October 15, 2021
On her 12th birthday, Yoyoka covers Deep Purple (slyt)
There is no fastball.
How I learned to hide the bomb and hate it.
Werner Heisenberg and the story to stop him. Involved was Moe Berg, spy extraordinaire. [more inside]
Who Will Record the Acoustiguides?
The Art Institute of Chicago has let go of its roughly 150 highly-trained volunteer docents, and says it will eventually replace them with a "limited number of paid educators." The Chicago Tribune disapproves, and the chair of the museum's Board of Trustees responds.
Off, dud, over, under, upon, hot, ono, oof, hi, lo, etc.
HACKENBUSH: a window to a new world of math (SLYT) An absorbing video book review of Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays (1982) by Berlekamp, Conway, and Guy. [more inside]
Don’t Split The Party
Paizo workers have unionized. In the wake of serious accusations made against senior management, workers at Paizo, known for their Pathfinder and Starfinder tabletop RPGs, have unionized, citing poor pay, crunch, and unsafe working conditions. This union is the first in an increasingly-popular industry. (Further coverage: ScreenRant | TechRaptor | Kotaku | Polygon)
We need to understand how we can be led astray.
The Unvaccinated May Not Be Who You Think. "Almost 95 percent of those over 65 in the United States have received at least one dose. This is a remarkable number, given that polling has shown that this age group is prone to online misinformation, is heavily represented among Fox News viewers and is more likely to vote Republican. Clearly, misinformation is not destiny." [more inside]
"a kind of tangible curiosity that statistics encourages"
"one of my co-workers had a tortoise called Pietro who could supposedly predict the weather ... I pondered how one might go about rigorously evaluating this claim". Conner Jackson collects and analyses data on the accuracy of weather prediction by Pietro the tortoise. The Royal Statistical Society explains why the article won their early-career writing award. Pietro's Instagram account. Other weather-forecasting tortoises include Herman in New Zealand.
Birthday Bruce will never be the same again
Sprinklegate : British bakery Get Baked was forced to shut down for a day after an anonymous customer reported it for using "illegal" U.S. sprinkles. [more inside]
Roman As Fuck
The real tragedy of purity culture, authoritarian parenting and the culture war ethos is not that we failed, but that we succeeded. This unholy Roman trinity may not have produced culture warriors or even prevented us from losing our faith, but it nevertheless worked as designed. Raised on war, we came to see all the world as a threat. Our birthright was not holiness, but hyper-vigilance and crippling anxiety.Author KucingNoir talks about how the evangelical christianity movement (and authoritarianism in general) of the 80s and 90s has created a generation of people who are terrified of something bad happening all the time.
Desperate NYC Tenants Are Waging Bidding Wars, As Rental Demand Surges
“There's a sense of urgency and desperation that I’ve never seen before." At least 70 prospective tenants wrapped around an Upper East Side building earlier this month, financial documents in hand, shouting numbers at a real estate agent as if at an auction. A few blocks uptown, another broker fielded close to a dozen offers above asking price on a fourth floor walk-up. In Prospect Heights, a two-bedroom, originally listed for $3,750 per month, leased for $4,500.
Janna Raskopf, a rental agent at Douglas Elliman, said she’d never rented an apartment to a tenant for more than it was listed. Since Labor Day, she said, more than half of the units she’d leased were being bid up, often as much as 20% more than their asking price.
The story is true, everything else is fake
"The story of Veles being a fake news hub is real. The story of the Book of Veles’ discovery and forgery is real. But all the actual content is fake." The story of how a respected photo journalist took a deep dive into deep fakes and people's occasional lapse in judgment in giving news from a respected source a pass. Seen in this context it is hard to imagine how we wouldn't see these people (AND BEARS) as fake, but that is hind sight speaking. More here from Washington Post.
RIP Russ Kick, 1969-2021
Russ Kick, author, anthologist, and "investigative archivist", has died. Perhaps best-known for taking on the US government's suppression of photos of flag-draped coffins, Kick had a reputation for using the FOIA process to great effect. He was also the author of several books of subversive knowledge, editor of The Graphic Canon anthologies, and operated AltGov2.org and The Memory Hole, in addition to his personal website. More recently, he was active on Twitter as @russkick, @thememoryhole2, @thegraphiccanon, and @kicklit. [more inside]
The Prestige
Two stories of psuedo-European culture in Georgia
Bizarro Bavaria: The author of Southbound finds the town of Helen, Georgia, attractive and troubling — but she isn’t giving it up by Anjali Enjeti for The Bitter Southerner and The troubled triangle of Scottish heritage, Southern racial politics, and Stone Mountain by Jim Galloway for Atlanta Magazine
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