November 17, 2018
The Giant Spider & The Giant Minotaur
Toulouse becomes a labyrinth for this mythological tale. Behind the scenes: with the giant minotaur. [more inside]
Food disorder
The Man takes center stage
"Broken Face" And All, Becky Lynch Is Suddenly The Biggest Star In WWE: How Rebecca Quin seized the moment to create one of the most iconic photos in women's wrestling history and became one of the biggest things in professional wrestling despite being out of action for an unknown amount of time. (content warning: real blood)
Claire's back!
Former Bon Appetit editor Claire Saffitz is back in the BA test kitchen (at least temporarily), this time making gourmet Sno Balls. [more inside]
Shack house might stock elves in it
On July 31st, known illustrated jocularity Wondermark (previously) posted an innocuous comic strip beginning with the phrase "Check out my sick elephant!" For the next three and a half months, ending(?) only this past Thursday, every Wondermark strip centered around this one phrase, eventually spiraling into a dramatic(??) storyline with numerous recurring characters—including, yes, several sick elephants. In the eighth strip, wordplay based on slight phonetic variation began appearing, and the phrase was no longer relegated to the first panel; in the last strip, over twenty different variations of increasing obscurity appeared in short succession. In-between is only chaos. [more inside]
Pilobolus dance troupe: good ideas are like a mouse in your house
"It's named for a sun-loving fungus that lives in cow dung, but the dance form of Pilobolus, which has been gaining momentum for more than 30 years, is a lot more exciting, but we'll let you judge for yourself" (an interview and performance segment from 9 years ago, related to Pilobolus' 2007 Oscar performance). How Pilobolus brings shadows to life (Wired Masterminds video). Pilobolus is more than shadow-dancing, but that creativity and whimsy is always present. From early on, the company "made a specialty of playful topsy-turvy entanglements that defied anatomical logic" and which sometimes "gave rise to bizarre imagery" (blurb from an almost hour long Pilobolus Dance Theater performance/ lecture, recorded in 1998 at C. D. Hylton High School in Woodbridge, VA). [more inside]
“If you meditate, you're less of an asshole.”
The growth of yoga and meditation in the US since 2012 is remarkable: The number of Americans who meditate has tripled. Yoga is up 55 percent. "Yoga and meditation, two ancient practices, are now officially the most popular alternative health approaches in the United States, each used by around 35 million adults. That’s the word from a report (PDF) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention out [last] Thursday, which looked at the changes in the use of yoga, meditation, and chiropractors between 2012 and 2017." Mindfulness Is Going Mainstream Because of Science: Mindfulness has gone from hippie-dippie magical thinking to science-based health hack. What gives? ... [more inside]
Preludes to Dracula
Roughly coincident with Dacre Stoker and J.D. Barker's prequel to Dracula (excerpt 1; excerpt 2) contending for a Goodreads Choice Award for Horror, Philip Spedding at The London Library has announced an intriguing find: "Bram Stoker was a member of The London Library but until now we have had no indication whether or how he used our collection. Today's discovery changes that" (video walkthrough of the evidence). Alternative copies of the sources listed in the article are available online. [more inside]
Giant ants from space Snuff the human race Then they eat your face
Ants that collect the skulls of their prey.
"Time-lapse video observation of the interior nest chambers of laboratory colonies found that freshly-killed trap-jaw ants are dragged into the nest like food items and dismembered. Leading to nests filled with trap-jaw ant body parts, as is found in natural colonies."
"Time-lapse video observation of the interior nest chambers of laboratory colonies found that freshly-killed trap-jaw ants are dragged into the nest like food items and dismembered. Leading to nests filled with trap-jaw ant body parts, as is found in natural colonies."
“You'll be celebrating Life Day before you know it!”
Watch the Star Wars Holiday Special on its 40th Anniversary [YouTube] “You can expect Disney to release a new Star Wars movie every year from now until ... let's be honest, probably long after you and I are both dead and buried. But there's another Star Wars holiday tradition you should be keeping: Making time to watch the Star Wars Holiday Special, a famously atrocious piece of Star Wars history that aired once, and only once, on Nov. 17, 1978. The special was never re-aired; it was never released on video. It's been something Lucas — and ostensibly now, Disney — has been all too happy to forget about.” [via: Polygon]
Ich bin ein Berliner
From All Things Considered, Uri Berliner tells the story of two families who risked everything to help his father escape the Nazis, and the story of the childhood token that reunited two branches of his family decades later.
The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old
"…it was eggs, rotten eggs, but not from me"
The world of professional darts has been rocked by two players accusing each other of repeatedly breaking wind during a match. (SLGuardian)
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