October 5, 2018
Articles of Interest: Fashion
Four podcasts on specific articles of clothing #1 Kids Clothing
#2 Plaid
#3 Pockets
#4 Hawaiian Shirts
Podcaster talks to historians, museum curators, and more, about each of these specific things.
Forty-seven States and the Soviet of Washington
'Still, there are ghosts dwelling here: old memories — dimly held, to be sure. Here is Yesler Way, once better known as Skid Road because of the logs rolled downhill along its course to Henry Yesler’s sawmill on the shore. Nowadays a nondescript thoroughfare dotted with cafes frequented by tourists, including a branch of the city’s ubiquitous Starbucks chain, it used to heave with disreputable saloons, brothels, and flophouses, making Skid Road synonymous with any district where the down-and-out may gather: places that are rough, sometimes radical. The Industrial Workers of the World put down roots in this quarter among loggers, itinerant farm workers, and miners bound for the Yukon, as well as the shipyard workers who led the Seattle General Strike of February 6–10, 1919, the only true general strike in US history and the one occasion when American workers have actually taken over the running of a city — the sort of endeavor which earned this state, now given over to the billionaires of the new economy, the appellation “the Soviet of Washington.”' [more inside]
Yes, that's Apocalypsewang!
Something to occupy you while you REMAIN INDOORS this weekend, a bit of fun from Mitchell and Webb, creators of Countdown parody Numberwang. Fear The Quiz Show. (MLYT) [more inside]
GLORIOUSLY, CATASTROPHICALLY THEMSELVES
For 40 years, Cindy Sherman, the great chameleon of our time, has created more than 500 photographs and almost as many distinct characters. She has transformed herself into vamps and victims, biker chicks and slasher babes, lonely-hearts and killer clowns. She has made herself over to look like a Goya painting and a lactating Madonna; a society matron with pink-rimmed eyes, radiant with contempt; an ashen-faced corpse, the lividity just setting in. John Waters has called her a “female female impersonator.” She has put it more simply, joking, “I collect breasts,” referring to the prosthetics she uses in her work.(SLNYT)
I've got the weight of a rather tempestuous life to carry
Safe House
A group of Latina women across the country have been working in secret, turning their homes into shelters for abused immigrant women. (tw: domestic violence) [more inside]
...and counting
Scott Ashlin reviews horror, sci-fi, fantasy, giallo, b-movies, and trash from across the entire history of film at 1000 Misspent Hours (previously). Despite the occasionally lurid subject matter and defiantly old school HTML styling, Ashlin's reviews are thoughtful, literate, and often take unexpected detours into critical and historical minutiae. (His review of the 1946 gothic melodrama Dragonwyck, for example, contains a brief history of the Hudson Valley Rent War, and recent coverage of Green Room draws on the author's experience with a touring punk band.) A number of films paired with Ashlin's reviews wait below the cut. [more inside]
Je suis un Génie, jongleur, magicien
If you've ever wondered "what might a cut-rate Disney musical cartoon number look like?" Alex Ramirès has the answer, in a series of low cost adaptations, in French: La Petite Sirene | Pocahontas | Vaiana feat. Elodie Arnould | La Reine Des Neiges | Le Roi Lion Feat Max Bird | Aladdin with Nino Arial | Bonus: playlist of other low cost movie scenes. Double bonus: if you want to sing along or understand the literal translations of the lyrics, head over to Lyrics Translate.
The End Of Big Ag?
“That same year, Diggers’ Mirth Collective Farm next door also suffered; the farmers managed to earn a small profit—enough to net each farmer the equivalent of $5 an hour. It wasn’t much, but had the farm been structured in a typical hierarchy, the owner would have already paid out the labor and been left to bear the losses alone. “In our case, as bad as it was, no one was in debt,” says Dylan Zeitlyn, one of the founders of the worker-owned farm. “We were more resilient because of [our model]—it could have bankrupted somebody.” The Co-op Farming Model Might Help Save America’s Small Farms (Civil Eats) - Cuba’s Urban Farming Revolution: Creating more self-sufficient cities (Architectural Review) - The road to restoration: smaller, sustainable farms (UN Environment) - Agroecology can free farmers from dependency, manipulated commodity markets, unfair subsidies and food insecurity. It is resisted by giant corporations that profit from the status quo. ( Climate And Capitalism)
His stories "throw torches over the underground lakes of the human soul"
Ashley Stimpson and Jeffrey Irtenkauf (Johns Hopkins Magazine, Fall 2018), "Throngs of Himself": "Near the end of his life, [Cordwainer Smith] wrote to a friend: 'Life is a miracle and a terror. The progress of every day, any day, in the individual human mind transcends all the wonders of science. It doesn't matter who people are, where they are, when they lived, or what they are doing—the important thing is the explosion of wonder that goes on and on—stopped only by death.'" SFE entry. ISFDB entry. [more inside]
So that's what would've happened if I invented the Finglonger
What if your phone had a finger? Just think of the possibilities. (cw: kinda weird?)
Drops of water
‘Human impulses run riot’: China’s shocking pace of change Thirty years ago, politics was paramount. Now, only money counts. China’s leading novelist examines a nation that has transformed in a single lifetime
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