April 2023 Archives
April 30
Epicurious, Yellow
FIDE World Chess Championship 2023
After Magnus Carlsen declined to defend his title, the 2023 World Chess Championship between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren has concluded. Guardian coverage. Full streams playlist on youtube. Agadmator recaps playlist. [more inside]
Today's Unexpectedly Delightful YouTube Suggestion
On Tuesday 6th March 2012, The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain played live on the main stage at Sydney Opera House in Australia. Orange Blossom Special - The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. [SLYT]
2023 White House Correspondents Dinner
Joe Biden's speech [22m] came off really well. Roy Wood Jr. was really good. [26m] The whole night [1h38m] included awards and a great speech by Correspondents Association president Tamara Keith.
"a very one-sided attempt at a contract"
"The older kids have been playing with the concept of contracts, which has often involved attempts to trick the other into signing something." Jeff Kaufman shares the "various forms of contract fraud" recently explored by his children and his attempts at explaining that forging your sister's signature on a handwritten note stating "I _Lily_ Wise will let Anna hav wutevr she wonts from me" does not constitute a valid contract with her.
“I used to be an adventurer like you, then I took an AI in the knee.”
Modder wires ChatGPT into Skyrim VR so NPCs can roleplay and remember past conversations [YouTube] “Spend enough time in any RPG and you'll eventually run out of things to talk about with its characters. But what if they had a never-ending supply of dynamically generated anecdotes? What if you could ask them questions that weren't listed on a menu in front of you? What if they could even remember the experiences they've had with you in the game, and could talk about them at length? Those are the questions modder Art From The Machine is trying to answer in Skyrim VR. In the video above you can see some scenes from the work-in-progress mod, which uses OpenAI's large language model ChatGPT to generate responses, xVASynth for text-to-speech so the NPCs can be fully voiced, and Whisper for speech-to-text, so players can speak into their mic and the NPCs can understand them.” [via: PC Gamer] [more inside]
Not proven verdict to be scrapped in Scottish courts
April 29
Point of Personal Privilege
More than an aspirational and abstract index of a Whitmanian democracy-to-come, Robert’s Rules was an especially formal response to the very real complications and specifically American violence of white supremacy, segregated democracy, and civil war. from Reading, Race, and “Robert's Rules of Order” by Kent Puckett
Gravity and Escape Speed
XKCD has recently done a couple more interactive posts, both oriented toward exploring 2D space in a gravity-based universe: Gravity, and Escape Speed. The first is a fairly laid back region to explore; the second starts your ship out fairly limited, and you try to find upgrades, get enough speed to leave your starting planet. The first is mostly just something to look around, the second feels more like an actual game, with lots of upgrades and fun collectables to find.
"The writing was on the wall. It is now written in blood."
In Sudan, a Deadly Reckoning for Rival Forces: With civilians trapped, scores have been killed as the army and a paramilitary group battle for control of the country. [more inside]
The Power and Peril of the ICU
...nearly all of us want medical treatments to extend our lives for as long as possible, until we reach the threshold when the pain and suffering imposed by such treatments exceeds potential future gains in life and the pleasure and joy it would bring. Obviously, the difficult part is knowing when that threshold has been crossed.
Provocation
"'What might she have written next?' asked Margaret Atwood in her tribute to Hilary Mantel, after the Booker prize-winning novelist’s sudden death in September last year....We now know the answer to Atwood’s question: Mantel was working on a rewriting of Pride and Prejudice, told from the perspective of the overlooked middle sister Mary Bennet, to be titled Provocation. Even more intriguingly, it was planned as a mischievous Austen mashup, with characters from all her novels making an appearance in unfamiliar guises." The article in The Guardian includes an excerpt from Mantel's notebooks. [more inside]
April 28
Radical.
Last June a rogue time capsule was cracked opened on Imgur: a collection of hundreds of pictures of 90s malls and stores.
She is the girl who has everything / Talent and beauty divine
Debutantes, models, fashion writers, publicists, club kids, and assorted demimondaines: A Century of the New York "It" Girl. [article limit before paywall] This sprawling cover story, with many embedded interviews, covers 151 women who drew the camera and made the New York scene over the past 60 years. Although many of them came from money or had family connections, some of them, like Debi Mazar and Connie Girl, just showed up, worked hard, and were themselves. [more inside]
"What You Have to Understand is People's Fears About Money"
…a 20-minute question from a soon-to-be emeritus that's not a question
Pedro Pascal, (#1 champion of Chilean food and big brother to Lux) as an academic. (CW: birbsite) [more inside]
Coupling strips of train images into images of trains
I have a rail line right under my apartment, so I built a small computer vision app running on a Rasperry Pi which records each train passing, and tries to stitch an image of it. [more inside]
Not SLB (Single Link Beaverton)
Getting Involved With Your Local Library
Ways to support libraries in trying times As promised, resources to help support libraries and the freedom to read. These are US-centric. More resources and descriptions within. [more inside]
We are also worried our Western allies are getting tired of helping us.
I think we don't have a current thread for the Russia-Ukraine war, so this is it. Round-up of links inside. Today is day 429 of the invasion. [more inside]
Checked Out
Ed Zitron goes on a lovely, if lengthy, rant about popularity, Twitter Blue and social media in general, before dropping a plug for Bluesky Social, a new social media network that was founded by Twitter in 2019 as an open-source, decentralized spinoff. It now seems to be getting much more media attention .
Apu hasn't uttered a word on "The Simpsons" in six years.
In 2017, Hari Kondabolu created The Problem with Apu: a documentary that examined and criticized the character of Apu on The Simpsons, voiced by white actor Hank Azaria. Azaria, notably, did not appear in the film, and was not available for comment. Now, nearly six years later, Azaria and Kondabolu sat down with NPR's Codeswitch to discuss what came out of that callout. [more inside]
it’s going to be a hot mecha summer
“Elden Ring developer FromSoftware’s revival of the Armored Core franchise launches this summer. The latest trailer for Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon confirms an Aug. 25 launch date for the game, while also showing off first gameplay and cryptically teasing its story. [...] Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon was officially unveiled in December. The developer promises that the new Armored Core won’t just be a Soulsborne game with mecha. FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki said last year that his company is taking “a good look at the core concept of Armored Core and what made that series special,” applying its recent game development experience and “reexamining it together with those core concepts of Armored Core.” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
Books Unbanned
In response to the growing number of libraries and schools banning books, both the Seattle Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library have made their complete e-book and audiobook catalogs available to teens and young adults anywhere in the US. “ We believe in your right to read what you want, discover yourself and form your own opinions.” [more inside]
April 27
Lions thought extinct in Chad reappear after 20 year hiatus
Lions thought extinct in Chad reappear after 20 year hiatus. Lions have not been spotted in Chad's Sena Oura National Park since 2004, but a remote camera has now managed to capture a lioness in her prime.
A model for the world or a cautionary tale.
India's Quest to Build the World's Largest Solar Farms. "Every morning in the Tumakuru District of Karnataka, a state in southern India, the sun tips over the horizon and lights up the green-and-brown hills of the Eastern Ghats. Its rays fall across the grasslands that surround them and the occasional sleepy village; the sky changes color from sherbet-orange to powdery blue. Eventually, the sunlight reaches a sea of glass and silicon known as Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park. Here, within millions of photovoltaic panels, lined up in rows and columns like an army at attention, electrons vibrate with energy. The panels cover thirteen thousand acres, or about twenty square miles—only slightly smaller than the area of Manhattan." [more inside]
Train length has been essential to creating record profits
As Rail Profits Soar, Blocked Crossings Force Kids to Crawl Under Trains to Get to School (ProPublica, 4/26/2023) (CW: pictures of children crawling under freight trains).
Ringmaster, Outrageous, Controversial, Scandalous, The Master of Trash.
Jerry Springer has passed away at age 79. When others went low, he went lower. Cheating spouse reveals. Baby daddy reveals. Teenage stripper reveals. Racists, badasses and brawlers. Springer, who died Thursday at 79, mined the depths and put what he dredged up on his show. [more inside]
"We know that children on the spectrum are some of our biggest fans."
'Enjoy Your Ride!': Kids With Autism Have a Message for Transit Riders Children on the autism spectrum were invited to record public service messages for a number of the biggest transit systems in the US for Autism Awareness Month, and I for one am here for it. [more inside]
"On a Hot August Night When the Dry-Flies Shrilled"
Unlike Hemingway, Dos Passos practiced moderation in most things and valued ideological nuance and evolution. The friends operated at different speeds: Hemingway raced; Dos Passos cruised. Take, for example, the annual running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Dos Passos enjoyed the experience primarily for the spectacle, the food, and the drink. Hemingway saw it as a test of manhood. There “were too many exhibitionistic personalities in the group to suit me,” Dos Passos wrote. “The sight of a crowd of young men trying to prove how hombre they were got on my nerves.” from The World at the End of a Line by John Dos Passos Coggin
Born A Crime
The 2011 documentary You Laugh But It's True [1h23m] is about the blossoming stand up comedy scene in South Africa and Trevor Noah's meteoric rise to fame as he moved toward his "hour", the one-man show which brought him to international fame, The Daywalker. All this predates his tenure on The Daily Show by several years. This movie is available on a lot of streaming services and the advertisement load on this YouTube video is insane, so look elsewhere if that makes you crazy.
Das ist ein Gamechanger!
please read the section for new members before posting to the main chat
All Things Great and Small: Excerpts From A Secret Whatsapp Group Of The Neighbors of Peter Glazebrook, Giant Vegetable Farmer [more inside]
Sapphire & Steel
When I was 6 years old my mind was blown by sci-fi TV serial Sapphire and Steel, with its stories of inter-dimensional slippage, time-shuffling wonkiness, and not entirely logical plot resolution. Revisiting it 40 years later, I'm ready to be disappointed. But it's actually good. Worth watching just for the stars, Joanna Lumley as TV's most fashion-conscious time-manipulating psychic alien, and David McCallum as her permanently-scowling colleague. All episodes are on shoutfactorytv.com (US) and itv.com (UK). Previously.
it's a war between kids, teachers, and the developers
Inside the Chaotic World of Kids Trying to Play Video Games on School Laptops [Waypoint][Games by Vice] “Kids have been trying to play video games on school computers for as long as computers have cropped up in schools, but decades ago, they jumped through those hoops in a dedicated computer lab, or secretly downloaded homemade games to their TI-83 calculators while pretending to crunch equations. But these days, computers are deeply intertwined into education, and many school age children have regular access to a computer, usually a Chromebook or iPad, as early as 1st grade, when kids are only six or seven years old. What exists now is an escalating game of whack-a-mole between students, teachers, and IT departments, as kids hopeful to do anything but school work try to find a way to play games. [...] There’s a whole not-so-underground market for getting around software like GoGuardian, like the YouTube channel IrwinTech, where it’s kids explaining to other kids what to do.”
"I do not recommend the coffee they serve."
April 26
Zooey Zephyr, Montana legislator, banned from floor
The most authentic Philly steak sandwich in Lahore
Breathe.
In a lengthy and deeply personal video, Kevin Smith revisits his recent mental breakdown, discusses his decision to part with cannabis, and details the practical breathing and mindfulness techniques that have aided his journey to recovery. Content warning (CW) for discussion of sexual abuse.
The end of the road for FiveThirtyEight?
After Disney laid off more than half of FiveThirtyEight's 35 staff members earlier this week, editor-in-chief Nate Silver said on Twitter that he was unlikely to renew his contract when it expires this summer. [more inside]
Omissions of This Magnitude Have Consequences
Our collective memories are what give us historical consciousness. We currently have next to nothing we can point to and say: this happened, it is still happening, here is what we’ve lost, and here’s why this must never happen again. from Hollywood Pretends There Is No Pandemic by Violet Blue
"Relentless Campaign to Weaponize Government Power"
Why are things so heavy in the future?
Gravity batteries are a means of storing and using energy by raising and lowering mass. They are being put into production.
HOCKEY MOMS ❤️ SARAH
Sarah Palin Forever: A short film by AI researcher Eryk Salvaggio, made with Midjourney and AI-generated voice narration, and based on a short story he wrote -- which itself was based on his real-life experience covering a 2008 Sarah Palin rally as a college journalist. As he explains in his newsletter, it is somewhere between a "horror story" and a "joke that goes on too long".
The Woman Shaping a Generation of Black Thought
Christina Sharpe is expanding the vocabulary of life in slavery’s long shadow — peeling back the meaning of familiar words and resurrecting neglected history. [NY Times Magazine] What would it mean to understand all of American life as still caught in the wake, still caught in the undertow of the ships that carried the enslaved? Sharpe also put forth the metaphors of the ship (the processes by which Black people are still seen as property), the hold (the ways that captivity and punishment are still central to Black life) and the weather (the ambient anti-Blackness that is as pervasive as climate).
Does what it says on the tin
Burp and Fart Piano. That's it.
MtG YouTuber Says Pinkertons Threatened Him With $200k Fines, Jail
"Gun policies... are downstream from culture"
Gun Violence Is Actually Worse in Red States. It’s Not Even Close. Colin Woodard, author of American Nations (summary), runs Nationhood Lab which is "focused on counteracting the authoritarian threat to American democracy and the centrifugal forces threatening the federation’s stability." [more inside]
What was that about the ship of Theseus?
The state of modded Skyrim in 2023: [Ray Tracing Shader | RTX 4090 | 4K DLSS] [FPS Test With RTGI Shader | 3440x1440] [RTX 3060TI] [Reshade RTGI - 1400+ MODS]
Northern hairy-nosed wombat numbers seem to be increasing
Northern hairy-nosed wombat numbers seem to be increasing (text article and embedded video). The northern hairy-nosed wombat species (the rarest of Australia's three wombat species) almost became extinct in the 1980s when numbers plummeted to 30 wombats at the Epping Forest National Park, about 400 kilometres south-west of Mackay. The first translocation of wombats from Epping to RUNR happened in 2009, and it is believed about 350 wombats now live between the two sites. Given the finite space of the current two sites and the predicted population growth of the large animals, the Queensland Government announced last month that a third wombat protection site had been added to its wombat recovery program.
April 25
RIP Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte made indelible marks on American culture while championing civil rights. Here's a link to his obituary.
Stil *ZOT*ting
Remember the Internet Oracle, the distributed source of all knowledge (read: wit)? It's still going - yes, since 1989. Read past questions and answers, ask your own, and become an incarnation of the ever-clever Oracle and answer someone else's. Writing and interface tips after the jump. [more inside]
Cobalt Supply Chain to a Hell on Earth
The race for high-tech metals has sparked a cobalt boom in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has come at a steep human cost.
e360: You talk about “industrial” mines and “artisanal” mines. What does that latter word mean?
Kara: The term is just nonsensical in its inaccuracy. It makes you think of craftsmen or people baking bread or something. In fact, it’s grindingly poor people scraping and scrounging in pits and trenches with pickaxes, shovels, their bare hands, strips of rebar... And that’s called artisanal mining, meaning people with their hands as opposed to heavy equipment. [more inside]
e360: You talk about “industrial” mines and “artisanal” mines. What does that latter word mean?
Kara: The term is just nonsensical in its inaccuracy. It makes you think of craftsmen or people baking bread or something. In fact, it’s grindingly poor people scraping and scrounging in pits and trenches with pickaxes, shovels, their bare hands, strips of rebar... And that’s called artisanal mining, meaning people with their hands as opposed to heavy equipment. [more inside]
She just sort of appeared, in a beam of clarity.
Here's what we know. We're alone. We're in a small boat. We're far from shore. The nearest land to us is Logan Airport. And that's when it begins to dawn on me. If we have to jump off this boat and swim to the closest land, we would be army crawling up the banks of a government-controlled airspace. The true story of nine people, eight life jackets, and a wooden boat built for… even fewer. Ike Sriskandarajah lived to tell the tale. Pirates of the Cari-BEAN-TOWN. [more inside]
You’ve been invited to a haunted house...
That haunted house is a Discord server. Will Jobst, previous creator of cozy story-telling RPGs and collaborative games ditches pen-and-paper for a new creation: "This Discord Has Ghosts In It" [more inside]
What! No Gin?
Tempting as it is to see the subject matter of the Cocktail Oracle—ornamented by Luhn’s bon vivant wordplay—as just a diversion, his choice of the cocktail as an experimental problem was not frivolous. Because of the formality of its conventions, the cocktail has offered all through its history a neat articulation of a combinatorial—or mixological—information system. from INGESTION / A MANHATTAN PROJECT by Daniel Rosenberg
Pet Shop Boys Lost In Russia
Pet Shop Boys have released a new EP, Lost [YT playlist], of four tracks recorded in 2015 for Super, but held off the album for not fitting thematically. The Lost Room meditates on the alienation of military school, with images from the German film Die Junge Törless [Trailer, 3m] used in the video. I Will Fall is a love song Neil said he could hear George Michael singing. Skeletons In The Closet might be talking about Russia's unwillingness to deal with Stalinism. Kaputnik continues the Russia theme. And finally, Living In The Past seems to be a VERY new song, and again deals with Russia. The video has a demo version of the song. [more inside]
"Do pink fairy armadillos exist?"
I was able to track my own past, including my past failures,
I Booted Up a Six-Year-Old ‘Breath of the Wild’ Save and Tried to Understand My Past Self by Patrick Klepek [Waypoint] [Games by Vice] “When I booted The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild this week, the most recent save file was dated April 9, 2017—almost six years ago exactly. The save sat in front of the game’s final boss, Calamity Ganon. In the spring of 2017, I beat Ganon, put the game down, and moved on. But with the game’s sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, due to arrive in a few weeks, I felt compelled to revisit what remains Nintendo’s most impressive release of the last decade. Doing so was a delightful form of time travel, an exercise in trying to piece together what Patrick Klepek was up to six years ago in Breath of the Wild. What were his priorities? What did he find interesting about the world? What weapons was he hauling around? I clearly made the markers on the world map, but, uh, I don’t know what any of them mean? I may have been the person who played this for 70+ hours back in 2017, but those memories left my brain the moment the Switch was turned off. They live on, instead, inside the save file.” [YouTube] [Livestream of Patrick confronting the above mentioned six-year-old save file.] [more inside]
April 24
“What are you?”
MIXED! Stories of Mixed Race Californians. “People are defining you according to this boundary, that you have to be ‘this much’ this,” said Fulbeck. “You have to speak this language. You have to take off your shoes, whatever it is. It's like if you're going to go off those definitions, then you're going to be in a world of hurt. You have to find your own way to define yourself."
fine water spray
AI-hab: All My Means Are Sane, My Motive and My Object Mad
A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas, deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.—It’s a blasted heath.—It’s a Hyperborean winter scene.—It’s the breaking-up of the icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself? from Chaos Bewitched: Moby-Dick and AI by Eigil zu Tage-Ravn
Make sure to say hi to Blathers
All the art in Animal Crossing...in person One man's mission. Fingers crossed he doesn't find any forgeries.
Edgy or insensitive? The Paralympics TikTok account sparks a debate
Tucker Carlson out at Fox News
Tucker Carlson out at Fox News [CNN] "Fox News said that Carlson’s last show was Friday, April 21."
Moderate amounts of ice cream might be good for diabetes
Half a cup a day, or is there something wrong with the study? "Could the idea that ice cream is metabolically protective be true? It would be pretty bonkers. Still, there are at least a few points in its favor. For one, ice cream’s glycemic index, a measure of how rapidly a food boosts blood sugar, is lower than that of brown rice. [...holy shit. --S.] “There’s this perception that ice cream is unhealthy, but it’s got fat, it’s got protein, it’s got vitamins. It’s better for you than bread,” Mozaffarian said. “Given how horrible the American diet is, it’s very possible that if somebody eats ice cream and eats less starch … it could actually protect against diabetes.” [more inside]
Postprandial Glycemic Response to Whole Fruit versus Blended Fruit
TLDR: smoothies ok We compared the postprandial glycemic response in 20 young, healthy college students (12 female, 8 male) after consuming whole fruit vs. blended fruit. The fruit included gala apple, with the seeds removed, and blackberries. We used a repeated measures two-way ANOVA with fruit treatment as the within-subject variable, sex as the between-subjects factor, and glucose maximum, glucose incremental area under the curve (iAUC), and 60 min glucose as dependent variables. Glucose maximum and glucose iAUC were significantly lower (p < 0.05) in blended fruit compared to whole fruit and 60 min glucose was marginally significantly lower (p = 0.057) in blended fruit compared to whole fruit. [Lisa T. Crummett and Riley J. Grosso in Nutrients]. [more inside]
Banned Book Book Club
Banned Book Book Club [via mefi projects
"Displays information about a book that has been banned in American schools 2021-2022, alongside a readable preview of most books (on desktop only) and a link to buy it. Reload to see another one.]"
Make a friend, be a friend
How to Make Friends Making friends easily is less about accomplishing certain actions than inhabiting a kind of persona. [more inside]
The Sequel to Worble III
Worble World is the latest full-length neo-80s synth skate video from the band Cobra Man and the goofy, oddball Worble skate crew. Catchy tunes, lots of big gaps, weird ramps, street grabs, general goofing off, and a full part from Manramp, this put a giant grin on my face, maybe it will for you too.
Free Thread #69
A new obsession, a centuries-old game.
Teachers nationwide are flummoxed by students’ new chess obsession: The fad, fueled by social media stars, has left teachers divided between displeasure and delight
Across the country, students from second grade to senior year have stumbled across a new obsession, which is, in fact, a centuries-old game. Interviews with teachers and students in eight states paint a picture of captivated students squeezing games in wherever and whenever they can: at lunch, at recess and illicitly during lessons, a phenomenon that is at once bemusing, frustrating and delighting teachers. Data from Chess.com, whose usership is the highest it’s ever been, and anecdotal evidence nationwide suggest a fervid, growing base of young users. This month’s U.S. Chess Federation National High School Championships in D.C. had to add overflow rooms to accommodate a record 1,750 attendees — spurring fears of a shortage of participation medals.
It has become easier for New Zealanders to become Australian citizens
Federal government makes Australian citizenship easier for Kiwis to obtain. Ahead of a visit by New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, Anthony Albanese unveils a new direct pathway to citizenship that will make it easier for about 350,000 Kiwis living in Australia to vote and receive government benefits.
April 23
The student ordered her own snake, even after I told her not to…
Gretchen McCulloch points out that "...we're in thesis defense season and not everyone has seen the snake fight thesis defense fanfiction." [more inside]
And we’re off... no we're not...
I've posted before about kaninhoppning (here, previously, previouslier), but since it's the world's cutest sport, I thought that revisiting it was in order. [more inside]
When Rock Stars Screw Up, They Do It In Epic, Spectacular Ways
But there’s no take-backs in life. Rock stars, like the rest of us, have to live with the consequences of their actions forever. In this list, we look back at the long history of rock stars’ fuckups and call out the 50 biggest ones. To be clear, we limited this largely to professional decisions that impacted careers. Many rock stars have done horribly destructive things when it comes to drugs or their treatment of women, but that’s a whole other list. The 50 Worst Decisions in Music History [Rolling Stone; ungated]
Cat Park
“I think I need to re-emphasize the detail on the sesame seeds”
“Four-Byte Burger” is a mellow video by Stuart Brown (@XboxAhoy on Youtube, but going by the shorter “Ahoy”) about his favorite piece of pixel art (“Four-Byte Burger” by Jack Haeger), how the original image file is “lost”, and his process for creating a “copy”.
(Haeger is still alive and was working for American Pinball as of 2021. The video doesn’t mention this, and he may have the original.)
(Haeger is still alive and was working for American Pinball as of 2021. The video doesn’t mention this, and he may have the original.)
The 'invented persona' behind a key pandemic database
"Azt mondja, hogy az angyalok a mennyországban magyarul beszélnek"
Many persons are fluent in more than one language, but my setting out some years ago at the age of fifty-six to teach myself Hungarian provokes comments and questions from those who get to hear of it. Like much else seen in hindsight, my enterprise seems to me now to have been inevitable. In my early years I envied various persons for various reasons, but my strongest envy was always directed at those who could read and write and speak and sing in more than one language.—The Angel's Son: Why I Learned Hungarian Late in Life by Australian writer Gerald Murnane.
The beef with "Beef"
Soleil Ho: We’re in Asian America’s peak media moment. But ‘Beef’ has poisoned the well
So it behooves us all the more to pause and ask if separating this art from its artists is something that would truly benefit the “community” or something that would solely benefit Choe and his enablers, who cast him in a major production despite the highly public controversy over the podcast clip when it first came out almost a decade ago. They could have cast any of the many Asian American actors in that role but instead opted for someone whose entire media persona is based on a misogynist and racist reaction to the model minority myth.
I see it this way: To uncritically embrace “Beef” for what it gives to the Asian American community shows that we’re on board with rape culture and with misogyny, especially against Black women. To embrace it shows that we’re willing to let others pay the price for our feelings of validation and belonging.[more inside]
April 22
What Happens When You Mix Beads And Milk
In preparation for the physical release of Cuphead in Japan, Studio MDHR has released a video of legendary illustrator Yoshitaka Amano creating the limited edition artwork for the first run of the game's soundtrack. (SLYT) [more inside]
Sleeping elephant seals fall through oceans depths
Sleeping elephant seals fall through oceans depths. Researchers have found elephant seals falling asleep out at sea, tumbling hundreds of metres deep in uncontrolled spirals and sometimes laying motionless on the sea floor.
Danco v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and FDA v. same
The U.S. Supreme Court yesterday put a stay on the April 7 preliminary injunction by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (previously). SCOTUS sent the case back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear arguments on May 17. The losing side may still appeal to the Supreme Court. The stay preserves access to mifepristone for now. Mifepristone is used in about half of all abortions as well as in the management of miscarriage, Cushing's syndrome and uterine leiomyomas. [more inside]
Oddly, Belgium wasn't protesting the "beer" part
The Entangled Notion of Climate Fiction
"Such narratives tend to eschew the issue of hope and despair, optimism or pessimism—this useless binary that terrorizes climate fiction and makes more complex definitions and points of view difficult to express. This matters because I often feel that talking about the issues expressed by my novels may make more material difference in the world than the novels themselves. [...] But, hooked on hope, perhaps reflecting a jaded attitude toward its own future, the book world, ever selling, requires an affirmation of the positive from climate fiction authors not required of, say, the writer of the darkest serial killer noir thriller. Again and again, I am asked to locate the hope in my novels and dissect it for the interviewer in a way I was not before I was pinned like a butterfly to the collection board of 'climate fiction.'" Jeff VanderMeer in Esquire, "Climate Fiction Won't Save Us."
The Internet is Not the Tool. I Am the Tool
At all times, I understand that the internet is using data I somehow gave it, and that those processes and technologies are now too complex for me to track. But it feels aggressive to me, in the way it would feel aggressive if suddenly every kind of advertisement everywhere you went in the world was designed only for you. When I say the new situation feels aggressive, I am anthropomorphizing the internet, but in theory the internet is a web of anthros, so that statement might be nonsensical. But is the internet the people? Or is it everything the people see and hear and know and make up, without the people? from You Have a New Memory by Merritt Tierce [Slate; ungated]
There's nothing stopping you from going to the lobby til this blows over
Here He Is... The One, The Only... Groucho is a 60 minute biographic documentary about Julias Marx, who with his brothers helped revive vaudeville and reshape American entertainment for most of the last century.
Sea la vie.
Horizon Forbidden West's new accessibility features address the fear of deep water [The Verge] The team at Guerrilla Games has released patch 1.21 for Horizon Forbidden West in the lead-up to the release of the Burning Shores DLC. [...] But perhaps the most interesting feature coming with this patch is the addition of a thalassophobia mode. Thalassophobia, simply put, is the fear of deep water. Throughout Forbidden West, Aloy has the opportunity to do some deep-sea diving in the postapocalyptic San Francisco Bay and elsewhere. There’s a point in the story where she can develop essentially a scuba tank for extended periods of underwater exploration. Thalassophobia mode, according to the developers, “aims to ease thalassophobia symptoms by improving underwater ambient visibility and allowing you to breathe indefinitely, regardless of story progression.” [more inside]
And How Can This Be? The Return of Lake Tulare
The Ghost Lake Rising in California - "Tulare Lake used to be the largest freshwater lake in the Western U.S., fed by water flowing down from the Sierra Nevada. It dried up about 80 years ago when the land was re-developed for agricultural purposes." (previously: 1,2) [more inside]
Hello!
Parrots taught to video call each other become less lonely, finds research The parrots were recruited from users of Parrot Kindergarten, an online coaching and educational programme for parrots and their owners. The birds first learned to ring a bell and then touch a photo of another bird on the screen of a tablet device to trigger a call to that bird, with the assistance of their owners. In total the birds made 147 deliberate calls to each other during the study.
April 21
Melbourne family shocked after deer smashes through window
Melbourne family shocked after deer smashes through window, becomes trapped in townhouse. The stag smashed its way into the Alphington home through a window, before becoming trapped on the ground floor for about two hours. If you are thinking "I didn't know Australia HAD deer!" they are a feral, introduced species.
Republicans are trying to make it harder for college to students to vote
Republican lawmakers are making it harder for students to cast ballots where they attend school, after the GOP suffered stinging recent electoral losses largely due to a historic surge in turnout from younger voters backing Democrats. [more inside]
The note was short: "We've decided to live here."
The owner of the home decided to let them stay. Whimsy ensued.
Hole wake
Astronomers think they’ve discovered a black hole some 20 million times the mass of the Sun speeding away from the core of a distant galaxy. And as the supermassive black hole barrels through intergalactic space, it’s compressing the scant gas and dust available out there, leaving behind a thin line of newly formed stars that's some 200,000 light-years long.
"It’s the logical endgame of American abundance and choice."
The Arms Had to be Out for the World to See
In honor of Vin Diesel wearing 3 different sleeveless shirts in the Fast X trailer, I scoured his films, noting every sleeveless shirt & time spent in them. When he wears 4 sleeveless shirts & spends 14-15% of the films running time in them, the films make more money and have higher critic scores [more inside]
Nixon In China
John Adams' 1987 opera about recent history, Nixon In China [Wikipedia], is here performed in 2012 by Theâtre du Châtelet [2h43m, subtitled in French]. Here is the libretto in English and Spanish. Here also is Nixon In China, a 45 minute film from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library.
Rapid unscheduled disassembly
we were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the blue checks began to disappear. CW: birdsite.
Street Fighter 6 Will Let You Fight A Refrigerator
I have never been this excited for a new Street Fighter game in my life [YouTube][Trailer] “As a series dating back to the 1980s, you normally expect a new Street Fighter game to play it safe. Sure, every generation or two there might be a visual shift, but Street Fighter is Street Fighter, it began as a 1v1 fighting tournament and shall forever be one. Until, that is, Street Fighter 6 came along. I’ll note before we go any further that I’m not a serious fan of this series. I played the shit out of the second, I admired the third’s graphics from afar and have had little to do with it since, since I’m both terrible at fighting games and not really that interested in them. But I am very interested in Street Fighter 6, because it’s fancy new ‘World Tour’ mode looks like everything you could ever dream of when a developer decides its time to shake things up. While we’ve known the vague outline of what this new game mode would entail for a while, a new showcase released today goes into huge detail about what we can expect.” [Showcase] [via: Kotaku]
“Who Jackie?”
Unraveling the Greatest Writers’ Room Story Ever [Vulture]
Zuker had started a new job as a writer-producer on Grace Under Fire by this time, but that show’s offices were also on the Radford lot, directly above the common area at Roseanne. He remembers hearing explosive laughter from below on the day some former co-workers came running upstairs at lunch to tell him the “Who Jackie” story. “What made this a legend for me,” he says, “is that within 24 hours, you’d be walking around the Radford lot and hearing people say, ‘Who Jackie?’ I was leaving the next night, and I heard two security guards saying, ‘Who Jackie?’ and laughing their asses off.”
Zuker had started a new job as a writer-producer on Grace Under Fire by this time, but that show’s offices were also on the Radford lot, directly above the common area at Roseanne. He remembers hearing explosive laughter from below on the day some former co-workers came running upstairs at lunch to tell him the “Who Jackie” story. “What made this a legend for me,” he says, “is that within 24 hours, you’d be walking around the Radford lot and hearing people say, ‘Who Jackie?’ I was leaving the next night, and I heard two security guards saying, ‘Who Jackie?’ and laughing their asses off.”
TSMC
I Saw the Face of God in a Semiconductor Factory [ungated] - "As the US boosts production of silicon chips, an American journalist goes inside TSMC, the mysterious Taiwanese company at the center of the global industry." (part of wired's 'let's get physical' series; previously: 1,2) [more inside]
Tuplets for Toddlers
SLTwitter from Robert Komaniecki: "I teach college music theory, but I'm also a new dad. I decided to combine my professional and personal identities and make a thread of music for babies where the adult musicians went way, way harder than they had to."
April 20
Nathan Lane Breaks Down His Broadway Career
In the inaugural entry to Playbill's new video series, "My Life in the Theatre," Lane sits down with a Playbill binder containing every Playbill from every show he's ever done on Broadway. [26m30s] Lane walks us through his career, including the time he asked Sondheim to write new songs for "The Frogs," how he almost changed his name to Norman Lane, and the production where he played a "thug version of Donald Trump."
“Don’t give away the papaya.”
There was another factor I hated to acknowledge as a freelance journalist. The work biases me toward odd and surprising narratives, the more dangerous the potential story, the more powerful its draw. This sensibility can be helpful when finding and exposing wrongdoing. But there are also those occasions when I only catch myself behaving like an aggressive and mercenary cynic. from Bad Tape by Dan Hernandez
The first thing he played us: Despacito.
He was actually a celebrity in Afghanistan, the violinist for the on-screen backup band for their version of American Idol (Single link Threadreader, original Twitter thread). He had heard through a friend about an Afghan violinist who had just escaped from Kabul and settled in LA (where I live). Problem was the guy had to leave his violin behind.
“It’s the end of the marriage between social media and news.”
Buzzfeed Shuts Down its News Division (NYT gift, archive.is), laying off 15% of its staff. Buzzfeed News won a Pulitzer (and was nominated on three other occasions), published the Steele dossier, and broke the story of Blippi pooping on his friend, but it was never profitable. [more inside]
This was a bad day to go into space
SpaceX's gigantic (and currently uncrewed) Starship rocket had its initial stacked launch, which started out great and then things got out of control, literally. The second link is video that starts about 30 seconds before launch and has a lot of reactions from the Space X staff watching the launch and their energy is, shall we say, uplifting to hear.
A defiant wuxia epic characterized by rapid, brutal combat
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty - the most approachable Soulslike to date [Kotaku] “The term “Soulslike” generates a specific kind of game in the mind. It conjures something that’s hard as hell, with fearsome bosses to beat, intricate levels to explore, tight combat to experience, and a world rife with enough lore to fill several tomes. You may call games in the genre alluring, unforgettable, and sometimes super cheap, but if there’s one word you likely wouldn’t use to describe Soulslikes, it’s “approachable.” Until now. [...] Wo Long is the latest Soulslike from action game aficionados Team Ninja, whose previous efforts in the genre comprise the Nioh franchise. Set in 184 AD during the Later Han Dynasty, the game tasks you with stamping out the Yellow Turban Rebellion, a peasant revolt that sought to disrupt ancient China. However, weaved into this mythically fictionalized retelling of the historical events of the Three Kingdoms period is an even greater threat than the poor, emboldened to rise up by some bad dude. Nah, it’s a mystical drug called Elixir that’s corrupting the lands, poisoning the people, and raising the dead.” [Gameplay Trailer] [more inside]
The Dankiest Sticky-Icky
Cannabis scientist Dr. Amber Wise answers Twitter's questions about cannabis in a seasonally-relevant video for WIRED. [more inside]
"the problem was Romania had run out of episodes of Columbo"
In 2021 a video featuring Peter Falk talking about the time he stopped a revolt in Romania went viral. This led Romanian YouTuber Radu Pericol Tiganas to do research, finding evidence which seemingly confirmed large parts of the story, recounting it in a Romanian-language video. Slate's Willa Paskin became interested, and found out that it was all a bit more complicated than it first appeared, laying out her findings in a pair of episodes of the Decoder Ring podcast which together are about the length of a single episode of Columbo.
Where is Home
As the Great Game Goes 'Round: Middle East Rapprochement & Realignment
Qatar and UAE in process of restoring diplomatic ties [ungated] - "The restoration of ties comes amid a broader regional push for reconciliation with Iran and Saudi Arabia agreeing last month to re-establish relations after years of hostility, which threatened instability in the Gulf and stoked the war in Yemen." [more inside]
April 19
Once Again, They're All A Little Looney
Cartoon Network has dropped a trailer for Tiny Toons Looniversity, the modern reboot/remake of Tiny Toon Adventures.
Philanthropy’s equivalent of “All Lives Matter”
Non-profit writer/speaker/thinker Vu Le discusses a recent joint statement by philanthropic leaders "protecting pluralism." Vu Le previously and even more previously.
Extra-national Chinese Police stations
Canadians describe surveillance, intimidation and terror 'under China's shadow'. In the UK, Alarm Over Chinese Businessman And 'Secret Police Station'. And in the Washington Post, Chinese police stations in NYC are part of a vast influence operation.
(archive link) [more inside]
(archive link) [more inside]
Inside the Black Box
Inside the secret list of websites that make AI like ChatGPT sound smart: (Archive) A WaPo analysis of the C4 dataset used in training large language models like ChatGPT, LLaMA, and others. [more inside]
Wahhhh! WAAAHHHHHH!!!1~
Hate babies crying on the plane? Want to listen to your tunes instead of the brat screaming in the back of the car? BabyMute is here to save the day!
An Epic Tale of Redemption Through Irrigation
The club’s nine-decade history and its forthright, sporty name may convince you that Barbara Worth was a real person—say, a pioneering female golfer, a contemporary of Patty Berg and Babe Zaharias who founded the club after a successful pro career. That is not the case. Barbara Worth exists in the pages of a novel and in a silent film. She was the creation of Harold Bell Wright, the most popular and influential California writer no one today has heard of. Together, author and heroine propelled California’s favorite story about itself: that given will and engineering prowess and water, the state can be whatever it wants to be. from The Most Famous California Novel You’ve Never Heard Of
Settlement for all US Facebook users
"“Goop vibes,” he said mournfully. I agreed."
Deck of Cards. Useless? Perhaps. Cool? Depends
Nintendo can take 25-30% of his monthly income
Nintendo 'Hacker' Will Be Punished For The Rest Of His Life [Polygon] “A man sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a Nintendo Switch hack-selling scheme has been released early. But he says he will have to pay Nintendo a portion of whatever income he makes every month, for a very long time, as part of a $10 million settlement with company. In a podcast interview (first reported by TorrentFreak), Gary Bowser, 53, said he was let out of federal prison in Seattle early because of his age, medical condition, and nationality (he is Canadian). He will soon return to the Toronto area. But Bowser noted that his plea agreement calls for him to pay Nintendo $10 million in restitution. [...] In December 2021, he agreed to pay Nintendo $10 million to settle a civil lawsuit Nintendo had brought against him. Bowser’s criminal sentence also called for a $4.5 million fine, but since he is returning to Canada, Bowser said he is unlikely to have to pay that.” [Podcast interview with Gary Bowser about release.]
People Lived in This Cave for 78,000 Years
People Lived in This Cave for 78,000 Years. Excavations in Panga ya Saidi suggest technological and cultural change came slowly over time and show early humans weren't reliant on coastal resources.
"Meet Comrade Student"
April 18
Cancel Culture
Smothered - The Censorship Struggles Of The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour [1h32m, 2002, Archive.org link] is a quality documentary about a lot of things, but mostly about how a folksy charming comedy show got too edgy for network television.
RIP Qwikster
What to read for National Poetry Month
The Michigan Daily's The Daily Book Review recommends for National Poetry Month: Devotions by Mary Oliver, Civil Service by Claire Schwartz, Be Holding by Ross Gay, and Asylum: A Personal, Historical, Natural Inquiry in 103 Lyric Sections by Jill Bialosky. [more inside]
100 Songs and (140!) More
Elvis Costello performed 240 songs from his 600+ songbook over ten nights at the Gramercy Theater in New York from Feb. 9-22. Costello superfan (and comedian) Connor Ratliff brought us the highlights from every night of the historic run. Catch up on his reports from
Night One,
Night Two,
Night Three,
Night Four,
Night Five,
Night Six,
Night Seven,
Night Eight,
Night Nine, and
Night Ten.
"This pun generator will at times insult, and at other times, delight."
Hairy? SCARY
Christina Hartmann and Michael Siegrist at the Technical University of Zurich have discovered that people’s disgust concerning food can be broken into eight distinct scales. The factors that determine why people differ on the various triggers for food disgust are not well understood, but the authors hope their instrument will contribute to a greater mapping-out of individual differences in this regard. [more inside]
"I couldn't do what I am doing if I wasn't autistic."
Dr. Mary Doherty is a consultant anaesthetist, intensive care doctor, and clinical research fellow. She is also autistic. In 2019 she founded Autistic Doctors International, which currently represents over 700 autistic medical doctors. She argues that while medicine selects for autistic traits, the healthcare system presents systemic barriers to access for autistic adults. She also argues strongly against recent attempts to subcategorize autistic people based on "severity", highlighting that [u]nreliability of speech for usually fluent autistic people, and the speed at which we can go from articulate and competent to completely unable to access speech, is not generally appreciated.
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo
This Transaction Raises a Ton of Questions and is Deeply, Deeply Weird
It is tempting to ignore this transaction because the business is some pervy corner of the internet. But I would argue that Pornhub (and by proxy its parent company MindGeek) is one of the most important websites in the world. Pornhub had over 2B visits last year and 100M+ daily active users. Visitor’s average time on site is 9 minutes and 54 seconds. Meaning that in 2022, a grand total of ~38,026.51 years of time was spent at this URL. Anything that aggregates this much attention matters. from We Don’t Know Enough About the Pornhub Acquisition by Evan Armstrong [all links SFW but the topic is PornHub] [more inside]
April 17
Kaktovic Numerals in Unicode
'Almost 30 years ago, a group of Kaktovik students invented a numbering system that reflected the way they counted in Iñupiaq and made math more intuitive for them.' The numerals are now part of Unicode (PDF).
Boney M - Live In Concert (Vienna 1 Nov 1979)
In 1979, German-Caribbean band Boney M [Wikipedia] were at the peak of their powers. One of the biggest recording group in Europe at this point, they appeared Live In Concert (Vienna 1 Nov 1979), presumably a television airing for a national holiday, and did an hour of their material, singing their own parts. (They were a bit Milli Vanilli in the studio.) It's a delightful concert of most of their biggest hits, with peak 70s disco costuming and wonderful performances. [more inside]
Have we forgotten that work is about getting paid?
How to Beat Superhuman AIs
Nick Sibicky, a popular Go teacher on YouTube, demonstrates how to use a recently discovered exploit to defeat one of the strongest Go playing programs in his most recent video, and shares some of his feelings on AI at this moment in time. [more inside]
Tesla is releasing a new beer to promote their vaporware truck.
At roughly $30 a bottle (guess it’s a billionaire’s beer). Meanwhile, the only successfully running Tesla truck model still belongs to this plucky inventor, aka The Queen of Shitty Robots (self-chosen appellation). [more inside]
robbery was quick, quiet, & clean, & netted more than 2.2 trillion ISK
EVE Online player uses obscure rule to pull off the biggest heist in the game's history [PC Gamer] “Instead of betrayal, this theft was dependent upon learning and exploiting the "shares mechanic" in EVE Online in order to leverage a takeover of Event Horizon Expeditionaries, a 299-member corporation that was part of the Pandemic Horde alliance. Using a "clean account with a character with a little history," Flan_Hill and an unnamed partner applied for membership in the EHEXP corporation. After the account was accepted, Flan_Hill transferred enough of his shares in the corporation to the infiltrator to enable a call for a vote for a new CEO. The conspirators both voted yes, while nobody else in the corporation voted at all. This was vital, because after 72 hours the two "yes" votes carried the day. The infiltrating agent was very suddenly made CEO, which was in turn used to make Flan_Hill an Event Horizon Expeditionaries director, at which point they removed all the other corporate directors and set to emptying the coffers. Counting all stolen assets, including multiple large ships, Flam_Hill estimated the total value of the heist at 2.23 trillion ISK, which works out to more than $22,300 in real money.” [The operation—spelled out in detail in this Reddit post.]
whose data, our data! whose science, our science!
April is Citizen Science Month! Join the 2023 City Nature Challenge global bioblitz and help document nature near you this April 28 – May 1 (global). Go on a Worm Hunt (UK). Listen to Heliophysics Audified: Resonances in Plasmas with NASA. Identify accessibility issues with Project Sidewalk. Explore the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's community air quality monitoring projects (list by region). Use HerpMapper to gather and share data on reptiles and amphibians (global, previously on MeFi).
He doesn’t say it’s on the house, but we both know that it is.
What I Think Will Happen if I Go to a Bar and Order a Whiskey Neat . Bonus: Scotch pronunciation guide from Brian Cox
Living in Adoption's Emotional Aftermath
From the New Yorker: "Adoptees reckon with corruption in orphanages, hidden birth certificates, and the urge to search for their birth parents".. Includes discussion on issues with international and transracial adoption and effects on adoptees' mental health; profiles three adults who were adopted and their journies in searching for their birth families.
Tear Gas Tuesday in Downtown Portland
A groundbreaking analysis reveals how Portland, Oregon, was blanketed with toxic chemicals, raising concerns about global teargas use: ‘This was a disaster’. [Guardian] Investigators have created a 3D simulation of the Portland police bureau’s (PPB) extraordinary use of teargas during a major protest event on 2 June 2020.
Forensic Architecture (FA), a research agency that investigates human rights violations, worked with weapons experts to analyze hundreds of videos from that evening, along with internal police files, invoice records, manufacturer data and photos of teargas canisters. The analysis reveals that the city’s downtown was blanketed with gas at more than 50 times the level federal regulators consider “immediately dangerous to life or health”. [more inside]
Don't Fear the Reaper
“You are locked in? This is what you want? Because it sounds like you have a lot going on,” the agent said, according to the affidavit. “You’re in the military. You’ve got college. You’ve got a lot going on, as far as good things in your life to kinda’ get in this world. It is a shady world, and I just don’t want you to have regrets if you come to work for us, because it, I mean it messes with your mind, shooting people.”Applying for a job through rentahitman.com is not recommended. [WaPo/archived; NBCNews] [more inside]
"The wonderful thing about music is that it's ageless." - AJ
RIP Ahmad Jamal, one of the great creators of American classical music.
Perhaps best known perhaps for his album At the Pershing: But Not for Me, especially the track Poinciana. Of the album, it's been written "if you're looking for an argument that pleasurable mainstream art can assume radical status at the same time, Jamal is your guide." An inspiration to so many, including Miles Davis, and a unique voice and vision in this world.
World Chess Championship 2023
The World Chess Championship is underway in at the St Regis Hotel in Astana, Kazakhstan. The reigning champion, Magnus Carlsen, has elected not to defend his title and play poker instead. Two players are playing a 14 game match to decide who will replace him as the official World Chess Champion: Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Lien. You can watch live coverage of the games on official channels YouTube (FIDE) and Twitch (Chess.com) [more inside]
I like things that I like
Starboard announced that it has concluded the acquisition of Parler
"No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," reads the opening statement of a press release by Starboard Media on their recent acquisition of the conservative social media platform Parler.
"the dead-tree era of computer journalism is officially over"
Maximum PC and MacLife have stopped producing printed copies. Harry McCracken posts a eulogy to an era in computer journalism.
Belated Dyngus
Hello, it's Monday, and that means a new free thread, and so here we are. By the way, apologies for not pointing out observance of Śmigus-dyngus day last Monday. I guess it just snuck up on me. [more inside]
California dreamin' 2 (electric bugaloo ;)
"There was only every slot, so you had to fight for all of them"
April 16
Spanish woman emerges into daylight after 500 days living in cave
"Didn't want to come out": Spanish woman emerges into daylight after 500 days living in cave as part of a research project. Beatriz Flamini, an elite sportswoman, celebrated two birthdays in the 70-metre-deep cave, having gone in before the war on Ukraine started and the Queen's death. [more inside]
Whaddya call a person who hangs out with musicians? A harmonica player.
Pocket Full Of Soul: The Harmonica Documentary [1h26m, 2009] is precisely what it says on the tin. I can't think of many who I can picture playing harmonica who don't appear in this movie. It's full of joy and harmonica music. CW: Harmonica Music
Ping-Pong against Parkinson's
Hello from lunar orbit! 🌔
An eclipse, the heart of a supernova, rockets up and down the gravity well, and more missions. Here's a snapshot of humanity's exploration of space in April 2023. [more inside]
A Satirist in the Abbasid Era
Satire is among the most powerful tools for bringing the powerful back down to earth, and al-Jahiz from ninth-century Iraq was a master of the craft. Beyond his powerful connections, his financial independence may also have helped make him one of the few writers who could speak freely, not only about the maladies of their age but also its various classes and subclasses.
Unpupular opinions for breaches of beachside conduct
"I unclipped her leash and Kit began to saunter, then run, one step ahead of the frothy surf, like a sandpiper. The wind pinned her floppy ears against her head, and she flung herself down to roll ecstatically in some dead, washed-up thing. She looked happy; she looked free; she looked right. In that, Kit wasn’t alone—many dogs love the beach. But the beach doesn’t love our dogs." [more inside]
Education and Censorship in the US
Children's author Maggie Tokuda-Hall lost a deal with Scholastic to license her book about love and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II because Scholastic (the world's largest book publisher and distributor of children's literature) requested that she remove the mention of racism in her author's note. Scholastic, after the public outcry, has apologized and offered to restart the conversation with her. Meanwhile, book challenges and bans of "woke" material continue to proceed at an alarming rate in the US. [more inside]
A picture is worth a thouand dollars
April 15
OK Go Deny Post the Okay to Go Ahead and Use its Name to Sell Cereal
OK Go, a band known for its elaborate videos (on treadmills, Rube Goldberg, drones, zero gravity), is being sued by Post Foods for use of the name OK GO! to sell breakfast cereal products. [more inside]
maybe there’s room for a Black weirdo like me
The books of my life: Colson Whitehead Pulitzer prize-winner Colson Whitehead on Ralph Ellison, Ursula Le Guin, and why he loves World War Z. [more inside]
Eat Sleep Rave Repeat
Former bassist for The Housemartins, soon after that reborn as a world-famous DJ, Fatboy Slim did a 90 minute set at Austrian music festival Snowbombing 2022, just about a year ago. It's a witty, joyous set of beats, and Norman Cook seems to be enjoying the show as much as the audience. [more inside]
Jimi Hendrix Experience started a new song before finishing the old one.
In this post, I will walk through the decision & explain just how bad
District judge Kacsmaryk's legally indefensible ruling on mifepristone. (Single link Substack). "Essentially the district court’s reasoning is this: the FDA seems slow and bad, so as a kind of revenge against the FDA, let’s allow plaintiffs to bring suits that are plainly time-barred! This isn’t really “law” in any conventional sense of the word." [more inside]
No nuclear power any more: Germany
Shut them down: In about 3 hours Germany will shut down their last 3 nuclear power plants. There's still open questions on how or where to dismantle them, esp. the highly radioactive fuels [more inside]
the only components he bought were the power supply and RAM
This PC Gamer Built Their Rig After Dumpster Diving For Months [Kotaku] “Dumpster divers find all kinds of things in the trash. From a full pallet of cold brew coffee to hundreds of metal tins for Yu-Gi-Oh cards, there’s no shortage of cool stuff buried in the heaps of garbage you’ll likely find in the bin. But while some of it may be useless, redditor Rydirp7 took the saying “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” to heart and built a whole PC out of discarded computer parts.” [more inside]
Drug Wars
A little-known drug brought billions to Syria's coffers. Now it's a bargaining chip - "After more than a decade of boycotting him, Syria's Arab neighbors are now in talks to bring President Bashar al-Assad in from the cold. The Syrian leader has been received in some Arab capitals, but he is yet to be awarded the ultimate normalization with Saudi Arabia, one of Syria's staunchest foes – and the biggest market for its drugs." [more inside]
Shoulda done an AskMe
First woman appointed director Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA's first female Goddard Space Flight Center director swears oath on Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. NASA's newly appointed director of the Goddard Space Flight Center has claimed two firsts before even starting her official duties. On Thursday, Makenzie Lystrup became the first woman in NASA's history to be appointed the director of the Goddard Space Flight Center. She also became the first person to take their oath of office on a copy of Carl Sagan's 1994 book Pale Blue Dot. [more inside]
April 14
comunità immaginate
Everything I, an Italian, thought I knew about Italian food is wrong (ungated) - The man I’m dining with is Alberto Grandi, Marxist academic, reluctant podcast celebrity and judge at this year’s Tiramisu World Cup in Treviso. (“I wouldn’t miss it, even if I had dinner plans with the Pope”.) Grandi has dedicated his career to debunking the myths around Italian food; this is the first time he’s spoken to the foreign press.
Paul Simon Goes Mystical Prog Acoustical
"On January 15, 2019 I had a dream that said "You're working on a piece called Seven Psalms." [Trailer, 5m14s] Paul Simon is releasing a 33m long piece in seven movements, Seven Psalms, composed in the wee hours of the morning. "This whole piece is really an argument I'm having with myself about belief, or not."
Food allergens malicious compliance
[...] a law intended to safeguard the more than 1.5 million Americans with a sesame allergy [...] [the law] mandates, among other things, careful cleaning to prevent cross-contact between food products with and without sesame. In a twist few would have expected, however, many food companies have chosen to add small amounts of sesame flour to products that were previously sesame-free, instead of conducting the careful cleaning required for foods without sesame. [more inside]
In Search Of Wikipedia’s Shrug Guy
The real triumph of the “Shrug” article, though, is its sole photo. It’s a man with a perplexing assortment of accessories: a tiara labeled “SCAMPER,” a neon wristband, a comically loose paisley tie. (archive.today link)
Bargaining With Your Lyft Driver
They almost did a car swap! This guy's account of a long, strange exchange with his Lyft driver in Las Vegas is funny and delightful.
Rehydrated Ganondorf can’t quench your thirst
“The third and final trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is stuffed with new details about Link’s next adventure, including a very good look at the newly reborn Ganondorf. And, as suspected, the rehydrated Ganondorf, seen in Gerudo-jerky form in previous trailers, is moisturized, thriving, and decidedly hot in the sequel to Breath of the Wild. His evil hotness is confirmed in brand-new artwork for Ganondorf released by Nintendo on Thursday, in which his increasingly Akuma-lookin’ ass is shown in great detail. Great man bun, cool pose, and perfectly accessorized, Ganondorf is going to challenge Link for handsomest man in Hyrule (and probably the Triforce, or something).” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
Welcome to Crab Fragment Cay
Internet lore tells us the story of Cheapass Games, founded by prolific gamemaker James Ernest in 1996. Their gimmick was, they printed small and cheap games, sold in small folders, that came with rules and maybe a board and cards. You would then supply all the other parts yourself: tokens, dice, play money, playing cards and other commonly-available parts that you could scavenge from other board games you might have lying around. In 2020, Ernest reentered the publishing industry with Crab Fragment Labs, offering an array of both pay-what-you-want-to-print and paid-for-physical products: card games, board games, quick-playing and easy-to-learn pub games, solitaire games and a wide assortment of the best of the old Cheapass Games, in Cheapassic Park. [more inside]
Household Formation Is Destiny
Home-based workers became younger, more diverse in pandemic - "People working from home became younger, more diverse, better educated and more likely to move during the worst part of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau." (More People in All Race/Ethnic Groups Worked From Home 2019-2021) [CW: link-heavy FPP] [more inside]
It is a solvent, after all
Can water solve a maze? Science YouTube Steve Mould built a couple of models that shows us that it can, but with a couple of interesting limitations (SLYT).
April 13
For the crouton petters
Submerged
Substack has a big problem. The CEO of Substack was interviewed by The Verge. It might just be the most disastrous techbro interview ever.
Kim lost part of her hearing after catching COVID
Kim lost part of her hearing after catching COVID. She hopes sharing her experience will raise awareness. Kim Gibson suffers tinnitus, vertigo and hearing loss after catching COVID-19. Her experience has been published in the British Medical Journal, with hopes it will lead to more research into post-illness symptoms.
25 or 6 Times 4
Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain
“Atlanta History Center explores the controversial history of the Stone Mountain carving through a documentary film [CW] and online resources.” [more inside]
carol gave me this copy ok?
As Carol Burnett is being celebrated for being quite aged, still alive, still working, and still hilarious, let's look back at this 1964 television adaptation of Once Upon A Mattress [1h11m], the 1959 Broadway musical that made Burnett famous. Also in the cast are Joseph Bova, Jack Gilford, Jane White, and Elliot Gould in his first appearance on any screen. This video was posted April 9 by Sam Gilford (Jack's son) with the description "carol gave me this copy ok? for Erenia" [more inside]
50 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time
Another list to argue about! What does Esquire Magazine know about sci-fi? I don't know either, but have at it! [more inside]
arguably the most recognizable video game song in history
The Super Mario Bros. Theme Is the First Video Game Music Enshrined in the National Recording Registry [Polygon] “Mamma mia, the Super Mario Bros. theme has been rightfully recognized as a key contribution to U.S. history. It’s one of the 25 songs that will be added to the National Recording Registry this year, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden announced on Wednesday, and the first video game song to ever be added. The Super Mario Bros. theme, officially titled “Ground Theme,” was composed by Koji Kondo, the storied Japanese composer behind many of Nintendo’s hits. The theme, released in 1985, has become ubiquitous — it’s appeared in numerous subsequent Mario games, was a theme in the recent Super Mario Bros. Movie, and has been remixed countless times across YouTube, TikTok, and elsewhere. 61-year-old Kondo, who still works at Nintendo, has made so many contributions to video game music history, including themes for The Legend of Zelda and arrangements in Super Smash Bros. games.”
April 12
a certain smirking relation to urbanity
Faulty Towers. The suburban subjectivity is built into the architecture of ultra-thin towers. Because they are so slim, it is possible to create full-floor (or more) condominiums. A New York Times study of the ultra-affluent area between Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue from East 59th St to East 63rd St found that more than half the homes were empty for most of the year. 69,000 new housing units were built in NYC between 2014 and 2017; that year, nearly 75,000 units were purposely unoccupied.
"Our failures here could last a generation."
Three Years Later, Covid-19 Is Still a Health Threat. Journalism Needs to Reflect That. Outlets like The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and NPR, to name just a few, have amplified voices and arguments that helped create a narrative that not only pathologizes those who remain cautious about the disease, but also fails to adequately convey the risks associated with Covid such that many people are unwittingly taking on potentially lifelong risks.
"Not everyone can carry the weight of the world."
Dril Is Everyone. More Specifically, He’s a Guy Named Paul.
The Chronoscope: Time Travel with Maps
Chronoscope World is a time machine to explore the history of the world by browsing maps dating back to 14th century B.C. More than 4,200 high-resolution maps can be displayed in a maps application on the correct geo location.
You can just browse the world map or browse cities of the world.
Here's San Francisco with 4 historical maps overlaid on the current city.
Here’s Amsterdam with 10 historical maps. Hint: The slider on the right controls the transparency of the overlaid map.
The site also includes special projects such as mapping the travels of Alexander Humboldt
Want an overview? The site's creator made a short video.
Here's San Francisco with 4 historical maps overlaid on the current city.
Here’s Amsterdam with 10 historical maps. Hint: The slider on the right controls the transparency of the overlaid map.
The site also includes special projects such as mapping the travels of Alexander Humboldt
Want an overview? The site's creator made a short video.
Ovulation to Implantation - Pregnancy Begins When?
The surprising science of how pregnancy begins An illustrated, 7-day description with this context: "Defining exactly when a pregnancy begins is a hot topic in some state legislatures and U.S. courts at the moment. While federal law has long said pregnancy starts after a fertilized egg has implanted in the uterus, state law in Kentucky, for example, calls someone "pregnant" as soon as a sperm meets the egg. With so much riding on biology that's often misunderstood, let's break down what is known: Here's how the run-up to a pregnancy begins in that very first week of action, from the minute a single egg, the size of a grain of table salt, bursts forth from an ovary."
Fyre Festival II is finally happening, says music festival founder
Fyre Festival II is finally happening, says music festival founder after release from prison. After his 2017 music festival collapsed on its opening weekend, leaving attendees stranded and starving on a remote island with no musical performances, Billy McFarland says he wants to have another go at running the event.
I Can Protect His Future, but She Can’t Be Helped
In a new article for Journal of Higher Education (twitter thread), University of Michigan Sociology Ph.D. candidate Nicole Bedera analyzes dozens of interviews with Title IX adminstrators at Western Michigan University. [more inside]
April 11
Chasing after 77
Iranian director Amir Naderi's third film after coming to the US is a love letter to New York City. Perhaps best described as a tone poem travelogue, we follow a young woman as she embarks on an annual ritual of a 24-hour crossword puzzle marathon. Marathon (2002) [1h15m] travels all across NYC, immersing us in the city's sights and sounds. Filmed in black and white with a guerrilla crew, it's a strangely involving story about the most insignificant of personal trials. Here's a review from Dennis Schwartz. [more inside]
The Facts Are Not in Dispute
How do you form a union? There are four steps, one for each of my paws.
An interview with Jorts the Cat on the role of love in the labor movement and how “the softest paw can be a claw.”
If a worker (Jorts) has a disability or just a different strength (stompy snuggler instead of supportive listener), adapting to those needs actually makes the workplace better. This is a silly cat story, but it’s an example that solidarity and accessibility should not seem radical: they’re just common sense.
Eldritch Horror of the Deep
The Japanese spider crab, up to 3.7m (12ft) from claw to claw, is the largest living arthropod. They're not angry, though, they mostly just eat dead things; and you can eat them. Watch a Japanese spider crab live cam at the Monterey Bay Aquarium (as of this writing, the crab was just chillin'). More facts. Finally, marvel at their majestic glory (DDG image search results).
Yer fond of me lobster, ain’t ye?
Dredge invents and perfects the fishing-horror genre [YouTube][Launch Trailer] “Dredge begins with a fisherman arriving at Greater Marrow, one island in an archipelago that interrupts a vast stretch of wine-dark sea, under peculiar circumstances. [...] Catching the fish requires a simple timing minigame, in which you have to hit a button at the exact right moment. But to keep the fish to later sell, you have to make space in your hull; each catch means rearranging the gridded cargo hold to optimize storage. [...] Through all this fishing, selling, and upgrading, you’ll find places to dock on other islands, one of which will set the fisherman off on a search for several artifacts that threaten to reveal more of the ocean’s secrets than, perhaps, he wants to see. It’s quickly understood that Dredge’s ocean has plenty of mysteries — many of which arise at night. It’s not only mackerel and coral grouper that swim in Dredge’s seas; something’s rotting the fish and turning them into grotesque monsters. Fish for long enough at night, and they’ll reveal themselves more easily, bursting forth from the sea to tear your ship to shreds. In these moments Dredge veers slightly into horror. But it’s a soft psychological horror —” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
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A Farewell to Kings
King of the Delta Blues Liars
Digging into Robert “Mack” McCormick’s archives to find out what he had learned about Robert Johnson uncovered a writer far more complicated and problematic than his subject. A lifetime of old-fashioned research repeatedly failed to deliver multiple projects, yet the one everyone was after was a completed manuscript on Robert Johnson.
Texas Monthly finally gets to write the story about the story.
April 10
Delibes: Lakmé - Duo des fleurs (Flower Duet)
Performed by Sabine Devieilhe & Marianne Crebassa This is one of the most beautiful pieces of music that I have ever heard, performed here with perfection by Sabine Devieilhe & Marianne Crebassa. [more inside]
Molten sulfur, like lava, crawled across the grass.
I didn't want to snark out anymore
Guy Raz's beardy stubble talks to Jason Sudeikis' beardy stubble about Sudeikis' career [1h12m], from his early years playing basketball and doing Second City in Vegas and through into developing Ted Lasso. You can see Jason transform between minutes 35 and 38 as they move into taking about Lasso, and his investment in the conversation makes the second half come alive. [more inside]
Showing that you’re on the battlefield of education
Inside Hillsdale College. Emma Green (previously) explores an influential conservative campus, an inspiration for Florida governor DeSantis' takeover of New College. (SLNewYorker) [more inside]
Unfolded
Al Jaffee, the legendary cartoonist who created MAD Magazine's famous Fold-In illustrations, has passed away at the age of 102. [more inside]
Floor 796
‘A crazy hippy idea’
Because a bee’s brain is so tiny – the size of a poppy seed – it’s only in the last decade that research technology has become sophisticated enough to analyze its neurobiology. Before these innovations, most scientists studying the insects assumed there could not be much going on in a brain so small and with so few neurons. Insects were considered to be like instinct-driven robots, with no capacity to feel pain or experience suffering. Now, that premise is being turned on its head. from ‘Bees are sentient’: inside the stunning brains of nature’s hardest workers [Grauniad]
When I'm An Astronaut
Cherry Stars Collide: Dream Pop, Shoegaze and Ethereal Rock 1986-1995 (Spotify, YouTube Music, Discogs, review, review) is a 2023 compilation album and companion to 2016's Still in a Dream: A Story of Shoegaze 1988-1995.
We have many stories to tell.
Story-Threading is a collection of folktales and childhood memories, narrated and stitched by the embroidery artists of the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre. The project also showcases 65 stitches practiced (32 page pdf) by Rohingya refugee women in the Cox's Bazar refugee camps in Bangladesh. In Aanr Fua Loi Ador Dow Yas Saa Thay Hulahala Gori Hawta Bat Tara Hoawn (Heart-to-Heart With My Child), the text and embroidery bring to life the complex emotions of a child’s life, and address with sensitivity the dangers that vulnerable children face, including child labour, early marriage, or sexual abuse (92 page pdf). [more inside]
Hell Never Ends on x86
From CathodeRayDude, two deep-dives into old netbooks doing things they *really* shouldn't.
Pt. 1, Phoenix Hyperspace: Anyone who Computers Pretty Good can tell you that there is no holy way to do this. No priest would bless whatever is going on here. This is bad and wrong, and someone should have stilled the sinful hands of Phoenix's devs. So I knew, at this point, that Phoenix had invented multiple novel technologies in pursuit of an incredibly stupid product that nobody wanted, but I was not yet quite aware of how bad it was going to get. [more inside]
Pt. 1, Phoenix Hyperspace: Anyone who Computers Pretty Good can tell you that there is no holy way to do this. No priest would bless whatever is going on here. This is bad and wrong, and someone should have stilled the sinful hands of Phoenix's devs. So I knew, at this point, that Phoenix had invented multiple novel technologies in pursuit of an incredibly stupid product that nobody wanted, but I was not yet quite aware of how bad it was going to get. [more inside]
In the Fight Over Ebooks It's Publishers vs Librarians
Libraries Need More Freedom to Distribute Digital Books But publishers are working hard to prevent that. Dan Cohen writes about the recent summary judgement in the Hachette v Internet Archive case. [more inside]
Something to procrastinate going back to work
Some Monday fun: Which Wikipedia Page is Longer? Article titles are also clickable on the page, for all your Wikipedia rabbit hole needs.
Future of Borges estate in limbo as widow doesn’t leave will
The Darkness at the Heart of Chuck E. Cheese
Last Squeak Tonight is a special web-only episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, a nearly half hour exploration of the Chuck E. Cheese chain of pizza parlors with singing animatronics, from its strange, off-kilter beginnings as way for Nolan Bushnell’s Atari to make money off arcade machines, to its depressing, soulless present. Even if you’ve never set foot inside a Chuck E. Cheese, it is a grimly fascinating watch.
bunch of what, now?
Please don't be offended, but the universe, or the fates, or whoever controls this stuff seems to think that I should share Bacon Popper's "Free" in this free thread. [more inside]
April 9
Turn the 80s Filter up to maximum!
What if we took a bunch of church camp songs and made them as 80s as possible? Armed with electronic drums, samplers, saxophones (and I assume a small army of Keytars) CCM studio musicians Chris Harris and Mark Heimermann turned this into their project Prism. Consisting of four colored albums, all your Sunday School favorites have been given a super modern (for 40 years ago) twist! We begin with Prism - Blue (1986) [30m, full album, weird crossfading of songs, YT Playlist Link]. Opening track here was Jesus Loves Me. [more inside]
How ToTP Made MTV Interesting
The story of Sweet Dreams, and how Top of the Pops inadvertently created the Second British Invasion via MTV. Annie Lennox's appearance upset MTV, who pulled the video for Love is a Stranger mid way through it's US premiere because they thought she was a cross dresser. She later performed Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) at the 1984 Grammy Awards Ceremony in full male drag. [more inside]
and if we looked out the window it would be all California
New form of keyless car theft
Birds, drawn.
The junco and the crow.
Song stuck in my head.
Strong beak.
Artistry unlocked.
Squelch with me.
Fermented berries.
False Knees comic creator Joshua Barkman previously on mefi in 2017.
Song stuck in my head.
Strong beak.
Artistry unlocked.
Squelch with me.
Fermented berries.
False Knees comic creator Joshua Barkman previously on mefi in 2017.
Lebron James' Akron Crusade
The Athletic has a long piece on the legacy that Lebron James is building in Akron, his home town. He has opened a Starbucks to provide both jobs and job training, and a bank branch, and bought buildings for housing, in addition to the school and mentorship programs his foundation runs. [more inside]
Police Log: "Misdemeanors: blahblahblhablahb"
Back in the day when copy editors couldn't correct mistakes after a newspaper had already been printed on paper and distributed house-to-house physically—but also after the advent of Web2.0—comes badnewspaper.com: an extinct volcano of these ossified mistakes, captured by digital cameras and posted on blogs for fogies like myself who used to buy trade paperbacks containing this sort of bathroom-reading-content (at least before Jay Leno cornered that lucrative market). Here is a typical entry.
A covert UAE campaign run by a Swiss company
The Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign. "Rumors destroyed his company. Then hackers handed him terabytes of files exposing a covert campaign against him—and the culprit wasn’t a rival but an entire country." A long article in the New Yorker describing a covert UAE campaign against Hazim Nada, the 34-year-old American-born owner of a shipping company, which turned out to be part of a larger UAE campaign against Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood: Nada himself was apolitical, but his father Youssef was a leader with the Muslim Brotherhood. [more inside]
The Original Grotesque
A cooperation (German language) amongst the German Museum of Technology, the Erik Spiekermann Foundation, the Art Library of the State Museums and the State Library of Berlin has created a digitization of "the mother of all grotesques", the 1898 Kreuzberger H. Berthold AG published Akzidenz-Grotesk, or AG. OTF and TTF downloads available at GitHub.
Zhang Shicao, Where Exactly Did You Put My Keys Last Night?
An 8:09 minute recording of a performance by the Shanghai Rainbow Chamber Singers regarding a roommate's misdeed. English translation courtesy of Wawa (Tumblr for translations of Douyin comments and occasional cultural explanations; YouTube channel for English subtitled Douyin compilations). Douyin is a Chinese short form video social media app, the international version of which is TikTok. [more inside]
“Who are these insects, the Beetles?”
The Beatles at Stowe School is a 27 minute BBC radio feature by Samira Ahmed about a 1963 concert played by a just-about-to-be-huge Fab Four at an upper class all-boys boarding school in England. While reporting the story, Ahmed found out that one of the pupils, John Bloomfield, had taped the whole thing on an old open reel recorder, the oldest recording of a full performance by the band in the UK. Ahmed gives the backstory behind the feature on her personal blog.
April 8
Whoa the seder never ends it goes on and on and on and on
The System Was Wack, so I had to Scream
"To get you started, here’s an incredibly rare recording of the entire Wilhelm Scream recording session". "Not an 'ow'.... a real scream....". The Wilhelm Scream previously and previously.
"She loved the medium, and it loved her back."
It's Draw a Bird Day!
Today is Draw a Bird Day! In 1943, a 7 year old girl was visiting her wounded uncle in the hospital. Trying to cheer him up, she asked him to draw her a bird - which, she noted, was not very good, but her laughter and honesty cheered him up, and the other wounded soldiers on the ward began drawing birds when she visited. Draw a Bird Day is a lovely occasion to celebrate the joys of the birds all around us ... as is the Cornell Wall of Birds. [more inside]
"I never heard the reverse, that a boy was 'girl crazy.'"
How Rural America Steals Girls' Futures (Monica Potts for The Atlantic, adapted from her upcoming book The Forgotten Girls)
Art, AIDS, and New York in the 80's
As part of their monthly documentary series, Vice YouTube brings us the 2020 film Wojnarowicz: F**k You F*ggot F**ker [1h43m, with introduction and director interview 2h20m]. Told through Wojnarowicz's own works and recordings and other material from the time, this is a look at a fierce, angry, brilliant artist burning with rage against the heteronormative world and the unfolding AIDS crisis. [more inside]
ChatGPT cooks up fake sexual harassment scandal & names real professor
From The Independent of April 6: "In an opinion piece published in USA Today, professor Jonathan Turley from George Washington University wrote that he was falsely accused by ChatGPT of assaulting students on a trip he never took while working at a school he never taught at. [...] In another instance, ChatGPT falsely claimed a mayor in Australia had been imprisoned for bribery. Brian Hood, the mayor of Hepburn Shire, has also threatened to sue ChatGPT creator OpenAI over the false accusations." [more inside]
Accessibility in design is a form of empathy
MeFi's Own Andy Baio on interacting with a world that wasn't designed with color-blindness in mind. Come for the interactive diagrams, stay for the solid The Purge joke.
Horrible Histories celebrates 800 Years of the Magna Carta in song
Structural Color
April 7
Keep an eye on the rabbit
Honey, I Sold the Kids
"Pretty Baby" Brooke Shields looks back on her life in new documentary
Brooke Shields' first modeling job was an Ivory Soap ad, shot by Francesco Scavullo, when she was eleven months old. She's spent most of her life in the public eye, including many years under intense (and, in hindsight, icky and misogynistic) media scrutiny.
A new documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (streaming on Hulu), provides an opportunity for Shields and others to look back on her life and career, and for the viewer to consider just how gross it was that a child was both sexualized by and pilloried for decisions made by the adults in her life. [more inside]
An Idea That Any Child Could Express in a Single Simple Sentence
It amazes me that a group of people could make a movie about being afraid of a hole, being attracted to a hole, feeling excited and curious about going into a hole, feeling concerned that, while on the one hand it might not be such a good idea to go into the hole, on the other hand maybe all the best things in life will become possible only after you have gone into the hole, and so on. It’s not the feelings that amaze me; I feel them all myself. It’s the idea that $20 million and a crew of more than a hundred crew members should have been devoted to dramatizing, over ninety minutes, an idea that any healthy child could express in a single simple sentence. from It’s Nineteen Seventy-Nine, Okay [The Paris Review; ungated]
What is paltering?
When you say, "I finished my math homework," when in reality all you did was take 5 minutes to write “666” in all of the answer boxes. At Heated Emily Atkin (previously) explains one way fossil fuel companies lie about their actions.
celebrating sound, agency, and avoiding walled gardens
Have your Mastodon account already and wondering how you can further participate in the glorious regular people inspired to creative acts of the Fediverse? Head over to Radio Free Fedi, the “small web, consent driven, artist populated, non-commercial mechanism, attribution promoting, community radio for the fediverse.” Something like a cross of Public Access TV and the early days of the internet. Comes in Regular and Comfy channels, for those looking for lighter fare.
Play it loud enough to wake the dead
Start your weekend right with a slab of 2005 vintage 'eavy metal & hardcore courtesy of the Roadrunner United Live Concert now on Youtube. Roadrunner United being the record label's 25th anniversary project, taking artists from past and present Roadrunner bands and letting them make new songs together before coming together in one concert in New York performing old favourites.
Early History of the Telescope
In the popular mind, many people believe Galileo invented the telescope. He didn't ... he simply knew how to take advantage of a good thing. Jack Kramer, of the Lake County, Illinois, Astronomical Society lays it down how we got to see the stars so deeply.
The "RV family" lifestyle sounds like a nightmare
Tiffany Ferguson dissects a trend of lifestyle vlogging about traveling around the country in an RV with your family [SL Youtube]. Content warnings for eating disorder mentions. Semi-previously on Metafilter.
"Poverty persists because some wish and will it to."
Matthew Desmond's book Poverty, by America (adaptation, NYT gift) (WaPo video discussion, NPR audio/text, New Yorker, The Atlantic, NYT, Roxane Gay reviews) argues that poverty persists in the United States because more fortunate people benefit from it.
Victor Wembanyama’s trading card market is exploding …
Living to work... on reelection
April 6
waydowntown
One of those weird cinema encounters that was possible back 20 or so years ago. Some random movie channel, back when those existed and were exciting. My encounter was waydowntown [Wikipedia], a movie set in Calgary where four office workers have a bet about who can live within the network of buildings and skywalks the longest without going outside. Echoes of Office Space, but much more dark and existentialI didn't know if I'd ever find it again, but I did. Here is waydowntown, from 2000. [1h23m, CW shades of suicide, self-harm, existential dread] It's not to everyone's taste, but it left an impression on me.
Accuweather's look ahead to the 2024 Total Eclipse across North America
Mammoth Meatball
They made a meatball with mammoth DNA. They made a website with mammoth DNA.
Therapeutic Benefits, “Exotic” Amazonian Origins, and Nationalist Cachet
Given that nationalist symbols of Brazil’s so-called racial democracy such as soccer, samba, and Carnival have generated ample scholarly attention, guaraná’s historiographical sidelining is noteworthy. Because guaraná never formed part of the slave-plantation complex, nor featured as a large-scale export commodity, the crop did not generate the trove of documentation of other Brazilian agricultural products, such as coffee and sugar. Unlike cocaine, opium, or marijuana, guaraná was never criminalized, sparing its consumers stigma and arrest, but excluding the drug from the vast documentation of state bureaucracies implicated in the coercive biopolitics of industrial capitalism and the racialized construction of vice in modern societies. And while the ingredient features today in energy drinks worldwide, guaraná soft drinks have not attained the fame of Coca-Cola, whose global brand recognition owes to U. S. political and corporate hegemony. from A Taste of Brazil: How Guaraná Soda Became a National Icon
My city had been pulled down, reduced to parking spaces
Parking Lot Map. This map shows you how much of the downtown land of 50 major US cities is taken up by parking lots . The loser is Arlington, Texas, where 42% of downtown land is taken up by parking. The map comes from the Parking Reform Network, which seems like a balanced part of your recommended daily allowance of urbanist activism.
a lynch mob assembled to not lynch me but our democratic process
Reps. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), Justin Jones (D-Nashville), and Justin Pearson (D-Memphis), now being called "The Tennessee Three," have faced expulsion from the TN General Assembly since Monday, for breaking decorum rules to join gun violence protestors (gift link) after they were not permitted to speak in the Chamber, on March 30, in the wake of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville on March 27. [more inside]
“No one must know or they’ll kill us and destroy the book.”
The Sarajevo Haggadah has been kept in the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina off and on since the late 19th Century. It is a medieval Hebrew codex, made to be read at the Passover Seder, and is beautifully illuminated, with a focus on the story of Joseph. The Haggadah has inspired plenty of art, including The Sarajevo Haggadah: The Music of the Book, by Bosnian composer and accordionist Merima Ključo, here performed with the CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra (with a panel discussion afterwards), which itself drew inspiration from Geraldine Brooks novel, The People of the Book. Brooks recounted the history of the Sarajevo Haggadah, and its incredible rescue by Islamic scholar Dervis Korkut during World War Two in a 2007 New Yorker article called The Book of Exodus.
Reverse Obitfilter
An age is passing before our eyes, a time that had never been so media saturated. We've lost a lot of people in the internet age, from Abe Vigoda to Betty White. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 official forums has a thread on old stars who are still around that's worth celebrating, while we can! Still with us are Dick Van Dyke (97), Mel Brooks (96), Bob Newhart (93), Willie Nelson (89), Gene Hackman (93), James Hong (94), Harry Belafonte (96), Sir David Attenborough (96), Roger Corman (97), Norman Lear (100!), Norman Jewison (96), Tony Bennett (96), Jimmy (98) and Rosalyn (95) Carter, John Astin (93; Gomez Adams! Sean's father!), Mamie Van Doren (92, on Twitter though sometimes NSFW), Tony Bennett (96), Hal Linden (92), John Williams (91), then there's Carol Burnett (89), Julie Newmar (also 89), Joan Collins (also also 89), and Willie Mays (91). [more inside]
Flipping the surveillance state
After the Los Angeles Police Department voluntarily turned over 9300 police officers' photos, names, ranks and badge numbers in response to a public records request, it is now suing a reporter and the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition to return these materials, over a concern for undercover officers' privacy. [more inside]
Sleight-of-hand magic trick only fools monkeys with opposable thumbs
members have gone on strike six times: in 1960, 1973, 1981, 1985, 1988
What you need to know about the looming WGA strike. [Polygon] “The WGA’s membership consists of writers spanning across the TV and movie industry. [...] The Writers Guild represents a ton of movie, television, and documentary writers. Most of your favorite shows and movies are written by union writers: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Star Trek: Picard, The Walking Dead, Detective Pikachu, Abbott Elementary, Better Call Saul, and plenty, plenty more — too many to name, really. [...] On April 3, WGA leadership asked its members to take a strike authorization vote. Basically, the union wants to know if its writers are willing to strike if a contract isn’t negotiated by the time the old one lapses. Voting on the authorization will start on April 11 and continue until April 17. Should the writers vote in favor, they’ll go on strike on May 1 if a new agreement isn’t reached. Negotiations have been ongoing with the AMPTP since March 20, and WGA representatives told the Los Angeles Times that the AMPTP hasn’t brought good enough offers to the table just yet.” [WGA 2023 list of broad demands] [Contract bulletins]
Rishi Sunak appears to miss the prison hulks of 1776-1857.
Clarence Thomas And The Billionaire
A ProPublica news piece has just dropped examining the relationship between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Texas Real Estate Developer Harlan Crow, and the frequent travel-related gifts Crow has showered on Thomas for 20 years - all of which Thomas has failed to disclose. [more inside]
Manifesting The Muse -- Dan Carlin and Rick Rubin On Human Creativity
Rick Rubin joins Dan to discuss human creativity. This unusual show evolves as it goes though and by the end covers a wide array of subjects and topics. By the end it isn't even clear who is asking questions and who is answering them. Carlin pulls a rabbit out of his hat, his work is history yet here is a great show on Creativity, interviewing a man who lives Creativity, Rick Rubin. Aside from his Johnny Cash albums I knew very little about Rubin, who I can now report is an outstanding human being. Rubin, when he is asking questions, is not afraid to put Carlin on the spot. It's really a great interview, both ways.
New York Jewish Conversational Style
New York Jewish Conversational Style (17-page pdf, 1981)
April 5
I want you to post an article about AI in Metafilter, and do it good.
How to Use AI to do Practical Stuff. "We live in an era of practical AI, but many people haven’t yet experienced it, or, if they have, they might have wondered what the big deal is. Thus, this guide. It is a modified version of one I put out for my students earlier in the year, but a lot has changed. It is an overview of ways to get AI to do practical things."
Also: How to Use AI to teach the hardest skills.
And Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok: How to Learn and Teach Economics with Large Language Models, Including GPT (PDF)
[don't share with candidates]
Company asking for only white candidates in job application sparks outrage. "A note in bold in the job offer said: "Only Born US Citizens [White] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don't share with candidates]. The company has apologized and said the ad was posted by a new hire at the company." [more inside]
Skip to “sir this is a Wendy’s” the minute you feel even slightly heated
Laura Jedeed on bar fights, protest trolls, and why punching a guy who is deliberately courting punches is a morally fine thing to do, it’s not pragmatically a good idea.
Bonus: Comedian Aamer Rahman on why punching nazis is better than debating them.
Jedeed has a thoughtful perspective on 21st century masculinity, with a generosity rooted (I think) in her experience of joining the U.S. military at age 18. “With every passing generation, men become weaker and more confused.” We are so used to rhetoric like that on the right that we no longer register how profoundly strange it is to feel that way about oneself.
Bonus: Comedian Aamer Rahman on why punching nazis is better than debating them.
Jedeed has a thoughtful perspective on 21st century masculinity, with a generosity rooted (I think) in her experience of joining the U.S. military at age 18. “With every passing generation, men become weaker and more confused.” We are so used to rhetoric like that on the right that we no longer register how profoundly strange it is to feel that way about oneself.
Brandon Johnson Prevails In Chicago Mayoral Race
Brandon Johnson has defeated Paul Vallas in a close race; here is reporting on ward-by-ward turnout and voting. In a race that was sort of a Teachers Union versus Police Union showdown, the teachers won. [more inside]
Un homme-orchestre
Franco-Ontarien singer Damien Robitaille crushing it with covers of various songs as a one man band. [more inside]
This study was in no way sponsored by Oreo.
Oreology (/ɔriːˈɒlədʒi/), from the Nabisco Oreo for “cookie” and the Greek rheo logia for “flow study,” is the study of the flow and fracture of sandwich cookies. With this work, we have studied the mechanics of splitting Oreo cookies when you hold one wafer fixed and twist the other. We measured the yield stress and failure mechanism of Oreo cookies, and influences on the cream distribution after twisting an Oreo open. With co-author Max Fan we developed an Oreometer (/ɔriːˈämədər/) for precise torsion of Oreos. [Introducing the Oreometer] [The Oreo Twister] [Full Research Paper] [MIT News Article] [Github with downloadable & printable files] [Wiki]
Afghanistan’s Ambassadors Fly the Flag Against the Taliban
April 4
OI? ISAC!
The Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, West Asia & North Africa, is the new name for the University of Chicago's renowned Oriental Institute. Founded in 1919, ISAC has been a leader in the archaeology, history, and anthropology of Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the surrounding cultures and civilizations. The institute has also actively disseminated its work to the general public, including a museum and a public lecture series shared on YouTube. [more inside]
Ad starring Rhys Darby and Jacinda Ardern
New Zealand tourism ad starring Rhys Darby (Stede Bonnet from Our Flag Means Death) and Jacinda Ardern (who was, at the time that the ad was first filmed and aired, the sitting Prime Minister of New Zealand.) Follow up ad with Rhys Darby; Jacinda Ardern; and Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings). [more inside]
Wisconsin Supreme Court election called for Janet Protasiewicz
Major news outlets predict Janet Protasiewicz will win Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election (CNN), "flipping majority control in liberals’ favor in what could be the most consequential election of the year with abortion access, election rules and more on the line." [more inside]
I've been hip-hopping since my days in the swamp
Nerdcore rapper The Stupendium (previously) now uses they/them pronouns, so I apologize for the language in the earlier thread. But their latest project brings together half of nerdcore to blow your mind with a rap battle you'd never expect: Unlikely Cyphers: The Muppets
Two great tastes that go great together
Am I The Asshole, Musicals Edition (Reddit link) Because a lot of musical theater characters make.... poor...decisions.
This is making me laugh and laugh.
How The Daily Show Gets Made, Chelsea Handler Edition
Similar to the "exit interview" with Leslie Jones, Roy Wood, Jr. sits down with Chelsea Handler for Beyond The Scenes, post- her week as The Daily Show host, to talk about her experience there in Chelsea Handler Dishes On Tucker & Her Week As TDS Host. And WHAT a conversation this turns out to be, with Chelsea going in-depth about her process, her strengths, her weaknesses, and a lot of other things. A conversation that has so much packed into it, it seems like it can't only be 48m long. [more inside]
The Transfemme Field Guide
Be Yourself, Regardless: The Transfemme Field Guide by Leadhead (ft. TransVoiceLessons, Jessie Gender and AdequateEmily). Text version
Pepsi Pink Filter
The Unbelievable Zombie Comeback of Analog Computing
"Bringing back analog computers in much more advanced forms than their historic ancestors will change the world of computing drastically and forever." ... I consulted Lyle Bickley, a founding member of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. ... “A lot of Silicon Valley companies have secret projects doing analog chips,” he told me. Really? But why?
“Because they take so little power.” [more inside]
"It's a little on-the-nose."
The Crack-Up
We often speak of secessionist and far-right movements such as the neo-Confederates in purely political or cultural terms, as symptoms of a sometimes pathologized fixation on ethnicity that crowds out all economic concerns. But this is wrong. from The Wonderful Death of a State by Quinn Slobodian
Klaus Teuber, designer of Settlers of Catan, dies at 70
The principal architect of the board game renaissance has died after a 'brief but severe' illness. [more inside]
How Paris Kicked Out the Cars
A city once remade for voitures has transformed itself into an unlikely utopia for cyclists and pedestrians. What can it teach us? [Slate longread, via Kottke]
Relatedly, Paris held a referendum on shared e-scooters this weekend, with very low turnout 7.5% of Paris residents voted 89% against keeping shared e-scooters in the city. [TechCrunch]
always a liar, always a thief and never caught
April 3
"I would be dead, but it would make me happy."
Daniel Wallace writes movingly about posthumously collecting the writing of his friend Randall Kenan (A Visitation of Spirits, Let The Dead Bury Their Dead, The Fire This Time). [more inside]
The Battle of Manners St
April 3rd marked the anniversary of a 1943 riot between US and New Zealand servicemen over Māori soldiers drinking at the Allied Services Club in Wellington.
News of the brawl was suppressed at the time. And while war clearly forged solidarity between Pākeha and Māori soldiers, New Zealand was still practicing its own local form of segregation.
professional women were Type A at work and Type A at home
A typology of household cognitive labor activities: anticipating a need, identifying options for filling it, deciding among the options, and monitoring the results. Research by sociologist Allison Daminger: in heterosexual couples, husbands who were project managers and surgeons exhibited strong executive function skills at work, but when at home, deferred to their wives' superior ability to plan and think ahead. (Definitely overlapping but not identical to MeFi's emotional labor discussions (the o.g. 2015 thread)!)
El Escarabajo Azul!!
The Historical Italian Cooking Blog
Historical Italian Cooking is a bilingual (English and Italian) cooking blog focused on a wide range of historical Italian cooking, from ancient Rome to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, with a side-trip to ancient Greece and a couple of relatively modern dishes. Many of the recipes are accompanied by videos on YouTube. [more inside]
Back to the Moon
NASA has announced the four astronauts that will fly by the Moon on the Artemis 2 mission. It's been nearly 50 years since humans have traveled beyond low earth orbit during the Apollo 17 mission. [more inside]
UFC, WWE to Merge; Emanuel to Serve as CEO, McMahon as Executive Chair
Endeavor Group Holdings and sports entertainment powerhouse WWE made things official on Monday, unveiling a definitive agreement to form a new, publicly listed company consisting of two “iconic, complementary” global sports and entertainment brands: UFC and WWE. Endeavor will hold a 51 percent controlling interest in the new company, with existing WWE shareholders owning a 49 percent interest. [more inside]
There is Persistent Consumer Demand to Believe in Magic
We have adjectives to describe the insistence on a superior past, and they tend toward the pejorative: vestigial, atavistic, reactionary. Exaltation of lost glory necessarily discounts the present; reimposing the ancien régime requires tossing aside today's players, often with casual recklessness. Audiences embraced "Field of Dreams" because it's a sumptuously shot, well-crafted movie with compelling actors and an Oscar-nominated score, yes, but also because they worried then—and continue to worry now—that something valuable is vanishing, that the best of baseball and the country of its birth is in the rearview mirror. That the only path to redemption is believing, twice as hard this time, in a fairy tale. One that narcissistically absolves our own active role in the decline. from The Expensive, Seductive Nostalgia of Field of Dreams
Just your type
Hello, Monday, happy free thread! This week, I'm wondering ... does anyone remember typewriters? Weren't they fussy and fiddly and fun? And didn't they sound great? Well, if so, today I have another free thing (or two) in your free thing thing, that may be pertinent to your interests: 1) an online (type)writing app called Writer that offers "distraction-free focus" and saves your text, plus you can opt to have manual or electric typewriter key strike sounds accompany the composition of your deathless prose. Hemingwayesque! (don't be put off by the neon green text — you can change that; use the gear icon to adjust your preferences.) [more inside]
April 2
PU (Pendulum Undoing)
Pannenkoek is the person who's been doing the A-button Challenge in Super Mario 64, and along the way has made a number of extremely geeky, but also informative, videos on Mario 64's internals, that explain a number of computer science principles along the way. You know, the person who brought M64's Parallel Universes (PUs) to our knowledge. He has a new video, on crashing the game in Tick Tock Clock by walking into a corner at the right moments (1 hour 12 minutes), and in this one they speak! [more inside]
Kyle Kinane's comments can cause cackling
Seemingly a very recent comedy special, Kyle Kinane showcases his own brand of intelligent, observant, insightful, occasionally irascible (or is that irritating?) comedy in Kyle Kinane - Shocks & Struts [1h]. It's a special that plays nicely within modern boundaries of comedy while occasionally bumping up against them in an unexpected, I think good, way.
ការចងចាំ។
“Blurred Lines,” Harbinger of Doom
“Blurred Lines” wasn’t supposed to be a meaningful song. It was, by design, a trifle: Pharrell, in imperial-superstar mode, goofing off with the white soul singer and textbook sex idiot Robin Thicke and tossing in a tongue-twisting T.I. verse later for good measure. It’s safe to assume that no one involved in the making of “Blurred Lines” assumed anything legacy-defining was happening in the room where Pharrell wrote the lines “I feel so lucky/You want to hug me/What rhymes with hug me?” [Pitchfork] [more inside]
Meet the Quenda
Meet the Quenda: (Video 1); (Video 2). It's not a language invented by Tolkien for the Elves (that's Quenya). Quenda, also called Western Brown Bandicoots, are a small marsupial species native to South Western Australia. Quenda are one of the few native marsupials that can still be seen in Perth’s urban bushland reserves (and sometimes at dusk/night-time at Murdoch University!) Because Quenda bury leaf litter, they help reduce fuel loads which might help reduce bushfire risk (bushfire is the Australian word for a serious forest fire or a serious wildfire). Burying the leaf litter also helps leaves break down and return nutrients to the soil. [more inside]
When A Toy Supports Hate
There have always been questions around the funding of the infamous image board 4chan, given its ties to hate groups and conspiracy theories like QAnon. But as part of the fallout of the mass shooting in Buffalo, it has come out that part of that funding came from Japanese toymaker Good Smile, whose Nendoroid line of super-deformed character figurines are popular around the world and has included characters from Disney and Nintendo, among other franchises. [more inside]
RIP Ryuichi Sakamoto, 1952-2023
Ryuichi Sakamoto, composer and electronic music pioneer with his band Yellow Magic Orchestra, has passed away at the age of 71. Band mate Yukihiro Takahashi passed away in January.
Even Orangutans need lactation consultants.
An orangutan orphaned as a child had no idea how to care for her first child. For the second, a zookeeper with her own human newborn showed the orangutan mother how to breastfeed. Zoe, a 14-year-old orangutan, grew up with the orangutan equivalent of a high ACEs score. Having never experienced a healthy childhood of her own, or witnessed another orangutan mother, she had no idea how to care for her first baby. The next time she got pregnant, zookeeper Whitlee Turner gave Zoe live breastfeeding demonstrations. [more inside]
More on AI and the Future of Work
Thinking About AI - "So where do I think we are? At a place where for fields where language and/or two dimensional images let you build a good model, AI is rapidly performing at a level that exceeds that of many humans." [more inside]
How Christian is Christian Nationalism?
By Kelefa Sanneh in the April 3 New Yorker. Here's one key paragraph: "For many people, Gorski and Perry argue, 'Christian' refers less to theology than to heritage. Drawing on their own survey, they found that more than a fifth of respondents who wanted the government to declare the US a 'Christian nation' also described themselves as 'secular,' or an adherent of a non-Christian faith. Paradoxically, so did more than fifteen per cent of self-identified Christians. This last data point might be a sign that 'Christian' is starting to become something more like 'Jewish': an ancestral identity that you can keep, even if you don't keep the faith."
April 1
Exposing the truth about the guitar industry
The batteries used in guitar pedals are more important than you think. A new pedal from JHS can now simulate the performance of the batteries used by the stars.
Rush
Rush, just Rush That is all.
Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)
Legendary Philly Soul producer Thom Bell (1943-2022) (Guardian Obit) created some of my favourite songs. He produced and co-wrote music for The Delfonics, The Stylistics, and The Spinners that was very groovy, yet also reflected complex and introspective moods. [more inside]
RFC9402: a notation to express exactly how your cat is wedged
Since there is currently no compact notation for describing such media, this document details a standard notation to describe the position and interaction of cats, containers, and related subjects pictured in these images. [more inside]
Spirituality is a Spandrel
The desire for connection and belonging, to nature and to other people; the feeling of being part of something larger than ourselves; the appreciation of beauty; the experience of awe—all are byproducts of other traits that had evolutionary benefit. Another aspect of spirituality is “the creative transcendent,” a name I give to that exhilarating, soaring sensation when we produce something new in the world, discover something new, find ourselves in a state of pure seeing. Painters, musicians, dancers, novelists, scientists, and all of us have experienced the creative transcendent. from The Spiritual Materialist by Alan Lightman [Nautilus; ungated]
Fun outings for visitors with limited mobility
"When I am skimming through the various San Francisco related subreddits, there’s one kind of post guaranteed to get me commenting. It’s when someone asks for tips on where to bring their relatives who are elderly and frail and coming for a visit. The responses are almost uniformly ridiculous." Wheelchair user and disability activist Liz Henry breaks down eight assumptions, and offers ten suggestions for "Fun outings for visitors with limited mobility" plus five ideas for at-home activities. [more inside]
Can I Offer You An Egg In This Trying Time?
On the memetic rhetoric of transgender coming-out comics ... but a lot more readable than the subtitle makes it seem like it will be. [more inside]
One night's sleep in pictures
Would you let your dog in your bed? Your children? Your partner? The Guardian set up cameras in nine bedrooms, taking a picture every 30 seconds for 12 hours, to tell the tale of a single night’s sleep. The bedrooms are used by a range of couples and single people, including one couple who sleeps apart and another who share their bed, on occasion, with a third person. Old people, younger parents, children, and pets make an appearance if sometimes briefly.
We've decided to let AI run the network
All you need are some quality mind altering chemicals and 90 minutes of time for the Adult Swim: Special Broadcast 2023 to completely reshape your reality. Enjoy! [more inside]
866 Wii U and 1547 3DS games were purchased with 464 eShop cards.
YouTuber bought EVERY Nintendo Wii U & 3DS game before the Nintendo eShop closes [YouTube] “Nintendo’s decision to close both the Wii U and 3DS eShops might make commercial sense for the company, but for fans and lovers of video game history it’s a disaster, as it’s feared many of the games being removed will disappear and never be seen or made available ever again. Loads of these games are tiny little indie things that probably haven’t been purchased or heard from for years, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth preserving! [...] In an effort to address this—or at least address it in a single place on as few consoles as possible—YouTuber The Completionist decided to sit down and spend almost a year of his life (328 days in total) buying his way through both libraries.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
Marilyn Monroe's Psychoanalysis Notes
Marilyn documented much of her psychoanalytic work in the notebooks she kept throughout the 1950s. Monroe's notebooks reveal a woman versed in Freudian theory. She records her dreams and refers to her unconscious. She coaxes painful histories onto the page.
Who Gets a Liver, Where and Why?
Where do livers come from, and where do they go? Life-saving liver transplants have plummeted in some Southern and Midwestern states with higher death rates from liver disease, while New York and California have made big gains. Not everyone is cool with this. Malena Carollo and Ben Tanen report for The Markup, co-reported with the Washington Post.
Are smartphones and social media causing a teen mental health crisis?
Don't panic about social media harming your child's mental health – the evidence is weak [ungated] - "We're told the internet destroys children's mental health – but Stuart Ritchie read all the relevant studies and saw little to support the claim."[1,2]
Meet the Woylie
Meet the Woylie, also called brush-tailed bettong or brush-tailed rat kangaroo. It's a small (38cm / 14.9 inches long, not including the tail) nocturnal Australian marsupial. Despite weighing 1300 grams (45.8 oz), it can move about six tonnes of soil every year in its quest for food. [more inside]
The Wayne Gretzky of Vasectomies: 58,789 and Done Counting
For years, Dr. Ronald Weiss (archive.org) kept a rigid morning routine. He started his day at half past five with a series of push-ups and pull-ups, a workout he’d performed every weekday morning, almost without fail, since university. He ate a bowl of plain yogurt with granola and berries while reading the newspaper. He drank a single cup of coffee — with milk, no sugar. Then, a few minutes before 8, he walked downstairs to the medical clinic in the basement of his family home, where he performed 14 vasectomies, one after the other, before lunch. Then he had a nap.
Do YOU dare to enter the threatening labyrinth of… GEARWORLD?
Come, unwary adventurers, into the strange, wondrous yet terrifying land of GEARWORLD! Documented by the distinguished travel author Eland the Younger, Gearworld is best described as “an access tunnel under reality.” Originally created by MeFi favorite Hugo and Nebula award winner Ursula Vernon (previously) as the draft for a Twine game, Gearworld has taken on a life of its own with multiple interactive fictions, written in Vernon's distinctive style. [more inside]