November 5, 2018
There's a reason why you haven't seen these Prince videos before.
NPR says that we have SEVEN seldom-seen new Prince videos for old songs posted online to watch. They're basically all SLAVE-era videos. Endophorminmachine; Dolphin; Rock And Roll Is Alive! (And It Lives In Minneapolis) [Ed note: !!! (Ed. note to Ed. note: !!!)]; Eye Hate U; Gold [Ed note: !]; Dinner With Delores; The Same December [more inside]
ANGER IS AN ENERGY
Today is Election Day in the United States.
In the wake of the most disastrous election in United States history, and after nearly two years of unfettered corruption and a dangerous trend towards strongman rule (see Metafilter potus45 threads passim), the American people now have their last best chance to halt Trump's incipient fascism by capturing at least one chamber of Congress. Democrats' chances look strong in the House, as well in the state races, but dicey in the Senate. [more inside]
In the wake of the most disastrous election in United States history, and after nearly two years of unfettered corruption and a dangerous trend towards strongman rule (see Metafilter potus45 threads passim), the American people now have their last best chance to halt Trump's incipient fascism by capturing at least one chamber of Congress. Democrats' chances look strong in the House, as well in the state races, but dicey in the Senate. [more inside]
What made this slug-a-seabed rise as killer?
Good Gods, why did ye thus make ill Godzilla? Book One of the Godziliad, by Adam Roberts (previously).
"She was a true Wonder Woman"
Hackers - reView
Red Letter Media Re:Views Hackers, the 1995 computer action movie, with their new friend, Macaulay Culkin (pictured here with the President of the United States)
“Daddy’s Big Little Nintendo”
A List Of Weird Names Luke Plunkett's Kid Calls His Video Games [Kotaku] “You and I, as adults, know to call things by their actual names. My kid is four, and does no such thing. For reference, he’s been playing some of these systems and games for around 18 months now. Which is why, despite now being a four year-old kid who can actually do a fairly good job of speaking like a human being, he persists with his cute lil’ baby names for the systems and games he was familiar with back then. They’ve stuck, and I just don’t have the heart to correct him, because there is nothing better in the world than hearing somebody be convinced a game is actually called “Mario Build It”.”
Australia's Colonial Myth
What omission? Well let’s look at what the explorers reported of the Aboriginal agricultural economy and see if you can remember any priest, parent or professor alluding to it. Lieutenant Grey in his 1839 ‘exploration’ of parts of Western Australia, so far unseen by Europeans, saw yam gardens more than five kilometres wide and extending a distance past the horizon and because the land had been so deeply tilled he could not walk across it. Sir Thomas Mitchell in the country that is now the Queensland–New South Wales border area rode through 17 kilometres of stooked grain that his fellows described as being like an English field of harvest. Isn’t that word ‘stook’ interesting when applied to what we thought we knew about Aboriginal history?
Stockholm says no to Apple 'town square' in its oldest park
Plans for the company’s vast new ‘gathering place’ have been shelved after a backlash. But Apple is growing bolder in its designs on public space There were around 1,800 responses to the city’s consultation on the project. Almost all of them were negative. "This is very important for democracy because it has to do with power, symbolically and spatially."
"I do all the poop scooping, but I actually like it"
Amanda Giese runs Panda Paws Rescue, home of the two-legged boxer Duncan Lou Who (previously), among others. Now she has a show on Animal Planet, "Amanda To The Rescue." She talked with Jacob Nierenberg of the Columbian about her life's work.
World's Most Dangerous Everyman
Daniel Cormier is the UFC heavyweight champion, one of the most successful fighters in MMA history, and he’s (possibly) a few months away from retirement. You’d never guess any of that by looking at him. He smiles so genuinely when fans approach him that you’d swear he’s known them his whole life. In fact, if you tell him he’s great, he thanks you in a way that suggests you’re probably wrong.
There is almost nothing menacing about Daniel Cormier. [more inside]
Broken Heart Syndrome Is A Real Thing
It has been found that the heart actually suffers a malfunction and can only move a fraction of blood after a heartache. Once mentioned as a non-medical term, a broken heart is now medically proven to have life-threatening effects.
Modernity has failed us
Apocalyptic Climate Reporting Completely Misses the Point
"Reporting on the IPCC, and climate change more broadly, is unbalanced. It’s fixated on the predictions of climate science and the opinions of climate scientists, with cursory gestures to the social, economic, and political causes of the problem. Yet analysis of these causes is as important to climate scholarship as modeling ice-sheet dynamics and sea-level rise."
Tonight we dine in 1491
Mouse wine, grilled guinea pigs, maggot cheese, rotten shark
The most disgusting food in the world. From The Museum of Disgusting Food, which has opened in Malmö, Sweden. More and more. WARNING: DISGUSTING FOOD INSIDE!
Welcome to Your State Stereotype
Perhaps you've noticed, as I did on a recent short road trip, that Google Maps welcomes you to a new state with a cute little icon. They've done a good and amusing job of capturing what each state is known for in icon form. Maine in a lobster costume, Wisconsin is wearing a cheesehead, Oregon has a bearded lumberjack, New Jersey a diner waitress. The internet has stepped up to catalog them all here.
Academia Is a Cult
Andrew Marzoni grew up in the Living Word Fellowship, but left the church to go to college. He would eventually earn a PhD before leaving the world of academia, which he now likens to the cult he left behind [SLWaPo].
high tech, low practice
The CIA's communications suffered a catastrophic compromise. It started in Iran. How did Iran find CIA spies? They Googled it:
According to one former official, the Iranian double agent showed Iranian intelligence the website that the CIA was using for their communications. By using Boolean search operators like “AND” and “OR”, stringing together characteristics of the communications and websites, Iranian intelligence was reportedly able to locate multiple other websites that the CIA was using for its communications. From there, Iran could track who was visiting the sites and from where — eventually exposing a large swath of the CIA’s network in Iran.[more inside]
AI's elves live in Kenya and twiddle your captcha
When Artificial Intelligence works as intended, Silicon Valley types often say it's "like magic".
But it isn't magic. It's Brenda, a 26-year-old single mother. In her eight-hour shift, she creates training data. Information - images, most often - prepared in a way that computers can understand
GORMENGHAST: THIRST TRAP
Erin Groans: A Gormenvast Review of Every Adaptation of Mervyn Peake's Titus Books: Erin Horáková has written a review of (nearly) every adaptation of Mervyn Peake's series of fantasy books, commonly called the Gormenghast trilogy. Published by the fantasy and science fiction magazine Strange Horizons as part of their 2018 fund drive, this covers theatre adaptations, board games, radio plays and television mini-series, both the BBC one (in wonderful detail) and the forthcoming Neil Gaiman adaptation. [more inside]
Fanciful musings on the backstory of Cohen's 'Suzanne'
With a playful twist, this piece imagines the scenario that developed to produce one of Leonard Cohen's earliest hit songs. [more inside]
Let them be cake
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