. Reactions to the trailer veer between it being "sublimely vicious" and "baffling" and "a conservative fantasy".
Favrd's down
Dean Allen made Textism and Textile and Textpattern and Favrd and other things and posted daily photos of his dogs and they made the web better. RIP.
The occult roots of higher-dimensional research in physics
First Baby
Less stockpiling, more listening? Sure. Let's try that.
James Jackson Toth (of Wooden Wand) has a confession: he's a music addict, and he realized he had gone too far when he figured out that he couldn't listen to all his music in 40 years. But he had a plan - listen to one album only per week, starting on the first week of 2017. Only 52 albums for an entire year, to get back to really listening to and appreciating music, instead of amassing more and more. Album #1: Autechre's Oversteps from 2010. Things began to fall apart almost immediately.
A perfect encapsulation of Daryl Gates' worldview.
How Sierra and a Disgraced Cop Made the Most Reactionary Game of the 90s. A look at the 1993 point-and-click adventure game Police Quest 4 as a mirror for the career and politics of its star writer, former LAPD Chief Daryl Gates. (CW: This article discusses incidents of police violence as well as depictions of queerphobia, violence, and murder.)
"My journey from boy to Boy George began in the 70s"
In the 1970s, nobody knew what to do about Britain. The economy was in tatters. Industry was in decline. Governments changed like traffic lights. There were fears about terrorism, immigration, and fascism. We joined Europe, then we wanted out. This is a film about how the '70s shaped me. It's my story, but it's also Britain's. - Boy George's 1970s: Save Me From Suburbia
When cows fly
Two people were killed during the second storm this year in the Netherlands. There was extensive damage. Roofs were torn off of buildings, cargo containers were blown off a dock, buildings collapsed and trees fell on houses and cars. The storm started in the morning and blasted the country for several hours. NRC posted this (non-gruesome) report in pictures. And if you're eager to see footage made and shared by Twitter users, don't miss out on #storm and #westerstorm.
Pity the musk ox.
"The energy here was so heavy and disruptive.... But it's changing."
How Do You Rebuild Your Life After Leaving a Polygamous Sect? Buzzfeed writer Anne Helen Petersen reports on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) community of Short Creek, and how it is changing now that its former leader Warren Jeffs is in prison for life, there are a growing number of ex-FLDS members in town, and formerly powerless female ex-members have formed the Girlfriend Club to support each other as they recreate themselves and their lives. (TW: Some mentions of sexual and physical assault, forced marriage.)
...and we will be making a donation to CryptoQueens...
As Tom Phillips, the UK editorial director, leaves Buzzfeed, his parting piece describes the 29 stages of a twitterstorm in 2018. Related: the 29 stages five years ago (MetaFilter thread). Unrelated: MetaFilter content previously amplified by Buzzfeed.
“this is evidence that some very strange things will happen”
It's The (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age Of Free Speech
Zeynep Tufekci discusses in new longform piece for Wired about how technology and the rise of social media is forcing us to rethink how we conceptualize free speech and censorship. (SLWired)
Train barks like a dog, snorts like a deer...
A new system is being developed by the Railway Technical Research Institute in Japan to equip trains with sound effects to scare deer away from the tracks and prevent collisions. Researchers have seen the number of deer sightings go down by 45%.
The Encyclopedia of the Missing
Vikings Give to the Who Dat Nation
Since Sunday Minnesota Vikings fans have raised more than $150,000 for the New-Orleans based charity What You Give Will Grow founded by Saints punter Thomas Morstead. Morstead said 100% of donations will go directly to Children's Minnesota to support their Child Life department. [more inside]
Oh boy
...hoping each time, that his next leap will be the leap home. The complete Quantum Leap journey A visual representation of Dr Sam Beckett's entire Quantum Leap journey.
For the Television issue of Special Request.
“This is not going to go the way you think!”
MRAs Make 46-Minute Cut Of ‘The Last Jedi’ That Edits Out All The Women [Pedestrian] “Uploaded to The Pirate Bay yesterday by an anonymous user, the “The Last Jedi: De-Feminized Fanedit” is, according to their own description “basically The Last Jedi minus Girlz Powah and other silly stuff“. You might be wondering how this is possible, seeing as the film is still a ways off from its DVD release date, but the intrepid nerdlinger(s) who decided to make this possible were so impatient for a version of TLJ where boys don’t get old off that they used a dodgy camrip with hardcoded subtitles.” [more inside]
Dieting, death and neo-reaction
Michelle Allison on the links between diet, death & neo-reactionary thought:
“Why do the people who have it all, who live on the bleeding edge of technological advancement, contribute in massively influential ways to our culture, who are massively financially rewarded, NEED EVEN MORE? To the point of doing away w/ enlightenment ideals and democracy itself? It seemed impossible to understand, and then my index card reminded me: because when you can't navigate your fear of death, can't even SEE it, nothing is ever enough. You can reach the top of the existing hierarchy and at the end of it, you're still human, still going to die.”[more inside]
Doing away with academic gatekeeper language.
Yeah, but that TruCoat
"Ok, I’ll try and keep this brief, but lets talk PT Cruiser and the 2007 recession. FYI, I’m not *blaming* the crash on the PT Cruiser, just generally laying out how the story of the PT Cruiser and the people who bought them provides an early window into the lending meltdown..."
Amazon HQ2: The Winnowing
I'm Gon Make U Sick O'Me
Parliament has released their first song in 38 years: I'm Gon Make U Sick O'Me. George Clinton in da house, baby!
Dumb contracts
"In the real world, contracts have social utility, and people use them in complex, strategic ways that often don’t align with their legal rights and obligations. These social functions require flexibility—often, the very flexibility that is intentionally short-circuited by smart contracts." Karen E. C. Levy discusses the limitations of smart contracts in her paper Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law (PDF).
Ahoy - deploy Toy-Cons and Joy-Cons!
Nintendo Labo is a series of DIY kits for their Switch console, each consisting of cardboard sheets, stickers, string, and rubber bands that can be constructed into RC cars, fishing rods, motorbikes, a piano, and even a giant robot backpack, all accompanied by games and (possibly) some kind of simple programming system. Labo follows in a long tradition of cardboard crafting and toys, from the glorious Polypops cardboard toys and furniture from 1966, to the Amsco Playsets of the 1970s, and of course Kenner's Star Wars Playsets (via @tealtan) – not to mention Nintendo's own Paper Model series dating back to the early 70s. [more inside]
January 17
"It Had Never Been Done on Television Before"
The Oral History of Breaking Bad To mark the 10-year anniversary of the premiere, Esquire spoke with Breaking Bad’s creators, actors, and broadcasters to reflect on this little-show-that-could, its groundbreaking approach to antihero storytelling, and its ascent from hidden gem to cultural phenomenon. [more inside]
Oooo,The telephone is ringing! You sound NICE.
Nick Beggs, the very talented bassist/chapman-stickist from Kajagoogoo, has been receiving a lot of calls from scammy phone solicitors on his land-line. He's taught himself how to put the caller on speaker mode, and started recording himself fielding these calls. In October, he posted a flurry of selfies documenting these interactions. I think Nick just wants a friend.
Ways to Cope With Nazis
Three different ways of coping with Nazis, some more effective than others. First there's Oskar Speck, who kayaks from Germany to Australia.
Then there's how Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto coped with the Germans.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising & Jewish Identity
And then there's how Isidore Greenbaum stood up at an American Nazi rally.
American Nazis & a Jewish Man from Brooklyn
This Couple Who Met On Neopets As Children Fell In Love And Got Married
Kristin, who's now 29, joined a role-playing guild on the site called the "Evil Jellies." There she met Michael Andrews-Karr, a then-10-year-old user from Ohio whose pseudonym on Neopets was "Doctor." Michael is now 27. [more inside]
Bruce Lee, now with lightsabers
The Greatest City in the World
The Minnesota Diet A new short story from the author of the Nebula Award–winning All the Birds in the Sky. [more inside]
A brief history of British Pigs
The United Kingdom has a unique genetic heritage of pig breeds, but in 1955, facing pressure from the Danish, Dutch and Irish pig industries, the Howitt Report recommended that British pig operations needed to be based on only three breeds, Large White, Landrace and Welsh, narrowing the pool of British Pigs from 16. In the subsequent years, four breeds went extinct: Cumberland, the Dorset Gold Tip, the Lincolnshire Curly Coat and the Yorkshire Blue and White. Rare breeds are now faring better than before, but still not great. For more on these breeds and the efforts to maintain them, see the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. British pig history side-story: The Pig War of 1859, which was really about which country controlled San Juan Island.
Potpourri
- Shadows are difficult to retouch.
- Every country's cuisine has its own character.
- Dogs are excellent meme subjects.
Ellen Pompeo Becomes TV's $20 Million Dollar Woman
"Decide what you think you're worth and then ask for what you think you're worth. Nobody's just going to give it to you." The 'Grey's Anatomy' star recalls in her own words the personal struggles and advice from Shonda Rhimes that led to a milestone: highest-paid actress on a primetime drama.
TANSTAAFL
How much do restaurants really make from food orders? Washington City Paper's Young and Hungry asked restaurants to break down the costs of some of their most popular dishes. [more inside]
A Strategy for Ruination
An interview with China Miéville in Boston Review.
“It seems really clear to us that this is an escalation of retaliation”
Private Prisons continue to send ICE detainees to solitary confinement for refusing voluntary labor ( The Intercept) Immigration detention deaths reach the highest total since 2009 (Houston Chronicle) The heads of NYC’s New Sanctuary Coalition arrested by ICE and slated for deportation (Miami New Times, NYT) Who is Jorge Garcia and why was he deported after 39 years in the US? (Bustle) [more inside]
Alive Inside
Across the country each year, thousands of people are wrongly labeled unconscious after suffering severe brain injuries. Among the survivors, a few, including Nick Tullier, make it to a Houston rehab hospital, where those with even the worst prognoses get a shot at recovery. (SLHoustonChronicle) [more inside]
Misogyny is collaborative
"If men can swallow the confronting reality that their silence is foundational to both sexism and sexual violence, then they get to embrace the inverse reality—that their vocal dissent could begin to destabilise these evils at their base."
[CW: sexual assault]
eye in the storm
Mosul Eye is a blogger and historian who stayed in Mosul to chronicle the city under ISIS. Chronicler of Islamic State ‘killing machine’ goes public, Lori Hinnant and Maggie Michael [more inside]
"If I'd at least gotten closer to that impossible perfection..."
What We Talk About When We Talk About Translation is an essay by Deborah Smith, translator of Han Kang's novel The Vegetarian, among others. It is a response to various criticisms of her translation, first by translator and novelist Tim Parks, followed by Charse Yun, who also laid out complaints about it from Korean critics, though, as Kang Hyun-kyung reports, Smith has vociferous defenders in Korea. If you want a summary, Clare Armitstead, who comes down on Smith's side, recaps the controversy in The Guardian. Jiayang Fan touches on the dispute but focuses more on Han Kang and her upcoming books in Smith's translation in an essay in The New Yorker called Buried Words.
Bengal Shadows
Said to be larger than the Holocaust in absolute numbers, a new documentary, Bengal Shadows, revolves around the British empire’s role, especially that of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in causing and exacerbating the Bengal famine of 1943.
The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry
Every baffled new parent goes searching for answers in baby manuals. But what they really offer is the reassuring fantasy that life’s most difficult questions have one right answer. [slGuardian Long Read by MeFi's own Oliver Burkeman]
January 16
Gritty McVittie
It has been snowing heavily in Scotland. All the snow ploughs and gritters are out doing their part. You can track their position and progress live - where you will also notice that each vehicle has a name. Bonus for finding David Ploughie.
Madame Tussaud, Beheadings, Death Masks
Marie Grosholtz was really good at propping a freshly beheaded and bloody head on her lap so she could do a death mask She even started on Marat's death mask while Corday was being arrested for the murder.
“The price of greatness is responsibility.”
Blood, Sweat, Toil and Tears: Playing Churchill on Screen [The New York Times] “He fought with distinction and held almost every major office in Britain. He commanded a country in the midst of world war and is credited with inventing the social safety net. He has been called an imperialist and a warmonger. A drunk and a racist. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature, rivaled only Shakespeare in his prolific literary output, and painted more than 500 pictures in his lifetime. And, some argue, he single-handedly saved civilization. Winston Churchill was a complex and contradictory leader unlike any in recent history. And he also presents one of the most sought-after and challenging roles for any actor worth his salt.” [more inside]
If anybody needs me, I’ll be in the Angrydome.
This is your latest installment in the Trump / U.S. Politics Megathread.
Trump golfs on MLK day after urging Americans to celebrate it with volunteering; popularity among African Americans continues to plummet. Bannon subpoenaed to grand jury. Blowback continues on “Sh—holeGate”; CNN reporter expelled from press conference for asking about it.
There are four years in a Presidential term of office (not many people know that).
"Little girls don't stay little forever."
Hundreds of survivors have come forward to testify against Larry Nassar, whom they say was allowed to abuse them for years through his position with USA Gymnastics, Michigan State University, and at John Geddert's Michigan club, Twistars. The hearings, which began today, will allow survivors to speak publicly, often for the first time [trigger warning for child abuse, sexual assault and suicide].
Yesterday, Simone Biles, the most decorated American gymnast in history, publicly identified herself as the third member of the 2016 gold-medal winning team from the Rio Olympics to be a survivor of Nassar's abuse, as did her two-time Olympic teammates Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas. 2012 Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney also spoke out publicly.
Today, the other survivors who aren't as well known will get to tell their stories alongside Biles, Raisman, Douglas, and Maroney, who had more media coverage. [more inside]
Frankendata
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein – in charts (in celebration of 200 years of Frankenstein - which maybe hasn’t gotten the respect that it should have)
It's Awl Over
The Awl and sister site the Hairpin announced that they'll cease editorial operations at the end of January. [more inside]
Lord Help Me to Improve My Debt Collection Skills
"The following is a list of 4510 different titles given to the exact same generic 9:59 self-affirmation pep-talk on Spotify."
The Autocrat and the Apostrophe
Nursultan Nazarbayev, authoritarian leader of Kazakhstan, has been broadly popular in his rule. Until he decided to start sticking apostrophes all over the place.
sexual liberation without consent is rape culture
Aziz Ansari was accused of coercing a woman (content warning: graphic description of sexual assault) into having sex with him. People are having very different reactions to this news. [more inside]
#didnthappen
When someone tells a story online, someone else will inevitably be ready with a two-word reply. “Didn’t happen,” they’ll type, or those who can’t be bothered to type can choose from an array of ready-made sceptical memes. New Statesman looks at DHOTYA.
Dreamy portraits of America’s forgotten women farmers
"Women Farmers of Appalachia is a photography and interview series whose purpose is to give an honest representation of the daily lives of Appalachian women in agriculture." Austin Ledzian and Joe Mrava talk about their project Women Farmers of Appalachia
"Even more striking than the images are the stories of the strength and steadfastness of the women behind the photographs. There was Laura, whose land has remained in her family for many generations, steeled and determined to carry on a lasting legacy. Another farmer, Gwynn, spent 13 years with her family terracing a hillside and converting its clay to plantable, fertile soil, all in the midst of a series of personal challenges, including caring for an ailing husband." - Huck Magazine
tea bath tone
Caitriona Dunnett is using a digital-cyanotype process to
photograph Mass Paths - The Secret Paths That Led Ireland’s Catholics to Forbidden Mass
January 15
Their task is not merely to taste like the thing,
but to recall the Platonic ideal of the thing. The Alchemy of Novelty Potato Chip Flavors.
well I'll be... wallaby on the bridge
It opens with an Iggy Pop cover
Hey, remember that time back in 1995 when Boy George put out a punk/glam rock album that was also full of beautiful pop songs and ballads? Cheapness And Beauty was a real thing! Full album [YT playlist, ~50m] Side A: Funtime [video], Satan's Butterfly Ball, Sad, God Don't Hold A Grudge, Genocide Peroxide, If I Could Fly [more inside]
the smooth, dark voice of late-night public radio has signed off forever
According to his Facebook page, public radio personality Joe Frank passed away this morning. [more inside]
We can't make up for a sleep deficit by sleeping longer another day
Sleep Scientist Warns Against Walking Through Life 'In An Underslept State' Walker is the director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He points out that lack of sleep — defined as six hours or fewer — can have serious consequences.
Zack Morris Is Trash
Proof, in YouTube playlist form, that Zack Morris from the 30-year-old American sitcom Saved by the Bell is trash. [more inside]
DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!
But what happened to that green Beetle?
In 1968 Steve McQueen chased a Dodge Charger through the hills of San Francisco in an Mustang GT390 (previously). The production company bought two Mustangs from Ford, one was ruined during filming and the other ended up with a private owner, never to be seen publicly again. McQueen practically begged to buy it back until 1977, but was repeatedly rebuffed. But yesterday, the Bullitt Mustang was seen again.
Ancient Appalachian Ocean and Carolina Bays
Ethnobiologists confirm Aboriginal knowledge of firehawks
What Do Wild Animals Do in a Wildfire? When big blazes spark and spread, some species escape, some perish—and some even thrive, as written by Sarah Zielinski for National Geographic. In Australia, Black Kite (Milvus migrans), Whistling Kite (Haliastur sphenurus), and Brown Falcon (Falco berigora) have been documented intentionally spreading fire to drive out prey, recently confirming what Aboriginal people have talked about for thousands of years. [more inside]
"1959 was on another level; That's all you can say"
In 1959, four major Jazz albums were made that changed music forever: Miles Davis' "Kind Of Blue", Dave Brubek's "Time Out", Charles Mingus' "Mingus Ah Um", and Ornette Coleman's "The Shape of Jazz To Come"
“Black Lightning” is immersively, not incidentally, black...
‘Black Lightning’ Is Pulp With a Purpose [The New York Times] “By day, Jefferson is a high school principal, something of a local hero for his outreach to troubled students. Until nine years ago, though, he patrolled the fictional city of Freeland, wearing a space-age electro-suit that one observer likens to a Parliament-Funkadelic outfit. Targeted by the police for vigilantism, he wearily gave it up. But he’s drawn back in as the city is overrun by a brutal gang, the One Hundred, which ends up threatening his two daughters: Anissa (Nafessa Williams) and Jennifer (China Anne McClain).” [YouTube Trailer] [more inside]
#WoYeShi is #MeToo with Chinese characteristics
#MeToo has reached China, sparking a small but growing protest movement within elite universities, concern and censorship from the country’s authoritarian rulers - and self-reflection within the small foreign journalist community regarding its own culture and reporting. [more inside]
"Is this where the cannibalism happens?"
Resurrection City and the Poor People's Campaign
New photos, and some stories, of the 1968 Resurrection City demonstration. "Deeply Grieving MLK’s Death, Activists Shaped a Campaign of Hurt and Hope
At Resurrection City, an epic 1968 demonstration on the National Mall in Washington D.C., protesters defined the next 50 years of activism"
Only 77 books, 24 of which were coloring books
New York Cancels Private Prison Care Packages Program brief article at the Marshall Project. The article notes that the program that "forced families and friends to send care packages to prisoners only through select private vendors" is suspended. It may yet expand. [more inside]
Operation PUSH
Flordia’s prisoners are going on strike. “...For no less than one month, they will refuse to work in the kitchen, the laundry, on farms, in maintenance, or in other jobs upon which the prisons depend to function. They will boycott products and services, forgo phone calls and the canteen, and engage in other activities to disrupt the prison economy.”
LL When the Postmen Wear the Shorts
in your head, they're still fighting
The post-pregnancy belly problem that nobody tells women about
There’s surprisingly little research on diastasis recti, which affects at least 60 percent of postpartum women. As with many other postpartum complications that affect women, there is little good research on the condition. Women aren’t routinely screened for DR at the one standard postpartum visit that occurs around six weeks after birth. And if they do get a diagnosis, they are often told that core work — for instance, tons of crunches — will tone the tummy and thus, close the gap. But core work done improperly or alone won’t necessarily fix the problem. In fact, it can even make things worse. And over the long term, DR can compromise the stability and function of the core, and is linked to a host of other problems that can crop up even years after childbirth. Given that so many women are forced to learn about DR on their own, here is a guide for how to try to prevent it and address it from those who treat it.
Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection
What color is that exactly?
Color is perspective. One may express a rose is red or pink or yellow, but what is the exact hue and saturation of that color? It’s all perspective. I believe there are no two people who can see one color the exact same way.
January 14
Bullitt AND Seinfeld references!
It's safer to back into a head-on parking spot, and then pull out forward. Most Americans do just the opposite. Why?
“The ax has fallen.”
Moby Dick; Or the Whale.
There are bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) older than this whale of a tale.
EXTRACTS. (Supplied by a Sub-Sub-Librarian). It will be seen that this mere painstaking burrower and grub-worm of a poor devil of a Sub-Sub appears to have gone through the long Vaticans and street-stalls of the earth, picking up whatever random allusions to whales he could anyways find in any book whatsoever, sacred or profane. Therefore you must not, in every case at least, take the higgledy-piggledy whale statements, however authentic, in these extracts, for veritable gospel cetology. Far from it. As touching the ancient authors generally, as well as the poets here appearing, these extracts are solely valuable or entertaining, as affording a glancing bird’s eye view of what has been promiscuously said, thought, fancied, and sung of Leviathan, by many nations and generations, including our own.[more inside]
The Other Irish Stout
So Murphy's Stout is not Guinness, it's from the Republic of Cork, Ireland's southern capital. In 1997, to capitalize on the rising popularity of anime Murphy's broadcast a amazing anime ad on the UK's Channel 4, Last Orders. The ad was a homage to a famous (in Cork) ad from the early nineties inspired by Kurosawa. That ad also had an excellent follow up, "Old man with parsnip". Cheers!
Math rock, but with actual math
The sound of space-filling curves. Herman Haverkort presents sonifications, or musical representations, of space-filling curves in various dimensions. (Sonification previously.)
Inferno - Purgatorio - Paradisio - Python
In 2016, Anat Deracine wrote a piece and "hid it under a rock for reasons that no longer exist." Earlier this month, she declared that 2018 is going to be fearless and published her Divine Comedy of the Tech Sisterhood.
The Thing She Carried
"The cast-iron skillet is 13 inches in diameter and so heavy I have to use both hands to pour anything out of it. And it tells a story of Florida endurance and female endurance that I wanted with me in that moment, a thing I never want to lose. It belonged to my great-great-grandmother, the cook on a wagon train from Georgia to Florida in the late 19th century...She had packed up everything she could, including the skillet, an even more massive Dutch oven and a one-gallon soup pot, all of them iron, all built to last. The kinds of things you take when you can take only important things." From the Bitter Southerner's Folklore Project: Susannah Nesmith's The Skillet, a personal reflection on what to save when you must leave it all behind. [more inside]
“...barns are red primarily because tradition dictates it be so,”
Falu Red, The Color of Bucolic Barns and Mummified Swedes [The Awl] “According to legend, there was once a goat named Kåre who lived with his shepherd boy in rural Sweden. One day, Kåre returned home with his horns stained a bright, mineral red. Instead of being frightened by his newly Baphomet-looking livestock, the boy summoned all his entrepreneurial impulses and set to work figuring out how he could make money from this occurrence. His goat had fallen headfirst into a pile of earthly riches, discovering a patch of copper-laden land, russet soil and dusty yellow stones. This site would become the famous copper mines of Falun, the source of much of Sweden’s wealth throughout the Middle Ages and the reason we have the term “barn red,” for it was here that Swedes discovered the preserving and protective properties of copper, iron ochre, silica, and zinc. Mixed with linseed oil, these minerals became a deep warm red paint, which was applied to the sides of houses and barns throughout Scandinavia and later, the east coast of America.” [more inside]
The Story of Cats, from ITV and PBS
The Story of Cats is a documentary mini-series, first aired on ITV then re-cut with new narration on PBS: Nature, now as a two-part series instead of three, with a different narrative flow. Where ITV focuses on comparisons of wild cats with "our moggies," PBS traces the evolution of cats as they spread across the world, and into our homes. ITV [via YouTube] ep 1: Wild at Heart; ep 2: Cute Response; ep 3: Super Cats | PBS ep 1: Asia to Africa; ep 2: Americas
In a well-written romance it is super-gratifying when the 🍆 meets the 🍩.
When comedian Paul Scheer got snarky on Instagram about the cover of a romance novel, members of the romance community took him to task. In apology, he live-tweeted his reading of the first book in the series. Via SorryWatch: ALL HANDS, ALL HANDS, EXCELLENT CELEB APOLOGY NOT A DRILL. [more inside]
Southern Food: Old Ways, New Ways
Carolina Fish Camps were and are an institution. But new southerners, especially Mexicans, are adapting older recipes to their tastes and old southerners are loving the new foods, too. Here's a video on a new recipe for turnip greens Turnip Greens de Arbol and a new dessert melding old and new: Peach Empanadas. The South has always blended traditions from other cultures and it's still doing so.
The first adventure
It’s an intense and cult-ish thing to discover Pierce’s books as a young girl. For all their sorcerers and dragons, her books, at their core, are about young women growing up and figuring out who they are: how to be weird and stubborn and heroic and angry, how to deal with getting their periods, how to control their tempers, how to handle jealousy, how to decide whether to sleep with their best friends or their teachers, how to prevent pregnancy, how to navigate romantic relationships with men many years their seniors, how to challenge and defeat men many years their seniors, how to be women who don’t conform to the rigid expectations of their (entirely imaginary!) world and time.
Two very different approaches to magical realism in painting
Rob Gonsalves was a Canadian artist who produced a delightful series of paintings that were part optical illusion, part flight of fantasy.
Andrea Kowch paints magical realist pictures of women in rural landscapes. Her work has been described as like a cross between Andrew Wyeth and Alfred Hitchcock.
"If the Lord is good enough to send me wind on a Sunday"
"Do improvements in energy efficiency actually lead to energy savings? At first sight, the advantages of efficiency seem to be impressive. For example, the energy efficiency of a range of domestic appliances covered by the EU directives has improved significantly over the last 15 years. Between 1998 and 2012, fridges and freezers became 75% more energy efficient, washing machines 63%, laundry dryers 72%, and dishwashers 50%. " [more inside]
Trainspotting and Poptopping
British Rail, Rail Blue 1967-1980 Footage of British Rail trains accompanied by contemporary music hits and radio show clips (SLVimeo)
January 13
Speaking of Norway ...
To Norway, home of giants (1979). John Cleese takes us on a journey through his ancestral Norway in this Python-esque travelogue which explores ski culture, Viking-era nostalgia and reenactment, a taste of Norwegian cuisine and literature, and even a visit with the Nobel committee.
Six more years until Steamboat Willie
C Me Feel Me Rick Me Roll Me
Never Gonna Give You Up but all the notes are C [SLYT] is exactly as described and weirdly compelling.
It’s never aliens, until it is
Everyone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not
Bitcoin is the hottest new investment trend and the New York Times style section is on it.
Butter me up!
The Promise Of Flatness
Fly like an.... well, you know
Camera 1 | The bald eagles at Codorus State Park (near Hanover, PA) have returned to their nest for the 2018 mating season, (Camera 2 w/ night vision) hopefully to raise another set of young as successfully as they did in 2017. The nest sustained a lot of damage and is currently about half its previous size, so the pair are in the midst of a rebuilding effort in time for egg-laying. (Last year, the first egg appeared on the evening of February 10 and the second on the evening of the 13th.) [more inside]
Drag has many forms - Dragula embraces the filth, horror and glamour
As the mysterious Boulet Brothers told James St. James, they came to Los Angeles and found the gay scene lacking the weird, filthy and outsider culture available in New York, so they created a scene there, later extending to Seattle. In a monstrous outgrowth of their LA parties of the same name, they host a competitive reality show called Dragula, which debuted on October 31, 2016. The show is now wrapping up its second season, so you can binge on their show that celebrates the dark, moody, campy horror portions of the greater drag community. [more inside]
“You can bring a bullet, bring a sword, bring a morgue”
“Black Panther soundtrack keeps getting better, adds Jay Rock, Future track. “King’s Dead” is the third track from the album released so far. Kendrick Lamar first premiered the first track, “All the Stars,” with labelmate, Sza. A tease of Lamar’s collaboration with Vince Staples debuted with the latest Black Panther teaser. Lamar, who is producing the album, hasn’t revealed the full list of tracks and contributing artists. The Black Panther soundtrack will be released on Feb. 9. Black Panther will follow one week later, hitting theaters on Feb. 16.” [via: Polygon]
Warning: Graphic Content
The Library of Congress has digitized its Popular Graphic Arts collection, nearly 14,000 19th century prints available in extremely high resolution public domain scans, searchable by subjects and browsable by thumbnails. You can read more about the work required to bring this collection to your computers on the library's blog. Below the fold, a few favorites to get you started. [more inside]
But could he hit a curveball?
The post-truth gospel. In 1894 Nicolas Notovitch's The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ was published and briefly became a huge, global story. The book claimed that during the 18 undocumented years of Jesus’s life – the gap in the Bible between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry in Palestine – he had visited India, Nepal and Tibet and trained with yogis as a Buddhist monk. When skeptics investigated, the story began to unravel. Today, Notovitch is virtually unknown. But is it possible that his claim that Jesus had trained as a Buddhist was a misdirection and the book had a more subtle ulterior motive? [more inside]
so...subway racing is apparently a thing
Adham Fisher does IRL speedruns of urban transit systems around the world. The goal of urban transit racing is to visit every stop or station of a system (like the Chicago "L" or the London Underground) in as little time as possible. Starting at age 14, Adham has been urban transit racing and setting records all around the world.
Language is a virus
Brain Cells Share Information With Virus-Like Capsules (slAtlantic) Turns out Burroughs was right. Language - and all long-term learning - really is a virus. Or rather, it depends on a strange, alien gene that now turns out to be co-opted from an ancient virus with striking similarities to HIV. It gets stranger: the same mechanism exists across vertebrates and insects, but was independently acquired. Genuinely mind-altering science that creates far more questions than it answers.
“I thought I’d come out and introduce myself and sing.”
January 12
The thing itself and not the myth
Storm, shipwreck, families divided A. E. Stallings meditates on shipwreck in naval history, in poetry, Shakespeare, and the refugee crossings of the Mediterranean.
Video Games for Architecture and Design
A curated list of nicely specific games for anyone interested in design. And a new find is the long-lost NES Prototype of Sim City
Marbles, Magnets, and Music (Synchronized)
Kinetic artist Mark Robbins of DoodleChaos made waves across the internet a few months ago when he perfectly synced a custom course from the Line Rider game to Edvard Grieg’s Hall of the Mountain King. As astounding as it was to watch the digital game and audio sync up, Robbins took things a step further by making a series of IRL Rube Goldberg-like contraptions with marbles, blocks, and magnets that plays perfectly with Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. The feat required listening to the waltz hundreds of times which he says resulted in him “going a bit crazy.” (via)
Living for free in California! can you imagine?
Wonderhussy's excellent Slab City New Years Eve . Desert adventuress and bon vivant exploring ghost towns, abandoned buildings and desert oddities. [more inside]
I see you. I believe you.
Did you get sugar in your eye?
Kids trying pastries! Also, barbeque, expensive foods, British food, and so many more suggestions. Fighting about regional barbeque optional.
badday.mpg
The strange history of one of the internet's first viral videos. Seems he wasn't having as bad a day as we thought.
Next week, it will have been one year since the Women's March. What now?
This year, the official main march will be held in Las Vegas, NV, as part of the March to the Polls. Sister marches and allied anniversary marches are also taking place; Denver, CO is hosting an especially big sister march, as is Houston, TX. This year, there is no list of centralized sister marches on the main site, although there is one on the Women's March NYC Facebook page. Still, sister marches are appearing in a surprising number of places as women nationwide remember and celebrate the action that kicked off a year of impressive political engagement. Sometimes the inspiration to move forward comes from surprising places--and sometimes it's important to pause and remember how far we've come since the first March.
"Nuke it from the home office. It's the only way to be sure."
Previously, we've heard about Greyball, Uber's system for identifying potential government officials on the service and feeding them false information. However, Bloomberg reports on a second technological system used by Uber to thwart investigations - Ripley, a system that allowed Uber to lock down the computers in foreign offices when investigators came calling. (SLBloomberg) [more inside]
"It’s through drawing that your head starts working"
But to think of a comic book page as a building is not such an abstract thought. In New York Boek, sketches exist as scaffolding for proposed structures, later worlds, waiting to be populated with people – characters that Joost describes as “not the smartest sort in the universe.”Marianne Hanoun talks about Joost Swarte's work for The New Yorker at It's Nice That.
not you.
Ultimate Paper Airplane
But does it fly? Forget everything you thought you knew about paper airplanes. For almost 10 years, designer Luca Iaconi-Stewart has been crafting a Boeing 777 that puts all those folded pieces of notebook paper to shame. The one-sixtieth scale model is incredibly detailed and features everything from tiny reading lamps above the first class seats to retractable landing gears. (sl video)
Nikki Sixx is a voice of reason on the opioid crisis?
From the things I didn't expect to read today file. Motley Crue bassist and primary songwriter Nikki Sixx speaking about the opioid crisis with intelligence and compassion.
Jeff Bezos, Welfare King
“More important, Amazon has obtained at least $123 million in state tax incentives to place warehouse and data center locations in Ohio. This reflects a perverse form of double-dipping: Amazon gets a bounty to create jobs in Ohio, and then a good chunk of the jobs are so low-paying that workers have to seek federal assistance, providing a second subsidy for the e-commerce giant.” Amazon Is Thriving Thanks to Taxpayer Dollars - David Dayen, New Republic
"It’s uniquely American. We exported it. It’s like jazz."
Motherboard's profile of Mike Hooker, who is one of the last pinball repair technicians in New York City.
It's like a fastfood pancake: same round structure, flatter and quicker.
Play free fast-paced web-based survive-o-shooter surviv.io, and answer the question: what if runaway gaming sensation Plunkbat (aka PUBG, aka Battlegrounds) lost a dimension and three fourths of its round length and all of its pretty graphics? [more inside]
The Grunge Goldrush
The Grunge Goldrush "Everyone was a little shocked. Everything got really easy because it was this economy — Nirvana became an economy."
Inside One of America's Last Pencil Factories
“Never stop fighting for what you believe in.”
No Girls Allowed: Dissecting The Gender Divide in Overwatch League [Paste Magazine] “To be honest, I didn’t feel like discussing this. I’m exhausted. At the heart of this issue is the same systemic imbalance seen across many facets of our culture, from academia, to sports, to the arts, to politics: you name it, this problem is there, lurking, poisoning the well. I can write until my fingers cramp and scream until I’m blue in the face, but really, it doesn’t count for anything. If society has yet to listen to all the people before me, then one more little article or opinion won’t solve or change anything. I’m just repeating the knowledge and wisdom of the women who came before me, repackaging it in a way that is palatable to a specific audience in hopes that maybe someone who didn’t get it finally will. I hardly feel as though I’m helping.” [more inside]
Vorsprung Durch Techno
Taming a wild Patagonian horse
Watch a gaucho tame a wild Patagonian horse in this short clip from BBC Earth (SLYT).
GET EQUIPPED WITH SOMETRHING SOMETHING
With Mega Man 11 finally happening, the Mega Man fangame community can finally rest, right? WRONG. To coincide with preparations for the third GameMaker-based Make a Good Mega Man Level Contest (the entries of first two having been compiled into fangames - the pretty good first one and the mindblowingly good and massive second one - see also forums here and here), a Make a Good Robot Master Contest has been announced. No GameMaker skills required - the three category winners will have their entries turned into levels and bossfights by expert fangame makers and included in the third Make a Good Mega Man Level game. Full rules here. Enter here (max. two entries per person - second entry must be for different category from the first). Deadline is February 15. [more inside]
January 11
Anais Nin had a Side Gig
She's the kind of artist who can't be bound to a single category. Anaïs Nin is our favorite breed of artist: the kind who just can’t be bound to a single era, movement, or category. Diarist? Definitely. Muse? To many, most notably American novelist Henry Miller. Yet her oeuvre spans a good portion of the 20th century, and includes everything from those notorious diaries (about bohemian Paris in the ‘30s, Miller, etc.), works of creative non-fiction, poetic erotica, and (drumroll) some seriously trippy electro music. [more inside]
ZZK: digital cumbia (and more) from Argentina (and beyond)
ZZK Records is a homegrown record label and artist collective born out of the Zizek Club nights in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They represent an eclectic, electric collection of sounds from parties that they were throwing as a group of friends, starting back in 2006, as recounted by El G. The label officially hits the decade mark later this year, but why wait? You can start with their first release, ZZK Sound Vol. 1, on Bandcamp. With that release, called their sound "Digital Cumbia," (previously) but they've grown up to be more than that. You can track their releases on Discogs, browse their Soundcloud account, hear it all on Bandcamp, or download hours and hours of mixes in their collection of digital "mixtapes". To enjoy their visual aesthetic (more), check out their YouTube account. [more inside]
GGTOW
Having a Baby on the Tennis Tour is the Most Rebellious Thing I Could Do
Serena Williams on her medical emergency after giving birth*, motherhood, and her new tennis goals [more inside]
CAN YOU TELL IF TWO CHIMPANZEES ARE RELATED BY LOOKING AT THEIR PHOTOS?
Well, can you, punk?
The Great Ape Dictionary needs your help! In our experiment, hosted by Gorilla.sc, you will see a photo of a chimpanzee and four possible matches. Can you tell who is related to who? Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters – they’re all there! Humans can recognise biological relatives through facial features; we want to explore how kin-based facial recognition evolved in humans and other primates.
CLICK HERE TO START THE EXPERIMENT
The Great Ape Dictionary needs your help! In our experiment, hosted by Gorilla.sc, you will see a photo of a chimpanzee and four possible matches. Can you tell who is related to who? Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters – they’re all there! Humans can recognise biological relatives through facial features; we want to explore how kin-based facial recognition evolved in humans and other primates.
CLICK HERE TO START THE EXPERIMENT
Why do we wear balls on our hats?
A brief history of the pom-pom. (Blame the Vikings, via Napoleon and maybe Michael Nesmith).
Shitty Media Men (And Those Who Defend Them)
As part of the pushback against sexual harassment and abuse that has become part of our societal discussion, the existence of the "Shitty Media Men" list was revealed. Containing the names of men in media who had histories of sexual harassment and abuse, this document had circulated among women in media, as a form of protection. And as part of that protection, its creator remained anonymous.
Until now. And it was not of her own volition that she revealed herself, but did so in response to news that Harper's Magazine had plans to out her via an expose from Katie Roiphe in their March volume. [more inside]
Until now. And it was not of her own volition that she revealed herself, but did so in response to news that Harper's Magazine had plans to out her via an expose from Katie Roiphe in their March volume. [more inside]
Miro Dreams Of Footy
Australian Rules Football (aka "Footy") says that if you're athletic enough to jump up on an oppposing player's unpadded shoulders, land kneeling, AND catch the ball, they're gonna rule it legal. Miro Gladovic of American Footy Star has a dream: to take American football players who don't make the NFL down under to play in the AFL. Aussie Rules is not only played on a larger pitch than any other major field sport in the world, its analytics & data are truly next level. Also: 10 funniest moments in the AFL.
Living with Slenderman
On March 31, 2014, two girls attacked a third in an attempt to ward off a future attack from Slenderman. Hazlitt provides an overview of the aftermath. [more inside]
"...it is a masterclass in How to Apologize"
Dan Harmon Admits to Sexually Harrassing Writer, Apologizes. “I crushed on her and resented her for not reciprocating it, and the entire time I was the one writing her paychecks.”
Full text here.
Megan Ganz response starts here.
Under river, outside time
The Woolwich Foot Tunnel Anomaly. The Woolwich Foot Tunnel provides a pedestrian shortcut across the Thames. But how short, exactly? [more inside]
Do these cinnamon rolls somehow destroy the patriarchy?
Geraldine DeRuiter from The Everywhereist likes to bake, so she decided to make the cinnamon roll recipe that accompanied Mario Batali's letter of apology for sexual harassment. The results may or may not make good eating, but I think they make good reading. accusations of harassment against Batali, previously)
Anyway, here's...
Among other things, legendary DC band Fugazi is famous [satire] for their stage banter and between-song noodling.
Experimental theater and music company Object Collection dove into 1500 hours of live show recordings to isolate the interstitial moments and create a pretty insane opera.
Sooner or later, the voice in my ears ceases to be a voice
OpenGenus for Open Genuses
The fastest growing civilization on the web, making the web safer, run by you, revolutionizing the way people interact with code, in the open-source wilderness. Open Genus is here.
Monopoly Model
“All in all, Westby is a corner of rural America that’s still modestly prosperous. And while its legacy of locally controlled cooperative businesses isn’t the only reason, it’s a big part of the story. Local farmers are not totally at the mercy of giant agribusinesses when they bring their products to market. Their ownership of the Westby creamery allows them to cut out middlemen and bargain collectively with food processors and retailers to get a fair price. The rest of the town benefits as well from the creamery and the other locally owned co-ops, as money and power that would otherwise flow to the absentee owners and managers of distant corporations instead stay within the community.
You either die or you’re hoisted by your own petard
I, Farmer.
Robot Agriculture: It's here. "When Heraud confesses his field-test failures to the board, they don’t vote to oust him as he’d feared, but instead encourage him to turn things around....He and his team of 20 engineers launch a 24/7 troubleshooting offensive they call “the surge.” They take turns sleeping on cots in the closet of their Silicon Valley office. They call in husbands and wives to turn wrenches and clamp tubes. They redesign fans, build mounts, change materials, and reformulate chemicals. Heraud consumes Tums by the fistful. By late 2015 they have a glitch-free LettuceBot that can handle the elements. They expand their contracts with farmers in Salinas and Yuma, Ariz. By early 2017, about a fifth of all the lettuce grown in the U.S. has been thinned by a LettuceBot." [more inside]
Golden light and deep blue sky made me.
Women who write about the wild cannot be easily labeled. They are conservationists, scientists, and explorers; historians, poets, and novelists; ramblers, scholars, and spiritual seekers. They are hard to pin down but for their willingness to be “unladylike,” to question, and to seek. The following list is in no way definitive, but if you want a primer on some of the best nature writing you probably haven’t read yet, you’d do well to start with these 25 women. [more inside]
Overkill
RIP 'Fast' Eddie Clarke, who had been the last man standing from the classic Motörhead lineup, now joins Lemmy and 'Philthy Animal' Taylor in the tour that will never end. [more inside]
...Redwall-esque fantasy world, where animals go off on grand adventures
The World Needs This Frog Friendship Sim from the Makers of ‘Neko Atsume’ [Waypoint] “Tabikaeru is a new game from Hit-Point Co.,Ltd., the makers of 2014’s historic looking-at-cats simulator Neko Atsume. It’s cute like Neko Atsume was, and it’s that same sort of “check once every few hours for a couple minutes at a time” deal, but Tabikaeru is a really a whole different animal. It’s a frog instead of cats, to be a bit literal, and instead of convincing critters to hang around, like in Neko Atsume, Tabikaeru is about helping them leave. “Journey frog is sent out on a journey,” as Google Translate puts it. “It is an application to wait for a leisurely return.”” [Previously.] [more inside]
scratch👽scratch🎷scratch👽scratch🎺scratch👽scratch🎹scratch
Star Wars cantina music as a math problem. Sound required. [single link reddit video, but TOTALLY WORTH IT]
a shocked comet fragment
The Hypatia Stone "They found that many compounds in the stone seem to have formed prior to the sun and planets. The elements are the same—carbon and silicon and aluminum and iron—but the ratios of these elements in the material are all wrong, unlike the composition of objects that orbit the sun."
"Even if you hate football, you have to go to these matches"
For Hungarian oligarchs and foreign journalists alike, the best chance of an audience with Orbán is a visit to the Pancho Arena, which is why the car park outside the ground fills up with expensive vehicles whose owners are seeking proximity to power. “Even if you hate football, you have to go to these matches,” said Gyula Mucsi of the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International. “It is the only place that the elite are willing to socialise with anyone outside of their small circle. Big construction and infrastructure development projects and plans which require a lot of money are basically decided in the skybox.” [more inside]
Different Friends are good at different things
One year ago today, Kemono Friends (previously) hit the air. Initially derided (or ignored) for advertising a mobile game that had been shut down before the show even began, Kemono Friends went on to dominate Japanese social media, boost zoo attendance and animal popularity, and receive the largest ratings jump of the season. Early episodes captivated viewers by pairing feelgood plots with a dark mystery the characters themselves don't even notice, while later episodes turn up the intensity on everything. [more inside]
In Norway in 2017, six out of the 20 best-selling cars were electric
In Norway in 2017 battery electric vehicles (BEV) reached a market share of 20.8 percent, while plug-in hybrids (PHEV) accounted for 18.4, according to the Norwegian Road Federation´s statistics. Norway should reach at least 50,000 BEVs in 2018. [more inside]
January 10
Fire and Flood
Montecito, CA: At least 17 people killed. Hundreds stranded. At least 100 homes destroyed. Thirty miles of highway 101 closed. The aftermath of the Southern California 2017 fire season. [more inside]
But don't ever take sides with citrus against the Family again. Ever.
Space Hamilton w/ cats
In a recent interview Brian K Vaughn and Fiona Staples bucked the trend and said they weren't interested in an adaptations of their comic Saga, but there's one exception... if Lin-Manuel Miranda wants to make a musical out of it.
In celebration of the goddesses in us all...
... and the goddesses must dance! Happy New Year of the Woman, should this be a thing. A cheery thank you to artist Ms Nina Paley as well!
Doggo in the dictionary
On the occasion of Merriam-Webster considering "doggo" for inclusion, Andrea Valdez writes about linguist Gretchen McCulloch's research into the origin of the word. [more inside]
Every word of this article is fact.
"“We were looking for something creative to do during CES that would sort of match what was happening in town,' [Sapphire Las Vegas Managing Partner Peter Feinstein] said. 'We’re offering a different place to go. If you’re six people from a company and there’s two women and four guys, you can still here and have some fun and see the robots and not feel like you have to be part of a strip club.'”
Las Vegas Strip Club Imports Robot Strippers for CES.
Facebook is Broken
Mark Zuckerburg recently said he would fix Facebook, but this cannot be done while retaining its current business model which is expected to result in at least $16 billion in profits in 2017 says John Batelle, who suggests the remote possibility that "Zuckerberg does the equivalent of dropping corporate acid and realizes the only way to fix Facebook is to make a massive, systemic change." [more inside]
You know, for kids!
Kafka for children is a selection of short stories by Franz Kafka, with illustrations.
Carried aloft on a shield by his warriors, he conquered England
The Strangest Viking: was Ivar the Boneless (son of Ragnar Lothbrok and commander of the Great Heathen Army that attacked and conquered most of England in 865 C.E.) born with osteogenesis imperfecta, aka "Brittle Bone Disease"? Author/actor Nabil Shaban, himself born with the condition, explores the question: was the most savage viking of the sagas both disabled, and still capable of becoming the leader of the largest band of bloodthirsty killers ever to sail their longboats up an English river? [more inside]
In nature, none more black than the birds of paradise (plus a relative)
The mating dance of the male superb bird of paradise is like nothing else on Earth. To win the affection of a female, he forms a sort of satellite dish with his wings, displaying dots and a stunning band of blue against a deep black background, and hops around a female. He and his relative don't only share a unique dance, but unique feathers that absorb light, as described in an article recently published in Nature Communications. In fact, as the feathers structurally absorbs up to 99.95% of directly incident light, it's almost as black than Vantablack with 99.965% light absorption (previously), and blacker than the more commercial 'spray-on' form of Vantablack, which only absorbs 99.8 percent of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. [via Wired] [more inside]
This is due to the repetitive and simplistic nature of ADD, CALL & MOVs
Infosec whiz Greg Linares found that Microsoft's Spectre & Meltdown KB4056892 Patch when converted to MIDI makes psytrance @ 115 BPM, and he posted the MP3 to YouTube. In another tweet he demonstrates his method by EDMifying the Careto exploit (here's the unrolled thread for the Twitter-averse). More of his music is available on SoundCloud.
Brill’s Language & Linguistics Blog
Stumbled on the cited site when looking for Brill's Dictionary of Ancient Greek, which is the English translation of Franco Montanari’s Vocabolario della Lingua Greca. The good professor has interesting things to say on his chosen subject. If you’re more an audio/visual person, there is a 24 minute interview with the fellow. (Getting back to the blog - it does not update frequently, but the archive is worth your time if words are your sort of thing.) [more inside]
Sport is a mechanism of control in America
"Sport is a mechanism of control in America" [Jaylen] Brown admits that, when he was 14, “It wounds you. But when I got older and went to the University of California [Berkeley] I learnt about a more subtle racism and how it filters across our education system through tracking, hidden curriculums, social stratification and things I had no idea of before. I was really emotional – because one of the most subtle but aggressive ways racism exists is through our education system.”
"I’m beginning to understand that I don’t even know what I know."
Daniel Wallace writes about his mother, Child Bride - "So, everyone knew about it. It was her great tale of youthful misadventure. She was an open book like this. She would tell you about anything, the more outrageous the better. If you had a scandalous story to tell, she would love to hear it, but she would have a better one, like this one, and yours would pale in comparison.
Married when I was 12 years old: Beat that.
But what I came to learn, 40 years after hearing the story for the first time, is that it wasn’t really true. It didn’t happen like this at all."
Thanks for the fish!
Kelly has taken this task one step further. When people drop paper into the water she hides it under a rock at the bottom of the pool. The next time a trainer passes, she goes down to the rock and tears off a piece of paper to give to the trainer. After a fish reward, she goes back down, tears off another piece of paper, gets another fish, and so on.Dolphins are so much smarter than we think that they know how to game the system to get more and better rewards. -- Original Grauniad article from 2003 by Anuschka de Rohan, but doing the rounds on Twitter thanks to Julia Galef's tweet about it.
"I went from resenting the American flag to thanking it."
"The standard view of 9/11 is that it 'changed everything' - but in its rhetoric and symbolism, the WWII nostalgia laid the conceptual groundwork for what was to come." - "The Good War," a graphical adaptation and update of an article by Chris Hayes by Mike Dawson. [more inside]
One of its distinctive characteristics is its often offensive content
The Anatomy of the Urban Dictionary: The first large-scale study of the Urban Dictionary provides unique insights into the way our language is evolving. [more inside]
Trashy Journalism
“After much debate, we resolved to turn the tables on three of our esteemed public officials. We embarked on an unauthorized sightseeing tour of their garbage, to make a point about how invasive a "garbage pull" really is--and to highlight the government's ongoing erosion of people's privacy.”
Portland's top brass said it was OK to swipe your garbage--so we grabbed theirs. - Willamette Week
punished for what she did, but also for what she didn’t do
She is Tonya Price but you cannot deny that she is also Tonya Harding. This is basically how this entire story goes: There are facts, and then there is the truth, and you can’t let one get in the way of the other or you’ll never understand what she’s trying to tell you. But therein lies the problem: Whatever her name is, she looks an awful lot like Tonya Harding. So even when she meets a stranger and says, “Nice to meet you, I’m Tonya Price,” the person will narrow his eyes and say, “Wait, aren’t you….?” Tonya Harding Would Like Her Apology Now. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, NYT
You are working with an interactive narrative in the form of a book
A gallery of Choose Your Own Adventure-type books in graph form, created and discussed by a team of undergrad researchers at UCSB. Check out this Google doc on methods (including what the symbols mean), and these posts on what the graphs reveal.
“Do one thing for me, Sredni Vashtar.”
All the Whites You Cannot Name
Delightful Yarn
Fiber designer Abi takes self-striping and self-patterning yarns to unexpected, wonderful places: carrot cake, sock monkey, cheeseburger, eggplant, and Wonder Woman.
Double double Tim Horton's is in trouble
My First Hundred Years
The Z List Dead List podcast talks to Brenna Hassett about Margaret Murray, leading Egyptologist-cum-folklorist/influential folklorist-cum-Egyptologist (you pick). [more inside]
Men have right to hit on women
In one of those polémiques the French media love so much, 100 women published an open letter in the daily newspaper Le Monde condemning the risk of "puritanism" sparked by recent sexual harassment scandals. French actress Catherine Deneuve, perhaps the most famous among the the signatories, insists that #BalanceTonPorc (Call out your pig) is akin to a witch hunt.
In reply to which, a very strongly worded piece was published this morning in French only)
To be continued...
In reply to which, a very strongly worded piece was published this morning in French only)
To be continued...
January 9
The six types of workbench builder
Are you a woodworker, or have been thinking about getting into woodworking? A rite of passage is to build your own workbench and a go-to resource the last decade or so has been Christopher Schwarz. Despite or maybe because of a couple of books, a slew of articles and the many, many hands-on courses under his belt, Schwarz is approached regularly for advice. Luckily he has put his anthropologist cap on and provided us with his insights into the six personalities of workbench builders. [more inside]
You've been framed.
"Oddly enough, there's a song about that."
In case you needed to pass on to your post-apocalyptic descendants a catchy folk song about piling stones and corpses on top of fallout shelter exits to make sure the demons stay in hell, here's the Digwell Carol by filk artist Leslie Fish. [more inside]
"When she disappeared, the city landscape changed completely.”
A lost figure from a bygone era: Yokohama Mary
"An enigmatic woman wearing a frilly white dress stands silently outside Matsuzakaya department store in Yokohama’s Isezakicho district during a local festival. Her face is caked in white makeup and her eyes are lined in black."Yokohama Mary lived on the streets of Yokohama for something like fifty years, until times changed and the neighborhood was no longer a welcome place for her. [more inside]
“...that Marvel appears to be determined to drag its heels...”
New Trailer Proves Red Sparrow Is the Best Black Widow Movie We're Probably Ever Going to Get [YouTube] “It isn’t exactly fair to hold up every single movie about a female assassin to Marvel Studios and ask when the hell we’re finally going to see a Black Widow solo movie, but the similarities between Natasha Romanov and Red Sparrow’s titular ballerina-turned-super-spy are too striking to ignore. [...] On its face, Red Sparrow seems like a rather straightforward kind of spy film, but the Black Widow comparisons really do come to mind when you realize that much of the movie follows Dominika’s earliest days during her Sparrow training that takes place in a Red Room-like facility.” [via: io9]
Books for sale
According to the International Organisation of Book Towns, a book town is "a small rural town or village in which second–hand and antiquarian bookshops are concentrated". Most Book Towns have developed in villages of historic interest or of scenic beauty.
Here is a list of book towns around the world.
And here is an Atlas Obscura story about The village of Hobart, in Delaware County, New York, with a population of 441 people, at the 2010 census,
and 5 independent book stores.
This link is already gone
Permanent Redirect is a new piece of art by Donald Hansen, who previously created Shybot, a bot that fled through the desert to avoid people. The trick to Permanent Redirect is that it moves URLs every time it is seen. If you want to chase it down, it was here a few days ago.
That thing needs a remote starter
Having trouble starting your steam engine? Here's your no-talking, no-music guide.
“A Sloppy Machine, Like Me”
The History of Video Synthesizers - from 60s video art to station identification to the invention of the Chyron.
Space Knights
Ever wanted to see the Arthurian legend retold in space? Time to see a weird and obscure kids show from 1989 New Zealand. [more inside]
The Science of Loneliness
When people ask me what my greatest fear is, I lie. I tell them about my fear of snakes. I say I have nightmares of being stuck in Fear Factor, lying for a full minute in a pit filled with writhing serpents, just so I can win $1 million. That fear is real. I have those nightmares. But the truth is, my greatest fear is being lonely. [more inside]
A haven for elderly sex workers in Mexico City
Casa Xochiquetzal opened in 2006 by former sex worker Carmen Munoz as a haven for her aging colleagues. More in a brief interview from the founder here.
A bit more on the house and its rules from a 2014 interview and photoseries here. And a link to that photographer's full gallery (and other work) is here.
And the house's Twitter feed is here and their website is here (in Spanish).
Your regular dose of What The Fuck !
Frank T Zumbach ~ Welcome to my Nightmares ~
Photo - blogging - prolifically - since - January - 2010.
Photo - blogging - prolifically - since - January - 2010.
So, about that article...
A news site gave would-be commenters a quiz. Here’s what happened: NRKBeta, the technology website of Norway's public broadcaster, "first began forcing would-be commenters to take such quizzes on select stories back in February after one of its journalists, Ståle Grut, had the idea in the shower before his commute. Grut works for NRKBeta, a subsite that both focuses its coverage on technology and offers its journalists a live space to try out media innovations. Grut’s big brainstorm, aimed at improving the quality of the comments on the site, is to require visitors to prove they have read and understood a story with a quiz written by the story’s author." NRKBeta's initiative, previously: RTFA
Colored divider bars add a graphic touch without hogging bandwidth
Bob Allison's Home Page gives helpful tips and tricks for web masters. "Web page designer Bob Allison provides a compendium of resources and information on creating a Web presence." - InfoWorld [more inside]
"a strange sort of journalist who could only exist in this time period"
Feinberg says that she would love, above all else, to “catch Donald Trump Jr. stealing valor,” the act in which a civilian poses fraudulently as a member or veteran of the armed forces. “Don Jr. humiliating himself in general is a good story,” she deadpans. Feinberg has also been scraping the internet, in vain, for the digital slime trail of Stephen Miller and Jared Kushner, who, she says, don’t have any sort of online presence, “which seems impossible given their age,” she tells me. “It’s driven me nuts.”The Columbia Journalism Review profiles Ashley Feinberg. [more inside]
Victorio Peak: New Mexico's El Dorado, C.I.A. cover up, or fatal scam?
Lost treasure stories are a dime a dozen in the Southwest. But when the Army; Air Force; the White House; Congressmen; New Mexico's Governor and F. Lee Bailey and dozens of other lawyers get into a single treasure saga, only confusion and rumors remain cheap (New York Times, 1973). It is one of the most celebrated legends of buried treasure in the history of the American West, a thriller that includes a gunfight, nuclear weapons and the Watergate hearings (N.Y. Times, 1992) These are two period-specific introductions to the ongoing saga of the treasure of the hollow mountain (Atlantis Rising Magazine, 2009), a cache of gold and loot that was re-discovered in 1937 by "Doc" Noss, in what is now part of the White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico. [more inside]
... house by house, block by block, with millions of dollars at stake...
In New York, Drawing Flood Maps Is a ‘Game of Inches.’ As FEMA revises the maps to account for climate change, deciding who is in the flood zone will be a battle with millions of dollars at stake. (SLNYT by David W. Chen) [more inside]
nothing but respect for MY national champions
After Alabama (13-1) rallies to a comeback win over Georgia (13-2), 26-23, in OT in the College Football Playoff National Championship, undefeated University of Central Florida Knights, snubbed in one of a series of controversial playoff selections this year (and years past), is declared National Champions - by Rick Scott, governor of Florida, and has the parade at Disney World and will pay National Championship bonuses to staff. [more inside]
"To live in hearts we leave behind / is not to die."
Cinamon Hadley, the woman whose portrait became the model for the iconic character Death from The Sandman series of comics for DC/Vertigo, has died at the age of 48. She was interviewed in 2011 about her life and experiences as a recognizable figure within fan culture. [more inside]
infrastructural detritus
"The postwar passion for highway construction saw cities around the world carved up in the name of progress. But as communities fought back many schemes were abandoned – their half-built traces showing what might have been." Unbuilt Cities: the outrageous highway schemes left as roads to nowhere
Paint By Monster!
A furry muppety guy teaches you all about art! How to read it and make it, and some people who are good at it! This is a smattering:
Copying and Stealing (With a playful remake of a Picasso painting) - Learning How to Draw ("No matter what Mommy and Daddy say, you're not great, you're not great!") - Magic Goldfish Sandwich (What does it feel like to walk in gold boots?) - Giant Terrible Robot ("But why did they give him a face?") - Monkey Shark Pizza ("Weird is where the good stuff comes from!") [more inside]
Copying and Stealing (With a playful remake of a Picasso painting) - Learning How to Draw ("No matter what Mommy and Daddy say, you're not great, you're not great!") - Magic Goldfish Sandwich (What does it feel like to walk in gold boots?) - Giant Terrible Robot ("But why did they give him a face?") - Monkey Shark Pizza ("Weird is where the good stuff comes from!") [more inside]
Can an algorithm tell when kids are in danger?
Don Your Tinfoil Hats
We had a wild crack dog... when I was young
Erykah [previously] Badu [previously] Rates Aliens, Period Tracker Apps and Porky Pig for Pitchfork [slyt] [previously Flaming and previously indecent] [more inside]
January 8
Where women carry rifles and govern alongside men
Syrian Kurds turn to Arab women to cement hold on power - " 'Who does the state beat down?' Reyhan Loqo asks her students. 'Man!' they shout back. 'And who does man beat down?' the 21-year-old instructor says. 'Woman!' the pupils reply." [more inside]
Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That's the problem.
MeFi's own Miss Cellania posted several end-of-year lists on her blog. This one is about animals. [more inside]
"He fought, and won, his battles."
Henry VII's is possibly the most extraordinary story of them all. With a hunger for power, and an iron determination to hang on to the throne at all costs, he would rewrite history, seizing the crown and rebuilding the monarchy in his own image. He would become paranoid, described later as an "infinitely suspicious' ruler, a 'dark prince', his reign seen as a bleak and wintery landscape. For years I've explored his murky story of spies and informers, intrigue and extortion. And I've found that the deeper you go, the more you discover fascinating glimpses of this manipulative king who created one of the strangest regimes in history; magnificent, oppressive, and terrifying. This is the story of Henry VII, the first Tudor. [more inside]
BBC Reporter Mobbed By Lemurs
BBC reporter Alex Dunlop mobbed by lemurs while attending an animal count at the Banham Zoo. He was nipped a couple of times, but overall results were ADORABLE. (Warning: autoplay in link.)
Box breathing box
Box breathing box - I wanted a device for box breathing, the technique where you breath in/hold/out/hold for 4 seconds. A device that wasn't a phone or computer. I built one, out of wood, plexiglas, metal, transistors, and a tiny bit of code. Then gave it the photo studio treatment, shared the code, and wrote about the experience.[via mefi projects]
Google sued over 'male discrimination'
James Damore, the Google employee who was fired in August for posting an anti-diversity memo to an internal forum, has filed a class-action lawsuit claiming that Google "unfairly discriminates against white men whose political views are unpopular with its executives.". [more inside]
Their lawyers have been relentless, so we will deal with it in court.
Radiohead are suing Lana Del Rey over her song Get Free, which they say bears similarity to their 1993 breakthrough hit Creep. [more inside]
Better Health Through Housing
A year after a pilot program by The University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System in Chicago to house homeless frequent ER patients to reduce costs, the results are in and “If every hospital in the area agreed to house 10 chronically homeless patients, which would be a relatively modest investment, we could collectively make a huge impact on reducing homelessness, and it would be near cost-neutral to every hospital,”
A New Day is On the Horizon
Oprah Winfrey for president? - after her speech at the Golden Globes (transcript), it seems a bit more possible. Gayle and Stedman are split on the issue.
For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight
100 years ago today, Woodrow Wilson publishes the Fourteen Points. In a speech to Congress, the president laid the groundwork for ending the First World War and establishing a new world order. The points range from secret treaties to national details to a call for what will become the League of Nations. (Yale Law, WikiSource) [more inside]
The Chats
Dance like goat body's watching
Jay Lavery at the Dancing Farm is back at it again. With temps below zero, how else are you going to keep the goats warm but some hot tropical moves? [more inside]
The Tattooist of Auschwitz
Also featuring: birds; turds; moles; voles
Spend ten minutes exploring the strange circle-of-life adventure of Rabbit Game, a game where you are a rabbit. There is also some non-rabbit content.
How segregated is your school district?
School segregation is as bad now as it was 50 years ago. Long-form article heavily saturated with infographics and those blocky pixel people Vox loves to use. Includes an interactive map of many of the school districts across the country, showing percentage of integration of Black and Hispanic students in each school district. Worth taking a look at. [more inside]
"It would be silly if it were still this vocally pure soprano"
Joan Baez on Her First Album in a Decade, and Retiring From the Road (SL Rolling Stone)
“...the mundane becomes terrifying.”
Doki Doki Literature Club is an uncontrollably horrific visual novel [Polygon] “ It’s a slow burn that begins with you and group of cute girls who must prove that their literature club is worth becoming an official school organization. Of course, your protagonist is hoping to forge new bonds with some of them along the way. The game encourages you to pick a girl to write a poem for, and depending on your choices, you may draw closer to the club’s charming, sweet members. Eventually, true to the game’s advertised content warnings (which you should take seriously, by the way), Doki Doki Literature Club leads you down a dark path, leading to the shocking and emotional death of one character. But in the same moment that it rips your heart open, the game instantly takes a much more unusual twist.” [more inside]
jeweled tailed slug
Caterpillar cameos "Predators have driven the evolution of many of these characteristics, weeding out individuals that lacked sufficient defenses. Generation after generation of natural selection has given rise to caterpillars that mimic fallen leaves or raindrops, species with eyespots that scream snake, or bright hues that warn of poisonous spines." [via]
Swords and Sarcasm
Comedian Ben Elton explores fantasy RPGs and LARP on the 80s documentary series South of Watford (1, 2, 3) (mlyt) [more inside]
the ashen lady
James Risen writes about My Life As A New York Times Reporter In The Shadow Of The War On Terror [more inside]
'How I let drinking take over my life'
I have the same feelings about alcohol that I had when I was 10. It’s dangerous; it’s disgusting; it causes cancer; it rots your liver and makes you look, and smell, like a much older and sicker person. Still, I’ve never stopped wondering why it grasped me so firmly, and for so long, why I allowed it to ruin parts of my life, parts I will never get back. What did drink offer me that was so much better than sobriety? What, exactly, was its magic?
January 7
Flowing towards a solution to the hardest math problems
In 2000, the Clay Millennium Problems were posted - seven unsolved problems in mathematics. If you solve one, the Clay Institute will give you a million dollars. To date, only one problem has been solved, the Poincaré Conjecture, by the reclusive Grigory Perelman, who refused the prize, and who is famously described in this (controversial) New Yorker article [prev]. Now, as described in Wired, interesting questions are emerging over approaches to solve a second challenge, the Navier–Stokes Equations which predict how fluids flow.
'2017 was not a great year for the English language'
The 2017 word of the year is youthquake (?!) and fake news and feminism and complicit and populism and Kwaussie, but also sontaku ("the pre-emptive, placatory following of an order that has not been given") and aporofobia ("peniaphobia" ("phobia of poor people")) and 初心 ("original intention or initial yearning"). ✍️ "Words of the Year" by Louis Lemand (quoted), The New Yorker. ✍️ "The worst words of 2017" (Quartz).
"Airport K-9 Piper is off-duty."
On the last day of his nine-year life, Piper, the border collie, chased a snowy owl from the runway at the airport in Traverse City, Mich. It was the 8,367th bird he had scared off in a three-year career as the airport’s K-9 wildlife control officer — which turned him into one of the nation’s most famous dogs (previously).
You can't blame youuurrrssseeeelf LIE MODE OVER-LOAD
The official trailer for Perverts of Mars. (SYLT, NSFW) From the makers of Oglaf and several talented improvisers. Because this is Youtube, there will be an ad before the ad.
“a different kind of comfort from mere escapism”
From the New Statesman: How Call the Midwife smuggled radical social issues into Britain's living rooms.
Fake vs. real
"But how? said my cousin."
"The Space Between Us and the Ground Below Us, or: Why I Traveled to Japan", by Bryan Washington in Catapult. Washington is a gay black man who grew up in Texas and spent summers with family in Florida, studied Japanese in school, wrote to a pen pal in Japan, and planned to visit him. That plan never happened, but in 2017, Washington went anyway. This article describes the trip, his adolescent ambitions, and dealing with homophobia and racism.
How to connect with friends who are depressed
She allowed me to be deeply depressed and simultaneously have a genuine connection to another person. For the first time, I identified as someone living with depression and I felt, oddly, good about it — or rather, like I wasn’t a bad person for having it.
The Museum of the Bible Is a Safe Space for Christian Nationalists
The intensely politicized religion that appears to be taking up residence at the Museum of the Bible isn’t there by accident. Given the theologico-political goals of its founders and patrons, it isn’t hard to see that the location of this museum was an act of symbolic and practical genius. If you’re going to build a Christian nation, this is where you start. [more inside]
“Hi, I'm Robert Seagull, and you're listening to NPR.”
NPR Host Robert Siegel Signs Off [NPR] “The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the median number of years that American workers have been working for their current employer is a little over four. I say that to acknowledge how unusual it is that I have been working at National Public Radio for a little over 40 years — 41, to be precise. For the past 30 years, I've been doing the same job: hosting All Things Considered. And doing it very happily. No one is more surprised by my tenure than I am.” [more inside]
January 6
Nutrient broth rations are being cut by 35% in order to sustain profit
Massive new data set suggests economic inequality is about to get even worse - "It shows the rich not only get richer, but they've gotten richer faster over the past 150 years. And as the acceleration continues, the working class will never catch up." (via) [more inside]
Now we say farewell to the queen
The End of an Era: “On Wednesday, Delta Airlines flight 9771 flew from Atlanta to Pinal Airpark in Arizona. It wasn't a full flight—just 48 people on board. But it was a milestone—and not just for the two people who got married mid-flight—for it marked the very last flight of a Boeing 747 being operated by a US airline.” [more inside]
The map is a little smaller...and less chill
Mapzen, providers of open-source cartography/GIS tools, have suddenly announced their shutdown down at the end of the month, and provided a brief guide to migrating to other tools or downloading their code.
[more inside]
[more inside]
Pipe down with all that bellowing!
A Fine Set of Pipes: "A few years ago, [Nate] Banton reckons, he couldn’t have made a living making them. But the niche market for pipes has opened to allow the smaller, softer cousins of the famous highland pipes to reemerge. In the early 1980s, the folk music resurgence slowly revived the smallpipes and border pipes, which were adapted to be the right size and volume to play in pubs. Today, they have joined the larger highland bagpipes to infuse the pub performances and parades that pipers use to keep Scottish music alive." Step into the world of smallpipes and border pipes (similar to but not to be confused with the Uilleann pipes) below the fold... [more inside]
on un-writing
There are other sorts of time, besides the writing time. "Sometimes, when people ask how long it takes to write a novel, I wonder what they really want to hear. How long does it take to get to the bottom of the ski run? How much of that seven years was spent actually writing the actual text that went into the actual finished novel?"
Action Figures!
Why am I so lazy?
Ask Polly answers a question from a reader who asks "Why am I lazy? Why do I put off everything I don’t want to do? And why can’t I flip a switch and just be a goddamn adult?"
"It divides people into categories — rich and poor, native and foreign"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced the end of its nearly half-century long pay-as-you-wish tradition, imposing mandatory admission fees for non-New Yorkers. [more inside]
Can I get an Amen?
A book on chanting Despite its centrality to many highly valued practices, there has been very little scientific study of joint speech to date.[via mefi projects] Joint speech is the act of humans speaking together, in prayer, in protest, in support of a team. Excellent examples and analysis at the site, my favourites were under the miscellaneous section. Many chants are to be found on UNESCO's list of masterpieces of the oral and intangible heritage of humanity.
The Astronaut's Astronaut
Almost grounded for sneaking a corned beef sandwich onto Gemini 3, John Watts Young went on to one of the most interesting astronaut careers in the history of NASA, including highlights such as flying on the first manned Gemini mission, walking on the moon with Apollo 16, and commanding the first space shuttle mission on Columbia. He has passed away at the age of 87.
Frederick the Great suggests that you go behind that bush over there
Historical Generals pointing out the toilets: a short thread.
Perhaps struck by the number of portraits of military leaders gesturing into the distance, Oxford historian Dr Jonathan Healey posted a few of them on Twitter with captions that re-imagined, with a rather consistent theme, just what they might be pointing at. The result may have started as a short thread, but then others got in on the act... [more inside]
Self-serve gasoline in the USA - update
Christmas on Crone Island
Nollaig na mBan: Known to many Christians as Epiphany, Three Kings’ Day, Twelthfth Night or Little Christmas, January 6 in Ireland is also Nollaig na mBan [pronunciation], or “Women’s Christmas.” Traditionally, on this day the women who had cooked, cleaned, decorated and produced the entire Christmas holiday enjoyed a day off while men cleaned up the remnants of the holiday. Historically, activities included gathering at the pub “without shame” - even pre-1958 when women were not permitted in pubs without a male chaperone - drinking stout or wine, and hanging out with female friends. Today, Nollaig na mBan is often reclaimed as a feminist celebration showing appreciation for women and celebrating women in leadership, literature and the arts. This year, it also launches the 2018 celebration of women’s suffrage in Ireland. If you celebrate in no other way, do, enjoy this beautiful and strange short film, Oiche Nollaig na mBan, based on Seán Ó Ríordáin's haunting poem. [more inside]
“Winner Winner Imitation Dinner!”
Does anyone own the Battle Royale genre? [Games Industry] “The recent public statements made by Bluehole and Epic [PC Gamer] about PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and its competitor Fortnite raise an important question: can anyone really own a game genre? This question is a good illustration of an issue which is felt acutely in the games industry, more so than in others. Intellectual property is protected by a patchwork of legal rights, each of which protects a different thing. Broadly speaking: copyright protects the expression of original ideas; patents protect novel, technical inventions; designs protect the external appearance of products (be they physical or digital); trade marks protect more or less anything which consumers rely on to identify the commercial origin of a product; and the law on confidentiality protects information which is, well, confidential.” [more inside]
Bergbahnen (The Swiss Alps, 500 Years Later).
Bergbahnen (The Swiss Alps, 500 Years Later). [via mefi projects] Photographs of the cableways and ski-lifts of Swiss ski resorts, taken on LomoChrome Purple and Turquoise specialty film. The colours call back to vintage resort posters; the grassy spring and summer landscapes look ahead to future, snowless winters. The project blog is also worth reading.
Which is more fragile? environment vs masculinity
Scientific American says: Men resist green behaviour as unmanly.
Naomi Chainey responds. [more inside]
January 5
Bowiemas as a season of meditation and insight
First off, HBO will show on Bowiemas, Jan 8, David Bowie: The Last Five Years. A companion piece to 2013's David Bowie: Five Years, an exercise in polar opposites. Also, Duncan Jones (Director of Moon), Bowie's son, announced a book club based on Bowie's personal list of of his favorite books [2013]. Duncan has chosen something light to start. [more inside]
Frank Lloyd Wright's Kalita Humphreys Theater
The architect's last commission, now crumbling, and the confusion about how or whether Dallas should fix it. A long post about Wright's, as usual, commanding and visionary plans, which were tinkered with from the start. The author gives a great history of the theater and how it should have been and how it wound up. More, it needs extensive restoration and repair but nobody seems to know who should do what (with which and to whom). He suggests that if decisions aren't made soon, the whole thing may be lost.
Her father's first wife was Tennessee Williams's first love
That day my mother revealed to me a secret that my father had wanted to keep hidden from my sister and me: He had been married before my mother, for 12 years. This fact was both astonishing and tantalizing. I badgered Mom for every tidbit she might share. She let the story slip out in pieces. Something had gone wrong in my dad’s first marriage. The woman had died in 1951 in some mysterious way, in the company of another man. Her name had been Hazel Kramer before she became Hazel McCabe. Mom added, seemingly as an afterthought, “I know that she used to be Tennessee Williams’s girlfriend.” [more inside]
The British Upper Classes At Play
Since 1709 Tatler Magazine has been sending dispatches from the front line of privilege. Every issue features the country homes of Britain’s elite, the worlds most expensive fashion & jewelry, the all important social scene, and of course horse racing. With a lineage longer than some of the families it reports on, Tatler not only observes the upper classes, it helps to preserve the rules they live by, and provides a knowing guide for those aspiring to join. We spent 6 months behind the scenes finding out what it takes to be posh in the 21st century. Episode 2 Episode 3
"I was so sad, what we did to her, especially when I seen her face"
Two boys violently carjacked an 80-year-old Baltimore City Councilwoman. Now, with the help of UEmpower of Maryland, she's their advocate.
Ring ring, banana phone
Anesthetics for Plants
Just like humans, plants known for their movement (venus fly trap, mimosa, sundew) can succumb to the effects of general anesthesia. The finding is striking for a variety of reasons—there’s the pesky fact that plants lack a central nervous system. Reported in the Annals of Botany.
The National Dividend
While not the only way to combat the massive wealth inequality in the United States, there is a way that’s simple, proven to work, and can exist inside our current system: A social wealth fund, a pool of investment assets in some ways like the giant index or mutual funds already popular with retirement savings accounts or pension funds, but one owned collectively by society as a whole.
Matt Breuing (The People’s Policy Project, previously), NYT Opinion.
probably getting tired of the "oh, your skull, is it" jokes tho
It's been almost a year of this crap.
Love Your Body
Ten inspiring Torontonians bare all to promote body positivity and pride in the skin we're in. [NSFW for tasteful nudity] The photos in Now Toronto's Body Issue encompass a wide variety of bodies and situations. Scroll down for previous years.
“— Nintendo has kept things simple for once.”
Nintendo’s Resurgence Was the Best Tech Story of 2017 [The Ringer] “Five years ago Nintendo started unraveling. The company was losing money for the first time ever as the monstrously popular Wii stalled in sales. Nintendo’s savior, a Wii follow-up christened the Wii U, turned into an elaborate act of self-sabotage. The system was poorly named (is that an add-on to the Wii?), poorly conceived (why is the controller a mostly useless tablet?), and poorly supported (where the hell is Metroid?). It became Nintendo’s worst-selling home console ever, and as the company’s losses mounted in 2013 and 2014, it appeared to be on the verge of obsolescence. Last life, no continues. But Nintendo often mines its biggest successes from spectacular failures.” [more inside]
Like having your mind disassembled, then put back together again
YouTube is the final form of public access TV
You get things like people visiting the least used stations in various parts of England, people flying to McDonald's on a paramotor and people making DIY ecospheres out of crap in a local stream.
It's even got slow TV. [more inside]
The End of an Era in New England?
For Kraft, Brady and Belichick, is this the beginning of the end?
Seth Wickersham of ESPN writes about the unraveling of one of the most successful franchises in modern sports history.
January 4
Build
Seattle 3 Year Time-lapse Video from the Space Needle - watch lots of buildings go up.
Blue Marble Data
planet.parts is a set of links to "Near-realtime Earth observation resources"
A pop punk band from La Jolla, CA
News of the day got you feeling uncertain? Nevermind. Some enthusiastic helper auto-tuned Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit to a major chord. I give you Teen Sprite.
Stop. Don't. Come back.
Worldcon 76, the upcoming science fiction and fantasy convention that (among other events) will host the 2018 Hugo Awards, has decided to revoke author Jon Del Arroz's attending membership to the con after he announced his plans to troll the convention by videotaping private events, a violation of the con's Code of Conduct. [more inside]
The urgent mission of “Making Gay History”
In the late 1980s, author Eric Marcus set out to record the oral history of the gay civil rights movement in America. “I felt such responsibility to these people, most of whom had never had their stories told, or they had been long forgotten.” [more inside]
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
10 miles off of the coast of New Hampshire lies Star Island, home of the Oceanic Hotel. During the winter months, the island is home to but a single inhabitant, the hotel's winter caretaker. [more inside]
Aharon Appelfeld, R.I.P. May his name be a blessing.
"I am not a Holocaust author”. Novelist and Israel Prize winner Aharon Appelfeld has died. Appelfeld, a survivor of the Shoah, basically wrote about living in a world where the Shoah is about to happen, or has happened, and how to be human in that world. Haaretz obit linked above, NYTimes obit here. (Previously)
The Rivers of America series
The series combined geography, history, and folklore to produce a regionalist portrait of America The series ran from 1937 to 1974 and produced 65 volumes.
The original editor, Constance Lindsay Skinner, established a standard for writing and book design that influenced book publishing for the next seventy years. The series adapted a fine press printing aesthetic to a mass market product.
One of the best qualities of this series is that the variety of authors was astonishing: historians, biographers, naturalists, novelists, and more, leading to a lively tone. [more inside]
Good; now make twenty more.
"From thatching to stonemasonry or metalwork, Britain's master craftsmen were central to every aspect of life. Down the centuries, their workmanship has defined the fabric of this country, from the grandest cathedral to the simplest of tools. There are still guardians of these crafts working today who are dedicated to taking the long tradition of these skills into our modern world. In this series, complete beginners with a real passion to learn will be given an intensive introduction with some of these experts. But can a complete novice master even the basic elements of the craft in a short space of time, however intensive? And will they have acquired the skills to make something that is both beautiful and useful?"
"didn’t I just read this on the front page yesterday morning?"
Uncivil is a podcast hgosted by journalist Jack Hitt and Rutgers professor Chenjerai Kumanyika that covers The Civil War Stories You Don't Learn In School (and why you didn't learn them), which feels like Urgent Listening In Today's America [more inside]
Blind men come to agreement on position, orientation of elephant
"This is an amazingly good video [by Aurélien Geron]. I wish I could explain capsules that well."- Geoffrey Hinton.
Utopia Now!
Meagan Day writes about five experimental Utopias in US history for Timeline - Bible Communists embrace free love in Oneida, NY - Kansas’ octagon obsessed vegetarians - Socialist loggers in the Sierra Nevadas railroaded by capitalism - Home, Washington was red, nude and without rules - All One Farm grows apples, drops acid, and eventually poisons millions.
Trying to make craft beer for more than just dudebros
“It bothers me that it’s the same thing over and over,” says Lauter, who contacted the Ohio Craft Brewers Association over the Paradigm Shift fiasco, but never heard back. “It’s a lot of talking and not a lot of doing. It’s almost like there literally needs to be a guide of how to not name a beer like an asshole. I keep talking about making a resource like that myself.”Bryan Roth writes about the struggle to be more socially diverse in the craft beer industry.
Did the boomerang theory boomerang?
"the best evidence against our paper is that it keeps getting rejected." Daniel Engber explores the post-fact research and finds some significant opposition.
Previously (SLSlate)
Most countries treat subway systems as national assets
"New York City’s subway is falling apart. If you are a regular rider, you know this firsthand. But even if you aren’t, it has probably become difficult to ignore all the stories about the system’s failure." [more inside]
Gnomesville
Over ten thousand Gnomes live in Gnomesville, the home of Gnomes in Fergusson Valley, Western Australia. Not everyone were happy with the Gnomes, but now the state government is providing funds to ensure the future of Gnomesville.
BBC Radio 4 Anansi Boys adaptation
"A new, six-part adaptation of Neil Gaiman's mythical fantasy about the trickster god Anansi and his unsuspecting son Charlie." Listen to all six delightful episodes for free via the (also free) iPlayer radio app or the Radio 4 website. [more inside]
Feminist things to do over summer
Here are some (Australian) summer activities to keep your feminist selves occupied: things to read, see, watch, listen to and connect with. From the Victorian Women's Trust.
January 3
A Real Lack of Avocado Toast
If they're not wasting it on avocado toast, how are millennials spending their money? Let’s read their (money) diaries! [more inside]
Nyege Nyege: Uganda representing new East African electronic music
Electronic music is booming in East Africa, and a small collective based in Kampala is at the heart of it all. Aaron Coultate travelled to Uganda to hear their story. Nyege Nyege: East Africa's New Wave, on Resident Advisor | See also: The NyegeNyege Urge hit me, a festival review by Maureen Shelmith for Jazz Symphonic | Soundtrack, part 1: Nyege Nyege Tapes on Bandcamp; part 2: Kampire's Nyege Nyege mix on Soundcloud. [more inside]
Fore Edge Painting
The argument over Fore Edge in or out overlooked the possibilities of Fore Edge Painting. [more inside]
Watching you skate made me feel like all sorts of things were possible
On the eve of the National Figure Skating Championships, Nicole Chung interviews Kristi Yamaguchi. [more inside]
"Burning Man is the very model of the Puritan ideal."
Logic Magazine interviews Fred Turner about Silicon Valley and techno-utopianism. (Turner previously on metafilter)
The Getty collections
Unlocking an 18th-century French Mechanical Table: The 1st of 14 videos about Eighteenth-Century Mechanical Furniture and Automata.
This is one of the many playlists of the Getty Museum Youtube Channel. [more inside]
‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ at 25
‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ at 25: Through the Wormhole With the Cast and Creators [Variety] “What evolved was kind of a third-child mentality of not being everyone’s cup of tea, but the people who liked it were passionate about it and really enjoyed the neurotic quality to our characters,” says René Auberjonois, who played security chief (or Constable) Odo. “Every single character on ‘Deep Space Nine’ had some deep psychic problem they had to work out. It was being developed at the time of the riots in Los Angeles and the burning of South Central. And also politically Bosnia and Yugoslavia. Everything was falling apart. There was a real darkness, and I think that deeply influenced the style of the show.”
People in general are stupid in all domains, even now
Katja Grace asks why, if humans have been "behaviorally modern" for about 50,000 years, did it take so long to invent rope (28,000 years ago), the wheel (at least 4000 BC) and writing (3000 BC)? As it turns out, there are a lot of possible answers.
"I wanted to look good. I also wanted to look credible."
How I Learned to Look Believable (CW: sexual harassment)
“Dear Internet,”
Logan Paul, and the toxic YouTube prank culture that created him, explained [Vox] “YouTube star Logan Paul, a popular vlogger from a family of popular vloggers, drew a massive backlash on Monday and Tuesday for posting a video showing a dead body he stumbled upon in Japan's notorious "suicide forest." The video, which Paul uploaded on December 31 and ultimately deleted late on January 1, chronicles a visit by Paul and a few companions to Aokigahara Forest, located on the northwestern side of Mt. Fuji. Upon seeing the body, Paul calls out, “Yo, are you alive?” and then, “Are you fucking with us?” He then continues to film his reaction to the discovery, complete with laughter and joking, which he later explains is his way of trying to cope with the shock of the situation.” [more inside]
Sexual misconduct in the Canadian arts, too
Albert Schultz, the co-founder and artistic director of Soulpepper Theatre, is accused by four actresses, one calling him a "serial sexual predator" (Globe story)
Cats who love music
How to Trademark a Face
A charming method for clowns to register their uniquely painted faces. The practice seems to be dying out because of digital photos. However, the convention is still that clowns don't copy each other's "faces." [more inside]
"We are choosing Hope over Fear."
Ten years ago today, on a wintry night in a high school gym in Des Moines, freshman Illinois senator Barack Obama took the stage to eloquently claim a historic victory in the pivotal Iowa Caucus. But while the hard-fought win would lay the foundation for his incredible rise to the presidency (and offer a prescient glimpse into his accomplishments), the credit was not all his -- as he's happy to admit. So, in this winter of our discontent, join Crooked Media writer (and Obama alum) Chris Liddell-Westefeld as he lays out the oral history of this crucial election as told by the countless staff, field organizers, and first-time volunteers who threw themselves wholeheartedly into the arduous, long-shot effort that would change the world. [more inside]
Furnish a room
salad Olivier
Get up and 'role
Will It Casserole? is a column about turning dishes which are not casseroles into casseroles. So far the author has converted pierogis, an entire steak dinner, Thanksgiving, and the Monte Cristo sandwich.
it's bombogenesis, baby: part II
"First, a monster storm will hammer the East Coast from north Florida to Maine with ice and snow. By Thursday, the exploding storm will, in many ways, resemble a winter hurricane, battering easternmost New England with potentially damaging winds in addition to blinding snow. [...] Forecasters are expecting the storm to become a “bomb cyclone” because its pressure is predicted to fall so fast, an indicator of explosive strengthening."
The plane is my tripod, and it is a moving tripod
if I had his nuts in a steel-trap I would...watch that trap till he died
The Paige Compositor: The story of Mark Twain, James William Paige, and the fever-dream type-setting machine that ruined them both. Drawings from the (enormous) patent, and text, both courtesy this roundup on Circuitous Root. [more inside]
A Hit Man Came to Kill Susan Kuhnhausen. She Survived. He Didn't.
"Does she need an ambulance?" "No, she's a nurse. She says call an ambulance for the guy. He may be dead." Susan Kuhnhausen talks about surviving her ex's plan to have her killed and her life since then. (slWillametteWeek) (content warning: gore, mayhem)
“Oh my God, this is so f---ed up"
"Inside Silicon Valley's Secretive, Orgiastic Dark Side. Some of the most powerful men in Silicon Valley are regulars at exclusive, drug-fueled, sex-laced parties—gatherings they describe not as scandalous, or even secret, but as a bold, unconventional lifestyle choice. Yet, while the guys get laid, the women get screwed. In an adaptation from her new book, Brotopia, Emily Chang exposes the tired and toxic dynamic at play." (SLVanityFair)
What You'll Wish You'd Know
Flying a glider is a good metaphor here. Because a glider doesn't have an engine, you can't fly into the wind without losing a lot of altitude. If you let yourself get far downwind of good places to land, your options narrow uncomfortably. As a rule you want to stay upwind. So I propose that as a replacement for "don't give up on your dreams." Stay upwind.In an undelivered high school address, Paul Graham discusses what anyone can do to develop towards finding and pursuing a good future.
it's all about the worms
Greetings Telegrams
By the early '30s, the telegram service in the UK was running at a loss, having been supplanted, in part, by the growing popularity of the telephone, and having come to be associated with the delivery of bad news. In an effort to halt this decline, the Greetings Telegram was introduced in 1935: these brightly-coloured bearers of good news rescued the service [PDF], prolonging its life (after a wartime interruption) until the early '80s. [more inside]
January 2
Latin America?
For one, California: Ubi secedere possumus? "When can we secede?" For another: Wisconsin. Caeseum, cervesa, farcimen. "Cheese, beer, sausage."
For a third: Tennessee. Cantator in omnibus tabernis. "A musician in every bar."
"Kate Bush is more like Keats."
"Byron once said about Keats, 'Keats writes about what he imagines; I write about what I live.' And most Rock & Roll people write about their lives in some way. Kate Bush is more like Keats in that she writes about what she imagines." -Steve Coogan
Intel CPU design flaw forces Linux and Windows kernel redesign
"A fundamental design flaw in Intel's processor chips has forced a significant redesign of the Linux and Windows kernels to defang the chip-level security bug."
Performance hit to Intel processors from the past decade is estimated at 5%-30% after the kernel patches are deployed. Linux patches are already available and the Windows update is expected soon. The details of the security flaw have not been released and the Linux patch notes have been redacted.
1123 Miles from Bloom County
So, Steve Dallas got #metoo'd, but he worked to make amends. Frank (our superhero) demanded that Steve come see Lola. Frank And Lola. [more inside]
The forgotten New Yorker who changed the ‘80s music scene
The forgotten New Yorker who changed the ‘80s music scene. New Order...were just one of dozens of new wave and post-punk acts imported across the Atlantic by New Yorker Ruth Polsky. During her tenure as a talent booker at seminal Manhattan nightclubs Hurrah on West 62nd Street (1979 to 1982) and Danceteria on West 21st Street (1982 to 1986), she was the first to take chances on then-unknown bands such as Simple Minds, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Smiths, the Psychedelic Furs and many more. With disco and rock still dominant in the charts, Polsky had a rare ear for fresh sounds, and took chances in bringing them to the United States before most other club bookers would dare. [more inside]
"I wanted to be special. I wanted to be somebody." RIP Rick Hall
Rick Hall, Producer And Songwriter Who Put Muscle Shoals On The Map, Dead At 85 Rick Hall, a songwriter and record producer known as the "Father of Muscle Shoals Music," died today at his home in Muscle Shoals, Ala. after a protracted illness. [more inside]
Dude, you broke the future.
The AI future that's already here. "What do our current, actually-existing AI overlords want?" In a speech to the 34th Chaos Communication Congress in Leipzig, MeFi's cstross offers some thoughts on our current dystopia and where it may be headed.
If birds left tracks in the sky, they'd look like this
If birds left tracks in the sky, they'd look like this. Stunning composite photos showing birds' and flocks' paths through the skies by photographer Xavi Bou, in the National Geographic.
Never too late for some holiday cooking tips
Our brains are mosaics, quilted together from pieces with varying hues.
"The unfulfilled wish is, of course, that men’s brains differ from – and by the usual implications are superior to – those of women in just the same way as men’s physiques differ and are superior. Stronger body, stronger mind, as though the brain were not, at a minimum, a pack of neurons with a wide and varied cast of support cells but instead a mass of contractile tissue, easily built up and broken down simply by following the rules dictated in Men’s Health. And of course, the perceived binary of human anatomy offers thin scaffolding for the facile argument... Nature doesn’t do binaries nearly as often as people think. But she’s a whiz with mosaics."
I did everything you said and I'm still alone.
"Over the last 12 months, I have completely transformed my life in an effort to find love. I didn’t." One year after writing the essay, "When Can I Say I'll Be Alone Forever," Aimee Lutkin returns with another essay about being single. [more inside]
A Combination of Professionalism, Moral Grace, and Raw Parking Skill
“As the events kicked off, the athletes jostled and clowned around in front of the logos of fellow parking firms. They smiled for their close-ups. A local event photographer took official portraits and action shots. Like cowboys before a rodeo, the contestants checked each other out. Some valets did high kicks and lunges; others nervously straightened their uniforms.” The suprisingly human story of the 2017 National Valet Olympics (SLAtlantic).
Live in Ohio? Like sweet booze? EVERYTHING MUST GO
Ohio state liquor stores are offering deep discounts on booze...provided you like questionable booze. Yes, there is some good stuff somewhere in that massive list, too.
continuation or escalation of gaming despite negative consequences
Gaming addiction classified as disorder by WHO [BBC] “Its 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) will include the condition "gaming disorder". The draft document describes it as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour so severe that it takes "precedence over other life interests". Some countries had already identified it as a major public health issue. Many, including the UK, have private addiction clinics to "treat" the condition. The last version of the ICD was completed in 1992, with the new guide due to be published in 2018. The guide contains codes for diseases, signs and symptoms and is used by doctors and researchers to track and diagnose disease. It will suggest that abnormal gaming behaviour should be in evidence over a period of at least 12 months "for a diagnosis to be assigned" but added that period might be shortened "if symptoms are severe".” [more inside]
Dear Sisters, In Solidarity
Yesterday (Jan. 1, 2018), 300 prominent actresses and female agents, writers, directors, producers and entertainment executives announced an ambitious initiative to fight systemic sexual harassment in Hollywood and in blue-collar workplaces nationwide, in part in response to the letter of support written on behalf of the approximately 700,000 women who work in the agricultural fields and packing sheds across the United States. Time's Up (Now) -- The clock has run out on sexual assault, harassment and inequality in the workplace. It's time to do something about it. There is also the related effort, 50/50 by 2020, to get networks, studios, talent agencies, unions and other industry organizations to achieve gender parity in 2 years. [more inside]
Who knows when Buffalo’s Comet will visit us again.
"The Buffalo Bills haven’t made the playoffs since the 1999 NFL season. Had they missed out again this year, their postseason drought would be old enough to legally purchase cigarettes, and it would likely smoke those cigarettes in order to take the edge off from all that Bills football. Buffalo’s barren stretch is the longest such streak in North American sports, but, after a series of wonderfully unpredictable events on Sunday, it finally ended." [more inside]
"All this report does for me is show how little the FBI cared"
FBI's 'Gamergate' file says prosecutors didn't charge men who sent death threats to female video game fans — even when suspects confessed [CW: death and rape threats, bigoted slurs; SLBusiness Insider] [more inside]
Coal Country 101
The 100-year capitalist experiment that keeps Appalachia poor, sick, and stuck on coal. [more inside]
January 1
oh Vovochka.
What Putin Really Wants, Julie Ioffe covers her native Russia in The Atlantic - "Russia's strongman president has many Americans convinced of his manipulative genius. He's really just a gambler who won big."
How to hot rod a little bug!
How to hot rod a little bug! I mean, this is a Volkswagen Beetle, and if it is as bored and stroked as much as it can be (and it isn't) it's what, 147cui? Less? For a vehicle a half century old? How can you make a fast car out of that boxer rear-engined antiquated hot mess? Watch. [more inside]
"If you’re not in a bikini on a beach, no one wants to watch you"
Why are there so few women and POC hosting travel TV shows (and working in travel media in general)? Women account for nearly 2/3rds of travelers today and are spending more money on travel than men, yet somehow travel TV remains a vast sea of (white) men. What gives? Travel TV host Samantha Brown has some ideas. [more inside]
Myers Briggs is so 2017
The Lipson-Shiu Corporate type test The personality test you never knew you needed.
mouse mouse mouse SHREW
Matthias Wandel [previously] has mice in his workshop. He was curious how small a hole a mouse could squeeze through, so he set up an experiment - and added excellent sound effects. Don't miss the second video at the bottom of the page! [more inside]
Dash X Butler
The astounding Julie Dash interviews the incomparable Octavia Butler! “A lost interview (1995) with award-winning Sy Fy writer Octavia Butler and filmmaker Julie Dash at her home in Los Angeles for Marc Boothe, Digital Diaspora, and "40 Acres & A Microchip" the first black cyberspace conference in the UK for digerati of African descent.
"to re-examine our relationship to our cultures and the way we represent them through the use of digital technology."”
Raw like dysentery
He said “real water” should expire after a few months. His does. “It stays most fresh within one lunar cycle of delivery,” he said. “If it sits around too long, it’ll turn green. People don’t even realize that because all their water’s dead, so they never see it turn green.”Raw water is the latest obsession of the clean living crowd, people like Juicero owner Doug Evans, with a disdain for bottled and especially tap water. If you think drinking unpasteurised milk is a dilettante's sport, this may be for you.
Unsung Code-Talkers: the Choctaw
Few of us know about the Choctaw code-talkers and their service in the ETO. During an engagement against the Germans, who seemed to have an uncanny skill at reading the Allied intentions, an officer heard two Choctaw talking. Wait, he said, what if we could send messages in that language and foil the Germans?! And that's what happened. There were a number of Choctaw serving in the Army and they became relay messengers and runners, and invented new terms for military specifics. In the second link, the personal stories of these Choctaw are told: Choctaw Nation report
Show Your Work
Show your work: The new terms for trust in journalism is an essay by media critic Jay Rosen (previously) that outlines 11 steps that journalists should take to improve transparency, and build trust with their readers.
List Of Sandwiches
An alphabetical List Of Sandwiches might be what you need for inspiration in this New Year.
Game status: afoot
A massive collection of Sherlock Holmes radio shows—541 episodes of adapted stories and original mysteries produced between 1931 and 2017. The eighteen actors portraying Holmes include Clive Merrison, John Gielgud, Orson Welles, Basil Rathbone, and Simon Callow. [more inside]
Elon Musk: Evangelist of the Brain-Computer Interface
At the World Government Summit in Dubai in February, Elon Musk said that people would need to become cyborgs to be relevant in an artificial intelligence age. Musk wants to use brain-computer interfaces (BCI) in a bi-directional capacity, so that plugging in could make us smarter, improve our memory, help with decision-making and eventually provide an extension of the human mind. [more inside]
It really will be like the Phoenix rising out of the ashes, the rebirth
Artist John Wullbrandt and his partner Jean-Claude Rivalland prepared for the inevitability of wildfire and fought the Thomas fire on their ranch near Carpenteria, saving the house but losing storage containers with John’s art and his studio — but having hope for renewal.
[more inside]