November 20
Three million Australians are considered at risk of homelessness
Three million Australians are considered at risk of homelessness. The total population of Australia is 27.5 million, so that's 10.9% of the total population. Services say they're turning new clients away. The number of Australians at risk of homelessness has increased more than 60 per cent since 2016, a new report says. [more inside]
The Bedrock Decency of the Average American
Two Americas: Why is American political discourse so radically different than the daily life of Americans? "...that ordinary Republicans and Democrats both think ordinary people in the other camp are more extreme than they actually are.
That delusion is depressing but unsurprising. It gets stranger, however, when you break the numbers down to distinguish between degrees of partisan affiliation and involvement. When the NGO “More In Common” did that, it discovered that partisanship and delusion were highly correlated: The greater the political commitment, the greater the delusion.
And then there’s this astonishing fact: There was one group whose perceptions were hardly skewed at all, meaning they had a pretty good grasp of the real views of Democrats and Republicans. That group? The “politically disengaged.” "
Death whistles
Why Aztec “death whistles” sound like human screams "Archaeologists have discovered numerous ceramic or clay whistles at Aztec sites, dubbed "death whistles" because of their distinctive skull shapes. A new paper ... examines the acoustical elements of the unique shrieking sounds produced by those whistles, as well as how human listeners are emotionally affected by the sounds."
Tell me what you cook, and I will tell you what you are.
"When we initially reached out to scores of chefs, recipe writers, historians, and food luminaries for nominations for their most important American recipes of the past 100 years—Which written recipes were the most influential, pivotal, or transformative for American home cooking between 1924 and 2024?—we expected strong opinions, but we didn’t anticipate the philosophical quandaries that adjudicating and assembling them would bring up."
The 25 Most Important Recipes of the Past 100 Years, from Dan Kois and J. Bryan Lowder at Slate. [more inside]
The 25 Most Important Recipes of the Past 100 Years, from Dan Kois and J. Bryan Lowder at Slate. [more inside]
It’s Called Rationalization
Last week, bible scholar, author, vlogger (and owner of one of the finest t-shirt collections in town) Dan McClellan posted a video asking the question Did God choose an adulterous man to rule his nation?
Apparently some viewers took issue with Dan’s message, so he immediately posted a followup video, On the intersection of some of my research & politics making abundantly clear what he meant.
"She was the truest witness of his life."
Cormac McCarthy’s Secret Muse Breaks Her Silence After Half a Century: “I Loved Him. He Was My Safety.” by Vincenzo Barney [more inside]
Literature as a performative, conceptual, uncreative art
In the sixteenth century, new printing technology meant that the works of one author could be bound, identified, and replicated. The idea of an autonomous, original creator became central to our culture. Gone were the collaborative days of monks accreting their manuscripts collectively. A century or more of audio-visual technology has slowly eroded that idea. Ever since radio, we have become increasingly less bound to books, and created a more multifaceted oral culture. Wikipedia is our new monkish collaboration. And this means, as Jarvis says, that what had once been public conversations in print now became radio programmes, talk shows, and Twitter. “Conversation became content.” from The modern discourse novel [The Common Reader]
Oculi Mundi
Oculi Mundi is a digital heritage destination: the home of The Sunderland Collection of world maps, celestial maps, atlases, globes and books of knowledge.
The project now includes a podcast, What's your map, which starts with William Dalrymple's exploration of an 18th century Jain cosmological map.
A Cinematic Progress Bar for Life
Enter your date of birth and a guess at your life expectancy, then choose from a list of movies. Memento Movi then shows a frame from that movie that represents your place in your lifespan. So, for instance, a twenty-year-old who selects Star Wars will likely get a frame from Tattooine, but a sixty-year-old who selects Jaws will be on the boat.
[via condour75's post as seen on mefi projects]
"Now stand by for adventure... three... two... ONE!"
Soundac Film Productions was a small company that produced animation for television. they made info cards and maps for use on news broadcasts, short bits for use as station IDs and over 4,000 commercials. They're perhaps best known for producing Colonel Bleep, the mostly-lost first color cartoon made for TV, and fitness cartoon Mighty Mister Titan. Ziggy Cashmere tracked down Scott Schleh, the son of Soundac co-founder Jack Schleh, and learned the story of the company, recounted in the article Building Zero Zero Island. They also supplied a Flickr collection of photos of Soundac materials and ephemera, likely all that remains of the company. [more inside]
Dockyard in Kent, England searching for chief scorpion wrangler
Dockyard in Kent, England searching for chief scorpion wrangler. The Blue Town Heritage Centre on the Isle of Sheppey is advertising for a chief scorpion wrangler to keep an eye on a colony of scorpions which have been living in the walls of Sheerness Dockyard, opposite the centre, for more than 200 years. [more inside]
The Founding Fathers envisioned a government resistant to corruption
First, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America encouraged the people to be virtuous, in recognition that corruption is a problem that cannot be solved by law. [more inside]
"interpretation of the entire history of jazz in one piece of music"
April this year saw the premiere of History… by Mary Lou Williams, completed forty years posthumously by composer Anthony Kelley [transcript]. Williams grew up in Pittsburgh, was instrumental shaping the sound of 1940s big bands and later bebop, for instance writing In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee. She went on to release celebrated solo albums, such as Black Christ of the Andes, and larger compositions, including The Zodiac Suite and Mary Lou's Mass. She was at the height of her fame when she died in 1981, having performed in the White House and taught Mr. Roger to scat. History… was premiered by the Duke Wind Symphony.
Even in the darkest stories, I’m looking for the light
I can’t think of a single role where I would say, Man, that’s me. Entirely me? No, no. First of all, they’re lines that you read and you learn, and that’s how that person talks. Sure, there has to be pieces of what you’ve done in who you are, and hopefully there’s pieces of who you are in what you’ve done. My mother used to say, Boy, you got to smile more, because if you don’t, people think you’re angry. So I had something in me. from The Book of Denzel [Esquire; ungated]
November 19
"Trouble? Ron, we'll be lucky if we still have a freaking job!"
TWENTY YEARS AGO TONIGHT -- Malice at the Palace, November 19, 2004: The Detroit Pistons, former champs of basketball from the 2003-04 season, were hosting the Indiana Pacers in their home arena, The Palace of Auburn Hills, for an early game of the new season. The Pacers took an early lead and held it, thanks mostly to 6'11" center Jermaine O'Neal and well-known hothead Ron Artest at small forward. With one minute left in the game, Pistons center Ben Wallace attempted a layup shot but was fouled from behind by Artest. A shoving match ensued between the two, and officials sent Artest to the bench to cool off. A Pistons fan sitting only a few rows away threw his Diet Coke at Artest, lying prone. And then all hell broke loose. [more inside]
Got a poem? Leave a poem! Need a poem? Take a poem!
During the pandemic, the town of Bremerton, Washington installed a little Take A Poem, Leave A Poem box. Liminal Garrett bemoaned the fact that there's never any poems to take. So they took the box's plight to the internet: use this form to send them a poem, they'll print it out and put it in the box for others to take!
'Europe, 1648'
Tarantula venom study could help epilepsy patients
Tarantula venom study could help epilepsy patients like this toddler who's had 50 ambulance rides before her third birthday. The study will test spider venom molecules against brain tissue made from the blood of individual epilepsy patients.
Where we're going, we don't need colour wheels
The Colour Literacy Project "The Colour Literacy Project is a 21st century initiative that recognizes colour as a meta-discipline. Our mission is to provide state-of-the-art educational resources that strengthen the bridges between the sciences, arts, design and humanities in order to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future. " [via: Is color even real?]
The Disease of the Powerful
Dan Gardner on Henry Ford, his son Edsel, and unpasteurized milk. "Intellectual arrogance cripples the powerful but it is a danger to us all."
New tool builds RAG with Page Rank algorithm
RAG: Retrieval Augmented Generation They built an RAG tool using Page Rank, the basic algorithm that Google built Web Search on. They are offering 100 free trials using their tool. See below for a typical task analyzing Dicken's "Christmas Carol".
RAG:Retrieval Augmented Generation is a technique that grants generative artificial intelligence models information retrieval capabilities. It modifies interactions with a large language model (LLM) so that the model responds to user queries with reference to a specified set of documents.] [more inside]
When you fight corruption, corruption fights back
The U.S. real estate market has become a money-laundering haven for corrupt officials and criminals across the world, a place to hide their cash behind opaque shell companies. from The mysterious Virginia mansion allegedly bought with stolen Nigerian money [The Washington Post; ungated]
Female Fronted Metal the Ninth 🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘🤘
Firstly, Poppy's new metalcore album Negative Spaces dropped. Wikipedia says: "Musically, the album has been described as Nu Metal,metalcore, industrial,pop metal, arena rock, electropop, synth-pop, and hyperpop, with elements of grunge, emo, space rock, and tech-metal." It was produced by Bring Me The Horizon's Jordan Fish and has gotten a lot of good reviews. [more inside]
I just asked you to watch the dog!
“It’s a miracle that this painting survives.”
A Man of Parts and Learning by Fara Dabhoiwala [archive link] is the text of a lecture about the portrait of 18th Century Jamaican polymath Francis Williams, the first Black man to be proposed for election to the Royal Society, which became the subject of popular interest last month when it was revealed that the painting celebrated Williams’ great scientific triumph. In his lecture, Dabhoiwala recounts the process by which the discovery was made, as well as explaining the context. You can watch it here.
The Love It Took To Leave You
Saxophonist and composer Colin Stetson performs 5 tracks off his latest and first non-soundtrack solo album in 7 years: The Love It Took To Leave You (SLYT, [warning for flashing lights]) [more inside]
Murder for Dummies
Murder for Dummies is a 6-part horror-comedy whodunnit series in the form of a true crime mockumentary about the murder of ventriloquist Keith Flapp. Created by comedy troupe Casual Violence. Youtube playlist. Trailer.
The source of demand was obvious
However, the calculator differs from the personal computer in one very significant way: calculators slid directly down the market from pricey machines owned by organizations to birthday gifts handed out by middle-class parents. At incredible speed (far faster than computers) calculators became as commonplace as wristwatches; indeed, it wasn’t long before manufacturers put calculators in wristwatches. Though the market leaders changed rapidly as the technology advanced, there was no disruption from below, no new path blazed by a doughty band of rugged entrepreneurs. We will have to consider later just why that was the case. from A Craving for Calculation
November 18
"Got no skill for BIG TALK, I like
World is watching as endangered turtles are moved to new home
World is watching as endangered turtles are moved to new home outside natural habitat.
A rare Western Australian turtle species will be introduced to a new habitat in the state's South West, in a last-ditch effort to bring the reptiles back from the brink of extinction. [more inside]
Inefficiency in search has long been the norm; AI will snuff it out
The change will be the equivalent of going from navigating a library with the Dewey decimal system, and thus encountering related books on adjacent shelves, to requesting books for pickup through a digital catalog. It could completely reorient our relationship to knowledge, prioritizing rapid, detailed, abridged answers over a deep understanding and the consideration of varied sources and viewpoints. Much of what’s beautiful about searching the internet is jumping into ridiculous Reddit debates and developing unforeseen obsessions on the way to mastering a topic you’d first heard of six hours ago, via a different search; falling into clutter and treasure, all the time, without ever intending to. AI search may close off these avenues to not only discovery but its impetus, curiosity. from The Death of Search [The Atlantic: ungated]
For holiday shopping or spending down those gift cards
An Argentinian ghost story, climate fiction for a better future, guidance on writing and the writing life, a satellite murder mystery, a resource for parents of children undergoing gender affirming care, the 2024 GG's, and more: a roundup of more than 50 new and forthcoming small press books (previously). [more inside]
That’s Balming Tiger’s story: “This is funny, so let’s do it.”
“The idea of calling our music ‘alt K-pop’ also started as satire. ‘We’re not K-pop idols, but let’s make some K-pop anyway,’ that idea. But as you do it more, you kinda become more aligned with it and believe in it. Even though it started as a joke, it became our reality.” Balming Tiger Is Re-Writing the Rules of K-Pop [more inside]
We're All Bezos on This Bus
R.U. Sirius interviews Jeremy Braddock about his new book Firesign: The Electromagnetic History of Everything as told in Nine Comedy Albums and the place of the seminal comedy group The Firesign Theatre in 20th century technoculture. [more inside]
The worlds most dangerous bird
Some fantastic and eminently quotable quotes from this ABC piece - Australia's Cassowaries EXPOSED: The Truth Behind the World's Most Dangerous Bird - Dr Ann Jones. A quick sample - "Just give it your sandwich", "That white bread'll probably make him constipated; just sayin'", "I mean you no harm", "Look at those wattles, they're like testicles..." [more inside]
more like bored games kwim
Let's talk board games! What do you like that's new? What do you like that's old? What games get better if you start selectively ignoring the rules? Or ignore that suggestion, and treat this post as a #freethread! Link unrelated.
"My heart wants to sing every song it hears."
the antideluge
An international team of scientists using observations from NASA-German satellites found evidence that Earth’s total amount of freshwater dropped abruptly starting in May 2014 and has remained low ever since.
For those who suffer from recurrent UTIs, there's a vaccine
For those who suffer from recurrent UTIs, there's a vaccine. Urinary tract infections can be extremely painful and some women experience them frequently. Now there is a vaccine to help prevent UTIs.
One need only go for a walk in the woods
"Walking amid a tangle of ancient Sitka spruces and cedars on the island of Gwaii Haanas in British Columbia, Robert Moor wonders how being in the presence of old-growth trees can help us feel, rather than intellectualize, not only the deep past, but also our responsibility to the future."
It’s hard not to think of the linearity of one’s lifetime on a river
I don’t know if it was the lack of tourists or the subdued surroundings, but when we hit the Ocklawaha, time seemed to dilate, to spread out along the edges, to submerge into the river’s unseen depths. More or less, it came to a creeping halt. As we floated up through central Florida along the Ocklawaha’s surface, I imagined something about the river led it to be of an inordinate density. Perhaps there amid the tree-marked emptiness, the river’s anomalous mass placed such a stress upon reality that the curve of spacetime stretched and stretched until it slowed like the river and a parallel pace was achieved. from To Fling Out Broad Its Name by Will Wellman [Socrates on the Beach]
November 17
Automatic digital piano recorder
Chip Weinberger developed the Jamcorder, an always on device to record everything you play on your digital piano: "Truly set & forget, you never need to hit record. Instead, just open the app and all your music is already there. and we mean all of it. Jamcorder stores 25,000 hours of music — around 3 straight years — right out of the box. So you can focus on playing and just jam away." Video. [more inside]
How a Team of Gophers Restored Mount St. Helens
How a Team of Gophers Restored Mount St. Helens After Its Catastrophic Eruption With Less Than a Day of Digging.
After the volcanic eruption of 1980, scientists released the burrowing rodents for only a brief time, but their activities left a remarkably enduring impact, according to a new study.
The Busboy Remembers RFK
Juan Romero, the busboy who cradled RFK’s head just after being shot, remembered those moments for StoryCorps. “I remember I had a rosary in my shirt pocket and I took it out, thinking that he would need it a lot more than me. I wrapped it around his right hand and then they wheeled him away." [more inside]
An American Peculiarity
“Since political communication research is predominantly US-centric, there is a tendency to apply American findings directly to the Asian context,” Kobayashi added. “Our study challenges this tendency and demonstrates the importance of research tailored to the Asian context.” By examining news consumption in Japan and Hong Kong alongside the US, the researchers aimed to understand if selective exposure is a universal behavior or if specific national and cultural factors shape it. from Americans Are More Likely to Choose News That Supports Their Beliefs. This New Study Reveals Why. [The Debrief]
Homebrew LLMs and Open Source Models
With a decent local GPU and some free open source software like ollama and open-webui you can try "open source" LLM models like Meta's llama, Mistral AI's mistral, or Alibaba's qwen entirely offline. [more inside]
Martha Martha Martha
I got the worms workin' under my skirt
Hila the Earth makes amusing raps about the earth, soil, and plants, like Dirty Talk and Wet Ass Planet. Nate & Hila (nateandhila.com) have similar duets on topics like honeybee sex and compost.
Delete your tweets (for free) before you yeet
Easy and free script for bulk-deleting your tweets. Courtesy of Luca Hammer. You do need to download and then unzip your archive, and briefly reanimate your Xitter account if you've already deactivated. Other than that, it was a couple of copy/pastes and my 17 years of history was gone in half an hour. Sad, but necessary.
this section will take about 20 hours and will max out Eevee's EVs
Beating Pokemon Platinum: not very hard. Easy game for babies.Beating all 4 billion+ different possible random seeds of Pokemon Platinum with a single static set of button presses: somewhat more complicated. But thanks to, among other things, intentionally sabotaging your own pets and using transdimensional mail to bifurcate reality now and then, youtuber MartSnake shows that it is in fact possible. [via RPS] [more inside]