October 19, 2020
Sound macroeconomic management — or, socialism
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's Well-Being Budget Proves Politically Successful: "targeting budget resources towards outcomes in areas like environmental protection, poverty and literacy rates and even the amount of free time people need to volunteer with community organisations."[1] [more inside]
How to Stop a Coup (U.S. Election Filter)
Ross Douthat, a columnist with The New York Times, writes that “There Will Be No Trump Coup.” [more inside]
It's hard to meet women when you look like this
Tired of the Monster Mash? How about some Halloween Monster Blues... Here's a snappy-funny country-monster tune for the season ahead! By Ted Parks and the Busted Bones.
The 28th Amendment
The United States Constitution provides no right to vote. While seven of the 27 current amendments to the Constitution are concerned with expanding the franchise, US citizens do not have an affirmative right to cast a vote or have their vote counted — as demonstrated in 2000's Bush v. Gore, which cheerfully noted that "[t]he individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States". [more inside]
"All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses"
Four sweet pieces of fan fiction in which characters watch election returns come in. The one for which you least need to know the underlying canon: "A Great and Gruesome Height" by Jae Gecko, a queer romance that pays homage to the Dar Williams song "Iowa" along with The West Wing. "It's 1998, Josiah Bartlet is the Democratic nominee battling sitting Republican President Lawrence Armstrong for the Oval Office, and back in Iowa, Republican campaign coordinator Megan Richter is about to fall from a great and gruesome height." (This is a Yuletide story, and you can sign up for this year's Yuletide exchange between now and 9am UTC on 26 October.) [more inside]
Tuplets for Todlers
Led by Numberphile's resident composer Alan Stewart, YouTube composers re-imagine nursery rhymes with a bit more oomph.
- The Itsy Bitsy Spider in Quintuplets
- BINGO in 5/4 (mostly)
- London Bridge in Mixed Meter
- Ring-a-ring o' Roses in Free Time
- Wind the Bobbin Up in 11/8
- Hickory Dickory Dock in Polyrhythm
- Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in Additive Meter
- Frère Jacques in 7/4
- Row, Row, Row the Boat in Tempo Canon
- Ants Marchin in Metric Modulation
Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?
Halloween looks different this year. Across the U.S., cities and towns have gotten creative to celebrate the holiday during the covid-19 pandemic.
The crisis of upper-crust sports for college
It was like Foucault’s panopticon, except for private-school kids in Dri-Fit. Ruth S. Barrett surveys the increasingly fraught world of niche sports for the college-bound kids of wealthy families, and how competition and COVID-19 have made things harder. (SLAtlantic) [more inside]
A truly massive cat drawing found in Peru
Does anyone across the cosmos ever make it?
The universe does many things. It makes galaxies, comets, black holes, neutron stars, and a whole mess more. We’ve lately discovered that it makes a great deal of planets, but it’s not clear whether it regularly makes energy-hungry civilizations, nor is it clear whether such civilizations inevitably drive their planets into climate change. There’s lots of hope riding on our talk about building a sustainable civilization on Earth. But how do we know that’s even possible? How Do Aliens Solve Climate Change? A piece by astrophysics professor Adam Frank on modeling hypothetical past exo-civilizations (aliens) and how they might have handled situations like our own current predicament. Link to study. Frank also has a book, Light of the Stars: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth, on the same subject.
You probably think this song is about... who?
"You're So Vain" (lyrics) was a big hit for Carly Simon, reaching Billboard's number one spot in 1973. However, who the song is about has been an enduring mystery. [more inside]
14-year-old wins 25K USD prize in 3M competition
3M, in partnership with Discovery Education, Oct. 14 announced that Indian American student Anika Chebrolu won the 2020 Young Scientist Challenge competition. Chebrolu, of Frisco, Texas, developed a novel antiviral drug to combat the spread of COVID-19 by researching protein spikes in coronavirus. [more inside]
Kafka's Foxconn Plant
The 8th Wonder of the World* (*wonder not guaranteed) A long piece by Josh Dizeza at theverge.com covering the creation, confusion, and (as of current date) collapse of the massive ($4 billion) Foxconn manufacturing facility touted by Trump and then-Gov Scott Walker as the first step in building a "Silicon Valley of the Midwest", one that would revitalize manufacturing in and the economy of southern Wisconsin. [more inside]
Leggo My Eggo
How frozen waffles are made This crushed a lot of preconceived notions about those frozen waffles at the supermarket and who is actually making them. Turns out, they're made almost EXCLUSIVELY by machines!
Dorothy Parker Comes Home
What is the best magazine interview–ever–that Dorothy Parker sat down for? This one. Journalist Gloria Steinem was 30 and Parker was 71 when they met in the winter of 1964-65 for a long chat that ended up as a 2,300 word article in the New York edition of The Ladies Home Journal. (Also: Ms. Parker has again come home to New York.)
Demystifying Game Development
Bijan Stephen interviews Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin (The Verge) of the Video Game History Foundation on their efforts to preserve videogame history by studying original source code, art, sketchbooks, documentation, and correspondence. They’ve already deconstructed Aladdin, reconstructed Days of Thunder, and recovered the NES version of SimCity. On October 30, they’ll be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the The Secret of Monkey Island by looking through its source material with creator Ron Gilbert. [more inside]
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