February 16, 2020
A Musical Interlude...
The Wildness of Maurice Sendak
The Wildness of Maurice Sendak is a fine biographic orientation to where Maurice was coming from (particularly the strains of his childhood). It's by Gabrielle Bellot, who writes a column called Wander, Woman.
As an introductory video, this Moyers interview from 2004 is also insightful. (Maurice is clearly moved by what Joe Campbell said about 'Wild Things').
“I am the programming equivalent of a home cook.”
“I made a messaging app for, and with, my family. It is ruthlessly simple; we love it; no one else will ever use it.” —Robin Sloan, An app can be a home-cooked meal.
[via Lobsters]
…mounds of dung and worm-eaten corpses, the hallmark triggers of disgust
"Disgust is inherently ambivalent—it at once revolts and attracts us. This reflects, for Strohminger, the larger evolutionary ambivalence that disgust stems from, since we “must balance the need for nutrition against the peril of toxic comestibles, the need to socialize against the threat of communicable disease.” In short, disgust may not derive from a simple aversion to harmful substances but from a tension between the desire to explore and consume new things and the dangers of doing so": Why We Love to Be Grossed Out (Nautilus) [more inside]
no one had defined a crossing in such achievable terms
The problem with the importance of being the first to do something is that something gets sliced and diced in more and more elaborate, and perhaps meaningless, ways. Was Colin O'Brady really the first to cross Antarctica unaided? He responds to the article.
"WELCOME to the EDGE"
Before the Sci-Fi Channel (these days "Syfy" because we're all dumber now) officially launched, they aired a good amount of vaguely weird video and shimmery audio along with a launch timer. The last hour and twenty minutes of it are preserved on YouTube. Here's some of it without the timer. Also, here's a collection of 125 FTL Newsfeeds, the weird fake future newscast Sci-Fi aired that served both as mood setter and experiment in serialized storytelling. Here's a bunch of bumpers from 1990/2000. And the bumps from their short-lived "Sci-Fi World" block, featuring the song Funkytown. [more inside]
Jazz with Bob Parlocha archive
Bob Parlocha was a jazz radio institution. He began spinning disks over four decades ago. This program fillled the late night airwaves in many cities across the USA. Jazz with Bob Parlocha continued that KJAZ feeling for twenty years until Bob's death in 2015. You can stream hundreds of hours of JWBP on the internet.
Stop at that top turtle and you miss that it’s turtles all the way down.
But design isn’t magic. To address a wicked problem is to look for its roots — and there’s no hexagon map for getting there. Stop at “insufficient competitiveness” and what you get is a solution that can be tidy exactly because it doesn’t touch the deep causes of Gainesville’s economic stagnation. You get a solution that’s indifferent to the legacies of slavery and segregation, to the highway projects that systematically cut off and blighted East Gainesville, to East Gainesville’s miserable public transportation, and to Florida’s $8.46 minimum wage.
plastic in your consoles, computer, modem, cables, plastic is everywhere
The inescapable impact of plastics in the video game industry [Eurogamer] Ed Annunziata loves the ocean. [...] It's an idea reflected in Annuziata's games, most notably, Ecco, his beloved series about a dolphin fighting to save the ecosystem and his species from mysterious aliens and human oppression. It is often considered one of the first environmental ocean games, but even Ecco couldn't predict the threat that would be posed by plastic pollution. "When I walk on the beach I see plastic bottles and wrappers left behind by weekend beach visitors," says Annunziata. "It's heartbreaking to see knowing that plastic trash will be floating around in the ocean for 1000 years." Plastic is a problem, and the same is true for the video game industry. Whether it's our consoles, our PCs, our game packaging, or just a water bottle you happen to throw away at a convention - it isn't solely our responsibility, but we undoubtedly bear some of the blame.” [more inside]
In a world where there is no compassion for those who stay...
‘Jumanji’ Producer To Develop Emerson, Lake & Palmer Song ‘Karn Evil 9’ As A Sci-Fi Movie [Deadspin] - New York Times bestselling author Daniel H. Wilson has been hired to adapt the screenplay [...] Centered on a society that has drained all its blood with a dependence on technology, the film will explore the world controlled by a pervasive and dictatorial technocracy. The annual “Karn Evil” — a macabre rite of passage — is a young person’s once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience unbridled freedom, before subjugating themselves to the ruling class. When people stop returning from their Karn Evil experience, fear drives a revolution to topple the status quo and the artificial intelligence discovered at its heart. [more inside]
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