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The Socialist YouTuber Using Cities: Skylines To Explain Politics [YouTube] “Roczniak’s main Skylines series is centered on a city named Franklin. The videos are unflinching looks at how American history and politics have created its cities. The series approaches cities from a historical angle, beginning with the time before colonization in North America and then slowly building period-to-period from there. There is no blank slate from which cities emerge, the videos argue, but instead they are founded through mass displacement and control. The early videos are dominated by discussions of trade and mercantile systems because Roczniak is plainly claiming that thinking the American city without taking those things seriously means that you’re not really addressing what cities are. Franklin exists as a kind of allegory for real cities, not being based on any one in particular, but the things that happen in and around the city of Franklin are all based on the history of city development.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 5:42 PM PST - 33 comments

If you would like to spend an evening admiring the spinning weather from above with an enthusiastic host, Dakota Smith (@weatherdak) on Twitter has you covered. You can find Florence ramping up, and get an idea of the flooding that resulted. Or maybe a more tranquil wave of clouds off of Lake Michigan. Or possibly a little GOES-17 water vapor imagery?
posted by cowcowgrasstree at 5:31 PM PST - 3 comments

"I have always wanted to be just a pair of eyes, walking through the world unseen, only to be able to see others.”
In 1933 the artist Jeanne Mammen was labelled a degenerate.
She was a chronicler of life in Berlin between the wars, her portrayal of lesbians was ground-breaking, often portraying women simply enjoying the company of other women. A little bit more and a pdf.
posted by adamvasco at 4:36 PM PST - 8 comments

It's Nobel Prize week! The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded today to James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for discovering how to release the immune system's brakes and enable it to attack cancer cells. Who will the awards in Physics and Chemistry go to? Inside Science (from the American Institute of Physics) has some predictions. [more inside]
posted by Westringia F. at 1:45 PM PST - 36 comments

Nearly a million people have downloaded the starter kit for the Conversation Project, (previously) a guide to discussing plans for the end of life. Others use the popular WeCroak app, which sends five daily reminders that we are all going to die. All share a common idea: that Western culture has become too squeamish about talking about death, and that the silence impoverishes the lives leading up to it.

The Positive Death Movement Comes to Life (John Leland, NYT)
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:25 PM PST - 40 comments

Sean Fennessey picks "The Best Scary Movies of Every Year Since 1978’s ‘Halloween’"
posted by Ipsifendus at 12:26 PM PST - 65 comments

Diana Vreeland loved him, as did Lagerfeld and de la Renta. But his style roots are in Durham NC On a clear and lovely Saturday evening last April in Charlotte, North Carolina, more than 450 guests gathered on the lawn of the city’s Mint Museum for its annual gala, a black-tie shindig called Coveted Couture, a reference to the museum’s dazzling show The Glamour and Romance of Oscar de la Renta, which opened the next day. André Leon Talley, the towering (he is six foot six) former Vogue editor who was a close friend of the late designer’s and the curator of the exhibit, sat slightly apart from the crowd, bedecked in a stately Tom Ford cape made of black silk faille—“like those,” he informs me, “of the bishops and cardinals.”
posted by MovableBookLady at 12:09 PM PST - 8 comments

"The Comforting Fictions of Dementia Care." Larissa MacFarquhar explores many dimensions of treatment for people afflicted with memory diseases. (SLNewYorker) [more inside]
posted by doctornemo at 11:58 AM PST - 31 comments

Woman frightened by VR experience snuggles the wrong end of dog for comfort. Dog to forever be known as Snugglebutt. (SLYT via BoingBoing) [more inside]
posted by numaner at 11:58 AM PST - 14 comments

"Boys and girls and babes, we all learned so much during the 2017–2018 NHL season. For example, I learned that chaos rules the universe, sports predictions are horoscopes but less accurate, and hockey games are won by pure, defiant, you-said-I-couldn’t-do-it spite and very little else. The meteoric rise of the Vegas Golden Knights and the triumph of the Washington Capitals reveal the true keys to hockey success. Depth at center and a hot goalie? No. You need a team that is obsessed with each other, and feels unfairly maligned by God. “Nobody believes in us but we believe in each other.” Romance, and grim vindictive gall: it’s how the ragtag Knights sailed past the West and how the cursed Caps clawed through the East. Throw in that center depth and the hot goalie, and you’ve got a Stanley Cup champion. Amid the rampant parity of the NHL, a team needs to nail it in three categories: spite, love, and I guess something to do with being good at hockey, each on a scale of 1–5. Here’s how all 31 teams stack up." Hockey podcaster Kelly Harris presents All You Need Is Spite: A Very Emotional NHL Season Preview
posted by everybody had matching towels at 11:43 AM PST - 12 comments

Charles Aznavour sings La Boheme. Aznavour au cinéma. French singer Charles Aznavour dead at 94
posted by growabrain at 11:04 AM PST - 25 comments

Matthew McConaughey is essentially a human soundboard.
posted by chavenet at 9:19 AM PST - 20 comments

At ImagineNative, Indigenous-Made Films Challenge Expectations [more inside]
posted by poffin boffin at 8:38 AM PST - 2 comments

It used to be that people born in the 1940s or '50s were virtually guaranteed to achieve the American dream of earning more than your parents did, Chetty says. But that's not the case anymore. "You see that for kids turning 30 today, who were born in the mid-1980s, only 50 percent of them go on to earn more than their parents did," [Harvard University economist Raj] Chetty says. "It's a coin flip as to whether you are now going to achieve the American dream." Chetty and his colleagues worked with the Census Bureau's Sonya Porter and Maggie Jones to create the The Opportunity Atlas ... merging U.S. Census Bureau data with data from the Internal Revenue Service. (Via NPR) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 8:29 AM PST - 45 comments

“Nelson was freaked out. There was no phone call, of course. The mysterious chubby man had asked Hoyer to have us ejected. According to Nelson, she had told him that an article about dairies and immigration would “destroy our lives out here.” It was an incredibly sensitive subject. “It’s kind of a third rail among dairy farmers,” Nelson said. “Whenever I go to a dairy farm, I never ask about the immigrant-labor thing unless they bring it up themselves.” Devin Nunes’ Family Farm Is Hiding A Secret (Esquire)
posted by The Whelk at 7:37 AM PST - 51 comments

RIP Carlos Ezquerra, comic artist who was the co-creator of Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog for 2000AD [more inside]
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 7:06 AM PST - 26 comments

The cameras register not only a car’s license plate number but also the face of its driver. At night, lights are projected over the camera lenses, blinding drivers more than oncoming headlights ever could. As we drove past another checkpoint, I tried to shield my eyes with my hand in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the road. The gesture did not go unnoticed: all four cameras immediately flashed a series of strobe lights.

Meduza publishes a report by a Russian-speaking journalist and traveler who managed to enter Xinjiang during the summer and observe how the new technologies in use there facilitate total surveillance, segregation, and discrimination. [more inside]
posted by Kabanos at 6:17 AM PST - 30 comments

A panel of critics tells us what belongs on a list of the 100 most important books of the 2000s … so far. [Vulture] [more inside]
posted by ellieBOA at 2:37 AM PST - 75 comments