October 2015 Archives
October 31
The film is made of different types of tea leaves
Chinti: a short animated film about an ant who finds a picture of the Taj Mahal. Written, directed, and animated by Natalia Mirzoyan (previously).
I am named after the daughter my father lost
"What's in a Necronym?" by Jeannie Vanasco: "Whether the knowledge affected van Gogh—that he shared both his name and birthday with a dead sibling—remains unknown, the guide said. 'Does anyone have any questions?' he asked. My mind filled with loud, hurried thoughts and just as suddenly emptied, like a flock of birds scattering from a field." [more inside]
'you're 'fugees now'
Stand up, cheap!
Ikea Hack: $22 Standup Desk. "Interested in trying a standing desk but put off by the price? Check this out.
Colin Nederkoorn, founder and CEO of Customer.io, has designed a simple base that can raise a monitor and keyboard up to standing desk height. Even better, it's constructed out of Ikea furniture that'll only run you $22.
Nederkoorn named his creation the Standesk 2200." [more inside]
Apparently he had enough medals in the closet already
The All Blacks today became the first team to defend the Rugby World Cup. After the match a young eight year old fan ran onto the field to join the celebrations and took a heavy tackle from security - what happened next is pure gold.
All Dogs Shred in Heaven
Tillman, the Skateboarding English Bulldog who became an Internet celebrity, has left the Boardwalk. He was 10 years old in centripetal years.
Obligatory Monty Python Reference Goes Here
Geekfilter: A series of video lectures on how Python works under the hood. (MLYT)
You better be fast ...and furious.
Norwegian sketch comedy actors together with two random rappers wandering the beach in LA make magic together.
The Case for Bad Coffee
Cheap coffee is one of America's most unsung comfort foods. It's as warming and familiar as a homemade lasagna or a 6-hour stew. It tastes of midnight diners and Tom Waits songs; ice cream and cigarettes with a dash of Swiss Miss. It makes me remember the best cup of coffee I ever had. Even though there was never just one best cup: there were hundreds. [SLSeriousEats]
31 Horror Icons
Every day this month, the wacky graphics folks at Baboon Creation (with Motion Designer Simon Lagneau) have posted an animated gif showing an iconic horror character in a 'walk cycle' (or float or bounce, depending on the character). From Frankenstein's Monster on the 1st to Michael Jackson Zombie on the 31st, all in a cartoonish style that's more spoopy than spooky. (Day 17: the Addams Family's Cousin Itt) Still, they call it "31 Horror Days"; I can't disagree or the monsters'll get me.
REGGAE REVIVAL
After more than two decades of being dismissed as music for parents and tourists, roots reggae is relevant again in Jamaica. A group of young artists is repopularizing the genre in a new wave that has been named the Reggae Revival. (Revival is a controversial word here, I would learn, but more on that later.) There are enough of them to call it a movement, the best-known being the singers Protoje, a 33-year-old from St. Elizabeth, and Chronixx, 23, from St. Catherine. - Meet the Millennial Musicians Behind Jamaica’s New Movement
“I have the most fulfilling job in the world. I am the Art Squad”
In “Anything for a Witness”, the most recent episode of the Everything Is Stories podcast, Lois Gibson, relates the story of her career, loving faces, and her general thoughts on being the greatest forensic artist of our time. (Includes intense descriptions of sexual violence.) This closes a loop with “Burden of Proof”, the podcast’s first episode, in which a former videographer for COPS and former crime scene photographer describes their careers affiliated with the law. Inside, a few more of the crime episodes that have been a staple of the freeform, well-produced, interview podcast. [more inside]
The High Drama of the Street Fighter EVO 2015 championships
Danse Macabre
Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice
"Women and cats will do as they please."
666 - the album
Released in 1971, 666 is the third and final Aphrodite's Child album, a two record concept concerning the biblical Apocalypse. The singer (now deceased) went on to become this guy. The keyboard maestro went on to become this guy. But the album itself remains one of the creepiest, strangest, best examples of so-called progressive rock ever released. And that [infinity] track featuring Irene Papas on vocals -- that's genuinely terrifying in the right/wrong situation.
Happy Halloween
The time a court barred defendants from arguing that ghosts don't exist
"The legal system is practically infested with cases about people who buy houses full of termites and find out too late. These are run-of-the-mill lawsuits that can turn on the wording of the contract and the jurisdiction the house was sold in. Stambovsky v. Ackley is basically the same, except ghosts." Sarah Jeong, writing for Motherboard. [more inside]
“Well, there goes The Walrus.”
Who you gonna call? The story behind the Ghostbusters music video
How did a funky R&B guitarist and singer get signed on to a spook-tacular music video? No, I'm not talking about Ray Parker Jr.'s very Halloween-appropriate music video for "The Other Woman", but his later video for the scary-funny movie, Ghostbusters. Screen Crush has the inside story on the making of Ghostbusters theme song video (alt source: Daily Motion). [more inside]
The video is 3 minutes and 59 seconds long.
Despite the press conference, the case was fairly low profile. It received more attention back in Canada than it did in Los Angeles, where the suspicious disappearance of a young woman — though not exactly common — wasn’t a rarity either. And with no news to report as the days went on, coverage of her disappearance basically ceased. That was, until February 13, when the LAPD summoned the public’s help again. This time, the department released a video. They wouldn’t confirm it at the time, but the video was taken by the Cecil Hotel’s elevator security camera in the early hours of February 1. It was, it turns out, the last known footage of Lam. And it was so strange, so creepy, so inexplicable that the release turned the case inside out.
The sound of horror
The Stone Tape is a television play, first broadcast on the BBC as a Christmas ghost story back in 1972. It was written by Nigel Kneale, best known as the writer of Quatermass. BBC radio is broadcasting a new adaptation tonight (along with an adaptation of The Ring)
Not that Witch Hazel, THIS Witch Hazel
Cartoon Research takes an in-depth look at the 1952 Donald Duck short, Trick or Treat, directed by Jack Hannah and starring June Foray (previously) as yet another Witch Hazel. [more inside]
BOOhemian Rhapsody
Lake Street Dive covers Queen for Halloween. Gets even better than the original at 2:35 or so. Wait for it.
Footsteps and other sounds were also heard on the property
Grey Hooded FigureThe Paranormal Database collects and categorises crowdsourced accounts of paranormal phenomena from all across the United Kingdom. Read spooky reports of haunted hospitals, rail and London Underground ghostlore, haunted coalmines, scary trees, haunted hotels and pubs, road ghosts, royal ghosts, school ghosts, spooky goings-on in prisons, haunted shopping centres, and haunted TV studios, among many other categories. [more inside]
Location: Broughton Astley (Leicestershire) - B581, Broughton Way
Type: Haunting Manifestation
Date / Time: 11 August 2014, 22:30h
Further Comments: Two people watched as a grey hooded figure walked out in front of their car, forcing them to brake sharply. The figure crossed the road and dissipated near a gate. Both witnesses were left shaken.
Boo
Jezebel ran a Scary Story contest this year, here's the wonderful (though sometimes badly edited) results. Need more? Then check out last year's winners, especially the one titled "Look at Me".
Why Props Matter
The greatest trick the prop ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist.
A look at the hidden power of film props and how filmmakers use the everyday (and not so everyday) objects in their scenes to enhance cinematic storytelling. [slVimeo]
October 30
And now it is time to read the book.
Many have heard of Brian Eno and David Byrne's album "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts," but perhaps fewer have read the Book by Amos Tutuola, or its companion book "The Palm Wine Drinkard," described as "Aside from the transmogrified strangeness of folk and fairy tales ... unlike almost anything else in print."
'Big Al' Molinaro dies at 96
meanwhile, Abe Vigoda is still kickin' it. Albert Francis "Al" Molinaro was an American actor in television and films, most notably as Al Delvecchio,[1] the owner of Arnold's on Happy Days and its spin-off show Joanie Loves Chachi.
He was 96 years old.
The cause of death was gallstones Molinaro had decided not to have surgically removed due to his age, Molinaro’s son told TMZ. Molinaro died in a Wisconsin hospital. [more inside]
"Frankenbike" just in time for Halloween...
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about a "Datacycle" (nicknamed "Frankenbike") created by a "tinkerer" and climate scientist that is being used by the Seattle Transportation Department and its consultants Alta Planning + Design to update their Bicycle Master Plan. Includes a fun video of the bike on local trails.
When Evil Clowns Are Not Enough
At McKamey Manor, people pay to be kidnapped, bound, masked, slapped, stomped on and held under water over an eight-hour ‘tour’. But unlike other ‘extreme haunts’ of the same variety, here there’s no safe word to make it stop [more inside]
When Canada Learned It Had Spies
"Unknown even to the majority of parliament, by 1972 the CBNRC had grown to employ some 600 people—slightly smaller than the Department of Justice, and about half the size of the Canadian Forces unit for military signals intelligence. Every successive federal government vehemently denied that Canada engaged in any international espionage, while the CBNRC secretly helped to fight and even escalate the Cold War."
Vulcan Benediction
Livestreaming Happy Trees
Twitch, the social media platform for video games, just launched ‘Twitch Creative': a section of the site dedicated to non-gaming videos from artists. There you'll find people creating paintings or illustrations, composing songs, designing costumes, and even glass blowing. To celebrate, Twitch is holding an 8-day marathon livestream of every single Bob Ross The Joy of Painting episode.
Taters for Out-of-Staters
The Idaho Potato Museum is a unique museum which appropriately showcases Idaho’s Famous Potatoes®. Located in the old Oregon Short Line Railroad Depot you’ll discover the world of potatoes®. [more inside]
When is it time to kill the queen?
Social insects are the most altruistic animals we know of, always ready to give their lives for Queen and Colony. Or... almost always. Possibly deranged researcher Kevin Loope collected colonies of yellow jacket wasps from the wild and video-taped instances of matricide, when workers turn on the queen and kill her. His study helped confirm the hypothesis that this happens most often when all the wasps have the same father.
Wayward, an In-Browser Shipwreck-Themed Roguelike
My kid isn't a junkie
As Heroin Use by Whites Soars, Parents Urge Gentler Drug War Noting that “junkies” is a word he would never use now, he said that these days, “they’re working right next to you and you don’t even know it. They’re in my daughter’s bedroom — they are my daughter.” [more inside]
The Chanel of Africa
As the main supplier of fashion prints to nearly half a continent, the textile company has continued to dominate that fashion scene there for almost 170 years. How’d that happen? Rooted in European colonialism and a testament to African ingenuity, creativity, and cultural pride; it’s a surprising story…
Twitch Installs Arch Linux
Twitch Installs Arch Linux — Remember how chaotic Twitch Plays Pokemon was? Now we have a much harder challenge: install Arch Linux. Every ten seconds, the most popular keystroke in Twitch chat will be entered into an Arch Linux virtual machine. [more inside]
the end of Grantland
ESPN is suspending publication of Grantland, effective immediately. The ambitious website hosted writing from a long list of witty, intelligent contributors on sports and pop culture, including Rembert Browne, Katie Baker, Mark Harris, Molly Lambert, and Mark Lisanti. Grantland was launched by Bill Simmons, whose contract with ESPN was not renewed earlier this year after almost 15 years with the company after Simmons was publicly critical of ESPN and the NFL.
the Grindr Rebbe is ushering in a new age of religious outreach
One figure was substantially destroyed by road builders this year.
In 2007, Kazakh economist Dmitriy Dey fired up Google Earth to see if he could find any ancient pyramids around his hometown of Kostanay. He didn't, but what he did find was just as unexpected: a crossed square and threefold swastika. Over the next few years, he discovered more and more geoglyphs, including nearly a hundred "mustache mounds." These finds were initially dismissed or ignored by mainstream scientists, but NASA has just released their own imagery of the structures and instructed ISS astronauts to try to collect more.
End of the line for Chromebooks?
Google will be folding its Chrome operating system into Android, according to The Wall Street Journal and independently confirmed by The Verge. Google is denying this, according to The Guardian, saying it is "committed to Chrome OS and it is likely Android and Chrome OS will co-exist with tighter integration between the two for the foreseeable future". Chromebook-like small laptops running Android such as the Pixel C are not uncommon, though they tend to dual-purpose as tablets and be more expensive than machines running the browser based operating system.
we've identified the problem, so what's next? where's the revolution?
Equity in Publishing: What Should Editors Be Doing? "My job as an editor is to publish the best writing—wait for it—by a variety of writers. With regards to Best American Poetry, we're correct to call out the clear conflation of "best" and "white"—too often "We just published the best writing we could find" is a terrifying excuse for not publishing diversely. And this diversity—no, this equity, because I don't just acquire a writer of color and call it a day, returning to white business as usual—does require work." [more inside]
Google‘s ongoing war on productivity (Episode 6,625)
Today, the Google homepage brings you the “2015 Global Candy Cup” doodle, in which flappy-bird-esque witches collect candy. May the best color (Green) win.
Wir sind die Roboter!
We've previously talked about the Langley School Music Project, Dondero High School's Pop Concerts, PS22's choir, and Chapel Hill's Chorus Project. Now we have first graders at the Grundschule Am Lemmchen in Mainz Mombach singing, playing, and acting out Kraftwerk's iconic single Roboter. [SLYT, if you ignore my links to previous school music groups.]
Purrcast
What it says on the tin. This seems like the kind of thing at least 75% of MetaFilter would enjoy - a podcast by cats. Not to be confused with Purrrcast which is a podcast about cats.
Uphill
Henry Bendinelli has been skiing for 70-some years. A short docu by filmmaker Riley Hooper, about a 91 year old guy.
Scientists have gotten nothing from giving spiders drugs except photos
It appears Witt imagined a world where all police departments and hospitals have a sort of spider lab. When a patient or inmate behaved strangely, that person's blood would be fed to a spider, which would then be left overnight to build a web. In the morning, a careful look at the spider's handiwork would provide answers. "Aha! My webs indicate this inmate over here is a laudanum addict, and this poor patient is suffering from schizoaffective disorder," a chin-scratching lab technician might have said.Unfortunately, the only result was "that spiders hate the taste of schizophrenia urine", which is useful if you are schizophrenic, want to get rid of a spiderweb and don't have a home-made flamethrower available.
Juno MacGuff takes one look and replies, "Seriously?"
Poor White Boys Finish Last
BBC: "If you're white, male and poor enough to qualify for a free meal at school then you face the toughest challenge when starting out in life.
That's what the Equality and Human Right Commission (EHRC) has said in "the most comprehensive review ever carried out on progress towards greater equality in Britain"."
Rare flowers bloom in Chilean desert
The ‘driest place on Earth’ is covered in pink flowers after a crazy year of rain. The Atacama Desert in Chile, known as the driest place on Earth, is awash with color after a year’s worth of extreme rainfall. (SLWaPo, plenty of pics, not a slideshow)
The Super Recogniser
Friends call Constable Collins Rain Man or Yoda or simply The Oracle. But to Scotland Yard, London’s metropolitan police force, he is known as a “super recognizer.” He has a special gift of facial recall powers that enables him to match even low-quality and partial imagery to a face he has seen before, on the street or in a database and possibly years earlier.[slNYT]
Covers
A series of 55 animated vintage book graphics by Henning M. Lederer
Skeleton's pointing at a clue.
Homestar Runner Dot Net ("It's Dot Com!") returns for another Halloween, with the House that Gave Sucky Tricks (YouTube link).
Tonight on WCLV-TV...
Webcomicker Kris Straub is no stranger to creepypasta, from his classic of the genre "Candle Cove" to his ongoing comic "Broodhollow", and for Halloween this year he has come up with another snapshot of local TV gone very wrong: "local58.info"
October 29
Halloween Rainbow Pumpkin Pajama Party
Celebrate like it's October 31, 1994! This music video is a cover of TLC's classic song "Creep" from 1994 and features a pumpkin-headed Creeper, a time/space portal, psychedelic flowers, silk pajamas, and a seductive mysterious crystal.
What could possibly go wrong?!
So It Turns Out There's A Lot We Don't Know About Ebola
"It's an explosive virus. It replicates like crazy ... and it destroys everything in its path, so, how is it just hanging out in the testes for like nine months?"
After 22 years, Mages are still being owned by Paradox
Paradox Interactive, makers of complicated strategy games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings 2, have purchased White Wolf Publishing and all its IP from EVE Online makers Crowd Control Publishing, announcing plans to move forward with the IP
Commentary and analysis are available from Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Venture Beat, and PC Gamer, and Obsidian have tweeted in response to the calls for them to be hired to make Bloodlines 2.
What the blazes? Something bit me!
Back in 1972, there was no internet, no Marvel Cinematic Universe. But there was vinyl. The Amazing Spider-Man - A Rockomic - From Beyond The Grave is an example of early media for kids with a turntable. René Auberjonois leads a cast of amazing actors for this Spidey adventure.
How Mysteries of the Unknown came to be, finally explained!
"I never would have believed it, until one night I woke up around three o'clock in the morning. I felt something cold against my shoulder. It was the ceiling. I was looking down at my own body." Julianne Moore and other actors ask you to think about "the paranormal, one of the biggest issues of our age" in this ad for Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown series of books. Curious about unexplained phenomenon? Tales of events, dismissed as chance, coincidence, or imagination, but what if they aren't? How could you explain it? How did these ads (if not the books) get so popular? Fittingly enough, it may have just been fated in the stars. [more inside]
*snap* *snap*
In 1977 NBC produced a one-off TV movie, Halloween with the New Addams Family, a revival of the 1960s series with virtually* all of the original TV actors. [via] [more inside]
Griever
Facebook, funeral homes and the feeding of our lives as we fade away. A horror story by Andrew F. Sullivan for Hazlitt.
Icons over education: QC government bails out Bombardier
Floundering company thrown a $1 billion dollar lifeline. With teachers and other public worker on strike for better pay, the message seemed to be money for a beloved corporation and austerity for everyone else. Bombardier has lost over $4.9 billion dollars in delayed C Series passenger jet program but the Quebec government is investing taxpayer money in the company. But really, it's less a bailout, QC Premier Phillippe Couillard says, and more an investment. An investment that the taxpayers of La Belle Province are footing the bill for even as taxpayers in other provinces are angry for services not rendered. In the wake of this news, Bombardier stock has taken a tumble.
“Everyone calls us the Crook Islands now,” he said.
I was lucky that he merely threatened me. A journalist from Newsweek actually was deported from a different tax-haven island (Jersey) for her reporting there, and was banned from re-entering the island, or any part of the U.K., for nearly two years. Even though her story was unrelated to the financial-services industry, it was expected to bring negative publicity to the island, threatening its reputation as a place to do business. The message was therefore quashed by banishment of the messenger. The wealth-management industry does not mess around. Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts.
"The Scholarship isn't Divorced from the Practice."
Back to the Source is a documentary by Cédric Hauteville about Historical European Martial Arts, which is the modern study and practice of historical western fighting techniques as documented in period texts. [more inside]
flicker
A paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science details how photo data from Flickr can be used to predict people's movements. [more inside]
Bogotá, here I come (NestleBlue)
If you've always wanted to visit Bogotá, Colombia, here's an extra reason to visit! To promote KitKat's launch in Colombia, Nestle installed 20 billboards. These are no ordinary billboards. [more inside]
A Labracadbrador
The astronomer and the witch...
BOO
The girl in the closet. The doomed nurse. The cave creature. Just a few of the best jump cuts in horror movie history.
Faxes from the far side
Here is the rather strange story of how American-made specialized film was salvaged from a spy balloon and sent to take the first-ever pictures of the far side of the moon by the Soviet space program, and how those photos were then faxed back to Earth, line by grainy line. Long read and/or audio podcast. [more inside]
Of the three men's fate we found no trace
"In December 1900, a boat called Hesperus set sail for the island of Eilean Mor, one of the seven islets (also known as the “Seven Hunters”) of the Flannan Isles off the coast of northwestern Scotland. Captain James Harvey was tasked with delivering a relief lighthouse keeper as part of a regular rotation. The journey was delayed a few days by bad weather, and when Harvey and his crew finally arrived, it was clear that something was awry. None of the normal preparations at the landing dock had been made, the flagstaff was bare, and none of the keepers came to greet the Hesperus. The keepers, as it turned out, weren’t on the island at all. All three of them had vanished. " [more inside]
"No religion at all has any connection to mankind’s civic progress"
Raif Badawi's website, Free Saudi Liberals, hosted discussion of the importance of separating religion from politics. It was shut down in 2012 after his conviction on charges of insulting Islam, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1000 lashes. He received 50 lashes in January of this year, but further flogging has been postponed due to his worsening health. This week, the European Parliament awarded him the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the latest in a string of honors from journalism, human rights, and writers' organizations.
How to spot manipulative behavior
How to Spot Manipulation - PsychCentral
How to Pick Up on Manipulative Behavior - Basic guide from WikiHow
Are You Being Manipulated? Keys to Hidden Aggression - Good Therapy.org
Psychological Manipulation Resources - Band Back Together
Eight Ways to Spot Emotional Manipulation - cassiopaea.com
Subtly Controlling Behavior - Abuse and Relationships [more inside]
How to Pick Up on Manipulative Behavior - Basic guide from WikiHow
Are You Being Manipulated? Keys to Hidden Aggression - Good Therapy.org
Psychological Manipulation Resources - Band Back Together
Eight Ways to Spot Emotional Manipulation - cassiopaea.com
Subtly Controlling Behavior - Abuse and Relationships [more inside]
In a knowing match nobody knows like Gaston
Bot-ston is a Twitter bot which creates new verses in the style of Gaston's song from Beauty and the Beast.
“Let’s be frank, the House is broken,”
Feels like Heaven
RIP singer Diane Charlemagne, probably best know as the vocalist on Goldie's classic drum and bass track 'Inner City Life'. Among her many other contributions across a wide range of music she had top ten hits with the Urban Cookie Collective with 'The Key, The Secret' and 'Feels Like Heaven'
China ends one-child policy
China will allow all couples to have two children, a Communist Party leadership meeting decided on Thursday, bringing an end to decades of restrictive policies that limited most urban families to one child.
It is estimated that the one-child policy prevented the births of 400 million children since its adoption.
“Our House Has No Structural Flaws”
Juggling Gentlemen - It's Business Time
October 28
Ten concept cars from the Tokyo Motor Show
Weird, or future, or both! There's the "car-like thing," the "three-seater with a swiveling cabin," the boat that's not a boat, the one with eight wheels, an "extreme super pickup truck" with scissor doors, a sidestep into the Toyato RV-2, and the one with the cute little head on the dash. [more inside]
This marvellous day
The Radical Life of Rosa Luxemburg
– A graphic novelization of the revolutionary life and legacy of “Red Rosa.” (previously) [more inside]
– A graphic novelization of the revolutionary life and legacy of “Red Rosa.” (previously) [more inside]
Forgotten Silver
Forgotten Silver tells the story of pioneering filmmaker Colin McKenzie. This legendary New Zealander created the worlds first colour film and first talking film. He created the first tracking shot and captured footage of a pre-Wright brothers flight. This "documentary" made by Peter Jackson & Costa Botes caused a furore in New Zealand when it was released 20 years ago today.
Watch the first 10 Minutes for free.
Rent or buy here. [more inside]
The Scariest Story Ever Told
At the end of a quiet road, behind a veil of twisted black oak trees, there was a house. A woman lived there. On bitter nights like this one, she sat by the fire and read until she grew tired enough for sleep. But on this night, as her lids grew heavy, she was startled by a sound. A sound she wasn’t accustomed to hearing these days. Who could be calling, she wondered? And this late? She rose from her chair and picked up the phone.
“Hello?” [more inside]
Army expels 22000 soldiers with mental health disorders for "misconduct"
NPR: Despite a 2009 law designed to prevent this from happening, "since January 2009, the Army has 'separated' 22,000 soldiers for 'misconduct' after they came back from Iraq and Afghanistan and were diagnosed with mental health problems or traumatic brain injury. As a result, many of the dismissed soldiers have not received crucial retirement and health care benefits that soldiers receive with an honorable discharge."
Junot Díaz Just Lost an Award for Speaking Out.
New York’s Dominican Consul General revoked Díaz’s Order of Merit last week, calling him “anti-Dominican.” Díaz was accused Thursday of being "antidominicano" by the Dominican Republic's consul in New York, Eduardo Selman. Díaz has also been stripped of the Order of Merit awarded to him by the Dominican Republic in 2009. Diaz lost the award after he and Edwidge Danticat were in Washington, speaking to congress about the anti-Haitian initiatives in the Dominican Republic. (These were discussed previously on MetaFilter.) [more inside]
Shake Cats
How to catch a match fixer.
What is Jeff?
Thiiisss! Issss....
Jeff
pardyMeet The Uyghurs
Kevin Kelly spent two weeks in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) in far west China. “This area has more in common with the culture of Turkey than with Beijing. It's kebab with chopsticks. But this is really China. In fact it is the largest province of China.“ Here are 120 photos of the "Silk Road".
Kevin Kelly loves to travel: Read the “Previous Lives“ part on his bio.
KK's Asia travels on Metafilter before, here and here. [more inside]
Kevin Kelly loves to travel: Read the “Previous Lives“ part on his bio.
KK's Asia travels on Metafilter before, here and here. [more inside]
Don't miss your due date
It's Hard Out Here for a Blimp
A military surveillance blimp has come free of its mooring at Aberdeen Proving Ground near Baltimore and is now floating over Pennsylvania while fighter jets monitor it. Of course the blimp has a Twitter account.
"played music upon it such as the ears of Men had not heard"
Joanna Newsom's new album Divers (Divers, Leaving the City, Sapokanikan) is too much for The Fragile Ears Of Men [more inside]
Alien Nation
The film Alien Nation was a hit in 1988, so the fledgling Fox Network figured building off its success with a human-alien buddy cop show was a can’t-miss concept.... [more inside]
Behind the Bizaare and Tragic Story of Shaye St. John
"Shaye Saint John videos are the internet's answer to outsider art, and they've been flippantly relegated to just another thing in "that weird part of YouTube." There's no big artist reveal, no studio-backed film adaptation, no corporate sponsorship. She posted videos on YouTube, and then one day, she stopped."[more inside]
Eating mushrooms can sometimes do weird things to you
Sepp Blatter has suggested an agreement was in place for Russian WC
Suspended Fifa president Sepp Blatter has suggested there was an agreement in place for Russia to host the 2018 World Cup - before the vote took place.
The 79-year-old told Russian news agency Tass of a "discussion" in 2010 about future World Cups.
“Not for the first time, it fell to a fiction to restore the history.”
First, Kill the Witches. Then, Celebrate Them. by Stacy Schiff [The New York Times]
Among the oldest settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and for years among the wealthiest cities in America, Salem had many claims to fame. It preferred not to count the witchcraft delusion among them; no one cared to record even where the town had hanged 19 innocents. It addressed the unpleasantness the New England way: silently. When George Washington passed through Salem in October 1789, he witnessed neither any trace of a witch panic nor of Halloween. Sometimes it seems as if the trauma of an event can be measured by how long it takes us to commemorate it, and by how thoroughly we mangle it in the process.
"I felt like, 'Whoa!'"
Put on a little makeup (makeup), make sure they get your good side
Put Your Makeup On So They'll Like You (slMedium)
love in the regime of choice
By analysing the language of popular magazines, TV shows and self-help books and by conducting interviews with men and women in different countries, scholars including Eva Illouz, Laura Kipnis and Frank Furedi have demonstrated clearly that our ideas about love are dominated by powerful political, economic and social forces. Together, these forces lead to the establishment of what we can call romantic regimes: systems of emotional conduct that affect how we speak about how we feel, determine 'normal' behaviours, and establish who is eligible for love – and who is not.
better than fuck him up socrates!
Twitter user and occasional Metafilter poster leyawn has created a choose-your-own-adventure game in tweets and GIFs using his own pixel art. Click the profile links to advance the story! [more inside]
When it's good, it's great; when it's bad, it's horrid
A 5-year study of 333 Australians found those with the short-short version of the 5-HTTLPR promoter of the SERT serotonin transporter gene were more likely than other adults to be depressed if they had suffered abuse as a child. However, if they hadn't suffered childhood abuse, they were likely to be happier than the rest of the population. This may help resolve inconsistent previous results about the effects of the allele.
I started this business because my mom was too lazy to roll dice
Mira is a sixth grade student in NYC. In this century's answer to a lemonade stand, she started a business hand-crafting memorable, nearly unbreakable passwords.
GLAAD Finds TV Representation Better, But Still Not Great
Media watchdog and advocacy group GLAAD (the acronym doesn't stand for anything anymore) has released the 2015-2016 edition of its Where We Are On TV Report, breaking down the overall diversity of main and recurring characters on broadcast, cable, and (for the first time) streaming scripted television shows. [more inside]
"The unique platform and reach our site provide"
We’d like to publish a story you wrote!
- Cool! What do you pay?
Oh, we can’t afford to pay, but EXPOSURE!
- How about no.
Wil Wheaton being propositioned by big media.
Best Books To Read For Halloween!
"These are books that should get the essence of Halloween going and give people a sure scare!" Goodreads' list of 536 books to get your fright on.
"How much—indeed, how little—should workers be paid?"
It was late 2011. Haley was a 32-year-old phone tech earning about $35,000 a year, and he was in a sour mood. Price had noticed it, and when he spotted Haley outside on a smoking break, he approached. "Seems like something's bothering you," he said. "What's on your mind?"Remember the Guy Who Gave His Employees a $70,000 Minimum Wage? Here’s What Happened Next., by Paul Keegan, Slate (originally for Inc.) [previously]
"You're ripping me off," Haley told him.
October 27
Are Think Tanks Undermining Australian Democracy?
"Are Think Tanks Undermining Australian Democracy? The past decade, for example, has seen powerful American think tanks (link is external), headed by political elites and backed by significant philanthropic funding, fundamentally re-shape key aspects of schooling. This has raised serious questions about whether elite economic and political actors are ‘working through’ think tanks to undermine democratic processes and the ideals of representative democracy."
LYING.
Garfield minus Garfield Plus Lying Cat. (SLTumblr) In this remixed comic, Jon Arbuckle lives with a very different but equally dubious feline.
Catfishing in Amazon: looking for truth in cloudy waters of fake reviews
Do you know Dagny Taggart? She's a character in Atlas Shrugged. She's also a best selling author of language learning ebooks on Amazon. According to her bio, she speaks 15 languages, which she picked up in her life of traveling the world. There's just one problem: the author Dagny Taggart doesn't exist. She is the pen name for a group of anonymous authors who were hired by an Argentine "Amazon entrepreneur" and a follower of k(indle) money get rich schemes. [more inside]
Frozen
Lion cubs Found in nearly perfect condition. More from the excellent Siberian Times
It sounds like you're living your best life!
Lessons From a Decade of IT Failures
To commemorate the last decade’s worth of failures, we organized and analyzed the data we’ve collected. We cannot claim—nor can anyone, really—to have a definitive, comprehensive database of debacles. Instead, from the incidents we have chronicled, we handpicked the most interesting and illustrative examples of big IT systems and projects gone awry and created the five interactives featured here. Each reveals different emerging patterns and lessons. Dive in to see what we’ve found. One big takeaway: While it’s impossible to say whether IT failures are more frequent now than in the past, it does seem that the aggregate consequences are worse. [more inside]
Everyone sing along now. EVERYONE.
What's the 13.5? Why, it's 十三五 - China's 13th Five Year Plan. And here's a happy, chirpy pop song and video to explain it all. (slyt)
Henry Hook (1955-2015)
The crossword community has lost another of the greats: Henry Hook. The New Yorker ran a profile of Hook in 2002, calling him "the Marquis de Sade of the puzzle world." [more inside]
Visual note taking is back and it has a cool history
Sketchnotes, Graphic Recordings, Visual Notes, you may have seen them at the last conference or big corporate meeting you attended: beautifully hand drawn notes that summarize big ideas using simple visuals.
This Web 3.0 generation has adopted the term "sketchnotes" which was coined by interface designer, illustrator, and author Mike Rohde.
The field is actually called Graphic Recording which is "capturing everyone’s most salient points and making them stick", as described by experts at ImageThink.
Practitioners call themselves all sorts of things, Sketchnote Artists, Visual Note Takers, Graphic Recorders, Scribes, Visual Notes Artists, Live Sketch Artists, Group Graphics Practitioners and more. [more inside]
The Hateful Life & Spiteful Death Of The Man Who Was Vigo The Carpathian
You’ve seen a painting of Norbert Grupe. A heavy, creased brow and shoulder-length hair framing a frightening scowl, the massive work hung in the fictional Manhattan Museum of Art in Ghostbusters II. [...] Most people will only ever know Norbert Grupe as Vigo the Carpathian. But Norbert Grupe—a Nazi soldier's son, boxer, professional wrestler, failed actor, criminal, and miserable human being who was never so happy as when he could make someone hate him—was once a man so beautiful that other men wanted to paint him.
The future of low-wage workers
The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp: What the future of low-wage work really looks like. "In the years since Amazon became the symbol of the online retail economy, horror stories have periodically emerged about the conditions at its warehouses—workers faced with near-impossible targets, people dropping on the job from heat or extreme fatigue. This isn’t one of those stories." (SLHuffPost)
Wes Anderson // Centered
Ethical Clothing (formerly) Made By An Unethical Man
Zweckentfremdungsverbot
Purple-haired Marie Antoinette and an angel stabbing themselves
Claire Boucher / Grimes has released the first music video for two of the (relatively) guitar-heavy tracks from her upcoming fourth album, Art Angels: “Flesh Without Blood/Life in the Vivid Dream” (She has also been sharing cover art sketches for all of the album’s tracks on her tumblr.)
The school-to-prison pipeline, explained
"When a student at Spring Valley High School, South Carolina captured a cellphone video of a police officer flipping over a student and her desk, then throwing the student across the room, the video quickly got national attention: people were alarmed that a police officer in a school would do that to a teenager who didn't pose a threat."
Did you ever hear the story about GWAR and Eighties Night?
It's GWAR's turn again for the AV Club's Undercover and this year they're hitting the only Cyndi Lauper tune on Tipper Gore and the PMRC's filthy fifteen; folks, I present GWAR covering "She Bop"
The only biscuit to have survived the Titanic’s sinking
A cracker that escaped the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was recently sold at auction for £15,000 ($23,000), making it the most valuable biscuit in the world.
Vintage Travel Guides for African-Americans Now Online
"From 1936 to 1966, the “Green Book” was a travel guide that provided black motorists with peace of mind while they drove through a country where racial segregation was the norm and sundown towns — where African-Americans had to leave after dark — were not uncommon. ... The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary, this year digitized its Green Book collection." (Previously.) [more inside]
"Tea with Jean-Luc, episode 1: Ménage à Tea"
The role of sex and gender in autism
The Lost Girls: 'Misdiagnosed, misunderstood or missed altogether, many women with autism struggle to get the help they need.' Part of Spectrum's Sex/Gender in Autism special report. [more inside]
Eyebrow game strong!
Charlotte Brontë sketch identified as self-portrait. [The Guardian]
A sketch of a woman’s head by Charlotte Brontë, previously thought to be of another pupil drawn while the author was at boarding school in Brussels, has been identified as a self-portrait. The literary biographer Claire Harman said the drawing, which she suggests shows Brontë looking into a mirror, preceded the novel Jane Eyre, in which the protagonist also draws herself in a similar fashion. The sketch dates from 1843, four years before Brontë published Jane Eyre, one of English literature’s great masterpieces, and when the young writer was suffering the agonies and insecurities of unrequited love.
Why Did Eva Moskowitz Publish a Student’s Disciplinary Record?
Recently, PBS' NewsHour ran a segment about the overwillingness of some schools to suspend even kindergarten students, in part driven by the desire to boost scores by pushing out weaker students. The segment focused in particular on the charter chain Success Academies, which has been particularly unrepentant in the use of suspensions at early ages. The PBS reporter, John Morrow, had spoken with a number of families, but only found one willing to go on camera: Fatima Geidi and her son, Jamir.
Why there was reluctance became clear very quickly, as the head of Success Academies, Eva Moskowitz, publicly posted Jamir's disciplinary record on the charter's website in response, very much likely in contravention of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). [more inside]
"Some said we were overwhelming them with food."
Reducing consumption of added sugar, even without reducing calories or losing weight, has the power to reverse a cluster of chronic metabolic diseases, including high cholesterol and blood pressure, in children in as little as 10 days, according to a study by researchers at UC San Francisco and Touro University California. (SLScienceDaily)
MLS Referees: What's it like?
Get an in-depth look at what it takes to be a referee in MLS. (Warning: Auto playing video)
Related: Behind the Scenes: See how PRO monitors its refs on matchday
The first-ever bootleg NES game was an erotic hack of Super Mario Bros.
I think he'd be very happy to be remembered as a film critic.
Philip French iconic Film Reviewer for the Observer (Sunday Guardian) has died aged 82.
On his retirement after 50 years as a critic The Wrap asked him some questions and here is an interview and some of his work.
On his retirement after 50 years as a critic The Wrap asked him some questions and here is an interview and some of his work.
An Interactive Guide to Ambiguous Grammar
Depending on whom you ask, the use of the active voice over the passive is arguably the most fundamental writer’s maxim, thought to lend weight, truth, and power to declarative statements. This absolutist view is flawed, however, because language is an art of nuance. From time to time, writers may well find illustrative value in the lightest of phrases, sentences so weightless and feathery that they scarcely even seem to exist at all.
No, where are you really from?
I envy you, being a librarian.
Down Cemetery Road (1964), from the BBC Monitor series, in which Larkin was interviewed by John Betjeman. - A casual conversation that halts and resumes in Larkinland. [more inside]
But that's the way I like it baby I don't wanna live for ever
But when it’s done—and it’s almost done—there will be no more Anguses, no more Lemmys. The bloody-minded, death-demolishing longevity of AC/DC and Motörhead cannot be counterfeited or repeated. Lemmy once roadie’d for Jimi Hendrix; these days, retiring postshow to his tour-bus bunk, he reads P. G. Wodehouse.Twilight of the headbangers.
Sex, Drugs and R&B: Inside the Weeknd's Dark Twisted Fantasy
When he first started recording as the Weeknd, Tesfaye was an unlikely star. "I was everything an R&B singer wasn't," he says. "I wasn't in shape. I wasn't a pretty boy. I was awkward as fuck. I didn't like the way I looked in pictures — when I saw myself on a digital camera, I was like, 'Eesh.'" Instead of his face, his album art and videos featured black-and-white photos of artful nudes — a topless girl in a bathtub, a woman's ass in a party dress. The aesthetic was American Apparel-style hipster catnip, right down to the Helvetica font.
Obviously the best thing to do is put a chip in it
Internet of Shit. Laugh now, while you can still buy a toaster that doesn't have Linux on it. The Internet of Things previously: 1, 2
Not human, lion-fronted and snake behind, a goat in the middle
When a Washington couple failed a paternity test, they thought the fertility clinic had used the wrong sperm. But the clinic was pretty sure it hadn't. A more detailed fertility test showed that the father wasn't the father -- his never-born twin brother was. [more inside]
Psychedelic Britannia
BBC Four Presents three programmes about the psychedelic era of British pop: Psychedelic Britannia, 60s Psychedelic Rock at the BBC, Arena - Magical Mystery Tour. Tune in, turn on, chill out.
It Begins With a Pitch
October 26
Deutsche Seelebahn
Archaeology from the Air, the photographs of Charles and Anne Lindbergh
In 1929, two years after his historic solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne photographed archaeological sites in the American Southwest and Mayan sites in Central America (Google books preview) as a side-gig while Charles helped set North America air mail routes. Almost 80 years later, Erik Berg re-visited those same Southwestern sites, as seen in the exhibition Oblique Views: Archaeology, Photography, and Time (media bank) and book Oblique Views: Aerial Photography and Southwest Archaeology. [more inside]
Ben Zeik competes in the 2015 O'Henry Pun Off
Glasgow Hurlant
Cheap AND Good.
"And if you believe that . . .
. . . I've got a bridge to sell you," says the dadjoker in your life when expressing doubt. But why exactly do we speak of selling the Brooklyn Bridge? Because, in the Ellis Island days, people did indeed sell famous landmarks to recent immigrants. NYT. One George C. Parker, between 1883 and 1928, was in the Brooklyn Bridge-vending business full time. [more inside]
Leave nothing but footprints
Buy Nothing Day has a long history but it's what one expects from a magazine like Adbusters, not a large retailer with $2B in annual sales. But REI plans to close on "Black Friday" and suggests people opt outside. People outside of the US can continue to live their lives as normal.
"Whiz kids need geezers."
Medium's Steven Levy asks for ideas on how to end age discrimination in tech companies. Readers respond. [more inside]
Silenced by SouthWest
On Monday, October 26, SXSW Interactive made the call to cancel two sessions for the 2016 event: "SavePoint: A Discussion on the Gaming Community" and "Level Up: Overcoming Harassment in Games." We had hoped that hosting these two discussions in March 2016 in Austin would lead to a valuable exchange of ideas on this very important topic.[more inside]
However, in the seven days since announcing these two sessions, SXSW has received numerous threats of on-site violence related to this programming.
Toward a Sociology of Living Death
In some areas (e.g., Pittsburgh, Raccoon City), zombification is now more common than attending college or serving in the military and must be understood as a modal life course event. Even if one is “objectively” a mindless animated corpse, one cannot really be said to be fulfilling one’s cultural role as a zombie unless one shuffles across the landscape in search of brains.
I think the internet might be running out of supercut material.
Penetrating the eye of Patricia
Viaducts and bridges, as made in China
"shoot the [lieutenant] if he tries to launch"
On October 28, 1962, U.S. strategic (i.e., nuclear) forces were at DEFCON 2 due to the Cuban Missile Crisis, including missiles on Okinawa, Japan. That evening, the operators of those missiles received launch instructions. [more inside]
" She had not realized how very different people were"
Throwing some sand in the gears
Mindset Revisited
Psychologist Carol Dweck (previously and previously) looks at how educators are (mis)interpreting her research on growth vs. fixed mindsets, and shares her reflections about what works and what doesn't.
Grave of the Griffin Warrior
Archaeologists have discovered one of the richest Mycenaean Greek tombs ever found: a mostly intact shaft grave in Pylos dating from 1600-1400 BC. [SLNYT]
"Ma'am, this is a jail."
"GetYourCare.org was created to show that women have real choices when it comes to health care," the site says. "All across America, thousands of low-cost health centers offer women and their families high-quality health care." A press release from the Alliance Defending Freedom claimed that the facilities listed on the map "typically offer the full range of women's health services without all the scandal of Planned Parenthood." But in an investigation into the facilities, RH Reality Check has found that these "real choices" include hundreds of elementary, middle, and high schools; clinics that provide care for homeless people; nursing homes; pediatrics centers; and even the D.C. jail. [more inside]
“I tell my son: be safe, don’t be just sleeping around with girls.”
26-year-old radio producer Ana Adlerstein was walking in Oakland when she was catcalled by 51-year-old Jerome. She pulled a microphone and her, Jerome, and Jerome’s son’s mother had a short conversation.
After some wrangling, Ana got Jerome into the studio and the conversation continued. Love + Radio presents: “An Old Lion, or a Lover’s Lute”
After some wrangling, Ana got Jerome into the studio and the conversation continued. Love + Radio presents: “An Old Lion, or a Lover’s Lute”
The 1st World Indigenous Games
Sandwiched between Brazil’s hosting of the 2014 soccer World Cup and the Olympic Games next summer in Rio de Janeiro, the Indigenous Games are being advertised as a low-budget, low-key alternative to the marketing-hyped and TV-driven sports culture of the 21st century.
Walk against the wind. Climb mountains. Look to the North. More often.
The most cut-off man on Earth. The story of Slava, a meteorologist who works at the most remote weather station on Earth and in a time capsule all his own.
It's an asteroid! It's a comet! No, wait...
On November 13, 2015, astronomers will get the chance to observe an object that will hit earth at 6:20 UTC, around 65 kilometres from the southern tip of Sri Lanka. This little guy is rare - even though there are many pieces of space junk in orbit around the earth, none of the artificial objects in distant orbit are known to have made the return trip to Earth. [more inside]
Indoor skydiving
How do you learn to keep your balance when skydiving? Take lessons in a wind tunnel
What America’s immigrants looked like when they arrived on Ellis Island.
Suspense, X Minus One, Lights Out! Mercury Theatre and more...
The Message
Robin: And just to clarify, Nicky, your recording equipment is live right now, yeah?
Nicky: Yes.
Robin: So if, Perry, you really meant what you said about this being declassified, you won't mind saying it right now.
Col. Eubanks: Can we sit down first, or...?
Robin: Right after you repeat the thing. On the record.
Col. Eubanks: The NSA would like to hire Cypher to decode a message we have reason to believe was transmitted by an extraterrestrial. Now can we sit down?
The Message Podcast, Episode One [more inside]
Nicky: Yes.
Robin: So if, Perry, you really meant what you said about this being declassified, you won't mind saying it right now.
Col. Eubanks: Can we sit down first, or...?
Robin: Right after you repeat the thing. On the record.
Col. Eubanks: The NSA would like to hire Cypher to decode a message we have reason to believe was transmitted by an extraterrestrial. Now can we sit down?
The Message Podcast, Episode One [more inside]
Grow, grow, grow your boat
Pumpkin boats, whether captained by avant-gourd record-smashers or costumed squads of competitive squashbucklers, have sprouted up as part of fall festivals across North America. The splashing pumpkins have been spotted in Tualatin Oregon, Elk Grove California, Salt Lake City Utah, Cooperstown New York, Damariscotta Maine, and Lake Pesaquid in Nova Scotia, home of the Windsor Pumpkin Regatta.
Old NYC
Old NYC Mapping New York City (and beyond) using old photos from the NYPL.
“Impressive. Most impressive.”
Lenin Statue in Ukraine Turned Into Darth Vader [The New York Times]
A statue of Vladimir Lenin in Odessa, Ukraine, has been refashioned into Darth Vader. A Ukrainian artist, Alexander Milov, whose work appeared at Burning Man this year, transformed the statue in response to recent decommunization laws, which require the removal of Communist symbols in Ukraine. Lenin’s face has been covered by Darth Vader’s mask, and his coat has been turned into a cape. The helmet also reportedly serves as a Wi-Fi hot spot.[Image] [Image 2] [more inside]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The 25 best horror movies since 2000 (according to AVClub)
"Ask horror-movie buffs to name their favorite decade for the genre, and you’ll likely receive a variety of answers. The ’30s had several of Universal’s classic roster of monsters. The ’40s had Val Lewton. The ’70s had zombies, and giant sharks, and Texas chain saw massacres. (The ’70s is a good choice.) But at the risk of speculating wildly, it seems safe to assume that not too many hypothetical fans would single out the current or previous decade as horror’s finest. Classics take time to solidify, reputations take a minute to build, and hindsight is 20/20. Plus, you know, Uwe Boll." [more inside]
How Friendships Change in Adulthood
The voluntary nature of friendship makes it subject to life’s whims in a way more formal relationships aren’t. In adulthood, as people grow up and go away, friendships are the relationships most likely to take a hit. You’re stuck with your family, and you’ll prioritize your spouse. But where once you could run over to Jonny’s house at a moment’s notice and see if he could come out to play, now you have to ask Jonny if he has a couple hours to get a drink in two weeks. [more inside]
Where Daughters Are Preferred
Mosuo, Kingdom of Daughters Not All Chinese Want Sons
Anthropodermic Bibliopegy
The Macabre Practice of Binding Books in Human Skin: Whether a reminder of mortality, a strange souvenir, or a punishment for a crime, the impetuses behind anthropodermic bibliopegy are as varied as the lives of their skin donors.
October 25
It's Autumn on Arrakis
Novelty twitter account @MaudDiBucks posts Dune quotes with the word "pumpkin" strategically inserted.
[via mefi projects] [more inside]
Max Beckmann's Self-Portrait in Tuxedo
But even then, Beckmann will be there before you, and seem more at ease. And in how he stands and where he’s chosen to stand, it’s also clear that he can leave, that he can move out the door just to his right. Again, the sense that he belongs here, that he knows better than you how to dress and what to do, gives the impression that you aren’t an audience viewing him, but that he is giving you an audience instead.
He belongs, we don’t, or don’t so well as he.
Max Beckmann's 1927 Self-Portrait in Tuxedo, appreciated by Harvard art historian Joseph Koerner. [more inside]
How do a bunch of wonky generated tones translate to memorable sounds?
A Beginner's Guide to the Synth is a nice long write-up to the history of the synthesizers, from their origins up to the present, with embedded sound samples. For a deeper dive into the history of the hardware, learn the secrets of the synths from Sound on Sound.
Incl. the 1967's "The Analysis of Paneled Plate and Carcass Furniture"
The website of Carl A. Eckelman, Ph.D., Professor of Wood Technology at Purdue University. Probably more than you wanted to know about joinery and cabinetmaking.
“That one is ridiculed by its fellow-birds for its stupidity”
Argots and Ludlings
"Though there appears to be no definitive research on gender and gibberish, it became clear to me that girls are drawn to gibberish and the dozens of other secret languages and language games, also called argots and ludlings, because using them builds social bonds." Jessica Weiss, "The Secret Linguistic Life of Girls: Why Girls Speak Gibberish." [more inside]
Hideo Kojima Is the Jonathan Franzen of Video Games
Hideo Kojima's new game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, is the video game analogue of Jonathan Franzen's books: technically dazzling, but built upon a bed of sophmoric ideas.
vision zero IRL
Are the ‘90s already history?
Marie's Crisis
The American Theatre Wing presents, Working in the Theatre: Marie's Crisis
“A mix of Japanese pop songs, most of them with a synth funk backbone”
Jen Monroe and Brian Sweeny, the curators of the Listen To This! album blog, have collaborated with Self-Titled Magazine on an eclectic mix of Japanese synth pop that will go perfectly with your personal end-of-Summer / Fall weather: OMG JAPAN (Track list and liner notes)
The origins of Deep House and Acid House with some examples
the pause that refereshes
This day is called the Feast of Crispian
The battle of Agincourt was fought on a muddy field in northern France 600 years ago on Sunday – St Crispin’s Day, October 25th 1415. Legend says Agincourt was won by arrows. It was not. It was won by men using lead-weighted hammers, poleaxes, mauls and falcon-beaks, the ghastly paraphernalia of medieval hand-to-hand fighting. It was fought on a field knee-deep in mud, and it was more of a massacre than a battle. [more inside]
The Philips Golden Ears Challenge
"We know that we are not alone in this obsession with sound, which is why we are inviting you to take our Golden Ears challenge..." [more inside]
"And I’m telling you that thing upstairs isn’t my daughter."
That Thing: A True Story Based on The Exorcist (Adam Sturtevant, Electric Literature)
Dealing with allergies in the restaurant kitchen
"In a stunningly short slice of history, we’ve gone from food allergies being met with ignorance or indifference in the restaurant world to their domination of the discussion between server and diner, starting with the greeting and continuing all the way to dessert. ... After witnessing enough diners who make a big fuss about how their bodies can’t tolerate gluten and then proceed to order a beer or dig into their date’s brownie dessert, fatigued chefs and managers are beginning to adopt a less accommodating approach. But the people who may ultimately pay the price for this pushback won’t be the “free-from” fabulists. They’ll be those with serious conditions."
From WHYY In Philadelphia
Terry Gross and the Art of Opening Up
This fall, Gross marks her 40th anniversary hosting "Fresh Air." At 64, she is "the most effective and beautiful interviewer of people on the planet," as Marc Maron said recently, while introducing an episode of his podcast, "WTF," that featured a conversation with Gross. She’s deft on news and subtle on history, sixth-sensey in probing personal biography and expert at examining the intricacies of artistic process. She is acutely attuned to the twin pulls of disclosure and privacy. ‘‘You started writing memoirs before our culture got as confessional as it’s become, before the word ‘oversharing’ was coined,’’ Gross said to the writer Mary Karr last month. ‘‘So has that affected your standards of what is meant to be written about and what is meant to maintain silence about?’’ (‘‘That’s such a smart question,’’ Karr responded. ‘‘Damn it, now I’m going to have to think.’’) [more inside]
This fall, Gross marks her 40th anniversary hosting "Fresh Air." At 64, she is "the most effective and beautiful interviewer of people on the planet," as Marc Maron said recently, while introducing an episode of his podcast, "WTF," that featured a conversation with Gross. She’s deft on news and subtle on history, sixth-sensey in probing personal biography and expert at examining the intricacies of artistic process. She is acutely attuned to the twin pulls of disclosure and privacy. ‘‘You started writing memoirs before our culture got as confessional as it’s become, before the word ‘oversharing’ was coined,’’ Gross said to the writer Mary Karr last month. ‘‘So has that affected your standards of what is meant to be written about and what is meant to maintain silence about?’’ (‘‘That’s such a smart question,’’ Karr responded. ‘‘Damn it, now I’m going to have to think.’’) [more inside]
Digital poetry - Leaving the ivory tower
The challenge: if people would only know, hear, and see what poets did, then at least some of them would realize too how cool literature can actually be. - Three projects which engage in popularizing, mediating, and digitally archiving contemporary Hungarian poetry. [more inside]
Keith Richards stranded on desert island
Courgettes are deadly
In June 2009, the filmmaker Myles O'Reilly nestled Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh in The Back Loft in Dublin, with a camera, a reel to reel recorder, a laptop, a fiddle, a five stringed viola and a hardanger, and what followed was a short series of five beautiful improvisations and a little bit of gardening banter
October 24
DANGER MASTER ROBINSON
WARNING WARNING: Scientist discovers puppy-sized spider in rainforest
Deep down Louisiana close to New Orleans
Chuck Berry was born in 1926. Here he is performing Johnny B Goode: The date is April 14, 2014.
BEEP! BEEP! MURDER!
“Bette Davis was right—bitches are fun to play.”
Maureen O'Hara, Irish-born star of The Quiet Man and more, dies aged 95. [The Guardian] [more inside]
Two owls? Count me in!
whatever colors you have in your mind
To support their latest album the band Dawes recently held a competition in Paris where fans uploaded videos lip synching the lyrics to the song “All Your Favorite Bands"” for a chance to cover his/her favorite classic rock song with the group. The winner was a woman named Paloma, and her favorite classic rock song is Lay Lady Lay and here is their version.
The World Is Now a Chaotic Mess
This week, in an article for The Nation, Bill McKibben reports the story of how two separate teams of reporters at Inside Climate News and The Los Angeles Times have, “reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science.”
...particular wedges not readily available at the toystore
In early 2010, experimental multi-instrumentalist and headgear innovator Buckethead (previously) released It's Alive, the first of a series of albums called "Buckethead Pikes" sold directly to fans "from a small kiosk inside the Bucketheadland park." While things started out slowly, with a release now and then squeezed in between other commitments, by 2014 Buckethead had left most of the bands he'd been playing with, and was releasing on average one pike per week. And he has kept going; earlier today, Buckethead released pike album #199
8 Days Til Halloween: Flare Up, with #200 not very far away. [more inside]
The first person to ever really *tune* a banjo …
Bill Keith, creator of melodic bluegrass and the mechanical wonders that are Keith Banjo D-Tuners (used here), has left us.
The biggest raise our mothers will ever receive
On Friday, South African university students achieved a historic victory; after a week's protest they ensured there would be no fee increases at universities in 2016. This has been led by women. [more inside]
The Mostly True Adventures Of Standup Comedy’s Legendary Frat House
Little videos about talking eggs and a burnt red bean bun, from Japan
Hello Kitty's newest friend is an egg named Gudetama, who is unmotivated because he realizes he only exists to be eaten. He has a twitter account (really, he does). Each episode ends with the gudetama song and dance, and there is a handy playlist of 18 short shorts with English subtitles. If you want some more talking food, try some KogePan, or burned bread (unofficial fansite), which also has a handy playlist of the 10 episodes, but organized in reverse order. (KogePan previously, but the links are dead.)
Quality meat, No fillers. Or maybe just some fillers.
The Hot Dog Report: Everyone makes jokes about chicken lips in their hot dogs but someone finally tested a wide variety of brands to see what they're really made of. [more inside]
Look where you're going, look behind you.
One of the greatest nautical painters in history
Ivan Aivazovsky (1817–1900) - "In 1840, Aivazovsky traveled to Rome, where he became friendly with Nikolai Gogol. He also received high praise from the Roman critics, newspapers, and even Pope Gregory XVI. The pope purchased Aivazovsky's 'Chaos' and hung it in the Vatican... [more inside]
Really wish I could find a good link for the Titan Sphere
As Valve prepares for the general release of a divisive PC gaming controller (and Microsoft readies their "Elite" version of the popular-on-PC Xbox One Controller), perhaps it's time to revisit the strange history of our attempts to make the ideal dedicated controller for PC games. [more inside]
Harriet Klausner (1952-2015)
Amazon Reviewer #1, Harriet Klausner (previously) has passed away at age 63. At the time of her death she had over 31,000 reviews to her name, none of them negative.
October 23
It started with bedtime. A coldness. A formality.
"Cold Little Bird," a very good and very disturbing story by Ben Marcus. [SLNYer]
Women's Day Off
The day Iceland's women went on strike. "Forty years ago, the women of Iceland went on strike - they refused to work, cook and look after children for a day. It was a moment that changed the way women were seen in the country and helped put Iceland at the forefront of the fight for equality." [Via]
Murphy Anderson Comic Book Artist R.I.P.
Murphy Anderson, long time artist for DC Comics has died at age 89. Anderson began his career at Fiction House in 1944 and then drew the daily Buck Rogers newspaper strip for two years. He began his long career at DC comics around 1950, he drew covers and stories for their science fiction and superhero comics and enjoyed stints on drawing costumed heroes like The Spectre and Hawkman. He was greatly admired as half of the "Swanderson" team when he inked Curt Swan's pencils on Superman. [more inside]
Come join us on this adventure
Rus (from Ukraine) and Alla (from Russia) just spent six months travelling the US in a Subaru and took lots of pretty pictures. They visited: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada
, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
“This was a brilliant innovation,”
We "picked" this asshole
The earlier French revolution
Less hippie, more hip
Paint Stripper
Zalgo-text would be kinder
mimic - [ab]using Unicode to create tragedy Replace a semicolon (;) with a greek question mark (;) in your friend's C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error [more inside]
“She was brave enough to talk with me on tape, & I respect her for that”
Welcome to Home of the Brave. I’m [Peabody-winning journalist and sometime This American Life and NPR correspondent] Scott Carrier. A couple weeks ago I was watching Donald Trump on television wondering how and why anyone would want him to be President of the United States. He’s a rude, arrogant condescending, chauvanistic egomaniac. What if he were president and got angry and had a fit? But then I realized I don’t actually know any Trump supporters, so I decided I should drive around Nevada and find some. (He also drives around a little bit of California.)
SLNYTrollery
Today's NYT sports section trolls Cubs fans with a 1908-inspired front page. The cover. More, from Talking New Media.
The Teachings of Don Carlos
Pulling back the curtain on Carlos Castaneda, one of America’s most secretive and popular authors. [more inside]
In the grim darkness of the fur future, there is only war
"On the shores of Payette Lake are crates full of beavers, part of a shipment to be dropped in the primitive area by parachute from an airplane." A clip from Fur for the Future, a recently rediscovered documentary from 1948 about Idaho Fish and Game parachuting beavers into the state's backcountry.
David Mitchell on A Wizard of Earthsea
Cloud Atlas author David Mitchell writes about first encountering Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea as a child, the power and depth of the story and everything he still loves about it as an adult.
A shoe mountain in the shape of a nun
The Price of Fear
Between 1973 and 1983, Vincent Price starred in twenty-two episodes of radio horror for the BBC. Price claimed the stories were drawn from his own reminiscences, though certain plots bear strong resemblances to classic pieces by Roald Dahl and Bram Stoker. Click on and listen, if you can afford...THE PRICE OF FEAR. [more inside]
It looks like a fine winter's morning out there at the 63rd latitude.
DaveYard Shift
DaveYard Shift plays mariachi covers of video game songs. Released thus far: "Bloody Tears" from Castlevania 2, "Gerudo Valley" from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, "Dark World" from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, "Dr. Wily Stage" from Mega Man 2, "The Moon" from Ducktales, and a medley of tunes from Kirby Super Star, Tetris, and Super Mario World.
Let it happen
Need to slow down? Here is the very first episode of The Joy of Painting, in which Bob Ross encourages viewers to take a walk in their own happy little woods. (SLYT)
Grainy, Spooky, Streaming
The streaming service Shout Factory has a treat in time for Halloween: The VHS Vault!. These are VHS rips of classic 80s horror movies: Sleepaway Camp, Night of the Demons, Day of the Dead, Class of 1984, and Exterminators of the year 3,000. There's also the documentary Adjust Your Tracking about VHS collectors.
Egregious case of market failure
The Federal Communications Commission is putting caps on the rates that inmates pay for phone calls, after a 14-year campaign by advocates for prisoners and their families. The order caps per-minute fees at 11¢ in state or federal prisons, and up to 22¢ a minute in local jails, depending on the size of the facility, while also capping the various fees that have been common on inmate calls to this point. [more inside]
The Zack Parsons Project
Zack Parsons, Something Awful's resident writer of much weirdness (oldest articles in that listing may be misattributed) has resumed his beloved series with Steve Sumner (the Max to his Sam), WTF D&D. While Zack still writes for Something Awful, he and Steve's reviews of weird pen-and-paper RPG sourcebooks and art, and their rollicking RPG campaigns, have resumed on Zack's new site, The Bad Guys Win, which also features other new articles from Zack (all of the new WTF D&D, currently a two-part adventure in the Ravenloft setting starring Steve as an idiot monk, is collected under Games). [more inside]
They called the wind Patricia
San Patricio & Barra De Navidad will experience equivalent EF5 tornado & 20 foot tsunami at same time.
After a remarkable burst of intensification, Hurricane Patricia is headed to the Mexican coast with 200 mile per hour (320 kph) sustained winds. It is the strongest hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere.
Do you wanna build a theory?
Some ways we can read Elsa: "Cold and Hungry: Discourses of Anorexic Feminity in Frozen," "Disney's Frozen and Autism," "Reading Frozen as a Feminist," and "Disney's Frozen: Gay or Schizophrenic?"
A Meatloaf Moment
Watch Adele’s Emotional, Technologically Groundbreaking Video for “Hello”.
The video stars The Wire’s Tristan Wilds.
October 22
least I have chicken
I am not a nazi.
Meet Bastian, a German WWII soldier collectible doll. Also meet Bastian Schweinsteiger, the 31-year old Der Mannschaft current captain and Manchester United star, who is certainly not amused by the similarities.
See a need, fill a need
In the wake of Turing/Martin Shkreli's 5000x price hike of Daraprim, reaction sets in regarding the need for reasonable prices on FDA-generic drugs. [more inside]
Walking on (non-Newtonian) water
Maybe Jesus could walk on water, but anybody can walk on this non-Newtonian fluid (SLYT)
#EndMommyWars
In a new video, sponsored by Similac as part of its #endmommywars campaign, seven mothers discuss the judgments they receive and the judgments they make about other mothers.
Macho Nachos
People prefer food in sexist packaging. Putting unhealthy food in macho masculine packaging, or healthy food in feminine-themed packaging, makes it taste nicer, and people are willing to pay more for it. According to a new paper(Direct paper link)
'The Empire Strikes Back' and So Does George Lucas
An interview from 1980 where Rolling Stone talks with George Lucas about his views on movie making, the difficulty working with studios, and the possible and tenuous future of the franchise. (context: previously) [more inside]
They're coming to get you, Elizabeth
Telly Savalas Visits The UK
In one of the more ill-conceived marketing stunts of the '70s, Telly Savalas visits Birmingham. Telly visits Aberdeen. Telly visits Portsmouth.
"a very fundamental, biological need to be liked"
"What is Social Anxiety Disorder?": The Atlantic's Olga Khazan interviews Stefan G. Hofmann, the director of the Social Anxiety Program at Boston University. (SLTheAtlantic)
“It is a black day for Sweden,”
Sweden school attack: horror as sword attacker kills teacher and pupil. [The Guardian] [Article contains graphic descriptions of violence.] [more inside]
Gif that's what's for dinner
The latest thing is Recipes as animated GIFs:
Pull-out monkey bread
Avocado & Eggs breakfast
Better than sex brownies
Homemade Nutella
Apple roses
Pizza dip
PES guacamole
Mozzarella sticks
Archer's Margarita
[more inside]
Pull-out monkey bread
Avocado & Eggs breakfast
Better than sex brownies
Homemade Nutella
Apple roses
Pizza dip
PES guacamole
Mozzarella sticks
Archer's Margarita
[more inside]
“You’re a softie underneath that tough-girl exterior — which I am too!”
What 12,000 Emails Tell Us About Being Hillary Clinton “… right now I’m fighting w the WH operator who doesn’t believe I am who I say I am and wants my direct office line even tho I’m not there and I just (g)ave him my home # and the State Dept # and I told him I had no idea what my direct office # was since I didn’t call myself and I just hung up and am calling thru Ops like a proper and properly dependent Secretary of State – no independent dialing allowed.”
Let's do the Time Warp again, AGAIN
Laverne Cox will star as Frank-N-Furter in Fox's TV reboot of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Previously. Meanwhile, fans have proposed various dream casts.
If Asian America exists, it is because of systemic racism.
The Two Asian Americas. "If Asians sometimes remain silent in the face of racism, and if some seem to work unusually hard in the face of this difficult history, it is not because they want to be part of a 'model minority' but because they have often had no other choice." (SLNewYorker)
Heirs to the Sexual Revolution
And yet, for all there is to worry about — and we old folks love nothing more than worrying about the sex lives of young people — campuses are still filled with college kids excited about one another and the thrill of a night that’s just beginning. To them, college sex isn’t a headline but something real. In an attempt to get past the existing media narratives, and the moralizing that comes with them, New York asked college students what they think about the campus-sex climate. Or, rather, how they experience it.[more inside]
The Greatest Pumpkin
It all starts with the seed. Top growers know their pumpkins' lineage back generations, and the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth keeps records.Ron Wallace was the first person to grow a one-ton pumpkin. He's going for 2,500 pounds next. [more inside]
Metal on inappropriate instruments
YouTube metal guitarist Rob Scallon covers Slayer's "Raining Blood", "War Ensemble", and "Angel of Death", and Metallica's "Battery", on banjo.
When The Police Turn Someone You Know Into A Hashtag.
Benjamin Dixon writes about the death of Corey Jones, a Florida musician who was shot and killed by a plainclothes officer in Florida on Sunday morning, after Jones' car had broken down on the side of the highway. [more inside]
well past time
"We all know tech is excluding most people from participating. But one group is actually over represented. And we’ve been conspicuously silent." Metafilter's own Anil Dash asserts that "Asian American men who work in tech are benefitting from tech’s systematic exclusion of women and non-Asian minorities" and gives some recommendations about what they should do about it.
Totally Texas
On behalf of the MeFites of Norway: It has come to our attention that somebody has let slip that "totally Texas" (in Norwegian "helt texas") is used as an expression to convey that some event is crazy or totally out of control. After decades, the Americans now know. An investigation into the leak will be made. Thank you.
Field Work Fail
Ever the Twain shall meet
Over a hundred years after his death (it was supposed to be a hundred but you know how people can be), The Autobiography of Mark Twain has been released in its entirety (Volume One previously). [more inside]
At once deeply religious and fastidiously superstitious
In preparation for the upcoming exhibition Scholar, courtier, magician: The lost library of John Dee at the Royal College of Physicians (January 2016), the RCP museum's twitter has posted some gifs showing details from some of the books that will be on display for the first time. [more inside]
Jan Hooks in the Wilderness
One year ago, the Saturday Night Live family lost one of its greatest talents when Jan Hooks passed away at the age of 57. Though there are many SNL players that fade into obscurity once their term at Rockefeller Center is up, most people are surprised that, aside from a recurring role on 30 Rock, Jan Hooks had pretty much disappeared since the turn of the 21st century. Grantland provides a bittersweet look back into her history and into what happened during those years.
a patchwork of colors and flavors
The idea behind Cookbook Club is a simple one—a group of friends all make recipes from the same book and gather to share the results, a crowdsourced feast. But there's a bit of magic to Cookbook Club that I didn't anticipate when I attended my first meeting, walking into an unfamiliar house clutching a bowl of pumpkin seed dip from Diana Kennedy's The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.
"one of the strangest experiments in movie history"
Perhaps she even wiggled her toes, just like Pippi.
Who was the woman behind Pippi Longstocking? Freshly released wartime diaries along with a new biography reveal Astrid Lindgren, author of some of the world's most beloved children's literature, to be as radical and determined as her best-known character.
October 21
YADKCOLSPAC
OCTOBER 22 IS INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!!!" EVERY YEAR WE GET TOGETHER AND MAKE SALMON FOR TOAST, EVERY YEAR WE GET A CROCKETY BLOAT, EVERY YEAR WE GET DRUNK ON THE DOCKS, AND EVERY YEAR WE HAVE SEX WITH OUR CAPS LOCKS!!!! [more inside]
Things are sillier when they're done with LEGOs (sorry, no dino DNA)
TT Games has made a number of LEGO-based games, often LEGO versions of other franchises. These include cutscenes that recreate some version of movie scenes, which initially didn't include dialog, as seen in these collections of cutscenes from Lego Star Wars : The Complete Saga and Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. That changed with LEGO Batman 2: DC Super Heroes, but things really got fun with LEGO Jurassic World (with all Jurassic Park movies). "So, you two, um, dig up dinosaurs?"
The Coast of Lake Michigan Looks Extra Oceanic in This New 'Linear Map'
When I visit Lake Michigan, I feel staggering incredulity: How is this not an ocean? Driving between cities around its 1,400 miles of shoreline—say, from Chicago to Grand Rapids—emphasizes the lake’s vast scroll, since the only way to go is around. A new map captures that experience.
From WATS lines to Whatsapp
The Final Experiment Is Nigh
Adam and Jamie announce the end of their classic Mythbusters series in this week's Entertainment Tonight. [more inside]
Ohio’s War on Reproductive Care
During Governor John Kasich’s tenure, abortion access in Ohio has dramatically decreased from 14 abortion providers to 8 as Kasich and the GOP-led legislature have passed a startling number of restrictions on Ohio’s abortion providers and Planned Parenthood. [more inside]
How do you get to Denmark?
Where do ‘good’ or pro-social institutions come from ? Why does the capacity for collective action and cooperative behaviour vary so much across the world today ? How do some populations transcend tribalism to form a civil society ? How do you “get to Denmark”?
Hunger makes a modern girl
An excerpt from Carrie Brownstein's memoir. "Sometimes the dull detritus of our pasts become glaring strands once you realize they form a pattern, a lighted path to the present." - from "Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl," scheduled to be published this month. [more inside]
The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods
The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods — a ProPublica investigation into racial disparities in debt collection lawsuits [more inside]
Where are all the women? The math said there would be more women!
One mathematician’s formula suggests that all-male lineups don’t “just happen,” despite what conference organizers might claim. "...in any conference with over 10 speakers, say, it would be extremely rare to have no female speakers at all—less than 5 percent chance, depending on one’s assumption about the percentage of women in mathematics as a whole."
I Like Big Books And I Cannot Lie
"Nobody likes to get played."
What do we really know about Osama bin Laden's death?
I saw this as more of a media story, a case study in how constructed narratives become accepted truth. This felt like a cop-out to [Seymour Hersh], as he explained in a long email the next day. He said that I was sidestepping the real issue, that I was ‘‘turning this into a ‘he-said, she-said’ dilemma,’’ instead of coming to my own conclusion about whose version was right. It was then that he introduced an even more disturbing notion: What if no one’s version could be trusted?
Like Google Maps for the Milky Way
You can browse the largest assembled astronomical image of all time, 46 billion pixels, in a Google Maps-like interface covering the Milky Way.
There are a lot of stars.
You will need: sugar, corn syrup, dentures...
Joe Biden is officially not running for President.
This closes the door on one of the biggest potential challenges to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s second attempt at capturing the Democratic nomination. Back in August, Mr. Biden was already running for president in the invisible primary. Like most candidates who test the waters, he didn’t find enough support to justify entering the race.
It was more popular on that ballot than bringing back the sale of beer
The Strange, Short Story Of Washington State’s Income Tax
People were so excited about the income tax that they voted twice. First, they changed the state constitution to allow the tax. Then voters approved the tax – 70 percent in favor. In the time between the two votes, something significant happened: People had received their income tax forms in the mail. Suddenly the tax wasn't just a theory. The form was daunting, and newspapers suggested people might need professional help to fill out the form.
In defence of cultural appropriation
Yo Zushi: Many of those calling out cultural appropriation of all kinds – from clothing and hair to musical genres – seem to share this proprietorial attitude, which insists that culture, by its nature a communally forged and ever-changing project, should belong to specific peoples and not to all. Banks is doubtless correct to feel this “undercurrent” of racial persecution by an industry that prefers its stars to be white and what they sell to be black, yet there is also truth in the second part of that undercurrent: “Y’all don’t really own shit.” When it comes to great movements in culture, the racial interloper is not wrong. None of us can, or should, “own” hip-hop, cornrows, or the right to wear a kimono.
This Is A Story About Loss
A woman who suddenly lost her best friend in a car crash shops at a store filled with unclaimed airport luggage. "When I first looked at [The Unclaimed Baggage Center]'s website months ago, I felt that same twinge of, 'It's a store full of lost stuff? That sucks.' I figured I would write a quirky piece about a kooky store, to compensate for the inherent sadness. But my world changed this summer, and now I'm here in Alabama, and the idea of losing stuff on an airplane feels decidedly less heavy."
This is not a women's issue. Don't try to make it a women's rights thing
The Loss
"All kids in the future wear their pants inside out."
Doc Brown: We're descending towards Hill Valley, California at 4:29 PM on Wednesday, October 21st, twenty-fifteen.
Marty: Two thousand fifteen?! You mean we're in the future!
Marty: Two thousand fifteen?! You mean we're in the future!
Balancing Safety with Sieverts
"In New York City, the police now maintain an unknown number of military-grade vans outfitted with X-ray radiation, enabling cops to look through the walls of buildings or the sides of trucks ... The NYPD will not reveal when, where, or how often they are used."
The lowest rung of the housing ladder?
"A growing number of people on low incomes are now living in shared housing - known as "houses in multiple occupation" - where each room is rented separately. But there's concern that many tenants are living in poor conditions." [SLBBC]
Insert your own "Alien Ant Farm" joke here.
A traditional Japanese cover of "Smooth Criminal", led by flautist Yoshimi Tsujimoto.
The Doctor
There was no question of where to bring Mubarak. Mother of Mercy is the only fully functional hospital in Nuba, which is about 3,000 square miles. The hospital is overseen by a onetime college nose guard from upstate New York named Tom Catena. Just as there are rules in Nuba for what to do in an Antonov raid, there is a rule for what to do with the victims of the bombing if they are still alive: get them to Doctor Tom as fast as you can.[more inside]
October 20
Thousands of reviews of experimental music
Touching Extremes (and the 2001–8 archive, housed separately) houses a wealth of reviews of obscure, avant, experimental, or otherwise not-terribly commercial music by Massimo Ricci, formerly of Bagatellen and Paris Transatlantic (both defunct), and occasionally still also of The Squid's Ear. [more inside]
D&Diesel
Among other things, Vin Diesel is known for being an avid Dungeons and Dragons player. He's even gotten to play his own D&D character in the movie The Last Witch Hunter. But until recently, we hadn't been able to watch him play it live. To remedy that, the folks at the Nerdist and Geek and Sundry got Diesel and a few other people together to play D&Diesel, an exciting half hour full of natural twenties and growling. [more inside]
GOOD THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO ... ... WAIT
It's the trailer that everyone has been waiting for and everyone is talking about... VENTURE BROS. SEASON 6
Marcel Duchamp meets the Invisibl Skratch Piklz
Vinyl Terror & Horror are Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen, two Danish DJs now based in Berlin. They are not your average DJ duo. [more inside]
It’s really nice to have a common bond about something stupid like that.
During that excruciating waiting period, players stake out their preferences. “We’ll give a rundown of the donuts, look at them all and extend them through a combine, like the NFL combine,” safety Harrison Smith says. Donuts are judged on factors such as crispiness, size and frosting distribution.
The Minnesota Vikings' Donut Club has an executive board, membership cards, and a strongly enforced set of donut rules.
"What's the next best thing to astronaut?"
I wear them because I like them & also I was a teenage Goth
When is it socially acceptable to wear black tights? (slTheGrauniad/The Guardian)
Truth as quantified externality
Amazon has posted (on Medium, natch) an aggressive response to the “everyone at Amazon is miserable but also paid well but also crying all the time” story in the New York Times [Previously]. This story and its aftermath represent a bit of a trap, particularly in discussions on Twitter: If you think the original story contained both valuable information and flaws, your default position is to go to bat for the Times; if you read this story as a portrait of a tough workplace written to cast it in the worst possible light, but acknowledge that it contained some worrying anecdotes, then your tendency will be to defend Amazon.
But these too reveal themselves as proxy positions. It’s not story versus story, or publication versus tech company. It’s media versus tech. [more inside]
But these too reveal themselves as proxy positions. It’s not story versus story, or publication versus tech company. It’s media versus tech. [more inside]
Tyreing
DSCOVR EPIC pictures
Yesterday, NASA launched a website hosting daily images of the full, sunlit side of the Earth. They're taken by the EPIC camera attached to the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) that's sitting in L1, ~1,500,000 km from Earth. [more inside]
King of the Wild Frontier
The Cold War gift that keeps on giving.
Just testing the the Davy Crockett may have contaminated 12,000 acres around Fort Carson with uranium and depleted uranium residue.
“In the general mindset of the era, it was deemed a requirement for more covert, squad level nuclear weaponry…called the ‘Davy Crockett,’ it was a 155mm caliber tactical nuclear recoilless gun”
With an explosive yield of .01-.02 kilotons, or the equivalent of 10 to 20 tons of TNT the Davy Crockett was developed for covert units to destroy Soviet infrastructure, engage tank formations or repel larger units.
As the largest conventional ordinance has a blast yield of 11 tons of TNT and was short ranged, very inaccurate and likely to expose users to radioactive fallout and contaminate large areas for years, the weapon was wisely discontinued.
Previously [more inside]
UnZapped
On Dec 8, 9, 10 1973 Frank Zappa and the Mothers did a legendary stink at the Roxy in Hollywood Ca.
The result if these shows is one of the greatest live albums ever produced, even though the voracious tinkerer Zappa dubbed some odds and ends onto Roxy and Elsewhere LP.
(The virgin recordings were later released as Roxy by Proxy), but the holy grail of this event was a never seen video broadcast originally intended for German tv, because certainly nothing like this could ever have aired in the us in 1973.
All that changed on Oct 14th when Roxy: The Movie premiered at the Egyptian theater in Los Angeles.
It will be released on dvd/blue ray Nov. 1st, 2015
Ladies with an attitude
Kurt Vonnegut Apocryphally Has Doomed Us All!
Though it was erroneously attributed to Vonnegut, Mary Schmich first lit the flame, imploring the youth today to wear sunscreen. Baz Luhrman fanned the fire with his hit rallying anthem, Everyone's Free (To Wear Sunscreen). And today? Well, today it was announced that all that sunscreen is massacring coral reefs around the world.
DU BIST KLIEN IN DER HOSEN!
The Story of Technoviking. July 8, 2000. Matthias Fritsch put down the camera on his lap on the back of a DJ van at Berlin's Fuckparade. Unknowingly, he recorded a dancer that became one of the first massively popular internet video memes, at a time downloading stamp-sized MOV and RM files was still norm. But TECHNOVIKING was not pleased, and a lawsuit left Fritsch bankrupt. This is the full story, as told by the creator of the original video with guest artists, sociologists and lawyers, how he (and Technoviking) lost control of their images, the implications of remix culture, the propagation of internet memes, and the impact of the internet on privacy rights. (Slightly NSFW censored private bits, 5 minutes in.)
The Strange Case of Anna Stubblefield
She told the family of a severely disabled man that she could help him to communicate with the outside world. Then, she says, they fell in love. [more inside]
“the ideal often clashes violently with the truth”
Visual Literacy in the Age of Open Content by Allana Mayer [JSTOR]
We have similar stories all throughout history: the moment when a perception—whether a literal way of seeing or a figurative mode of thinking—is assaulted and fundamentally shifts, a non-reversible alteration, a displacement from one’s old ways. Western society has seen plenty of moments like these, moments where a perceptive or critical threshold has been crossed.
Most people have an inaccurate assessment of who is "on welfare."
The mayor of Lewiston, Maine recently made headlines when he called for the state to publish the name and address of anyone receiving welfare benefits. The idea of publicly shaming people for receiving government assistance is not new. But when these stories do arise, we rarely stop to think about what we mean when we say someone is "on welfare." In 1983, Mimi Abramovitz tackled that question head-on in a paper provocatively titled "Everyone is on Welfare." Almost 20 years later, she updated the paper for the new millennium. (Also available on Researchgate). [more inside]
Breast Cancer awareness
The American Cancer Society released new guidelines today recommending that women start getting the tests later, at age 45, and only every other year. [more inside]
CreepyPosta
A Portrait of the Person-Guy
The Person-Guy is the cause of every evil and frustration in your life. The Person-Guy only wears odd socks, because he thinks that wasting our limited lifespan sorting them into matching pairs is indicative of a potentially authoritarian neurosis. The Person-Guy has a minor vocal tic, and it sends you into strange daylight fantasies; tearing out his throat with your bare hands, feeling the frantic little pulses of blood as they spurt and froth around your claws and then go cold. The Person-Guy likes all the same things you like, which is why you hate him. The Person-Guy is not reading this article. Only you are reading this article.
"It's 2015—tell them, go ask a sex worker!"
The Can Do bar came about because sex workers had been advocating for [workers' rights] and working under shitty conditions for years...One day a group of sex workers here in Chiang Mai said, 'Actually the government doesn't get it, nobody understands what we're talking about, we're going to have to build it ourselves, we can't wait anymore.' And so they pooled their money and raised a million baht [almost $30,000] between them all and created the bar. Charlotte England at Vice writes about the only bar in Thailand, and maybe anywhere, owned and run by a sex workers' collective.
I Am Somebody.
"I am somebody. I am God's child. I may not have a job, but I am somebody. I may be Black, but I am somebody. I may not have an education, but I am somebody. You may not respect me, but I am somebody. I may be a Puerto Rican, but I am somebody. I may be an Indian and my land was stolen, but I am somebody." The history of the chant. [more inside]
First, Let's Get Rid Of All The Bosses
Six months after we first discussed Zappo's planned move to a Holocracy, how is it going? When the deadline arrived on the last day of April, 14 percent of the company, 210 people, took the [severance] offer. Twenty of them were managers, I was told, out of a total of 246. It was a difficult day. Tear-stained faces replaced the typical smiles on the Zappos campus. [more inside]
This Creepy Puzzle Arrived In Our Mail
"We received a letter from Poland containing a really weird CD. Written on the disc is what looks like a product key, however upon examining the contents of the CD it’s quite clear that this is a puzzle of some sort."
More, from the Washington Post.
Apatosaurus Jones
Your creep is not even a legit creep
Indian comedy group All India Bakchod teams up with dating site TrulyMadly to present the Creep Qawwali (a form of Sufi devotional music), lamenting online and offline creepy guys. [more inside]
In Conversation With Sarah Silverman.
October 19
This is a test. This is only a test.
The following message is transmitted at the request of North American Aerospace Defense Command. Two nuclear missiles are heading for the United States. Take shelter now. [more inside]
Nostalgic beats from Ayman Rostom, aka Dr. Zygote and The Maghreban
Ayman Rostom had a penchant for nostalgic productions in his music, which isn't surprising given how he studied his brother's tapes of Yo! MTV Raps back in the day, which lead to his career as Dr. Zygote and his own Boot Records label (Bandcamp). More recently, he's taken the handle The Maghreban and embraced stripped-down house-type beats that he releases on his Zoot Records label, though in his new video for Now Easy, the focus is on his love of oldschool drum'n'bass. [more inside]
Just let it in.
The first and final full trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, first sequel to the Star Wars trilogy has been posted. [more inside]
THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Netflix will be making four 90-minute Gilmore Girls episodes, written by series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino. Lorelai, Rory, Emily, and Luke are expected to return. [more inside]
Replicating Walker
Many of those who went to see Furious 7 earlier this year went because it was, by all accounts, a raucous good time. And there were also a number of us who were extremely curious about how they were able to finish the film after the tragic death of star Paul Walker. Variety currently has an article up on the methods used to replicate Walker for certain scenes and, most intriguingly, an imgur gallery has been posted of all the shots that were completed after Walker died.
Dropin'drones
Nora Young on CBC's Spark interviews Scot Yount, who was hit by a drone during a parade, and Joe O'Neil, whose quadrocopter crashed onto a police van in London, ON (podcast). With drone-related accidents on the rise, the US DOT has formed a task force to create a registration process. Registration could begin as soon as the holiday season, DOT officials said Monday.
Greeks Bearing Stretchers
He likes big butts and he cannot lie
You never see fear coming ‘til it swallows you whole
Half-heard whispers. A creaking door. A missed step. From Vertigo to Videodrome, the scariest movies exploit our greatest – and most basic – fears. Fear Itself - BBC Documentary (SLYT NSFW)
I Thought I Told You To Shut Up
I Thought I Told You To Shut Up. In 1977 David Boswell created comic book anti-hero Reid Fleming, the World’s Toughest Milkman. 30 years later, the big screen Hollywood adaptation remains in contractual limbo. Narrated by Academy Award-Winner Jonathan Demme. Previously on M-F, with that comment .
The Democratic Party is in deep trouble
At all levels of government, (except the presidency) the republican party is arguably in a stronger position. than it has been since the reconstruction. Matt Yeglesias argues that the democratic party is in deep trouble.
Archive.org, WHOIS Lookups, & Facebook >> WaPo, USA Today, & GQ
We’ve all followed the sad news about Lamar Odom… [It’s] prompted lots of journalists to ask a natural question: Who made Reload?… I’ve yet to see one proffer anything more than a skin-deep answer… Here are the simple steps I took to begin answering the question… My goal is to help you become a better consumer of the press, so that when you read paper-thin accounts like the above, you stop and say: “Hey! That’s not real journalism.” Only with that kind of pressure will the media improve.
With a few quick searches, Blake Ross took the press to task and solved a mystery.
With a few quick searches, Blake Ross took the press to task and solved a mystery.
“...illustrate exactly why people of colour need safe spaces,”
Closure of POC Yoga due to hate, death threats a tragedy for all people of color.
For the past 5 years Teresa has been involved in a beloved community collective called POC Yoga. The collective offered monthly to weekly yoga classes for people of color. It was also a safe space for lesbian, bisexual, gay, queer, and trans friendly, and open to people of all ages, body sizes, abilities, genders, and experience. But not anymore. Due to an unauthorized September post advertising their class on the online social network Nextdoor that was then critiqued by conservative talk show host Dori Monson, POC Yoga and Teresa were suddenly met with angry white protest that escalated into national ire and multiple death threats.[more inside]
Shuttered: The End of Abortion Access in Red America
"Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court opinion legalizing abortion — started in Texas. Now, as abortion rights are under unprecedented attack, it’s Texas that could trigger the end of Roe v. Wade. At stake: The reproductive rights of millions of American women, across the entire country." Shuttered: The End of Abortion Access in Red America, with support from EHRP, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
The Life of a Professional Guinea Pig
What it’s like to earn a living as a research subject in clinical trials Today, Stone no longer relies on strangers in bars—instead, he’s a part of a small community that shares info about study opportunities. Stone says he sends mass texts whenever he sees a new study online. In exchange, the group does the same for him. The members of this group call themselves guinea pigs, or lab rats. They also call themselves professionals.
folksongs should not be buried in libraries
Cannons buried in flowers
Young pianists from around the world have gathered in Warsaw for the 17th International Chopin Competition, which is now in the second day of its final round, streaming live beginning in half an hour. Today, Eric Lu, Szymon Nehring, and Georgijs Osokins will enter the octagon Warsaw Philharmonic to interpret the piano concerto in E minor, op. 11. [more inside]
Grass grow in de graveyard/Sing, O Graveyard!/Graveyard ought to know me
Black Deaths Matter: A Generation of African Americans Are Buried in Racism
In Richmond, Virginia, two nearby African-American cemeteries, East End and Evergreen, are obscured by creeping kudzu. The cemeteries are within view of Richmond’s city-owned Oakwood Cemetery, which holds the remains of an estimated 17,000 Confederate soldiers. Brian Palmer, a journalist, is working on a film that follows a group of local volunteers who hope to reclaim East End. He learned that the gulf between the neglect in East End and the meticulous perpetual care in Oakwood is supported by contemporary public policy: The state government allocates funds to the Daughters of the Confederacy, a private group, to provide for the maintenance of Confederate soldiers’ graves in Oakwood and dozens of other state cemeteries.
M-42
Inside Grand Central's Secret Sub-Basement, Which Nazis Nearly Destroyed [autoplaying video] [more inside]
Vetch
Vetch (dropbox PDF link) is the first known literary journal for transgender poets and prose writers.
It still looks like traveling to me
Get ready for the upcoming NBA Season with a refresher on the rules through the NBA Video Rulebook [more inside]
Contemplating a future from a prison cell
"From a certain angle, the premise seems almost cruel: invite prisoners on death row to design their own memorials — ways for them to be remembered after they’ve been executed. This means asking them to confront not just their own mortality, but the state’s hand in ensuring it; to imagine not only the reality of their deaths, but a time beyond it.
Yet, if Life After Death and Elsewhere suggests anything, it’s that this process may offer a release. These men are already thinking about death, after all — two paintings that feature the grim reaper assure us of that. Now at least they have somewhere to channel their thoughts."
A short story by Ellen Klages
"Licked into being by primeval supercow"
*Norse God Family Tree* *The Emu War* (previously) *Headless Folk of the French Revolution* *How Voltaire broke the lottery* *Mummy Brown and other Historical Colors* *Management Secrets of Genghis Khan* -- just some of the Veritable Hokum dredged from history and served up in comics form by Korwin Briggs.
October 18
Life is unfair
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
June, 1987, Wembley Arena London, While My Guitar Gently Weeps.
There are a few artists that you might recognize..
a portfolio of kinetic art
Pee U - 235
There is a club among atomic scientists who have worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. How much plutonium in the body does it take to join the club? Enough so that it comes out in your urine.
Chernderlier
The Swedish Chef sings Sia's Chandelier (SLSoundCloud)
Animated Chocolate Cake
Inside Corporate America’s Campaign to Ditch Workers’ Comp
One Texas lawyer is helping companies opt out of workers’ compensation and write their own rules. What does it mean for injured workers? [more inside]
No matter where I am, the public libraries belong to me. I’m the public.
The role of the modern librarian, and other things. Interviewed by Erica Heilman, in which Jessamyn elaborates on librarians and libraries, the people they help, some of their needs, teaching tech and online skills in a rural community, and the balance of the online and the offline life. [more inside]
Canada federal election 2015
"We’re now in the home stretch of Canada’s federal election campaign — at seventy-eight days, the longest in modern Canadian history and the most important since 1988, when free trade with the United States was the defining issue. For the first time in Canadian history, it is a close three-way race between the ruling Conservatives, the centrist Liberals, and the social-democratic New Democratic Party (NDP)." [more inside]
Time and Tide
Life behind the Three Gorges Dam
The major themes of the China story - unprecedented socioeconomic change, environmental crises, the thirst for energy, the destruction of historical and cultural heritage - are all here, framed against the backdrop of millions of ordinary Chinese struggling to cope with the powerful man-made and natural forces beyond their control. Would the huge sacrifices be worth it in the end...Photo-Essay, over time, by Singaporean photo-journalist Chua Chin Hon
Can an iPad run Drug Wars? Oh... it can?
The TI-83 graphic calculator is still a standby for mathematics education in America. This Mic.com article looks at some of the causes and effects of that fact. [more inside]
Potato Toys
Published in 1931, Игрушки Картошки is a Russian book of toys you can make out of potatoes (and matches, and the occasional stick). [more inside]
Colonising Force
An influx of Indian users ruffles Quora. Responding to the question “What turns people off about Quora?,” the user David Stewart wrote, in 2013, “The large, and steadily increasing, Indian presence.” The answer has earned him over 3,400 upvotes. [more inside]
Fly To Space!
On 20 February 1947, the first animal made it into space aboard a captured Nazi V-2 rocket. That animal was a fruit fly, accompanied by several compatriots from the same species. Their rocket reached an altitude of 108 kilometers and then parachuted safely back to Earth after completing their 3 minute and 10 second mission. All hail Earth's pioneering space travellers!
/r/gonwild
"Loadingicon are small, trippy-looking color-limited .gifs that would make good or at least interesting animated icons or loading screens.
Gifs posted should be a closed loop, and animated either by hand or computer.
Gifs drawn from film, television, or other video sources are not allowed. Reposts or posts that otherwise aren't a good fit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
[more inside]
Gifs posted should be a closed loop, and animated either by hand or computer.
Gifs drawn from film, television, or other video sources are not allowed. Reposts or posts that otherwise aren't a good fit may be removed at the mods' discretion.
[more inside]
“The draft shows Ward making mistakes and changing his mind.”
Fruit of good labours. [Times Literary Supplement] Earliest known draft of King James Bible discovered by Jeffrey Alan Miller, assistant professor of English at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
The draft appears in a manuscript notebook formerly belonging to Samuel Ward (1572–1643), who was part of the team of seven men in Cambridge charged with translating the Apocrypha. At the time of his selection as a translator, probably in 1604, Ward was still a young Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1610, though, he became Master of Sidney Sussex, a post he held until his death. Today, a trove of Ward’s notebooks and other manuscripts survive in the college’s archives, and among them is a small notebook now identified as MS Ward B.
Functions of Film Sound: The Prestige
More subtly, offscreen sound is used to withhold the "Prestige," or the payoff, of each man's greatest trick. (Originally, the word prestige meant "illusion," especially one that dazzles the eyes.) Alfred's first, minimal version of the Transported Man is shown only in part. We see the setup with Robert watching avidly and Cutter elsewhere in the audience, skeptical. But we don't see the Prestige phase of the trick. Nolan keeps the camera on Cutter while we hear the second door open and the bouncing ball being caught by the duplicate Alfred. Nolan thereby makes the trick itself vague, to be revealed in full later. Conveying the illusion through offscreen sound also emphasizes the contrasting reactions of Cutter, who is unimpressed, and Robert, who considers it "the greatest magic trick I’ve ever seen." [more inside]
October 17
They're great!
A series of dark commercials (purportedly) for Kellogg's Frosted Flakes have appeared on Youtube as part of a "Tony is Back" campaign. Kellogg's is not amused.
Playing with Barbies has rarely been about fashion
"I'm taking comfort in the ghosts of my past lives"
The Gollop Chamber
The making of X-Com, Julian Gollop's squad based tactical game. Many subsequent games have taken the XCOM name, often of dubious qaulity, to the point when an XCOM FPS almost had Gollop crowdsourcing his own remake. Fortunately Firaxis did a "very very good" job with it's XCOM: Enemy Unknown" , though Gollop would have done a few things differently. A sequel, XCOM 2, is on the way, and will show "what happens when you lose Enemy Unknown.> [more inside]
Choose Something Like a Star: The Return of Celestial Navigation
"[S]atellites and GPS are vulnerable to cyber attack. The tools of yesteryear—sextants, nautical almanacs, volumes of tables—are not. With that in mind, the [U.S. Naval] academy is reinstating celestial navigation into its curriculum." A navigation expert speaks about the importance of a lower-tech approach. Want more? Celestial navigation in the classroom. Build your own sextant!
What happens when someone dies alone
The Lonely Death of George Bell (slnyt) Incredibly well-researched, in-depth article on all the people affected by the death of a random man late last year, from the city workers charged with disposing of him and his things, to the people who knew him. Surprisingly moving, it is full of small uplifting moments.
“We tell stories from the fault lines that separate Americans.”
The Us and Them Podcast from West Virginia Public Broadcasting is dedicated to exploring America’s cultural divides. It was partly driven by host Trey Kay’s friendship with Alice Moore (episode one), a major player in the 1974 West Virginia Textbook War that tore up the state in Trey's high-school years. (Episode two, which won a Peabody when originally aired on Studio 360.)
Alice made a reappearance in the podcast during the recent prolonged defeat of the Confederate Flag (episode nine). She also got a brief mention in episode ten, in which American foreign correspondents of color Roopa Gogineni and Mike Onyiego visited Louisiana to report on the flag war.
Alice made a reappearance in the podcast during the recent prolonged defeat of the Confederate Flag (episode nine). She also got a brief mention in episode ten, in which American foreign correspondents of color Roopa Gogineni and Mike Onyiego visited Louisiana to report on the flag war.
Can men have it all? (STL)
Table turning Twitter account illustrating the absurdity of women having it all.
Apparition, by Stealing Sheep
The new song and video by the psychedelic pop band from Liverpool is on Vimeo and YouTube. A discussion of the video, with screenshots and storyboards. The Stealing Sheep website and twitter; also, wikipedia. More on the video: Nowscopitone, Guardian, folkradiouk, Frontview. The video credits.
The Confessions of @dick_nixon
“I understood that Nixon couldn't be frozen in the world of the tapes — he belonged ‘in the arena.’ And that made him a natural for Twitter.” Justin Sherin analyzes how and why he imitates Richard Nixon on Twitter as @dick_nixon.
Promoting a new season? Get Your Analog Socia Media On
A new season of Going Deep With David Rees begins next month. To help promote the show, Rees will eschew social media, taking his campaign on the road. [more inside]
"Wasn't I hiding something, too?"
Sure, it's a massive time suck, but think of the savings!
A few days ago, a reddit user posted a thought-experiment about living in Las Vegas and working in San Francisco, commuting four days a week by airplane. Their back-of-the-envelope calculations have them saving about $1100/month. The posting was picked up by CityLab, and is leading to some interesting discussions. [more inside]
2015 Nikon's Small World Photomicrography Contest Winners
Mars with guitars
An outer space trip. Strum.
October 16
The Broad Experience
If you spend any amount of time thinking about the business world and how women work within it, you must listen to The Broad Experience podcast. There are currently 70 episodes, hosted by the very smart, inquisitive, and (perhaps most importantly?) British, Ashley Milne-Tyte. I feel like I have never heard these kinds of discussions between women that are as erudite, insightful and pull no punches like these conversations that she is hosting. [more inside]
Hüsker Dü - top-shelf Land Speed Record-era live footage
Hüsker Dü were caught on tape on September 5, 1981 at the 7th St Entry, Minneapolis, MN, blazing through a familiar set they'd recorded weeks earlier for Land Speed Record. Set 1
The real surprise is when they returned to the stage later that night to showcase the slower, more melodic side of the band, complete with four unreleased tracks. Set 2. [more inside]
The real surprise is when they returned to the stage later that night to showcase the slower, more melodic side of the band, complete with four unreleased tracks. Set 2. [more inside]
"he's my zucchini."
"To help shed some more light on this subject matter, here are 12 terms related to sexual and romantic identities that are beginning to receive more attention in the media but that are still regularly absent or erased from conversations currently taking place in popular culture." Noah Michelson sheds light on sexual and romantic identities in a beginner's primer at Huffington Post.
The Middle East Friendship Chart.
Chivalry has fuck all to do with women, and everything to do with horses
"That’s all chivalry is: basic guidelines for how not to be a sack of shit. And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die." Myths Retold (previously) clears up a few errors about chivalry. It's a handy guide to privilege, human decency, history, and Arthurian legend ("It turns out you’re not even allowed to see the grail if you thought about a boob once"). [more inside]
"..the Glaswegian origin story is definitively a crock of shit."
Who Owns Chicken Tikka Masala? Complicating a popular origin story.
Alzheimer's caused by fungi?
"Our findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of fungal infection in the central nervous system from Alzheimer's disease patients, but not in control individuals." Nature magazine just published a study that claims that Alzheimer's disease is caused by fungi. If this is true, this is amazing and incredibly exciting.
(By the way, I've just noticed that our very own cstross was the one who shared it on Twitter.)
There once was a dildo in Nantucket
He's-at-homes The dildos of the wives of the whalers of Nantucket. Except this isn't exactly about that, really, it's about loneliness, fading port towns, myth making and removing women from history.
Aisla Craig, home to curling stones, birds, and a bit more
Not just any rock: curling stones' special granite comes from Scotland
From the study of his run down house, David B. Smith pointed to where the sea crashed against the west coast of Scotland. "Out there," he said, "is Ailsa Craig." Not even a dot on the horizon could be spotted, but the 73-year-old retired judge and curling historian extraordinaire knew the exact location of the island that supplies the granite for the Olympic curling stones.Ailsa Craig is where curling stones are born, but also a protected bird sanctuary, and home to a historic light house and golf course. [more inside]
“THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS, WHICH IS TO SAY, NOTHING MUCH.”
Camus' Web. by Jacob Eugene Horn [McSweeney's Internet Tendency]
Wilbur the pig was unhappy. In the two short months that he had been alive, Wilbur was certain he experienced the peaks and valleys of happiness and despair. When he was but a runt, he was free to prance about, but now that he was under the care of Farmer Zuckerman he was confined to a simple pig pen.
Sequins to outfit The Golden Girls, Designing Women, Dame Edna, and more
Braxae Vintage Co. is an Etsy shop with over 700 vintage beaded and sequined dresses, jackets, tops, and the rare pant suit for sale. You can also browse the hundreds of items the shop has already sold. [more inside]
You've Got Mail
Now you can phone your cat
Worried that FifiCortexieKins has wandered off into the woods mousing and is lost? The cat GPS tracker allows you to monitor the location, and previous ramblings, of your cat. It weighs 25 grams, is claimed to be precise to three metres, contains a sim card, and incorporates a microphone and speaker so you can converse with your cat wherever they are. (Ad contains the French for meow)
Coming out on Facebook
"The future of war belongs to the bots." [and the cyborgs]
Missing hiker Geraldine Largay's remains have been located.
The likelihood that there's interesting or important math is pretty high
Shinichi Mochizuki and the impenetrable proof - "Fesenko has studied Mochizuki's work in detail over the past year, visited him at RIMS again in the autumn of 2014 and says that he has now verified the proof. (The other three mathematicians who say they have corroborated it have also spent considerable time working alongside Mochizuki in Japan.) The overarching theme of inter-universal geometry, as Fesenko describes it, is that one must look at whole numbers in a different light — leaving addition aside and seeing the multiplication structure as something malleable and deformable. Standard multiplication would then be just one particular case of a family of structures, just as a circle is a special case of an ellipse." (previously: 1,2; via) [more inside]
Hunting Witches With Walt Disney
Under the name Attaboy Clarence/The Secret History Of Hollywood, Adam Roche creates very long, very in-depth podcasts about classic Hollywood how it relates to broader sociopolitical trends. Clocking in at 171 minutes, Hunting Witches With Walt Disney goes into the background, motivations, and effects of the Red Scare in Hollywood and the House Of Un-American Activities. The nearly 3 hour long podcast spans a cast of characters including Budd Schulberg, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Dorothy Comingore, Edward Dymytryk, Dalton Trumbo, Walt Disney, Humphrey Bogart, and of course, Howard Hughes
Bathe in Sith Lord Remorse
A 249,999,900% return on your investment in a photo
A $2 photo purchased at a junk store has been verified as only the second known image of Billy the Kid. It may sell for $5 million.
The steam must flow
After a long wait, PC developer/publisher/hivemind Valve have finally begun to roll out their big push for the living room space. [more inside]
The Library of Scott Alexandria
Scott Alexander writes a lot. He's a psychiatrist, but talks about all kinds of stuff (in his about page, he calls out cognitive science, psychology, history, politics, medicine, religion, statistics, transhumanism, corny puns, and applied eschatology). Every time I read something of his, I'm struck by how reasonable he is. Evidently, I'm not alone: his posts each attract hundreds of comments. And he gets linked here a good bit. So a long-time reader of his combed through all his writings of the past decade-or-so and assembled this best-hits list. It's going to take me several happy months to get through it.
Ermahgerd!
Watch the Skies!
Watch the Skies is a megagame which throws hundreds of players into the roles of world governments, corporations, the media, alien races and even the pope (Oh, don't forget the Whales) in a day long game of alien invasion* [more inside]
Now THAT'S a piano.
SLYT, Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, 1976. Have fun. It's just a little joyful thing.
October 15
Transgender Girls are Welcome to Join the Girl Guides of Canada
After years of allowing transgender children to join only on a case-by-case basis, the Girl Guides of Canada have released new guidelines(pdf) that make their stance on the issue clear and official: "All persons who live their lives as female are welcome to join the organization." [more inside]
Hong Kong Is Slowly Dimming Its Neon Glow
"Since the mid-20th century, endless towers of flashing, throbbing neon have defined Hong Kong’s landscape as much as Victoria Harbor and the skyline of densely packed high-rises.
'When you think of Hong Kong and visual culture, one of the first things that comes to the fore is neon signs,' said Aric Chen, the design and architecture curator of M+, a museum that is collecting images of Hong Kong’s neon signs online and some of the signs themselves as they are retired, including the neon cow.
The Hong Kong immortalized in the films of Wong Kar-wai, the director of 'In the Mood for Love' and 'Chungking Express,' is awash in neon, Mr. Chen said.
'If his representations of Hong Kong in the popular imaginations are seminal, which I think they are,' he said, 'you can’t separate that image from the neon ambient glow.'
But the neon of Hong Kong’s streets is dimming." (Previously).
Talent and Creativity expressed through dance
MacArthur Genius Grant award winner Michelle Dorrance is a tap dancer. Here she is performing on Colbert with the house band, Stay Human. This is really beautiful. She is a tap dancer, musician and choreographer breathing new life into a uniquely American art form in works that combine the musicality of tap with the choreographic intricacies of contemporary dance.
Dorrance uses her deep understanding of the technique and history of tap dancing to deconstruct and reimagine its artistic possibilities. [more inside]
Do you need vulva emoji? Or do you want to keep typing ({|})?
Feministing has done an article on Flirtmoji's recent release of 15 vulva emoji, realistically asymmetrical and in a variety of pleasant colors.
Designer Katy McCarthy did an interview on her work on these sexually explicit emoji and the necessity of inclusivity.
How Doctors Take Women's Pain Less Seriously
"If she had been alone, with no one to agitate for her care, there’s no telling how long she might have waited." Nationwide, men wait an average of 49 minutes before receiving an analgesic for acute abdominal pain. Women wait an average of 65 minutes for the same thing.
"The problem of abuse is the greatest challenge the web faces today."
Umair Haque on Why Twitter’s Dying (And What You Can Learn From It):
Can we create a better web? Sure. But I think we have to start with humility, gratitude, reality — not arrogance, privilege, blindness. Abuse isn’t a nuisance, a triviality, a minor annoyance that “those people” have to put up with for the great privilege of having our world-changing stuff in their grubby hands. It will chill, stop, and kill networks from growing, communities from blossoming, and lives from flourishing.
Mans' best friend.
The First Legal Abortion Providers Tell Their Stories
The Cut [NYMag] speaks to seven doctors who practiced on the cusp of Roe. Many are still practicing. [more inside]
Real-time Expression Transfer
Researchers at Stanford produce real-time, photo-realistic expression transfer. [Auto plays with sound]
When you look in the mirror, who do you see?
Reflections of the past is an award-winning photo series by commercial advertising photographer Tom Hussey. [more inside]
What You Can Learn From Hunter-Gatherers' Sleeping Patterns
Here’s the story that people like to tell about the way we sleep: Back in the day, we got more of it. Our eyes would shut when it got dark. We’d wake up for a few hours during the night instead of snoozing for a single long block. And we’d nap during the day. Then—minor key!—modernity ruined everything. Our busy working lives put an end to afternoon naps, while lightbulbs, TV screens, and smartphones shortened our natural slumber and made it more continuous. All of this is wrong, according to Jerome Siegel at the University of California, Los Angeles. Much like the Paleo diet, it’s based on unsubstantiated assumptions about how humans used to live.
You can't count on the web, okay?
The web, as it appears at any one moment, is a phantasmagoria. It’s not a place in any reliable sense of the word. It is not a repository. [more inside]
Six Degrees of a Different Bacon
Six Degrees of Francis Bacon. Collaboratively mapping connections in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. (Via)
“I do not consider literary forms to exist in a hierarchy,”
History v Historical Fiction by Jane Smiley [The Guardian] Historical fiction is not a secondary form – I was condescended to by a conservative historian who cannot see that he too constructs stories.
“The condescender was Niall Ferguson, a conservative historian about 15 years younger than me, who wanted to be sure that I understood that the historical novel is all made up, but that historical non-fiction, written by historians is truth. He referred to his research. I referred to my research. He wasn’t convinced. I suggested that the demands of history and fiction are slightly different – that since a novel is a story, it must be complete, and since a history must be accepted by the reader as accurate, it must be incomplete.”
In Search of 'Desiderata'
"Desiderata" is a 1927 poem by Max Ehrmann. It's been subjected to misattribution and mutation (the second Google result is a typo-ridden version that's lurked on a .edu site since 1996 and substitutes "Neither be critical about love" for "Neither be cynical about love" and "Be careful" for "Be cheerful". Even Snopes prints a version with "careful" rather than "cheerful.)
Daniel Nester digs into the history of the poem in a piece published on the website of the Poetry Foundation.
Cult of the cosmic
Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.
It seemed nearly impossible for a movie to fail by Fandango's standards.
Be Suspicious Of Online Movie Ratings, Especially Fandango's — FiveThirtyEight.com notices a consistent pattern in Fandango movie ratings, and warns against the perils of relying on ratings provided by companies trying to sell you the product being rated. [more inside]
Norvig Does Probability
"You’re so sweet, Bonney. You’re too sweet."
Nathan Fielder, host of Nathan for You, talks to AV Club writer John Teti's mother, who expressed a strong dislike for Fielder on a podcast last year. [more inside]
💻💬
There are at least three emoji-based programming languages: 🍀 (aka 4Lang; bubblesort example), Emojinal, and HeartForth (stack-based, for extra obscurity; factorial example). [more inside]
Put it on the board....YES!
To put an exclamation point on the Chicago Cubs winning their first postseason series at Wrigley Field in the 100 year history of Wrigley Field, rookie Kyle Schwarber hit a dramatic 400+ foot shot over the new video scoreboard in right field... [more inside]
"Paint her greener!"
The green Orion slave girl. Star Trek's almost-forgotten 1965 original pilot contained a sequence that would later become iconic: the dancing, seductive green Orion slave girl. Getting her to stay green, though, was a different matter entirely. [more inside]
Sex Blah-sitivism
We tell women to have sex with as many partners as they desire while neglecting to tell men to study up on female anatomy. But who wants sex if it’s not good? A woman’s right to say ‘meh’
The Drone Papers, from the Intercept
The Drone Papers-The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone wars. [more inside]
ONE BASEBALL PLAYER SLAPPED ANOTHER BASEBALL PLAYER ON THE BUTT
At the beginning of October, the Toronto Blue Jays at long last clinched the AL East division, ending a record 22-year drought [prev.]. Meanwhile, after a disastrous, injury-plagued 2014 season, the Texas Rangers rebounded from a late-summer nadir to improbably win the AL West title. The two teams collided in a best-of-five series -- Texas won two, then Toronto. It all came down to Wednesday night's showdown. Tied 2-2 after six, the 7th inning proceeded to unravel over the next 53 minutes in increasingly bizarre and dramatic fashion. To wit: A freak accident. A controversial call. Roars and brickbats from the crowd. The mayor tweets for calm. A comedy of errors. A violent slide. An epic home run, and an even more epic bat flip. Benches clear. Players ejected. Fans arrested. And the slap-ass heard 'round the world. [more inside]
"I'm sorry, Mikhail, if I could? Didn't mean to cut you off there."
At least there's Big Boo
Why Don't Queer Butch Women Exist in Games?
Meanwhile, Julie Compton wonders Why Hollywood Can't Get with Butch Women.
And Jack Halberstam asks, Is the Butch Back?
October 14
Murder in the Alps
Four dead, an ever-expanding list of suspects, dozens of detectives on the case. Three years after the fact, a mysterious shooting in the French Alps has evolved into one of the most confounding, globe-spanning criminal investigations in decades.
كل ما تبذلونه من قاعدة هي ملك لنا
Homeland gets pranked. Season 5 of Golden Globe winning TV show Homeland (currently showing on Showtime) has Carrie living in Berlin, so it was largely filmed in Germany, even some bits that appear to be in other countries. The crew built a very convincing set of a middle-east refugee camp that is first seen in episode 2, and for added authenticity they hired local German arabic graffiti artists to give the walls authentic arabic graffiti. Trouble is, the artists actually wrote slogans such as "Homeland is racist" and "This show does not represent the views of the artists". [more inside]
Ohm... Ohm....
Meditation has gotten hip again. With events like Wisdom 2.0, DIY apps, trendy in-person sessions/ networking, and even free 10 day sessions, the backlash has begun.
The master of slow-burning action.
"There’s a long and noble tradition of literary critics misunderstanding Joseph Conrad. Partly that’s because he is such a complicated, dense and fascinating writer. Far more words have been written about him than he ever wrote himself – and not everyone can get it right all the time. Especially when you throw combustible postcolonial issues into the mix." [Sam Jordison - The Guardian] [more inside]
Let them fight
Legendary and Warner Bros. announce some forthcoming movies: "The initial trio of films are 2017’s KONG: SKULL ISLAND; GODZILLA 2 in 2018; and then GODZILLA VS. KONG, arriving in theaters in 2020." [more inside]
♂?
America's Child Marriage Problem
In the United States today, thousands of children under 18 have recently taken marital vows — mostly girls married to adult men, often with approval from local judges. In at least one case, a 10-year-old boy was legally married. [more inside]
“Time and again, I have gone to bed early.”
I Have Gone to Bed Early: Translating Proust by Dan Piepenbring [The Paris Review]
Richard Howard, who turns eighty-six today, first appeared in The Paris Review in our thirteenth issue—from the summer of 1956. Since then, several of his poems and translations have found their way to these pages, and in 2004, J. D. McClatchy interviewed him for our Art of Poetry series. In our Summer 1989 issue, George Plimpton spoke with Howard about translating Proust.[more inside]
Uniquely curious (in both senses of the word)
After thirteen seasons, Stephen Fry has announced he is stepping down as host of the BBC panel show QI. He will be replaced by Sandi Toksvig.
What's that? A tasty snack!
Move or die
Don't feel like using Nate Silver's new statistical prediction model CARMELO to figure out if your NBA team will be any good this season? Maybe this fact will help instead: The most important contribution an NBA basketball player can make to their team is no longer thought to be scoring points. Like, at all. [more inside]
"You can't do this without us, and we can't do this without you,"
"Yousef Al Otaiba is the most charming man in Washington: He's slick, he's savvy and he throws one hell of a party. And if he has his way, our Middle East policy is going to get a lot more aggressive." - Ryan Grim and Akbar Shahid Ahmed [more inside]
"And I've learned that life is an adventure."
In May 1991, ABC launched a half-hour drama series called "My Life and Times." The premise: An 85 year old man living in a retirement community in 2035 looks back on his life and shares his experiences with friends and family. Framing sequences were set in 2035 while the bulk of the episodes featured flashbacks to the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s. The show begins on April 9, 2035. [more inside]
Supported by the McGarblin Group
It's 1983, time to watch Computer Show. There are only a couple of episodes uploaded to Youtube, but the first one features custom art work site Lumi, and the second explores Reddit. [more inside]
"Talk to your dudes about believing women who say they've been hurt."
"I am a hetero white cis man working to take the space I have in the world and make it feminist... I know that it should be rapists' responsibility to not rape instead of survivors' responsibility to not get raped, and I know that by virtue of being a dude who doesn't talk to other dudes about rape I am complicit in rape culture, but I just have no idea where to begin. Can you talk to me about talking to rapists about rape?" [cw: potentially triggering language abounds]
Tipping point?
NYC restauranteur Danny Meyer is eliminating tips at his 13 restaurants. "Significantly increased" prices will make up the difference. (More from NYTimes.)
Out of the Cultural Revolution, a Nobel Prize and a cure for malaria
Earlier this month, Youyou Tu was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for her discovery of artemisinin, also known as qinghaosu. She is the first Chinese Nobel recipient for work that was done in mainland China. Dr. Tu's studies were done in the midst of the Cultural Revolution, a politically precarious time for Chinese academics, which adds a layer of historical complexity to her work. It is difficult to overstate the importance of artemisinin to anti-malarial efforts. Unfortunately, artemisinin-resistant strains of malaria are already beginning to appear only thirty years after the drug was introduced.
The American Dream in all likelihood died a long time ago.
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny (New Media / Old Media Edition)
August: Caleb Madison solicits crossword submissions for a new daily feature at Buzzfeed.
September 30: The Observer publishes a profile of Buzzfeed’s Puzzle Editor.
October 3: “You Won’t Believe How Much Of This Crossword You Can Finish”
October 6: “You Won’t Believe How Much Of This Mini Crossword You Can Finish”
October 12: Madison explains “why in the world [Buzzfeed is] launching a crossword,” and the puzzles start arriving in earnest: “The 9 Celebrities Discover Their Inner Princess Puzzle”, “That Crossword Where 20 Minutes In, He Gives You That Look”, and “That Puzzle When You Can’t Escape Pumpkin Spice Season”
December: People write letters to The Awl about how they hate themselves because they aren’t crossword puzzle constructors. Previously
September 30: The Observer publishes a profile of Buzzfeed’s Puzzle Editor.
October 3: “You Won’t Believe How Much Of This Crossword You Can Finish”
October 6: “You Won’t Believe How Much Of This Mini Crossword You Can Finish”
October 12: Madison explains “why in the world [Buzzfeed is] launching a crossword,” and the puzzles start arriving in earnest: “The 9 Celebrities Discover Their Inner Princess Puzzle”, “That Crossword Where 20 Minutes In, He Gives You That Look”, and “That Puzzle When You Can’t Escape Pumpkin Spice Season”
December: People write letters to The Awl about how they hate themselves because they aren’t crossword puzzle constructors. Previously
First Jamaican-Born Writer Wins Man Booker
For the first time, a Jamaican writer has won the Man Booker Prize for the best original novel written in English. Marlon James' 680-page A Brief History of Seven Killings is a fictional oral history of three decades of Jamaican life, using the real-life attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976 as its jumping-off point. [more inside]
Real Mjǫllnir
RIP Carey Lander, keyboardist
Carey Lander, keyboardist for Scottish indie band Camera Obscura, has passed. Carey died of Sarcoma, and she asked everyone to give for those who would come after. She was 33.
Living in the database, database
The Red Drum Getaway
A Hitchcock mashup where Kubrick is the villain. / Un mashup hitchcockien dont Kubrick est le méchant.
I have water but can you drink from my hands?
In 1992-1994 and 2005-2009, Yuka Makino studied the lopping practices in the oak forests of Garwhal, Himalaya. Her PhD dissertation (PDF) contains a fascinating prologue describing the practical and ethical issues for conducting ethnographic research in an area where distrust of outsiders runs high and where gender and caste norms are strictly enforced.
One afternoon, several children came and were chatting with us when a 10-year-old girl joined us. Though she still took part in the conversation in a loud voice, she stood at the edge of the veranda, far away from the door. (...) I realized that she was a Scheduled Caste girl and if she had stood at the doorway her shadow would have fallen into the room and may have touched my assistant’s plate of food, contaminating or polluting it. I let her stand there so that neither she nor my assistant would feel uncomfortable. [more inside]
DIY Overhead Control Panel
DIY Computer Control Panel. That is all.
what makes a good community?
what makes a good community?
The thing is, reaching the goal of a diverse community is a step-by-step process. There are no shortcuts. Each step has to be complete before the next level of cultural change is effective. It’s also worth noting that each step along the way benefits all community members, not just diverse contributors.Sarah Sharp writes about community building, shortly after her recent departure from linux kernel development.
Frankly, you sound a little paranoid
If someone had told me even a few years ago that such a thing wasn’t pure coincidence, I would have had my doubts about that someone. Now, however, I reserve my doubts for the people who still trust. There are so many ghosts in our machines—their locations so hidden, their methods so ingenious, their motives so inscrutable—that not to feel haunted is not to be awake. That’s why paranoia, even in its extreme forms, no longer seems to me so much a disorder as a mode of cognition with an impressive track record of prescience. --Walter Kirn on modern paranoia in The Atlantic [more inside]
October 13
"If this was the law of Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity?”
Thoreau was kind of a dick. Actually, more than "kind of." He was, in fact, a huge, total dick. (OK, he was a strident and powerful abolitionist. But somehow he managed to be a dick about that too.) [more inside]
"About $43,000 a year."
What's the Difference Between Data Science and Statistics? — Not long ago, the term "data science" meant nothing to most people-even to those who worked with data. A likely response to the term was: "Isn't that just statistics?" These days, data science is hot. The Harvard Business Review called data scientist the "Sexiest Job of the 21st Century." So what changed? Why did data science become a distinct term? And what distinguishes data science from statistics?
Are Aliens Building Structures Around KIC 8462852? No. (Yes?)
The Planet Hunters citizen science project has flagged a star 1400 light years away in the constellation Lyra that exhibits irregular, asymmetrical changes in brightness which have been difficult (but not impossible) to explain via natural phenomena. Mainstream media coverage is rushing to ask whether the behavior might indicate alien intelligence at work. But Reddit (and Betteridge) are skeptical.
Tables turning
Putin Bets Big on Aggressive Syria Policy
As the UK government denies reports that RAF pilots have been given the green light to shoot down hostile Russian jets in Syria.
Iraq has begun bombing Islamic State insurgents with help from a new intelligence center with staff from Russia, Iran and Syria.
Russia is using electronic warfare to cloak its actions in Syria from Isis and Nato.
What happens if Russia decides to go into Iraq. How to respond to Russia in Syria while avoiding World War Three.
Meanwhile Shiites in Iraq Hailing Putin for Syria Push.
Iraq has begun bombing Islamic State insurgents with help from a new intelligence center with staff from Russia, Iran and Syria.
Russia is using electronic warfare to cloak its actions in Syria from Isis and Nato.
What happens if Russia decides to go into Iraq. How to respond to Russia in Syria while avoiding World War Three.
Meanwhile Shiites in Iraq Hailing Putin for Syria Push.
The Seventeen Faces of Julian Vandervelde
Democratic Debate 2015
Tonight's Debate debate will be the first time a major news event will be broadcast live in virtual reality. That might not be such a good idea. Here is the When, the Where, the Who and How to Watch. [more inside]
Why are glasses so expensive?
Why are glasses so expensive? [SLYT] According to Forbes, "Today more than 80% of major eyewear brands, including the world’s No. 1 seller, Ray-Ban, [and Oakley] are designed and retailed (over 7,000 stores US alone) by Luxottica" (2012). [more inside]
Ooo wee ooooo, baby baby...
21st Century: a complaint
I want to complain to the studio execs who commissioned the current season of "21st century"; your show is broken. I say this as a viewer coming in with low expectations. ... Whose idea was it to hire the ghosts of Philip K. Dick and George Orwell as showrunners anyway?
A review of the current season of reality by noted author (and MeFi's own) Charlie Stross.
Why Do I Make Less Than My Male Co-Stars?
...if I’m honest with myself, I would be lying if I didn’t say there was an element of wanting to be liked that influenced my decision to close the deal without a real fight. I didn’t want to seem “difficult” or “spoiled.” At the time, that seemed like a fine idea, until I saw the payroll on the Internet and realized every man I was working with definitely didn’t worry about being “difficult” or “spoiled.”Academy Award-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence on the wage gap between male and female actors
Neckst theory of giraffe necks:
Yes, THAT Daily Mail... This is a great article considering it is from the Daily Mail.
A comprehensive study may have revealed how the long neck of the giraffe evolved.
A runner’s high depends on cannabinoid receptors in mice.
The Runner’s High: It’s Like Smoking Weed [High Times]
Research on mice [Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences] has confirmed that a “runner’s high” arises from a release of anandamide, a neurotransmitter that stimulates the same cannabinoid receptors that cannabis does. If you have ever run, biked, lifted weights, or performed any kind of physical exercise, you may have noticed a sense of euphoria and the feeling you are relieved of physical pain and anxiety. They thought it came from β-endorphin, but now scientists have confirmed that anandamide is most likely the cause.[more inside]
Pitchfork Acquired by Condé Nast
The independent online magazine announced it was acquired by the media conglomerate. The indie-rock tastemakers, on the verge of their 20th birthday will join Vogue, Wired and Vanity Fair for an undisclosed sum. [more inside]
Post-punk Pulsar
Houston to Ground Control (SLYT)
Artist Tom Kucy raided the NASA Apollo Project Archive of photos to create a short film titled "Ground Control".
people you never knew existed
only one, actually
99 Luftballons played on a red balloon (SLYT)
Obama and Marilynne Robinson
President Obama & Marilynne Robinson: A Conversation in Iowa. "It seems to me as if democracy is the logical, the inevitable consequence of this kind of religious humanism at its highest level. And it [applies] to everyone. It’s the human image. It’s not any loyalty or tradition or anything else; it’s being human that enlists the respect, the love of God being implied in it."
Where do you find out about Russian criminals?
Librarian Edith Edi Campbell posted to her Facebook page about “Large Fears,” a Kickstarter-funded children’s book for queer black boys, “I would say there are so few books for queer black boys, but there are too few books for all our marginalized young people.”
Children’s writer Meg Rosoff responded: “There are not too few books for marginalised young people. There are hundreds of them, thousands of them. You don’t have to read about a queer black boy to read a book about a marginalised child. The children’s book world is getting far too literal about what ‘needs’ to be represented. You don’t read Crime and Punishment to find out about Russian criminals. Or Alice and Wonderland to know about rabbits. Good literature expands your mind. It doesn’t have the ‘job’ of being a mirror.” [more inside]
Cats of London
Thurston Hopkins was a British photojournalist. Here is his black-and-white photo essay from the 1950's called Cats of London.
Anyone know what this is? Class? Anyone? Anyone?
How could anyone possibly screw up Ferris Bueller's Day Off? By turning it into a sitcom. [more inside]
you cannot cancel your geography
From activist Palestinian OGs, to Black Hebrew hitmakers from remote desert outposts, to goofy trap about food, rap in Israel and Palestine is a melting pot of voices and perspectives. Mike Skinner of the Streets for Noisey Magazine investigates Hip Hop In The Holy Land. [more inside]
The Olivia Pope of Children's Television
From W. Kamau Bell:
"First of all, Doc McStuffins is about a seven-year-old black girl. That basically makes the title character the Diahann Carroll of children’s TV. How many other children’s TV shows have a black female lead character? Hint: The answer is “not nearly enough.” Second of all, Doc McStuffins is a doctor for her stuffed animals and toys. And that may sound merely adorable to you, but I’m raising a pair of black girls who will one day be powerful black women. And Doc McStuffins is the reason that my four year old could say the words “stethoscope,” “otoscope,” and “sphygmomanometer” when she was two years old."
"At the very least it should have been a major sports story. "
Iran is opening up to foreign trade, but not to flagship US brands
The Death and Life of the Great British Pub
Counting the closures of rural inns, high-street noise boxes, sticky-carpet boozers of the backstreets, it can be said that roughly 30 pubs shut every week in the UK; a rate of decline that, as one group of worried analysts has calculated, would mean total elimination of the British pub by the 2040s.[sl longform grauniad] [more inside]
A Stolen Boy, an Angry Loner, an Underground Bunker
INSIDE AN FBI HOSTAGE CRISIS from the Wall Street Journal. [Warning: graphic violence, disturbing images and video]
The curse of Bury St Edmunds
Bury St Edmunds is a small, polite market town in rural eastern England. Better known for its ruined abbey, beer, sugar beet, and being the sort of place Margaret Thatcher ought to keep a tea shop, in 2002 local resident John Peel declared its music scene "the new Seattle". Yeah. How did THAT turn out?
All these thing, they're just disappointing compared to you
John Grant [previously] has a new album coming out soon, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure. He released the lead video, Disappointing [NSFW], a while back, but it might have flown under your radar. It certainly did mine.
Odorez comme des alcools adolescents (Plenitude)
Pardon My French: 561 covers of English-language hit songs, sung in French (by native French speakers of varying musical abilities) in the most literal word-for-word translations over chiptune instrumentals. Includes classics such as L'éclair de Jacques Qui Saute (Les Pierres qui roulent), Sexuelle Guérison (Marvain La-Joie) or Le Paradis des Bandits (Yo Sympa). Includes MP3s, lyrics and links to the original songs for earbleach. BAISE OUAIS ! [more inside]
They hate Silent Hill there
Low cost 30 day project
Sunset Silhouette Selfies
October 12
A Very Revealing Conversation With Rihanna
"It was hard work maintaining a light buzz for so long, but it paid off. When Rihanna’s manager, Jay Brown, appeared to tell me that this was one of her first interviews in years I just laughed. And then choked. Because here she was."
— Miranda July interviews Rihanna for the NYT Magazine's Greats Issue. (SLNYTM)
Variations on a Traffic Jam
Here's fifty lanes of automobile traffic in Beijing.
Here's a bike traffic jam at CicLAvia in Los Angeles, and on New York's 5th Avenue the traffic is afoot.
Farewell to a record jacket visionary.
Sly Stone leaping and kicking the air in his ultra-70s platform heel boots. Thelonious Monk at the piano, a weapon slung across his shoulder and surrounded by the accoutrements of underground resistance. Bruce Springsteen grinning and leaning on his buddy, sax man Clarence Clemmons. If you're any kind of music fan, these iconic album cover images will probably be familiar to you. And they are only the tip of the iceberg: there were so, so many more designed for Columbia Records, over the years, by art director John Berg, who has just passed on at the age of 83. So long, John, and thanks for all those killer record covers.
No Nudes Is Good Nudes?
Previous efforts to revamp Playboy, as recently as three years ago, have never quite stuck. And those who have accused it of exploiting women are unlikely to be assuaged by a modest cover-up. But, according to its own research, Playboy’s logo is one of the most recognizable in the world, along with those of Apple and Nike. This time, as the magazine seeks to compete with younger outlets like Vice, Mr. Flanders said, it sought to answer a key question: “if you take nudity out, what’s left?”Playboy to stop printing nude photos as of the March 2016 issue. (SLNYT) [more inside]
The Saint of Dry Creek
Patrick Haggerty was a teenager in rural Dry Creek, Washington, in the late 1950s. He remembers the day he first had a conversation with his father about being gay. [more inside]
“Tweets Are Rare, But Precious”
For Reuters, Neil Hall and Angus Berwick tell the tale of Lincolnshire hermit Rachel Denton. In 2006 Denton formally committed to living the rest of her days in solitude after a lifetime as a teacher and Carmelite nun. In addition to keeping a garden and raising chickens, she makes time in her routine to update her Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles.
"an abyss of hedonistic pleasure"
"The room was upholstered in crimson and oatmeal and decorated with Socialist Realist frescoes of industrious maidens. A hefty multipointed star descended from the ceiling like a satellite returning from space. Above the tables a pair of identical life-size plaster statues of Soviet schoolgirls faced each other in the manner of temple guardians. They drummed on drums with a look of patriotic ecstasy; crimson blindfolds bound their eyes. Taking a swig of kvas, a fermented bread beverage that's slightly reminiscent of root beer, I wondered whether the statues were intended to be a political statement, nostalgic kitsch, or just a really ambitious exercise in color coordination." - The Surreal Thrill Of Moscow Dining by Alex Halberstadt
Artisans
Here's a 5 min. Youtube clip with some tile makers and brick layers creating ceramic art with oriental motifs & Arabic music in the background
1491
On this Columbus Day, consider what the world truly looked like before the arrival of the West. [more inside]
Holes in your mind, cold and sharp at the edges.
"FABRICATIONIST DEWIT REMAKES THE WORLD" is a work of interactive fiction that tells the story of a synthetic being who, after a sleep of centuries, receives an unexpected visitor—along with a new role in the Great Project.
The Little Printf
So I lived my life flying around the world, telling people how to do things I had sometimes never done myself, while everyone suddenly seemed to believe I was a real programmer because of things I did that were mostly not related to programming in the first place.
One day, I was stuck in an airport coming back from a conference, furiously typing at a terminal, when an odd, gentle voice asked me:
If you please, design me a system!
We can be anything we want to be. Then one day we can’t.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Ladybird books, eight new titles are being produced. However these are targeted at adults, and may not be entirely serious in nature... [more inside]
A Chicago Sojourn
A journey through the architecture and urban landscape of Chicago – from industrial zones to Mid-Century suburbs and all points between. [more inside]
Say no to this.
Facebook's 2014 UK Tax Bill
Social network giant Facebook paid just £4,327 ($6,643) in corporation tax in 2014, its latest UK results show.
Its most recent Companies House filing shows the company as making a pre-tax loss of £28.5m last year, but the firm also paid its 362 UK staff a total of £35.4m in share bonuses.
"Time to retire the 'firewater' fairytale"
Rates of all types of addiction — not just alcohol — are elevated in aboriginal peoples around the world, not only in America. It’s unlikely that these scattered groups randomly happen to share more vulnerability genes for addiction than any other similarly dispersed people. But what they clearly do have in common is an ongoing multi-generational experience of trauma.No, Native Americans aren't genetically more susceptible to alcoholism.
"It's a metaphor for everything I've ever failed at."
"There are two kinds of women: those who knit and those who unravel. I am a great unraveler. I can undo years of careful stitching in fifteen gluttonous minutes. It isn't even a decision, really. Once I see the loose thread, I am undone. It's over before I have even asked myself the question: Do I actually want to destroy this?" [more inside]
How Steven Soderbergh stays busy in his retirement years
Watching him direct is akin to witnessing an athletic performance. Soderbergh walks, jogs, runs, sits, lies on the floor, and hangs half off dollies while PAs grip his ankles. “When I tell other cameramen what goes on with Steven, they’re flabbergasted,” says Soderbergh’s longtime second cameraman, Patrick O’Brien, who works on only about 30 percent of The Knick — usually when Soderbergh needs him to gather extra close-ups in a scene with a lot of characters, operate a crane that he’s sitting on, or shoot the other side of a two-person conversation. [more inside]
Global Bleaching Event Underway
The world's coral is suddenly and rapidly starting to die - "This is only the third time we've seen what we would refer to as a global bleaching event. [The prior events] were in 1998 and 2010, and those were pretty much one year events. We're looking at a similar spatial scale of bleaching across the globe, but spanning across at least 2 years. So that means a lot of these corals are being put under really prolonged stress, or are being hit 2 years in a row." Can 'manually breeding supercorals capable of living in increasingly inhospitable waters' help in time? (via/via)
“the art of turning fiction into fact.”
Traces of Destruction: The emotional work of studying painful history
But people who decide to study this violent history, people who write it all down — we’re also people who need to mail in tax forms, or put on a pot of coffee, call our dads. This can be difficult work, this act of entering the pre when you live in the post, and then having to be a person, and hand something in by a deadline, and walk away and study and do it again. For writers of colour who choose to study or tell the stories of their own communities, this in-between space is made more stark by the fact that they work within a system that often speaks about them, for them, but not with them.
“Poetry makes life what lights and music do the stage.”
A serial novel written in real time by Joshua Cohen, with illustrations by Leon Chang.
PCKWCK is a reinterpretation of Charles Dickens' first serial novel, The Pickwick Papers. That's about all we know so far, because it hasn't been written yet. Beginning Monday, October 12th at 1pm EST, Joshua Cohen will write PCKWCK over five days in front of the entire internet. Every day from 1pm-6pm EST visitors to www.PCKWCK.com will be able to watch Cohen write in real time, offer feedback that may affect the outcome of the novel, and talk with Cohen and other readers in a chat room.[more inside]
Indigenous peoples, sexuality and gender
The enigma behind America’s freak, 20-year lobster boom
The Maine lobster haul has been growing and growing since the early 1990s, and no one is certain of why. Now there are fears of a pending bust, but without knowing the reason for the boom, no one can confidently predict whether the bust will happen either.
Woman Defeats Husband
How the women of Umatilla, Oregon took over the city's government - in 1916.
It Scared My Toddler
In reality the Washington D.C. football team has a racist name, an asshole owner, and ruined one of the most promising rookie quarterbacks to ever play in the league. Jon Bois uses Breaking Madden to get fictional revenge by burning Washington to the ground. [more inside]
"Patriotism is not enough."
On this day one hundred years ago, the German army executed Edith Cavell. She was a British nurse who had worked in Belgium before the First World War, and then helped Belgian, French, and British men escape the country during the German occupation. A military court found her guilty of actively aiding the enemy in wartime, and ordered her execution. [more inside]
Hundreds of nails and miles of string
String (or yarn) and nail art can pretty straight-forward - use nails to set anchors for string and make something. You can make more complex patterns, like this string art clock by Aline Campbell, or multi-colored geometric patterns by Mahmoud Al-qammari. But it takes more skill and patience to make a giant portrait, as done by Zenyk Palagniuk, in the style of Kumi Yamashita.
Oi! Ik voel me goed (Non-English SLYT)
The Amsterdam Klezmer Band performs their Klezmer rap song 'Chassid in Amsterdam'. Lyrics (in Dutch/Jiddish) in the description. [more inside]
October 11
Input/Output
Input/Output (SLVimeo) - A new short from Terri Timely and Park Pictures which defies description
Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department
Given the success I am having with students, one might think that the Mathematics Department leadership would be expressing curiosity about how I am achieving that success. Instead, Craig Evans in early 2014 asked me "If you had a job at McDonalds and came along with all these new ideas, how long do you think you'd carry on working there?" The fact that the now Interim Chair of the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department should compare undergraduate education to fast food reveals everything you need to know about how students are regarded by the leading clique of men at the helm of the Mathematics Department of the number one public university in the world. [more inside]
"This is how they protect me."
"Every society struggles to care for people with mental illness. In parts of West Africa, where psychiatry is virtually unknown, the chain is often a last resort for desperate families who cannot control a loved one in the grip of psychosis. Religious retreats, known as prayer camps, set up makeshift psychiatric wards, usually with prayer as the only intervention." NYTimes. Links contain upsetting images and video. [more inside]
Instant Carma
A man takes his car for a drive through town. Stuff happens (SLYT).
The best & worst places to die
The Economist's Quality of Death Index for 2015 was published last week. It attempts to measure the quality of palliative care in 80 countries. The top three countries (in order) are Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. And the bottom three countries? Philippines, Bangladesh, and Iraq.
Here is The Economist's summary and here is the full report.
The Art of Richard Thompson
(slvimeo) Richard Thompson is renowned among cartoonists as the "artist's" cartoonist. Little known to all but those close to him is the extent of his extraordinary art, a gift so rare that it compelled "Calvin and Hobbes" creator, Bill Watterson, to break an almost 20 year silence and declare, "Now I have a reason to read comics again". Cul de Sac, his comic strip, from the beginning.
“I made it a point to live with all the guys I admire."
Raising social mobility
Three of the four largest global accountancy firms in the U.K. have announced changes to their hiring processes. In particular, Deloitte announced that it will "begin using a school-blind hiring process to help address unconscious bias." Interviewers will no longer have access to details of an applicant's school or university until an offer has been made. The announcement marks the start of Deloitte’s inaugural Social Mobility Week. [more inside]
Now you see me now you don't.
Liu Bolin is the invisible man. He paints his entire body to exactly match the scenery behind him and is camouflaged so well it is sometimes almost impossible to spot him.
More of his art and a TED and previous.
More of his art and a TED and previous.
The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election
The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election — They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy. [more inside]
Starring Catherine Deneuve
An unusual rock formation in Chattanooga appears perilously balanced; but more than thirty people can stand on its top at one time. It's called Umbrella Rock. In one of the earliest picture of Umbrella Rock is of soldiers taken in 1863. Today, of course, it looks different. [more inside]
"This is not a comfortable conversation."
Michael Twitty is becoming one of the most transformative figures in the world of food. Reinterrogating and recreating African-American history in the context of American culinary history through his blog Afroculinaria, Twitty argues for "culinary justice" in food writing and the conversation on food history. His project (and forthcoming book of the same name) The Cooking Gene is in part a product of his Southern Discomfort Tour, a journey retracing the preservation and transmission of culinary knowledge before, during and beyond slavery. [more inside]
Miracleman Remastered
Gaiman and Buckingham return to finish their saga - "Many comics legends have worked on Miracleman, but no run on the series is as fondly remembered as Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham's, cut short before its time. But now Marvel isn't just remastering Gaiman and Buckingham's original comics, but letting them finish the story they began 25 years ago." [previously: 1,2,3; also btw...] (via/via)
The consequences of sexual harassment at Berkeley
Dr. Geoffrey Marcy, a prominent exoplanet researcher employed as a professor at UC Berkeley, has been found to have repeatedly violated sexual harassment policy. The full report has not been made public, but according to a report by Buzzfeed, the result is that he is to be given "clear expectations concerning his future interactions with students" or risk further punishment. Dr. Marcy has put an apology letter on his web page. Dr. Michael Eisen, a biology professor at UC Berkeley, has posted an article about the contradictions between the Berkley sexual harassment training and institutional consequences. Dr. Janet Stemwedel writes in Forbes about the differences between institutional and community responses in this case.
The secret history of Myers-Briggs
Of all the questionable assumptions that prop up the Myers-Briggs indicator, this one strikes me as the shakiest: that you are "born with a four letter preference," a reductive blueprint for how to move through life's infinite and varied challenges.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass....”
The Wheel of Time Reread by Leigh Butler [TOR.COM]
Hello! Welcome to the introductory post of a new blog series on Tor.com, The Wheel of Time Re-read. This is in preparation for the publication of the next and last book in the series, A Memory of Light, which is[more inside]scheduled to bepublishedthis fall. My name is Leigh Butler, and I’ll be your hostess for the festivities. I’m very excited to be a part of this project, and I hope you will enjoy it as well.
"Trains are quieter than people think."
A woman is arrested for trespassing after doing yoga poses for photos on the live tracks of the Washington DC metro, months after photographs surfaced. Barely a month before her arrest, in a nearby DC suburb, a train runs over a teenager who was posing for photographs with his girlfriend. [more inside]
Piece of cake^w Toast
Person: Pick up a big red block. Computer: OK.
In 1970, a young graduate student at MIT demonstrated SHRDLU, an interactive artificial intelligence program which could understand simple English sentences in order to manipulate and describe objects within a simple "block world". It was heralded as a huge breakthrough, leading to predictions that comprehensive "Strong AI" was just around the corner. This optimism proved to be premature, being followed a few years later by the first so-called "AI Winter" of disappointment and funding cuts. But the student, Terry Winograd, went on to Stanford and continues to be influential not just in computer science but also in ethics, cognitive science, natural language and even design. But you might know him better as the PhD. thesis advisor for a guy named Larry Page who was working on some kind of techniques for finding relevant web pages.
Searchable Archive of > 30M American and Canadian Newspaper Pages
Despite its aging interface and its slightly misleading name, The Old Fulton New York Postcards site is an amazing tool for anyone doing any kind of historical research. It is a huge searchable archive of american and canadian newspapers.
Charleston Cantina.
Charleston to 'Cantina Band' Last night's episode of Strictly Come Dancing, the UK version of Dancing With Stars was a Hollywood special which included this two minutes of joy in which Kellie Bright & Kevin Clifton danced the charleston dressed at Luke and Leia. With lightsabers. Other films included Pulp Fiction, Pretty Woman and Ghost. [alt link for Star Wars dance]
Covered in lube and sliding about — it’s a fantastic way to make friends
The "Lube Olympics" makes slippery bid to rival 2020 Tokyo Games — featuring popular Greece sports like group sumo, tug-of-war, giant balls relay, sliding underneath the sheets and so much more
Revontulet
October 10
A Brief Look at 12 of Microgenres, from associated artists
The Fader recently collected insights from artists associated with 12 microgenres of the past 15 years, from electroclash to vaporwave, but they left out sound samples. That's remedied, below the break. [more inside]
Pretty floating spheres of water
RED 4K Video of Colorful Liquid in Space. "Once again, astronauts on the International Space Station dissolved an effervescent tablet in a floating ball of water, and captured images using a camera capable of recording four times the resolution of normal high-definition cameras. The higher resolution images and higher frame rate videos can reveal more information when used on science investigations, giving researchers a valuable new tool aboard the space station. This footage is one of the first of its kind. The cameras are being evaluated for capturing science data and vehicle operations by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama." [Via]
"Sometimes you open up the barrel and it's empty. Heartbreak city."
With friends like these
Governor General's Literary Awards
The finalists for Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards have been announced. Winners to be announced Oct. 28. Categories, as usual, are fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction, children's literature (text and illustrated), and translation.
Lou Reed was a monster
“A cowboy needs a horse, a fireman needs a dalmatian.”
“Every cliché was born for a reason. But why does a cop need a doughnut?” Cara Giaimo, in Atlas Obscura: The Long, Sweet Love Affair Between Cops and Doughnuts.
Do you know what a Hobart is?
Hobart® Mixer - Learn The Basics About Hobart Mixers | Making maple icing for donuts using a Hobart H-600 T commercial mixer | A200 Hobart Service | An upstart: Ferneto Planetary Mixer
The time when Chrysler built a car that featured a turbine engine.
In the early sixties, Chrysler built a concept car that included a turbine engine in a body built by Ghia. They provided the cars to families for extended test drives. The Olson family loved theirs. [more inside]
What's it like to be an animal?
The Speed of Animals. If you're six feet tall, 10 miles per hour probably doesn't feel very fast. But what if you were just six inches tall, like a squirrel? It would feel quite a bit faster. This site shows the actual speeds of animals and how fast they would be going if they were your size.
Heart Moving Phone
SHARP and Tomotaka Takahashi have announced a new phone, a cute robot that interacts with you. (via)
Lee Moses, soul man of mystery
If you love grit in your R&B and funk in your guitar, you might love the deep, deep soul of singer/guitarist Lee Moses. (Wikipedia) Born in Atlanta, Moses worked with producer Johnny Brantley, recording only a handful of singles in the late 60s and one album, Time and Place, in 1971. A remastered anthology of his work was released in 2007 under the same title. [more inside]
Your Network at Play
The Washington Post has a puzzle to see how well you understand social networks. The day’s political issue: whether baseball caps are fashionable. More explanation and the solution below the jump. [more inside]
Shade Court Is Adjourned
Last October, the Mostly Honorable Judge Kara Brown of Jezebel took up her gavel to make very official rulings on whether the concept of "shade" is being overused in the media. Last Friday, Judge Brown retired Shade Court, saying "I feel that I’ve done all I can for these people." [more inside]
A gene for gay?
A controversial talk by Tuck Ngun at the ongoing American Society of Human Genetics 2015 meeting in Baltimore presented evidence of epigenetic mechanisms associated with homosexuality in discordant male twins (i.e., one gay, the other straight). The conference organizers and news outlets quickly trumpeted that scientists had discovered epigenetic markers capable of predicting the sexual orientation of a male; however, the reaction of scientists at the meeting was less enthusiastic. Ed Yong at the Atlantic wrote a particularly thorough takedown. Criticisms centered around the small sample size (37 pairs of twins), the fact that the samples were taken from saliva (whereas you'd expect epigenetic variants influencing sexuality to occur in the brain), and the fact that the predictive model they developed was not terribly predictive (67% accuracy). [more inside]
In Battlestar Galactica, fracking causes pregnancy.
Premature birth and problem pregnancies near fracking wells A new study in the US's 'fracking capital' Pennsylvania has found that pregnant women who live near gas fracking wells are far more likely to give birth prematurely or develop problems during their pregnancies. [more inside]
Reddit, Florence 1400
A year ago, someone took a well-composed photo of a fight in Ukranian Parliament. This prompted the creation of a small subreddit that finds photos (many soccer-related), that look like they're from the Renaissance - r/AccidentalRenaissance. Here are a few post samples: Pence & Morse * Ukraine * The Orchestration of Heisenberg * Maldini * The Accused, Etc.
"Hope is the enemy."
"Caring for a patient suffering from dementia means coming to terms with the frustrating paradoxes of memory and language." A thoughtful, philosophical first-person essay. [more inside]
Sketches Tolkien Used to Build Middle-Earth
"HOW DID J.R.R. Tolkien create The Lord of the Rings? The simple answer is that he wrote it. He sat down in a chair in 1937 and spent more than a dozen years working on what remains a masterwork of fantasy literature and a genius stroke of immersive worldbuilding.
The more complicated answer is that in addition to writing the story, he drew it. The many maps and sketches he made while drafting The Lord of the Rings informed his storytelling, allowing him to test narrative ideas and illustrate scenes he needed to capture in words. For Tolkien, the art of writing and the art of drawing were inextricably intertwined." [more inside]
Photographs of Bangladesh
The state of mental health in Bangladesh - a photo essay. Other photos from Bangladesh by Allison Joyce.
October 9
What's the frequency, kid?
A Highly Irregular Children’s Story: David Gates reviews The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, a children's book by Donald Barthelme. [Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1976]
The Rhythm of Life
Because, at 1:32 am, you need to feel a bit of the Rhythm of Life.
#15Girls: 15yr old girls seeking to take control and change their fate
Refuse to share a pencil, reject a boy, say no to your imprisoned dad — all of these can get a teen girl killed in El Salvador's gang war - "Aby, whose best friend disappeared, is still staying at home. Her latest aspiration is to be the director of NASA." Warning: Some of the depictions and images in this story are graphic. [more inside]
HUNTING THE DECACORN
Mother Jones wins suit against wealthy political donor
For three years, Mother Jones has been litigating a defamation suit over a piece that drew attention to the political activites of wealthy billionaire Frank VanderSloot. "This was not a dispute over a few words. It was a push, by a superrich businessman and donor, to wipe out news coverage that he disapproved of. Had he been successful, it would have been a chilling indicator that the 0.01 percent can control not only the financing of political campaigns, but also media coverage of those campaigns." [more inside]
Corner coup
In August, Mara Willaford and Marissa Johnson disrupted a Social Security rally in Seattle and upstaged Bernie Sanders. This week, they gave their first local interview to Real Change, a weekly progressive newspaper sold by self-employed vendors, many of them homeless.
The tragic tale of Mt Everest’s most famous dead body
The tragic tale of Mt Everest’s most famous dead body is part one of a two part BBC article centered around the story of Tsewang Paljor, known as "Green Boots", whose body has remained for 20 years near the summit where he died.
Part two is Death in the clouds: The problem with Everest’s 200+ bodies [more inside]
Judgemental Reviews Of Common Pasta Shapes
MeFi's own The Whelk reviews common pasta shapes for The Rumpus. I can only assume he recused himself from judging conchiglie due to the family resemblance. [via mefi projects]
Grievances
Kowloon Walled City exist in the space between the atmospheric gloom of Neurosis, the sludgy twang of late-period Godflesh, and the echoing space of Low. Kurt Ballou of Converge interviews Scott Evans of KWC on the process of recording their excellent new album Grievances.
"This is the guy you’ve been talking about in all those pages."
Jason Baca has been the cover model for over 400 romance novels. What is his life like? "Things get a little weird" he admits. [more inside]
Do what you can with the time you have.
In Case You Aren't Paranoid Enough About Social Media & Privacy
"One broader implication of this is that no one should take the NSA seriously when they say they are only collecting “metadata” on whom someone contacts, rather than the content of the communication. Social network metadata is incredibly powerful."
How to tell whether a Twitter user is pro-choice or pro-life without reading any of their tweets
This Could Be Bad For Movie Stars Everywhere!
Chick-fil-A and the Politics of Eating
Chick-fil-A and the Politics of Eating: In recent days, the complicated politics of urban consumerism have been playing out most visibly, with the arrival of Chick-fil-A, a totem of red-state habits, in New York City. Created by a conservative Christian child of public housing, S. Truett Cathy, in Georgia, in the mid-20th century, Chick-fil-A has come under fire during the past few years over comments made by the founder’s son Dan Cathy, the company’s president, in opposition to same-sex marriage. [more inside]
Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011." [more inside]
Reel-to-reel tape is the new vinyl
In case you have any spare cash lying around. "I could hear the pedal squeak every time John Bonnam hit the bass drum."
One Square Mile at a Time
Prince, too, seemed a little awestruck by Madge
We found love in a Hopeless Pass
@sadtopographies: An Instagram account cataloging the most unfortunately named places on Earth, from Shades of Death Road in New Jersey to Mamungkukumpurangkuntjunya (or "Where the devil urinates") Hill in Australia and everywhere in between.
But I don't know anybody in New York and I'm on Grinder, so...
On Pop-Up Porno, dating horror stories are lovingly animated as pop-up books.
Happy seventy-fifth birthday, John Lennon
“What's past is prologue.”
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Launches Three-Year Shakespeare Translation Commissioning Project [Oregon Shakespeare Festival]
OSF is commissioning 36 playwrights and pairing them with dramaturgs to translate 39 plays attributed to Shakespeare into contemporary modern English between now and December 31, 2018. By seeking out a diverse set of playwrights (more than half writers of color and more than half women), we hope to bring fresh voices and perspectives to the rigorous work of translation. Play on![more inside]
The Fluffernutter
Did you mark Fluffernutter Day yesterday? Part of the cuisine of New England, a fluffernutter is a sandwich made with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff, usually served on white bread. The name was invented by an ad agency in 1960. Also called a Liberty Sandwich, it been proposed as the official state sandwich of Massachusetts. There are many variations e.g. Reese's Pieces and Nutella, and... [more inside]
The music stuck in my head.
Jim Dickinson was a musician, producer, and writer based in Memphis. A lifelong curator and steward of American music until his death in 2009, he fronted the band Mud Boy & the Neutrons and contributed to albums by Sleepy John Estes, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Albert King, Big Star, the Replacements, and many others. [This] essay...was adapted from his memoir The Search for Blind Lemon. [more inside]
Wishing Well
I’ve been given instructions for my meeting with Sananda Maitreya. 1. Please don’t mention the name “Terence Trent D’Arby”, as it is painful for him. 2. Please don’t make any comparisons with Prince regarding his name change, which occurred in 1995 after a series of dreams. 3. Please don’t ask him things like, “What songs do you think would make a good single from your new album, Rise of the Zugebrian Time Lords?”
“I was killed when I was 27”: the curious afterlife of Terence Trent D’Arby
October 8
This blazer is the best thing you have ever bought.
Chef Paul Prudhomme has died:
He introduced the rest of the world to Cajun foods Chef Prudhomme introduced the world to Cajun foods. Blackened red - fish was his most noted dish. He really will be missed. He had a great personality.
Poopsi Blue
If you are a human being who poops from your butt, you should consider viewing this informative Squatty Potty commercial. (Relevant previously.)
Woodwork by raking light
Visionary of the Year
Why Iraq Needs Music: Zuhal Sultan On Starting The Iraqi Youth Orchestra - "You know, we all need our basic needs — we need food, we need shelter and we need education — but we also need to be human."
Intermental
Getcha motor runnin...or something
Slow Steps To Freedom
A nonviolent drug offender who was granted clemency after 22 years adjusts to life on the outside.
"I believe in your ability to prove the doubters wrong." - President Obama [more inside]
Siinä kaikki
While the end of Sábado Gigante's 53 year television run has received heavy press coverage, earlier this year another foreign-language television show ended a 53 year reign with a single host: Finland Calling. [more inside]
Raury is the new Beck?
Hip Hop is evolving, take a look at Raury he's 18 and his work so far draws on on Gospel, Hip Hop, alt folk, Rap and Freakfolk Raury is a free-spirited singer, rapper, guitarist, songwriter, and producer who was raised in Stone Mountain, Georgia, roughly 20 miles outside Atlanta.
He mixes alternative folk, rap, and electronic music while counting the diverse likes of Chance the Rapper, King Krule, and Lorde as contemporaries.
He's a trippy kid who has sort of a "new age poor swamp people" optimistic view on life. It's sort of contagious.
Check out this companion track to Devil's Whisper, God's Whisper. it's Beck, The Flaming Lips, Violent Femmes, Kanye, and a little bit Rocky Horror Picture Show!
How does it translate to live performance? Check him out on Late Night With Colbert
and check out the fun and weird bit on Sway In The Morning as Raury freestyles over Outkast's "Elevators"
He's also made some straight out of the 80's stealing from the 70's feel good pop with Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine
A vision perpetually deferred
Rose Eveleth writing in Eater's Future Week: Why the 'Kitchen of the Future' Always Fails Us.
Dear Friends
How about a Sexy CEO costume?
Vote-swapping in 16 ridings.
Problem: "the American public has become more consistent and polarized"
American Democracy is Doomed is a Vox long(ish)read by Matthew Yglesias summarizing the work of Juan Linz on constitutional crises in presidential democracies (previously), which combined with constitutional hardball and ideological polarization threaten to destroy American democracy (#nottheonion). As Yglesias describes the problem, it's primarily structural, an inevitable result of rules that have failed in every other country that has tried them. (We're 30 for 30 so far.) (All but the first link are pdf.)
Tragedy turned to slapstick
Benny Hill This makes all YouTube videos better by speeding them up and adding Yakkity Sax music. Technology has advanced from the last Benny Hill-ifier on MeFi in 2008, when speeding up technology did not yet exist. Some suggestions: Car chases! Light saber duels! Dirty Dancing (forward in three minutes for maximum enjoyment)! Donald Trump!
A drunk man's assault on a robot raises unusual legal issues
After a drunk man pummels a Pepper robot greeting customers at a store in Japan, robotics ethicists call for a new type of legal protection that would apply specifically to robots.
As more-advanced robots can already react to basic stimuli, navigate complex environments, and use specialized “intelligence” to accomplish narrowly defined tasks, they present themselves as far from human but also as something rather different from a toaster or basic tool. Weng calls for a set of laws to guide human interaction with robots as they become more common and more social. He argues that they are a “third existence,” after people and property, deserving of their own legal protections.[more inside]
Britain's water crisis
I know a guy and a gal
Marvel Studios is following up on that mid-credits scene from Ant-Man by announcing a sequel for 2018, titled Ant-Man and the Wasp. [more inside]
Deliver
Dabbawalla: Fast, efficient, and proud, Mumbai’s teams of home-to-work lunch couriers connect families through meals cooked with love. [more inside]
Racial Profiling via Nextdoor.com
"Under the 'Crime and Safety' section of the site, the tone is much less neighborly. There, residents frequently post unsubstantiated 'suspicious activity' warnings that result in calls to the police on Black citizens who have done nothing wrong." [more inside]
The (mostly) limbless magician, penman, musician of the 18th Century
Matthias Buchinger, sometimes called Matthew Buckinger, described himself as "the wonderful Little Man of but 29 inches high, born without Hands, Feet, or Thighs." Despite being born (in Germany in 1674) with limbs "more resembling fins of a fish than arms of a man," he was renowned for his works as a calligrapher and micrographer (remarked for details illustrated in psalms written in characters of different sizes), builder of whimsey bottles (the oldest known "mining bottle"), and called the most extraordinary conjurer of all time. People may have initially gathered to see a tragedy, but instead were presented with an astounding range of impressive skills. [more inside]
Why you might want to shred your boarding pass after flying
If you leave your boarding pass in the seat-pocket in front of you after your flight has landed, someone else could upload it to this site, and you might be surprised at how much they could find out about you.
"Women blame women for things that have nothing to do with them."
The Passion of Nicki Minaj: "To put down a woman for something that men do, as if they're children and I'm responsible, has nothing to do with you asking stupid questions, because you know that's not just a stupid question. That's a premeditated thing you just did." [SLNYT]
Greyjoys and Cthulhu devotees, rejoice!
Happy Cephalopod Appreciation Day! October 8 is Cephalopod Appreciation Day, the eighth day of the month celebrating those with eight tentacles. But it's not just a mere day of squidly homage, it's an entire week! [more inside]
But I Want It
"Maybe you didn’t hear me. I really, really, really want it." Or, "The four conversations you can have with a small child."
Bird of the Year
Every year, Forest and Bird New Zealand holds a vote for the (New Zealand) Bird of the Year. Will you vote for the cheeky kea, the fantail, the bellbird, the little blue penguin, the famous kakapo, the melodious kokako, the NZ robin, the plucky pukeko, the tui, the curious weka or one of the other contenders?
"What happened to Lane is illegal."
"A BuzzFeed News investigation into Texas judicial practice found that with no public defenders present, traffic court judges routinely flout the law, locking up people for days, weeks, and sometimes even months because they did not pay fines they could not afford. The result is a modern-day version of debtors prison, an institution that was common two centuries ago but has been outlawed since the early ’70s."
Love comes in so many forms and can be directed at so many things.
"There is no good answer to being a woman; the art may instead lie in how we refuse the question." In "The Mother of All Questions", Rebecca Solnit writes for Harper's about being asked to justify her own (and Virginia Woolf's) childlessness, and more broadly about how to define happiness and a meaningful life.
Twenty Hours and Ten Minutes of Therapy
Twenty Hours and Ten Minutes of Therapy Reflections at 50 on being young, scared, and coming out. Allison Green taped the therapy sessions she had when she was 23. Years later, she listened to them and wrote about what, and who, she heard.
The winner will be revealed on November 10.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize presents its 2015 shortlist. The five titles were chosen from a longlist of 12 books announced on September 9, 2015. One hundred and sixty-eight titles were submitted by 63 publishers from every region of the country. [more inside]
The 2015 Nobel Laureate in Literature is Svetlana Alexievich
Svetlana Alexievich is the latest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature: "for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time". Alexievich is a Belarusian writer and is unusual among Nobel laureates in that she is primarily a non-fiction writer. Her most famous book is Voices from Chernobyl, and you can read an extract in The Paris Review. You can read more about her books on her website and read excerpts in English. John Lloyd wrote a long review of her book Zinky Boys for the London Review of Books. And you can read an interview with her on the home page of her American publisher, Dalkey Archive.
October 7
‘Space Ghost Coast to Coast,’ Secretly TV’s Most Influential Show
Few people afford Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Cartoon Network’s strange, seminal comedy, its rightful place in the pantheon. But from its bargain-basement launch in 1994 to its place at the center of the wildly popular Adult Swim lineup in the 2000s, it helped introduce cringe comedy to the American viewing public, deconstructed the idea of the talk show beyond repair for a generation of comedians, and changed the look and feel of the entire animation art form.
Stereotype Threat, Imposter Syndrome and Stereotype Tax
How Poker Player Annie Duke Used Gender Stereotypes To Win Matches - "By the time she got to that championship game 10 years later, she had also figured out a way to make people pay, quite literally, for the stereotypes they had about her." (previously)
None more black
The Great British Bake-off
"No - no no no! Dude, don't do that!"
Extreme phone pinching is the latest trend sweeping social media networks, and it involves holding your expensive phone over perilous locations.
"You and I are in fact unequal."
Male engineering student Jared Mauldin, a senior at Eastern Washington University, wrote a letter to the editor of The Easterner expounding on the differences between him and the women entering his program. [more inside]
"This is not who I am"
Steve Rannazzisi discusses with Howard Stern how a lie told by a young comedian seeking acceptance snowballed into a career-threatening scandal.
“This is for the kids,” he said, “I’m too old.”
The stage is set...
The Sherlock special trailer (SLYT)
Verus sis is futurus
The University of Antarctica has a central campus consisting of 400 acres in a built-up area around University Peak, Victoria Land. The official founding occured on Antarctic Independence Day (23 June 1961), when it became Antarctica's first (and still its only) university.
"...and I was licking the baby's face."
Earlier this year, legendary actor Brian Blessed withdrew from the Guildford Shakespeare Company's production of King Lear due to complications with an existing heart condition. And so to see his name trending on Twitter this morning was a cause of some alarm to his fans - until it was revealed that not only was he not dead, he was on BBC Radio 4 talking about a 1963 incident in which he helped a woman deliver her baby in a public park. [Warning: some birth details]
You can't spell America without Gay Cabal
Author and historian Bob Arnebeck writes about early American history and its Founding Fathers' "relationships with men beyond conventional propriety." Featured characters include war hero and Washington D.C planner Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the first inspector general of the US Army Baron Von Steuben , and Alexander Hamilton. Bonus: Revolutinary America's tolerance for homosexuality by Victoria A. Brownworth.
Squidward laughing spreads his wings, OH LORD YEAH!
If you watch only one completely-realized, well-lipsynched, full-length video mashing up Spongebob Squarepants clips with Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" this year, make it this one.
Meatloaf Again?
From today's Atlantic magazine: a treatise on the economic history of leftovers, and how America's overall rise to the status of economic superpower lead to their downshift from "budget-minded lifesaver" to "butt of jokes." [more inside]
Buck up, you melancholy dadbod!
a button to stop all the chaos that doesn't work
On October 1st, Davey Wreden (creater of The Stanley Parable, previously) released The Beginner's Guide. "It lasts about an hour and a half and has no traditional mechanics, no goals or objectives. Instead, it tells the story of a person struggling to deal with something they do not understand." [more inside]
Harvard Debate Team Loses to Maximum Security Prisoners
Harvard's debate team won the world championship in 2014 and the national championship in 2015, but lost to a team at the Eastern New York Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison. The debate program at Eastern is part of the Bard Prison Initiative, which teaches classes in six prisons across New York "to redefine the relationship between educational opportunity and criminal justice." [more inside]
Wait..."the real Betty"?
The rebooting of Riverdale continues apace today with the release of "Jughead" by
Erica Henderson and Chip Zdarsky, and the reviews are highly positive. [more inside]
Sleep Aid
"It’s late, and you’re still awake. Allow us to help with Sleep Aid, a series devoted to curing insomnia with the dullest, most soporific texts available in the public domain." [more inside]
Megabeer is almost here
SABMiller may have rejected Anheuser-Busch InBev's latest offer, but some analysts think an eventual merger is inevitable. [more inside]
"This is where people died. For that right. Our right."
Following the 2014 implementation of a strict photo voter ID law and a 54% increase in the cost of a driver license earlier this year, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency cited budget cuts as the instigating factor for the recent closure of 31 driver license bureaus across the state. As of last week, every county in Alabama where black citizens currently comprise more than 75% of registered voters has had its driver license office closed. [more inside]
The white man in that photo
The story of Peter Norman, the Australian sprinter and third man in the Black Power salute picture from the 1968 Olympic Games. [more inside]
Proposed D.C. Policy Would Offer 16 Weeks Paid Family Leave
The District would become the most generous place in the country for a worker to take time off after giving birth or to care for a dying parent under a measure proposed in the D.C. Council. Under the legislation introduced October 6, "almost every part-time and full-time employee in the nation’s capital would be entitled to 16 weeks of paid family leave to bond with an infant or an adopted child, recover from an illness, recuperate from a military deployment or tend to an ill family member," according to The Washington Post. [more inside]
The disaster that liberated me
When the Kashmir earthquake struck in October 2005, Tabinda Kokab was a teacher in a remote village close to the epicentre. She recalls the day that changed her life, and how it forced her to throw off the expectations that Pakistani society had placed on her as a woman. [more inside]
An outrage in Kunduz
The MSF (Médecins sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders) Trauma Center in Kunduz, Afghanistan, was attacked by US forces on October 3rd. The rationale for the attack remains unclear, with differing accounts being given by US officials. MSF has condemned the attack, in which at least twenty-two people were killed, and called for an independent inquiry into the bombing. [more inside]
Hello, Darling.
This Friday, people will be able to go to the theater and see yet another interpretation of J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan". Such news does not necessarily excite Barrie fans, given the middling results of some past interpretations (and Pan isn't being received much better). But the AV Club's Ryan Vlastelica argues they can take heart that the best "Peter Pan" movie was already made... in 2003.
Manoj Bhargava wants to change the world
Manoj Bhargava the inventor of 5 Hour Energy Drink (prev), wants to spend his billions fixing the world's problems. [more inside]
“...and at the time he was everybody’s favorite dad.”
To Revoke or Not: Colleges That Gave Cosby Honors Face a Tough Question by Sydney Ember and Colin Moynihan [New York Times]
Few people in American history have been recognized by universities as often as Mr. Cosby, whose publicist once estimated that the entertainer had collected more than 100 honorary degrees. The New York Times, in a quick search, found nearly 60. But now, as dozens of women have come forward to accuse Mr. Cosby of sexual assault, colleges across the country are confronting the question of what to do when someone who has been honored falls from grace.[more inside]
A Criminal Mind
October 6
Network Effect
networkeffect.io appears to be an internet art installation, with themes of connectedness and impermanence.
Caveat: Chrome only, and requires sound. Even so, worth it.
Caveat: Chrome only, and requires sound. Even so, worth it.
SuperSisters! 1973 feminist trading cards
SuperSisters! This 1973 deck of 72 trading cards each featured a different famous woman (although Anita Bryant, Phyllis Schlafly and Angela Davis were not included...and a number of others, including Jane Fonda, declined respond when asked to participate). Peruse the whole deck at the University of Iowa Digital Libraries!
Lucidibeet hubcar
"I have to say, these language designers can be such a tease sometimes"
28 years after the first version, and 20 years after perl 5, Larry Wall unveiled perl 6 at a meeting on Monday night in San Francisco. [more inside]
Novel geography
The Map of Literature. Martin Vargic, creator of the Map of the Internet 1.0, has created an insanely detailed "National Geographic" map of Literature, where "Jurassic Park is located between 1984 and Clear and Present Danger on the continent of Thrillers, a stone's throw away from H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds." [more inside]
“I was wrong to say that I didn’t like the Beyoncé album"
The Pernicious Rise of Poptimisim, by Saul Austerlitz.
*DING!* Thank you! Good morning!
The Principles of Argumentation - Pan African Studies Department - California State University, Northridge
Using Rhetorical Strategies for Persuasian - Purdue
Four Argument Strategies - Ethical Realism
38 Ways To Win An Argument—Arthur Schopenhauer - India Uncut
How to win Arguments – Dos, Don’ts and Sneaky Tactics - Lifehack
How to Win Every Argument - Eric Barker, Time (with TED talk by Daniel Cohen) [more inside]
Using Rhetorical Strategies for Persuasian - Purdue
Four Argument Strategies - Ethical Realism
38 Ways To Win An Argument—Arthur Schopenhauer - India Uncut
How to win Arguments – Dos, Don’ts and Sneaky Tactics - Lifehack
How to Win Every Argument - Eric Barker, Time (with TED talk by Daniel Cohen) [more inside]
ALL THINGS UNRAVEL IN THE END
"Would you? Could you? In a car?" "No, I do not care for that Renoir"
In other news, the sky is blue
Childcare costs on par or higher than rent is not a new story,
it is well established that childcare costs have been skyrocketing in recent years. [more inside]
You're really huge now, Knut
Bodybuilders Go To This Tiny Town To Cheer Themselves Up When They're Feeling Sad (slyt) [more inside]
“I have trust issues, but it’s something I’m working on.”
Felines of New York, inspired by Humans of New York, will show you what authentic cats are really thinking. [more inside]
"I am healthy, and I have a plan to stay that way.”
Dallas County district attorney Susan Hawk's life fell apart after she took office: divorce, depression and thoughts of suicide. After she fired some of her most experienced staff and amid allegations of erratic or unstable behavior, she vanished from public view in late July. Nine weeks later, she re-emerged to announce that she had undergone two months of treatment at a mental health facility for Major Depressive Disorder. She says she’s ready once again to serve. Is she up to the job? (Some links in this post discuss suicide / suicidal ideation. Some readers may find linked content disturbing.) [more inside]
We have replaced “venture” capital with “product-market fit” capital.
Bros Funding Bros: What's Wrong with Venture Capital. "What really matters is that we are in the midst of a technological renaissance that will be much farther reaching than any of us can predict if we invest correctly. Our generation has an opportunity, in our lifetime, to put a massive dent in human suffering and make trillions of dollars in return. ... We need a wake up call on Sand Hill Road. We need to recapture our potential and open the doors." [more inside]
Sick of Comcast? Five Bucks, and It's Gone
Comcast is famously bad at customer service, "winning" Consumerist's Worst Company in America award for 2014 and 2010. In particular, it's famously bad at letting customers go. But for the low, low price of $5, AirPaper will cancel your service for you. [more inside]
BM 2.0
Two short videos from last year's RISE Lantern Festival outside Las Vegas. This year's evnt is scheduled for this weekend in the Mojave desert. [more inside]
The economic impact of the strike will be...
...a net positive. We often hear about how much strike will cost the economy, however new research suggests the London underground train strike of early 2014 may have positive effects as it forced commuters to find different routes to work, many of which they stuck with. Researchers were able to access 200 million data points from the Oyster Card system that allows access to the London transport system to conclude about 5% of travellers switched their route after finding a new route during the strike, suggesting a lack of experimentation concerning the available options. Short paper here.
But where's the Coffee Shop AU?
As a tenth-anniversary surprise, Stephenie Meyer released a genderswapped version of Twilight this morning, in which Bella and Edward are replaced by Beau and Edyth. EW calls it a Twilight Surprise.
Cleolinda (of Movies in 15 Minutes fame) is doing a read-along on Twitter under the hashtag #sparkletime.
Cake is one of the major food groups
Scott Waters is a 66 year old American, artist, photographer and ex-Apple Computer employee. He recently took a trip in England (Portreath, Redruth, Wadebridge, Padstow, Ashby de la Zouch, Little Eton, and Oxford) and listed his observations on Facebook. It went viral; coverage in Cosmopolitan, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, and the Metro. Naturally, some people disagree. [more inside]
CJEU Strikes Down Safe Harbour Data Sharing
The Columbine effect
Good women seldom make history.
This is Professor Wangari Maathai. The first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The first Kenyan woman to earn a doctoral degree. An icon of Kenya’s democratic movement who repeatedly put not just her mind but also her body on the line in order to secure a better future for Kenyans and their natural environment. But Maathai’s standing in Kenya is definitely ambiguous. She is beloved by feminists and environmentalists, and tolerated by everyone else... Women are expected to look backwards on guidance on what it means to be “good” – where “good” is primarily defined by men – but not too good because that makes women less interesting to men. This was not Wangari Maathai.
"whatever comes out of oppression is more interesting"
Chantal Akerman the director of Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles died yesterday evening.
Le Monde says she commited suicide.
Her last film No Home Movie was shown last summer at the Locarno International Film festival.
Poor Man's Eggs Benedict
"That sound you hear at 11 a.m. Tuesday — those exultant cheers swiftly muffled by mouthfuls of English muffin, bacon, egg and cheese? They are the victory cries of thousands of McDonald’s breakfast lovers, who for the first time in 43 years will (officially) be able to consume Egg McMuffins at whatever time of day they deem fit. These are heady times, people." By Sarah Kaplan. SLWashPost.
Nobel Prize in Physics awarded for neutrino oscillations
The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics Takaaki Kajita of Japan and Arthur B. McDonald of Canada share the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work in neutrino oscillations ("metamorphosis in neutrinos" in the press release), in which neutrinos switch flavors as it propagates through space. The finding has a large impact on the standard model, as it requires neutrinos to have non-zero mass.
"You know the thing I'll be great at?"
Your Drunk Neighbor: Some rich asshole. (Oh, and that's "Some rich asshole" for those of you without the browser add on)
Association Football in the Philippines
Football in the Phillipines has been largely an unsuccessful project. But is it Azkals' (street dogs) time to shine? Maybe, but it's a long way to the top if you want to kick and rush.
The Smartest Building in the World
Passengers 'rush to be in my bus'
Vankadarath Saritha, Delhi's first female bus driver - "Women have been to space so why can't we drive a bus?"
“And here’s our agent.” They pointed a smartphone at Wiley.
Real estate brokerage Marketplace Homes has begun using its ZipTours application to allow buyers to tour homes for sale in the Detroit area under the supervision of an agent video chatting on their smartphone. After providing photo ID and a facebook account, the buyer receives a code to open the lockbox and can tour the home with their remote agent. [Alt link for possible paywall problems]
October 5
Hail to the Pencil Pusher
🎶 Final fan-ta-sy is an R.P.G. 🎶
Step Aside, Pops!
Block Transfer Computation
Children and Screen Time
Maybe screen time isn't so bad for your kids... Here's a summary from LifeHacker Vitals, the tl/dr version of the paper recently released from the American Academy of Pediatrics- "Growing Up Digital:Media Research Symposium" held earlier this year. The full paper is located here.
The Academy seem to be relaxing the rather strict limited time recommendation they've held in the past.
Teenagers around the world are breathing a sigh of relief.
My God, it's full of letters
He disliked the machine so much that he won't be keeping it.
Product testers and analysts are scratching their heads over Keurig's latest attempt to revolutionize beverage preparation. Pop a $1.25 pod into the 24-pound, $370 Keurig Kold, wait a minute and a half, and behold: an 8-ounce glass of cold soda that doesn't taste very good. Coca-Cola has signed on as partner to the SodaStream rival, but as Motley Fool points out, this may not be the vote of confidence it appears: "Now we now why Keurig Green Mountain was able to get two soda giants to back the platform. It's not going to cannibalize retail sales." [more inside]
we just make a little money and we buy a little mercy
"I think there are different kinds of mercy: big Mercy and little mercy. Big Mercy is so big because it is made out of suffering and ultimatums, out of saviors and omnipotence, and out of stories that have only one way of ending, which are brutal and where almost nobody wins... But maybe there's another kind of mercy—mercy so little that it costs almost nothing. So little most of us never notice it." [more inside]
“The only way to survive is by taking care of one another”
Perfect Blue
Keeping up the trend of 2015 not living up to our high expectations, Pepsi-Cola, will be selling Pepsi Perfect starting on October 21st, 2015, but only in a limited edition batch of 6,500 bottles. [more inside]
Inside Essex's "wonderhome"
John Trevillian has spent the last 25 years transforming an ex-council house near Stansted into a historic fantasy. “Everyone thinks I’m independently wealthy or that I’ve got a degree in interior design. But all I had was these stories in my head." (dlTheGruaniad)
The Amazing Inner Lives of Animals
We have long asked whether we are alone in the universe. But clearly we are not alone on earth. The evolution of intelligence, of empathy and complex societies, is surely more likely than we have hitherto considered.
Just call 1-800-SMOOTHE for Magic 102
A Twilight World of Ultimate Smoothness is a limited-run, six-episode, serialized podcast (primarily conceived by David Wilcox and co-written with Johanna Hyman, but with a number of producers actors, and co-writers) chronicling the decline and fall of radio veteran Greg Willis, host of the eleventh most-listened-to, syndicated, smooth jazz/classic light R&B program on radio today. Take a trip to an alternate universe radio station with bizarre ad spots, musical numbers, call-ins, and an overarching narrative of a DJ gone power mad. Remember: when sneaking onto Sade’s estate, beware the Sax Wolves.
🎷 Smooth With A Silent E 🎸 Laser Vandross 🎷 Unexpected Robes 🎸 Camelot 🎷 The Request Hour 🎸 The Comfort Cruise [more inside]
🎷 Smooth With A Silent E 🎸 Laser Vandross 🎷 Unexpected Robes 🎸 Camelot 🎷 The Request Hour 🎸 The Comfort Cruise [more inside]
"the trade agreement almost certainly will encounter stiff opposition"
Multinational agreement reached on the Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty. Representatives of a dozen nations agreed on the TPP, a wide-ranging trade agreement for the Pacific region, excluding China. Years of discussion and months of intensive negotiating led to this consensus. Opposition continues, based on a wide range of issues. [more inside]
Publication bias in studying the efficacy of psychotherapy.
"The efficacy of antidepressant medication has been shown empirically to be overestimated due to publication bias [...] The efficacy of psychological interventions for depression has been overestimated in the published literature, just as it has been for pharmacotherapy. Both are efficacious but not to the extent that the published literature would suggest"
On what street did you lose your childlike sense of wonder?
Black & White In Color
One of my biggest pet peeves in art is the lazily-desaturated DSLR video. "Black & White In Color" is my personal response to treating black and white as an editing afterthought.Visual artist Julianna Thomas reminds us that some things really are black and white. (SLVimeo)
Kidnapped caprine recovered in Canada
Stubborn goat arrested after refusing to leave a Saskatchewan restaurant: "RCMP said that employees initially 'asked' the goat to leave and tried to walk him outside, but the rebellious animal turned around and sauntered back through the restaurant's automatic doors." It turns out that the seemingly ornery creature had actually been kidnapped from a rodeo: team members are thankful it's back safe and sound, but Katie Dutchak, co-founder of the University of Saskatchewan rodeo team, reminds everyone that tampering with animals is not funny.
“People always leave traces. No person is without a shadow.”
Henning Mankell, Dean of Scandinavian Noir Writers, Dies at 67 [The New York Times]
Henning Mankell, the Swedish novelist and playwright best known for police procedurals that were translated into a score of languages and sold by the millions throughout the world, died Monday morning in Goteborg, Sweden. He was 67. Mr. Mankell was considered the dean of the so-called Scandinavian noir writers who gained global prominence for novels that blended edge-of-your-seat suspense with flawed, compelling protagonists and strong social themes. The genre includes Arnaldur Indridason of Iceland, Jo Nesbo of Norway and Stieg Larsson of Sweden, among others.[more inside]
Just when you were worried about bridge collapse.
Geologists use a novel dating technique to find the cause of a tsunami. Single link New Yorker.
"Calm down... I gotta play this cool..."
For 24 hour comics day 2015, Sara Goetter did an absolutely adorable comic about that first time you recognise a fellow geek in middle school.
October 4
Flower Power: Pit Bulls of the Revolution
Sophie Gamand has created a photographic series of pit bulls wearing flower crowns to challenge the common association of pit bulls with violence. Inspired by Rococo and Baroque traditions of portraiture, the photographs reveal another side to these often-maligned dogs.
Diamond Dogs
Rome
Mary Beard: why ancient Rome matters to the modern world. "Failure in Iraq, debates about freedom, expenses scandals, sex advice … the Romans seem versions of ourselves. But then there’s the slavery and the babies on rubbish heaps. We need to understand ancient Rome, but should we take lessons from it?" [Via]
The latest battleground in language shaping culture
His daughter died as a result of a car "accident". He and others argue that they should be called "crashes". An academic exercise, or the latest battle in changing the way people think about car culture?
A ponderous, scholastic joke
On the Nature of Things Humanity Was Not Meant to Know: Cosma Shalizi considers Lucretius' De Rerum Natura ('On the Nature of Things') as a "real-life Necronomicon, a book full of things humanity was not meant to know."
Gourmet plating
60 Second Tasting Menu. Now that Eater is part of a $850M media org, they have rebundled their site's video offerings.
Go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!
COTS
Five Big Issues Raised by “The Inner Light”
Morgan Gendel, writer of the Star Trek TNG episode, "The Inner Light," writes about it on Tor.com: "But now that I’ve begun speaking regularly about “The Inner Light,” questions about the episode that lay dormant for two decades like a Romulan Warbird waiting to de-cloak have suddenly shimmered into view.
Fan questions and my responses have yielded up, in addition to the “Road Not Taken,” Five Big Themes addressed in “The Inner Light.”" [via Keith R. A DeCandido's rewatch, which was an FPP on Mefi a few years back]
"We need to value women’s work and put our money where our mouths are."
Life as a waitress too often means low pay and sexual harassment — When you live paycheck to paycheck, reporting discrimination or harassment becomes complicated. [more inside]
Nuclear Fruit: The Cold War's Impact on Video Games
What She Left Me
"They’re such small things —a big toe, an ankle joint—but if they’re yours and they hurt, they become huge. Once it became painful to walk, I found myself wondering if the cancer was coming back, as it can, in my feet, which made me think about the hysterectomy I’d undergone just months before. I found myself thinking, if I cut off my feet, they wouldn’t hurt."
October 3
Need A Little Sugar in my Bowl
He shakes my ashes
Greases my griddle
Churns my butter
And he strokes my fiddle
My man, is such a handy man
Alberta Hunter - My Handy Man
Euphemisms in the blues. NSFW. [more inside]
Greases my griddle
Churns my butter
And he strokes my fiddle
My man, is such a handy man
Alberta Hunter - My Handy Man
Euphemisms in the blues. NSFW. [more inside]
#FreeAllBodies
Do I have boobs now? "Dear Facebook and Instagram, I'm a trans woman starting hormones. Are you going to censor me?" [more inside]
Facebook is just going to do whatever the f— it wants to me. And to you.
Violet Blue, a technology journalist and sex blogger, describes how she has been locked out of her Facebook account and cannot access it without providing a government ID.
Last weekend, as I sat locked out of my Facebook account ‘for security reasons’ (and you tagged me in something, not knowing I can’t respond), my friend’s boss Mark Zuckerberg spoke at the United Nations. He talked about plans to expand Facebook use into refugee camps, and made no pretensions about how this would be used to benefit his company. I personally know what this will do. [...] De-anonymizing refugees usually precedes murder on a grand scale.[more inside]
The Spiritual Ordeal of Marriage
National Magazine Award Finalist Katy Butler describes a heartfelt experience attending the Art and Science of Love, a Gottman workshop, with her "almost husband". "I remember the cautionary words of Wendell Berry in an essay on marriage...'Some wishes cannot succeed. . . . Because the condition of marriage is worldly and it's meaning communal, no one party to it can be solely in charge. What you alone think it ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. . . . When you unite yourself with another, you unite yourselves with the unknown.'" John Gottman's well-known research on successful marriages.
Shortest FPP ever?
Looking back on Anabolic Frolic, Happy 2b Hardcore in Canada
The story of Anabolic Frolic, the DJ name for Chris Samojlenko, tracks closely to the history of Happy Hardcore in Canada, if not North America at large, from the very first Happy 2b Hardcore mix released in the beginning of 1997, to the final Hullabaloo to mark the anniversary of the first Hullabaloo rave. [more inside]
No money means no animation!
Cross that bridge when you come to it
Gephyrophobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by a fear of bridges. No not those bridges. If you suffer from this disorder (as I do) you may not want to read this list of bridge collapses. You may also not want to read that the US Department of Transportation rates 1 out of 9 bridges in the country as deficient. Even worse, here's an awesome interactive map showing your local bridge evaluation scores from the USDOT.
I Missed You in the Rain
A 1972 missed connection, as written up more than 40 years later on Craigslist. [internet archive link]
Unlockdown Nation
Why are little kids in Japan so independent? - 'If we had a nonviolent society, kids could walk around on their own, unafraid, like they do in Japan'. (via)
CORBYN CRONY'S LUST FOR BLOOD
Can You Survive A Week As Jeremy Corbyn? The press hates you, lots of your party hates you – can you make it through a week without resigning? (NSFW, Buzzfeed, Choose Your Own Adventure format)
38 Saint Bernards breathing
Lasqueti Island in British Colombia is home to about 350 year-round human residents and a whole bunch of Saint Bernards. [more inside]
Beauty is Slavery. Ugliness is a Virtue
What's really important in our lives is not how we appear. Beauty will vanish, but what we have inside, it will never change.Welcome to the capital of ugly
Swiss suffragettes were still fighting for the right to vote in 1971
It was not until 1971, 65 years after Finland became the first European country to grant women the vote, that Switzerland became the last, not only in Europe but in much of the world.
A Sewing Machine, Murder, and the Absence of Regret
Why Has India's 'Beef' Lynching Sparked No Remorse? Ravish Kumar writes for NDTV about the killing of Mohammad Akhlaq: We are not understanding what is happening around us. We are not being able to make others understand. The sparks have been spread across our villages. Young men with their half-baked sense of history want me to pose with them for selfies, but are not willing to even consider my appeal that they give up their violent ideals. [more inside]
October 2
It was me. I let the dogs out.
This work documents the history and possible origin(s) of a musical hook which consists of the phrase
"Who let the dogs out" in combination with the sound of dogs barking. [more inside]
Painting on Petri dishes
The 2015 finalists for the American Society of Microbiologists'agar art winners have been announced! Agar art, also sometimes called petri dish art or microbial art, is a technique in which colonies of bacteria or fungi are grown on agar plates to produce a pattern. If you want to see more, the Daily Dish posts a new art plate every single day. Previously.
The Apollo Photos
The Project Apollo Archive has uploaded to Flickr all photographs taken by the Apollo missions to the moon (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17). [more inside]
The Earth-Twin Planet That Nobody Talks About
If we found it orbiting another star, this world would surely be hailed as the most Earthlike exoplanet known: the best place yet to search for alien life. No doubt you sense there is a catch, and indeed there is. It is not orbiting another star; it is the planet closest to home right here in our own solar system. The world I’m talking about is Venus: The Earth-Twin Planet That Nobody Talks About
The race
This week, the mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota and a local Black Lives Matters group came to an agreement to prevent the disruption of this Sunday's Twin Cities Marathon. [more inside]
You're saying "Khaleesi" wrong.
The birds that fear death
A study published in the journal Animal Behavior found that crows can recognize their fellow dead crows and learn to avoid the dangerous circumstances associated with death. The BBC described the study, which involved a "masked individual playing bad cop, arriving on the scene holding up a dead crow." [more inside]
Just Say "I Don't" to the 80s
You used to call me on my cell phone ...
First Disclosure & Sam Smith covered Drake's latest hit Hotline Bling. Now we may have the definitive interpretation by Erykah Badu [more inside]
If we do not find new images, we will perish
"The Fall" is a 2006 adventure fantasy film directed by Tarsem Singh. The opening title sequence is the "perfect example of a director’s absolute control over his vision."
Ebert described the movie as "a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free-fall from reality into uncharted realms. Surely it is one of the wildest indulgences a director has ever granted himself. Tarsem... has made a movie that you might want to see for no other reason than because it exists. There will never be another like it. " [more inside]
German soldiers who fought in the American Revolution
I've listened to most of the Wartime podcast and enjoy it. But there is one episode that really caught my attention. As a Canadian, I don't know a great deal about the American Revolution and I had no idea that a huge number of Germans fought for the British. This episode gives a fascinating glimpse into who these Germans were. Check it out.
Quantum of Solace
Quantum cryptography could render all our protections worthless soon(ish). But cunning cryptographers have other tricks up their sleeves.
"Barbaric Cultural Practices"
"The Conservative government is not afraid to defend Canadian values." Welcome to the home stretch of the Canadian election! [more inside]
peer-to-peer
"He would never cut off funds to his own f—ing dog!"
The Simpsons co-creator Sam Simon was a philanthropist and animal lover who gave millions and millions of dollars to various organizations, especially after he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2012. PETA's headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, is named after Simon, as is a 182-foot ship used by the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Simon died earlier this year, at which time the Sam Simon Foundation was established by a trust he had set up. The Foundation is now under fire for not continuing to support Simon's pet causes, including the MY Sam Simon and his dog, Columbo, a rescued Cane Corso, "a mastiff breed that some people consider a pit bull on steroids" whose care may cost more than $140,000 a year.
Carlsbad's Frank Kindel: Flying paper boy of the Guadalupes
If you happen to drive along NM-137, a quiet rural road in south-east New Mexico, you'll drive through Queen, a former ghost town that is once again inhabited by the living. Slow down and you'll see a monument to The Flying Paper Boy Of The Guadalupes, Frank Kindel. [more inside]
웃 i am not here and this is not really happening.
After the triumph of OK Computer, Radiohead fell into a creative tailspin -- and frontman Thom Yorke into a nervous breakdown. Exhausted from touring, hounded by press, and jaded by copycats, he escaped into the electronica scene pioneered by Kraftwerk and Warp Records -- fertile ground, the band discovered. Trading spacey rock for apocalyptic brooding, they teased their new sound not with singles or music videos but with innovative web streaming and cryptic, dreamlike "blips" -- winterlands, flocks of cubes, eyeballs, bears. After nearly breaking up over tracklist angst, they cut the kid in half. Thus fifteen years ago today, Kid A and (later) Amnesiac debuted, a confounding mix of electronic fugue, whalesong, pulsing IDM, drunken piano, and epic jazz funeral whose insights into anxiety, political dysfunction, and climate crisis would make it one of the most revered albums of the twenty-first century. See the documentary Reflections on Kid A for interviews and live cuts, or look inside for much more. [more inside]
“I’d rather that everyone… could just stay obscure”
[T]here are immediate practical benefits to trolling. The way we’ve designed the Internet has made the old cliché “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” actually come true. It’s now possible to monetize any kind of attention, good or bad—and if your gift happens to be generating the bad kind of attention, then it’s well within reach to make trolling into a full-time career.
Arthur Chu writes about “The Big Business of Internet Bigotry” for The Daily Beast.
Arthur Chu writes about “The Big Business of Internet Bigotry” for The Daily Beast.
What keeps us apart, what brings us together
Evil! -- one seemed to see it everywhere
This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a bronchial spasm. That is, at least, according to William Delisle Hay’s 1880 novella The Doom of the Great City. It imagines the entire population of London choked to death under a soot-filled fog. The story is told by the event’s lone survivor sixty years later as he recalls “the greatest calamity that perhaps this earth has ever witnessed” at what was, for Hay’s first readers, the distant future date of 1942. -- Brett Beasley in the Public Domain review on one of the first modern urban apocalypse stories.
I really did believe we were talking about Edward Scissorhands
Jon Hendren spent an entire segment talking about Edward Scissorhands instead of Edward Snowden. No one noticed.
“I like the half-rhyme. I like 'greatest' & 'played with'. That's good.”
Salman Rushdie Reads Drake Lyrics. [YouTube]
Salman Rushdie's a 68-year-old award-winning novelist but he can also spit bars — Drake's bars. In this clip from Exhibitionists, a new CBC Arts series premiering Sunday, October 4, 2015 at 4:30pm, watch Rushdie read selected lyrics from hip hop icon Drake.
Welcome to 2015, gentlemen. Everyone is on their phone all the time.
After a pair of baseball announcers roasted a group of selfie-taking women, members of the Alpha Chi Omega sorority at Arizona State University, in the stands at an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game, SBNation fires back: Taking photos at sporting events isn't worthy of ridicule. It's simply how fans in the 21st century document moments of their lives.
“Nobody ages like anybody else.”
What old age is really like. Getting beyond "Generic Old Man" and "Eccentric Old Woman" by examining literature by 'natives' of old age.
After my son was born, everyone told me to write it all down.
"I'm trying to think of when my birth story begins, and even though this isn't fair to my son and isn't part of his story, I know it has something to do with when my sadness begins." Part of the Exposing the Silence project.
Attention K-Mart Shoppers
"This is a digitized version of an in-store cassette tape that was played within a Kmart store. See the title of the file for the month and year. I worked at Kmart between 1989 and 1999 and held onto them with the hopes that they would be of use some day. Enjoy!" (via)
EXTREME! Oil Extraction
Project Oil Sands - "In the late 1950s, Dr. Manley Natland, a passionate, lifelong geologist working for the Richfield Oil Corporation, hatched a gonzo idea to harness the power of a nuclear explosion for the benefit of bitumen extraction in Alberta’s oil sands. He proposed a plan to plant an atomic bomb deep below the oil sands, set it off and start pumping the oil freed up by the intense heat of the explosion."
Memories of Future Past
Photographs of crumbling modernist architecture in Paris. This is a sampling of the photography in Laurent Kronental's "Souvenir d'un Futur" exhibit, showing the crumbling majesty of Paris' architectural experiments during a period of great growth.
I know you already had to prove yourself beyond them...
Historical photographs from the Grand Canyon
Here is a big collection of old photos from the Grand Canyon. Among others, there are photos from John Wesley Powell's expeditions down the Colorado river in the 1870's. Pictures of people touring the canyon rim by car in the early 1900's, and ladies going down into the canyon by mule in 1909 wearing very nice hats. There are pictures of Hopi dancers on the rim from the 1940's. And there are pictures of park rangers leading fishing trips down into the canyon in the 1940's, and pictures of the early commercial Colorado River trips in the 1930's through the 1950's.
October 1
Bird bird bird, bird is the word
Fourteen-year-old Bridget's summer camp experience takes a turn for the bizarre when her otherworldly bird dreams start bleeding into reality.
Birdland is Brendan Patrick Hennessy's (with illustrations by Izzy Marbella) delightful entry into the 2015 Interactive Fiction Competition. It follows on from the equally delightful Bell Park, Youth Detective with the earlier title's eponymous heroine featuring as a character to be met rather than the one whose choices you are making. (Brendan Patrick Hennessy previously, IFComp previously)
You had an entire day ahead of you.
"A tumor stole every memory I had. This is what happened when it all came back."
Sure I'd love to see Ron get punched...
Hogwarts Nine Nine... Two great tastes that go surprisingly well together.
UCC Shooting Is The 142nd School Shooting In Three Years
President Obama says mass murder has become routine, and prayers just aren't enough. Since the Sandy Hook massacre in December of 2012, there have been 142 school shootings in the United States, including today's murder of 10 students. In total, there have been been nearly 1,000 mass shootings in less than three years, "with shooters killing at least 1,234 people and wounding 3,565 more."
An $18 grilled cheese sandwich?
"The way to kill a complex city is to chase out all the poor people – and their food" "When greed makes a place like New York, London or San Francisco unaffordable, the non-wealthy leave, and the city loses the smells and tastes that made it great." [SLGuardian]
Primates meet primate
This would have been Luke’s 13th birthday
Rosie Batty's son was murdered by his father.
Her bravery since has led her to become Australian of the year. She dedicates the award to her son. She has praised the coroner who led the inquest into her son's death.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced a $100 million package to address domestic violence.
Musician Chris Brown has been denied a visa to enter Australia on the basis of his domestic violence record. [more inside]
Grange Hill with Daleks
After teasing for hours on the official BBC Doctor Who twitter feed about #bigdoctorwhonews leading to a fever pitch of speculation re potential mega famous guests stars, new companion(s) or the recovery of lost episodes... it was finally announced that there will be a new spin-off YA series Class written by Patrick Ness centered around Coal Hill School in London
Are you brave?
OCLC consciously uncouples from catalog cards
On September 30th, OCLC ended support for Accessions List and Catalog Cards. What does this mean? It means they will no longer be supplying such cards to libraries, special collections and information filers. Partially filling the gap are suppliers of blank cards e.g. [1] [2] [3]. Also, books about cards.
Mom News Daily
Mom News Daily has been rated the #1 source of information by woman parents. It's satire. [more inside]
A clothing line for us really busty ladies? Well, it's a start.
“Accommodating a large bust is not taught in fashion school,” Love says simply. A Calgary woman decided to create her own fashion line for the generously endowed lady.
Concussions, CTE, and the NHL
Last month, former NHL enforcer Todd Ewen committed suicide. Earlier this year, former NHL enforcer Steve Montador died suddenly after struggling to cope with substance abuse and depression. In 2011, former NHL enforcer Derek Boogard overdosed on alcohol and painkillers, former NHL enforcer Rick Rypien committed suicide, and former NHL enforcer Wade Belak (probably) committed suicide. In 2010, former NHL enforcer Bob Probert died of a heart attack; his brain showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). As of today, the NHL "has 'no desire' to settle a class-action lawsuit that alleges negligence and fraud by the League regarding concussions." [more inside]
"The Cost Of Doing Business"
"We thought we’d rather die in a plastic boat than die there."
"For the next several days, I’m going to be sharing stories from refugees who are currently making their way across Europe." Humans of New York went to Greece (and will go to other locations) to talk to newly-arrived refugees fleeing Iraq as well as some locals. It will be posting their stories and photos. There are spots of kindness, however, as you'd expect, they are largely terrifying and tragic. (Warning: Human suffering and death.) [more inside]
The Hart Island Project: history is created through storytelling
Hart Island is a 131 acre island found at the western end of Long Island Sound. From the air, you can see paths, clearings, buildings and docks, but you can't clearly see the Riker's Island inmates who bury the forgotten dead in mass graves. Since 1869, there have been close to a million bodies buried on the 101 acre potter's field, but only recently was the site re-opened to the public. Still, access is limited, and finding a grave site is difficult. That's where the Hart Island Project comes in, by helping to map graves, identify the dead, and allow people to share their memories of loved ones. [more inside]
Lincoln impersonator Jim Getty has died
James Getty, who lent his voice to the recordings played at the Lincoln Memorial, has died at 83. (He lived in Gettysburg, PA.)
There will also be a Track Managing Droid
Nick Burcombe, who worked at UK developer Psygnosis on WipEout, gave Eurogamer permission to republish the design document, which includes additional pages intended to support the game's later US launch. [more inside]
THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU SPRAY A STRANGE BEAR IN THE FACE, MARY!
Mary Maley records her recent encounter with a bear in Berg Bay, Alaska. Despite her cajoling and her persistent attempts to reason with it, the bear insists on destroying Mary's kayak, even after she has pointed out that the kayak is made of plastic, does not taste good, and offers no nutritional value. The bear ignores Mary's repeated requests to explain its actions and throughout the incident Mary fails to connect the bear's actions to the stimulus that immediately preceded it. Bears everywhere know exactly why this bear is destroying Mary's kayak. [more inside]
Authenticating American-ness
Bolerii
The Wiener Cello Ensemble presents 5+1: Bolero
High Hitler: A look into the megalomaniac’s drug addiction
From Guernica:
At the end, when he was already hiding in his wet and dark Fuhrerbunker and his beloved Eukodal was no longer available, the dictator was in a frail state. He had lost his teeth, he was drooling and he was hallucinating. Hitler, the man who believed in what he called the “Aryan master race,” had ended up a junkie...
who want lasagna
Hungry? Check out FoodP0rnn for delicious inspiration. (SLTwitter)
Daredevil unavailable for comment.
"In August we asked readers to settle age-old disputes and draw where their neighborhoods begin and end. More than 12,000 New Yorkers responded, drawing maps in more than 280 neighborhoods and giving us a pretty detailed look at the local geography."
“It still feels like a dream,”
Toronto Blue Jays win first American League East division championship in 22 years with victory over Baltimore Orioles [National Post] [more inside]
Fifty years and two documentaries since the Indonesian coup
It has been fifty years since the attempted coup in Indonesia which kicked off a series of events that led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians.
The reprisals, urged on by the West, mainly targeted the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), the largest non-ruling Communist Party at the time. Documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer has made two powerful and haunting films about this episode, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014). [more inside]
"The sad state of web app deployment"
Getting to the Point with Senator Elizabeth Warren
Senator Elizabeth Warren addresses the Edward M. Kennedy Insitute for the United States Senate on the subject of inequality in the US. Transcript [but her delivery is so terrific, watch the video, really. -ed.] Slate reflects on the speech. [more inside]