August 25, 2021
Everyone Already Knows What Owl She's Talking About
How Data Science Pinpointed the Creepiest Word in “Macbeth” (SL Medium) Actors and critics have long remarked that when you read Macbeth out loud, it feels like your voice and mouth and brain are doing something ever so slightly wrong. There’s something subconsciously off about the sound of the play, and it spooks people. It’s as if Shakespeare somehow wove a tiny bit of creepiness into every single line. The literary scholar George Walton Williams described the “continuous sense of menace” and “horror” that pervades even seemingly innocuous scenes.
30 Years Of Ten
August 25, 1991 -- Barely a year after coming together as a band, Pearl Jam released Ten [Wikipedia], their debut album. The release, supported by several hit singles (including one that basically broke MTV for a while) launched the band and is widely recognized as one of the top albums of all time. CD: Once, Even Flow [video], Alive [video], Why Go, Black, Jeremy [original video, uncensored MTV video], Oceans [video], Porch, Garden, Deep, Release - Master/Slave [more inside]
Our Never-Ending Empathy for Everything Is Backfiring
"A few years ago, I began to observe that the bulk of criticism I got was not about work I had actually done, or words I had in fact written, but about that which I wasn’t saying, or doing. I used to call this free-floating daily disparagement of all that we had failed to write or say aloud “negative spaces”—pun fully intended."
Ursula LeGuin, Jacqueline Jackson, and the Wooden Woman
A previously unpublished poem by Ursula LeGuin has just appeared on the web. You can learn much more about Jacqueline Dougan Jackson, children's author and college professor, on her website. [more inside]
A history of Google messaging apps
Ron Amadeo of Ars Technica walks down memory lane and covers Google's various messaging app offerings over the past decade and a half. It's even more of a mess than you think.
Delta Air Lines to require workers be vaccinated or pay
Delta Air Lines said Wednesday that it will require employees to be vaccinated against the coronavirus or face the alternative of weekly testing and a $200 monthly surcharge for health insurance. (SLWaPo) (alt, non-paywall source) [more inside]
I have no idea how these cats got wedged into acrylic squares, or why.
Hiding Images in Plain Sight: The Physics Of Magic Windows. Engineer Matt Ferraro shows how to make transparent acrylic squares with holographic images embedded in them.
"...no state is more mocked, maligned and misunderstood."
The greatest thing about every single town in New Jersey, a five-part series by NJ.com food and features writer Pete Genovese. Links to each individual installment below the fold. [more inside]
Parents are not okay
"Through these grinding 18 months, we’ve managed our kids’ lives as best we could while abandoning our own. It was unsustainable then, it’s unsustainable now, and no matter what fresh hell this school year brings, it’ll still be unsustainable." [SLAtlantic]
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