January 19, 2016
"How did my father die?"
Sports person did a sports thing!
“the eleven most boring conversations i can’t stop overhearing” (in which a liberal white male american san francisco bay area resident possessive of the auditory acuity of a baby chihuahua learns to scream).
The Likely Persistence of a White Majority
In The American Prospect, Sociologist Richard Alba discusses two reasons why the Census-projected relative demographic decline of White Americans may prove illusory.
Holding the T
Holding the T "By far, squash is the toughest, most brutal, most complete sport there is. It takes everything out of you. It takes every mental and physical effort you have. And if you do your best you have a fifty-per-cent chance to win.”
Grim Reapers
More U.S. military drones are crashing than ever... Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Force’s newest and most advanced “hunter-killer” drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagon’s favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups. From the Washington Post, January 19, 2016.
Diminished professor
Pediatrician Hans Asperger is known worldwide for the syndrome he first diagnosed. The rest of his story – in Vienna during WWII – has only recently come to light: The Doctor and the Nazis
House for Sale. 8 Bedroom Villa near Siena. Previous owner Michelangelo.
Art lovers take note: a sprawling villa once owned by the artist and sculptor Michelangelo Buonarroti is on the market. And if you have a few million to spare, the masterpiece could be yours. The eight-bedroom villa, located near Siena, was bought by the Renaissance master in 1549 and remained in the Buonarroti family until 1867 - more than 300 years after his death.
The home, surrounded by the vineyards of Chianti and views of Tuscany’s rolling hills, could be yours for €7.5 million. [more inside]
Afghanistan 1970 – 1975 Images from an Era of Peace
A Collection of Vintage Photographs from The Heart of Central Asia - By Joseph Hoyt. His Tales and Travelogues with a very good map. [more inside]
"'Say it with me people. Pulitzer. Motherf***ing. Prize'"
Kevin Dawes: searching for a missing American in Syria. A young American man and sometime SomethingAwful goon, self-taught as a medic and aspiring to journalism, maxes out his credit cards and heads for Syria, on his own. His contacts and friends increasingly fear he is mentally ill. The last report of him is from 2013. (GQ, 1/15/2016) [more inside]
“Falafel is a meal that transcends socio-economic backgrounds—”
A Falafel House Divided by Mohamad Yaghi and Jack Crosbie [Roads & Kingdoms]
“They work meters from one another every day, preparing falafel the way their father taught them. But instead of sharing a kitchen, Zouhair alone inhabits the original Damascus street shop. One store over, Fouad has a new shop, emblazoned with red signs that read “Falafel M. Sahyoun.” A single white tile wall separates them, a boundary that is never breached. The brothers no longer speak. Lebanon has long been a country defined by divisions, and though the brothers’ rift is not sectarian, the uneasy relationship between two falafel makers competing in close proximity is a reflection of the problems that still haunt the country.”
The language is completely case insensitive
I've Always Been Hungry
Growing up poor, there were times when I only ate what I could manage to steal. As a well-fed adult, I still can’t turn down a good meal…or a bad one.
This moving memoir piece is by Zen monk and author Barry Graham, who also blogs at No Mean Preacher.
Going faster miles an hour
What holds Wile E. up in the air long enough to understand his mistake—what propelled that boulder back into the rock face, what blew up the detonator and left the dynamite unscathed—isn’t anarchy, but its exact opposite.How Wile E. Coyote explains the world (slds)
wake up little boy, daddy's looking for you
A family living in Washington is speaking out about the horrors they experienced while operating a baby monitor inside their 3-year-old son's bedroom. [more inside]
MLKNOW
Partly organized and hosted by Creed director Ryan Coogler, MLKNOW was an all day event that celebrated Martin Luther King Jr Day with a string of stars reciting his and other black activists still all too relevant words at Harlem's Riverside Church. A full archive of the event is available. (Actual event starts at around 39:45.) Non-chronological Program. More timestamps below, with individual links where available: [more inside]
Worst. Tablecloth. Pulling. Gig. Ever.
They misunderstood my ability to be a dick, when correctly inspired. Juggler and comedian Mat Ricardo describes a nightmare gig in Beijing, starting with a (supposed) world record attempt and ending with a mad dash for the airport.
Her Story
Her Story is a 6-episode new-media series that looks inside the dating lives of trans & queer women as they navigate the intersections of desire & identity.The show is co-written, co-produced, and co-starred by writer and One Billion Rising organizer Laura Zak and founder of The Trans 100 and We Happy Trans Jen Richards, and also stars Angelica Ross, founder of Trans Tech Social Enterprises. (CW: One of the side characters is hella transphobic, and there's smatterings of casual transphobia.)
We are still living in Moynihan’s moment.
Coates sees the mass incarceration of African Americans as the “national action” that America chose to undertake to address the problems Moynihan described. Moynihan’s framing of poverty as a problem of black families—of black people—has enabled political leaders for half a century to look away from restitution and towards punishment as a way to address social problems. We are still living in Moynihan’s moment.The Moynihan Report Resurrected, by Sam Klug [more inside]
The Polaroids of the Cowboy Poet
Superstition...
Peter Huttlinger, who died on January 15th, was an American guitarist known for impressive fingerstyle arrangements, in particular this one [SLYT]
Univision buys The Onion (no, really)
Even NPR couldn't resist making a joke, but it's it's true: the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. has purchased a controlling interest in satirical news site The Onion and its subsites, legit pop-culture site AV Club and clickbait parody site Clickhole. [more inside]
The Keeper
Gay City News profiles Robert Woodworth, on his retirement after thirty-two years at New York’s LGBT Community Center.
British People on Top of Tour Buses Look Generally Displeased
A113
Tim Burton, John Lassiter, Genndy Tartakovsky, Brenda Chapman, Brad Bird, and many more of the biggest names in animation all went through the animation program at CalArts, taking classes in room A113. As a thank-you gesture, the number A113 is included every Pixar Film. Even The Good Dinosaur. And quite a few other movies and tv shows as well. [more inside]
The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene
It seemed absolutely crazy. The idea that an Iowa housewife, equipped with the cutting-edge medical tool known as Google Images, would make a medical discovery about a pro athlete who sees doctors and athletic trainers as part of her job? via
the classical music of now
Your Home Is Filled With Bugs
Census Finds Lots of Bugs in 50 US Homes Aside from pets, family members, or roommates, many of us often go weeks without seeing another living thing in our homes. But appearances can be deceiving. We are, in fact, surrounded by arthropods—insects, spiders, centipedes, and other animals with hard external skeletons and jointed legs. They are the most successful animals on the planet, and the walls that shield our homes to the elements are no barriers to them.
In the first systematic census of its kind, a team of entomologists combed through 50 American houses for every arthropod they could find, and discovered a startling amount of diversity. [more inside]
tasty delicious coffee making recipes
Brew Methods is a collection of coffee brewing guides.
Highest Annual Mileage Record
How many miles can you cycle in a year? British cyclist Tommy Godwin’s "unbreakable" 1939 record of 75,065 miles has just been beaten by American Kurt “Tarzan” Searvogel, who achieved 76,156 miles, or 208.6 miles a day, between January 10, 2015 and January 9, 2016. [more inside]
I feel like I’ve finally gotten to know Ada Lovelace
Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace - by Stephen Wolfram; a good read, even if you're generally familiar with the story of Lovelace, Babbage, and the Difference Engine.
Do Londoners have it in their nature to stand on the left?
"London’s commuters have learned to withstand vast and unpredictable challenges: track closures; signal failures; engineering works. And they have developed a thick skin. But on that particular Friday, the 11,000 of them who got off at Holborn station between 8.30 and 9.30am faced an unusually severe provocation. As they turned into the concourse at the bottom of the station’s main route out and looked up, they saw something frankly outrageous: on the escalators just ahead of them, dozens of people were standing on the left."
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