December 4, 2015
Ark and flood in one package
The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) was established in 1961 and has grown into one of the US government’s largest intelligence organizations. It employs 17,000 people, including thousands stationed overseas, and its 2013 fiscal year budget request was for $3.15 billion. Yet, the DIA is also one of the more secretive agencies in the U.S. intelligence community, regularly denying access to basic information about its structure, functions and activities. On November 20, the National Security Archive posted a new sourcebook of over 50 declassified documents that help to illuminate the DIA’s five-decades-long history. [more inside]
People react to being called beautiful.
Macs and Cheeses of the Internet
MT-40 Riddim
The Casiotone MT-40, an electronic musical keyboard, was launched on the consumer market in 1981 and discontinued roughly a year later. It was not a particularly powerful piece of gear; it came with 23 fixed timbres and six drum patterns, played on tinny electronic sounds. However, in 1985, one MT-40 ended up in Jamaica, in the hands of a young musician named Noel Davy, where its bass pads and one of its drum patterns ended up instrumental in spawning the new electronic style of reggae and dancehall. [more inside]
God, I Need This Job
RIP: Workshops. WTF is a Lab?
"Now you're confused. 'Then, what's a Lab?' 'It's the exact same thing as a workshop, but without the good shit." [more inside]
The demented sound of John Gavanti
"Oh Ancient Ocean!/You are nothing!/Vast you may be!/Next to me what are you?/I am beautiful pink and you are stinky green!" In 1980, members of No Wave bands Mars and DNA recorded John Gavanti. An operetta loosely based on Don Giovanni, it's the story of a man with magical powers and a strong libido who gets it on with a lioness and a grandmother "in the beautiful autumn of life," among others. It was recorded in an all-vaccuum-tube-equipment studio that Sonic Youth later used to record 1987's Sister. Glenn Kenny at Trouser Press said "Some have called this the most unlistenable record ever made, and that's a fine invitation indeed." There's a review of sorts here. There's an unreadable fake(?) interview with fans and musicians here.
My Ex Stalked Me for 11 Years
Only Christmas Carol we listen to!
Frank Kelly's The Twelve Days of Christmas Has us rolling on the floor!
This is what Christmas is like at our place.
Enjoy!
Emilio no longer looks me in the eye, but Molly has become vicious.
Jury Duty, by Anonymous. (SL Medium): There is one other person in the room who doesn’t quite fit in, the Latino man who is the only other male juror of color. He sits and stares out the window. He doesn’t join in on small talk. “I haven’t been sleeping,” he says, when asked why he is so silent. “A man’s life is at stake.” I think of him as Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men. We will share this role.
Mt. Etna has erupted
Best Albums 2015
It's time to engage in the Annual Album Arguments! And so far, Kendrick Lamar is winning the internet with To Pimp a Butterfly. Rolling Stone, Noisey (from Vice), and Spin all give it #1. Stereogum puts it at #2, behind Grimes' Art Angels
Sexual Assault Allegations Flare Up in the Adult Industry
On November 28th, adult and mainstream actress Stoya sent out a pair of tweets accusing adult actor James Deen of raping her. Deen replied on Twitter that the "egregious claims" were "false and defamatory", but more performers have since made similar accusations, including producer-director-writer-star Joanna Angel, who dated Deen for six years. [more inside]
Walking on Tigers' Tails
“The distance between the station and the train was accurately measured ... I was not nervous as it approached and I leaped without hesitation,” she recalled. She landed safely, but the rocking motion of the train rolled her straight toward the end of the car. Just before being pitched off, “I caught hold of an air vent and hung on.” Then, with a sense of the dramatic, silent film actress Helen Gibson let her body “dangle over the edge to increase the effect on the screen.” [more inside]
giving the people something they didn't ask for
Steamed bun? Cornbread? Everything bagel? Challah? Or maybe just regular old Wonderbread? Whatever the case, Bread Face Blog has you covered.
Ace: The Talented Member of KISS
Ace's High (Part 1, Part 2) is a short documentary about a four-member Ace Frehley tribute band whose members all performed in full 1970s Ace Frehley makeup and costumes. [more inside]
oldweb.today
Do It A Capella
In 1990 PBS Great Performances broadcast Do it A Capella, a Spike Lee - produced special featuring "some of the finest rock/popular/doo-wop groups in the world. . . a watershed event bringing the renaissance of a cappella to the public consciousness." [more inside]
All roads lead to receiving.
Curious about the largest single-site jail in the country? The Cook County Department of Corrections has you covered with a frankly fascinating series of short videos touring the jail's eleven divisions. [more inside]
Finally, A Bread Fit For The Kwisatz Haderach
Dune Week: Spice Filled Sandworm. Now, you too can make a proud, impressive, spice-scented Great Maker of Arrakis.
May his rising cleanse the world, or at least your kitchen.
[Dune on Fanfare]
Do You Hear What We Hear?
Cult favorite punk cabaret duo Kiki & Herb released a Christmas album full of spiteful brio years ago that's been nearly imposssible to find since ...That is until Kenny Mellman (Herb) put the entire thing on soundcloud.
Mona Shores Singing Christmas Tree.
Mona Shores Singing Christmas Tree. As explained by the AP: "It's not that an oversized tree adorned with ornaments is uncommon as a student choir sings carols in the days leading up to Christmas. It's more that the towering steel tree is decorated with garland, twinkling lights ... and hundreds of teenagers. [...] The Mona Shores Singing Christmas Tree combines the usual elements into an unusual show that will draw thousands of spectators this weekend. The 67-foot-tall tree features 25,000 lights, 5,000 linear feet of greenery, and 15 tiers on which about 220 choir members stand. About 50 other students sing from positions near the base of the tree."
The Demands From Students Protesting Racism At 51 Colleges
What do student protestors want? College students have for weeks led protests over race relations on campuses across the country after well-publicized confrontations at the University of Missouri and Yale University.
A list of formal demands made at 51 U.S. campuses has been collected on a website called The Demands. [more inside]
August Engelhardt, history's most radical cocovore
"He believed that since the coconut grew high up in the tree, closest to God and closest to the sun, it was godlike. And since it had hair and looked like a human head, he thought it came closest to being a man. According to his rather crackpot theory, to be a cocovore was to be a theophage — or eater of God."
“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired,”
Debate erupts as Hanya Yanagihara's editor takes on critic over bad review of A Little Life. [The Guardian] The editor of Hanya Yanagihara’s bestselling novel A Little Life has taken to the pages of the New York Review of Books to defend his author from a review that claimed the novel “duped” its readers “into confusing anguish and ecstasy, pleasure and pain”. [more inside]
How do you lose a rocket booster?
A decades old mystery is now solved! After many attempts searching through Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) images, the Apollo 16 S-IVB rocket booster impact site has been identified. [more inside]
Promises of what I seemed to be
Scott Weiland, Ex-Singer of Stone Temple Pilots, Dies at 48. The troubled singer died in his sleep on a tour stop in Minnesota. Weiland, who had been fired from STP, was in his third act, comparing himself to Keith Richards, and had lost a bandmate earlier in the year. Weiland rose to stardom 23 years ago with STP's debut Core. [more inside]
the tenuous blue wall
"There’s no question that recent demographic trends have aided Democrats enormously. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of all white voters and won election in a 44-state landslide. In 2012, GOP nominee Mitt Romney carried 59 percent of all white voters yet lost decisively. What happened? African-Americans, Latinos, Asians and other non-whites — all overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning groups — rose from 12 percent of voters in 1980 to 28 percent in 2012.
It’s true that if every demographic group were to carry its 2012 levels of turnout and party support into 2016, Democrats’ lead in the national popular vote would expand from 3.9 percentage points to 5.1 points based on population trends alone. But, as FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver and others have argued, Democrats’ advantage in the Electoral College is much more tenuous than it’s often portrayed." Run your own simulation with 538's Swing Tracker.
It’s true that if every demographic group were to carry its 2012 levels of turnout and party support into 2016, Democrats’ lead in the national popular vote would expand from 3.9 percentage points to 5.1 points based on population trends alone. But, as FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver and others have argued, Democrats’ advantage in the Electoral College is much more tenuous than it’s often portrayed." Run your own simulation with 538's Swing Tracker.
Opa!
Is this the most emotionally moving holiday commercial ever, or is it "the worst thing I’ve ever, ever seen"? You decide.
Unpregnant
Alexandra Kimball writes about pregnancy, miscarriage, grief and feminism. Women make and unmake our children, not just in the biological sense, but in the ontological sense, too. The fetus is a fetus, and the child a child – only the woman knows. If we deny her the power to define her own pregnancy, we deny the power inherent in womanhood.
The 10 Best Actor Transformations
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