December 28, 2017
a different northern soul
No-one knows how, no-one knows why, but it's become a tradition in Wigan to take to the streets in fancy dress on Boxing Day night.
Some say it's a tradition started by German workers at the local Heinz factory, others claim a more ancient tradition derived from Elizabethan mumming. Regardless, costumes range from ridiculous to tasteless to downright clever. [more inside]
The Cat In The Hat Songbook
Perhaps you'd like to hear the 1967 album Dr Seuss Presents The Cat In The Hat Songbook: Seuss-Songs For Beginning Singers [YT playlist, ~30m] -- Side A: Let Us All Sing, The Super-Supper March, My Uncle Terwilliger Waltzes With Bears, In My Bureau Drawer, The No Laugh Race, Plinker Plunker, Hurry Hurry Hurry!, Cry A Pint [more inside]
I thought that I had to decide between [how I] identify and [my] career.
Ben Barres, the first openly transgender scientist elected to the National Academy of Sciences, has died. He is known for having written from his perspective about gender discrimination in science and been a tremendous advocate for women. Barres was diagnosed 20 months ago with pancreatic cancer. “I’m really not too bothered about dying,” he says. “What’s frustrating is that there are so many things I won’t be able to work on. There are so many things I wanted to know.” [more inside]
Rose Marie of 'Dick Van Dyke Show' fame dies at 94
Heaven just got a whole lot funnier | She was born Rose Marie Mazetta of Italian-Polish parentage in New York City on Aug. 15, 1923. When she was 3, her mother entered her in an amateur talent contest in Atlantic City as Baby Rose Marie. Nominated three times for Emmys, Rose Marie had yet to turn 40 when she joined the Dick Van Dyke Show cast as Sally Rogers, but had been an entertainer for more than 30 years. [more inside]
Nothing Golden Brown and Fried Can Stay
As 2017 comes to an end, the lights will go down on Flavortown for good. Pour one out in remembrance of better times.
Previously, yet more previously.
Previously, yet more previously.
SLUSH PILES IN WHITE
But questions must be asked: What constitutes someone being “grabbed” in their attention? What is the editor’s “subjective tastes” that bar them from not liking a piece enough? Who is this “us” and “we” who are not looking for a piece at the moment? My essay probably didn’t appeal to these folks for whatever reason. Fair enough. The subjective, though, is the personal, and the personal is always connected to the body which produces subjective tastes. Our tastes are not created in a void.- Marcos Santiago Gonsalez
The high cost of being in the slammer
The Big Business of Prisoner Care Packages Yet another reason to stay out of trouble.....
Why We Fell For Clean Eating
With Instagram nutritionists peddling diet advice that purports to cure disease and beautify, the Guardian explores why millions of "vulnerable and lost" dieters are falling for clean eating.
Twitter Picked the Nazis
NYT Opinion: Confessions of Digital Nazi Hunter. In which the creator of a bot that succeeded at taking down Impersonation Accounts gets shut down by Twitter itself.
"Aaand... commercials! Two minutes to Forrest Trump sketch..."
But the more of SNL I watched this year, the more I felt like I was watching a different show than everybody else was. I was tempted to call it the worst show of 2017, but I’m not sure that’s what I mean. It’s certainly made with a certain degree of love and affection that marks it as the work of talented people.Saturday Night Live’s current cultural cachet is built on a mirage [Todd VanDerWerff, Vox]
No, what SNL was was the emptiest show of 2017, and the fact that it was so over-praised makes me worry we’ll learn nothing at all from this particular moment in pop cultural history. And there’s no better way to talk about that emptiness than to consider just how poorly SNL handles the current occupant of the White House, even as it clearly wants to say something daring.
Main Job: Mathematician. Hobby: Secret Street Photographer
The eminent mathematician, Carl Stormer, had a secret hobby as a 19-year-old student. He hid an early camera in his clothes and took photos on people on the streets of Oslo in the 1890s. Supposedly, he took a shot of Henrik Ibsen but there are no identifications of the people in the photos. In his later years, he exhibited many of his photos at a show in Oslo.
Here is his wikipedia page.
“this just looks like a scheme to keep standards low.”
Who Would Pay $26,000 to Work in a Chicken Plant? Chicken plants have recruited thousands of foreign workers in recent years through a little-known program to fill jobs they say Americans won’t do. (SLProPublica by Michael Grabell)
This is definitely not the place for more of your narcissism.
If you're feeling low on your general schadenfreude levels this day, you could do worse than ponder the editor's comments on Milo Yiannopoulos's autobiography, Dangerous. Or read them for yourself in full in the court documents [PDF]. [more inside]
Kenji Dreams of Sausage
Can the nerd king of home cooking conquer the restaurant world? Jonah Weiner writes for New York magazine about the cult of food writer and cook J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and his preparations for opening his first restaurant, called Wursthall, in San Mateo, California.
Cricket, football, fire and snow
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