February 25, 2012
The Freedom, and Perils, of Living Alone
"In a sense, living alone represents the self let loose. In the absence of . . . “surveilling eyes,” the solo dweller is free to indulge his or her odder habits — what is sometimes referred to as Secret Single Behavior. Feel like standing naked in your kitchen at 2 a.m., eating peanut butter from the jar? Who’s to know?
. . .
What emerges over time, for those who live alone, is an at-home self that is markedly different — in ways big and small — from the self they present to the world. We all have private selves, of course, but people who live alone spend a good deal more time exploring them."
Bud Powell
No musician of Bud Powell’s era had such capacity for improvisatory excellence and was so ready to unleash it, instantly, in such concentrated form onstage. [more inside]
Drunk Eliza
paint your own nebula
New Musical Express
Marriage Suits Educated Women
Stephanie Coontz: The M.R.S. and the Ph.D. "Is this really the fate facing educated heterosexual women: either no marriage at all or a marriage with more housework and less sex? Nonsense. That may have been the case in the past, but no longer. For a woman seeking a satisfying relationship as well as a secure economic future, there has never been a better time to be or become highly educated... The most important predictor of marital happiness for a woman is not how much she looks up to her husband but how sensitive he is to her emotional cues and how willing he is to share the housework and child-care. And those traits are often easier to find in a low-key guy than a powerhouse." [more inside]
We love you. Every part of you belongs to you.
ILU-486, a chilling short story by Amanda Ching, in the vein of dystopian classics like The Handmaid's Tale and inspired by recent events in Virginia, has been sweeping the blogsphere. [more inside]
Your Facebook Profile Can Predict Your Job Performance
A new study shows that the nature of a person's Facebook profile can help predict the person's performance as an employee.
Music billboards on the Sunset Strip from 1974-75. (SLFlickr, but oh what a Flickr!)
Music billboards on the Sunset Strip from 1974-75. (SLFlickr, but oh what a Flickr!) An amazing series of photos scanned from 35mm slides and negatives of music-related billboards on the fabled Sunset Strip from 75-75. A beautiful collection of artwork incorporating more than just promotional flats and album blow-ups. I believe some of these are even painted by hand.
Enjoy!
The More You Love a Memory, The Stronger and Stranger It Is
Dmitri Nabokov the son of Vladimir Nabokov, who tended to the legacy of his father with the posthumous publication of a volume of personal letters, an unpublished novella and an unfinished novel that his father had demanded be burned, died on Wednesday in Vevey, Switzerland. He was 77.
This Mall Had Everything
Dixie Square Mall, Chicagoland's rotting eyesore, urban archaeology mecca. and site of a Blues Brothers chase scene, is finally being demolished. For real this time. It sat vacant and rotting since closing in 1979, slowly becoming the grim epitome of dead malls. (Previously)
Early 20th C. Australian Bike Culture
Teller Reveals His Secrets
cars going back to the elements, Peter Lippmann's pics
Wonderful photos of cars being reclaimed by Nature | the photographer is Peter Lippmann, his website has other alluring and intriguing images of impermanence | historical women with anachronistic fashion accessories [nsfw] and other things. [more inside]
Lion pride and prejudice
Metafilter likes cats and Downton Abbey, right? I present Downton Tabby (SLYT)
Witnessing the Badger
Theramin Badger Doesn't Give A Ooo-Eeee-Ooooo
from gadgetmaker/musician David Cranmer, aka Nervous Squirrel whose other projects include Brian the Penguin and the Programmable Musical Pig, seen in performance with the band Nine Owls in a Baguette. Because... well, why the owl not?
from gadgetmaker/musician David Cranmer, aka Nervous Squirrel whose other projects include Brian the Penguin and the Programmable Musical Pig, seen in performance with the band Nine Owls in a Baguette. Because... well, why the owl not?
It's an honor just to be...you gave it to HER?!
Reaction shots of losing (and winning) an Academy Award. In .gif form.
Chaconne
No Limits with Crutches
Dergin Tokmak contracted polio as a child and lost much of the use of his legs. This did nothing to stop him from becoming an astonishing dancer.
"We recommend that W&WW perform actual meter readings and bill customers based on those actual meter readings..."
Linda Stewart has a mission. After discovering discrepancies in the water billing for two of her Baltimore properties, Linda Stewart, also known as "WaterBillWoman", began to look more closely at billing across the whole city. [more inside]
the special freedom of complete loneliness
Rich. Creamary. Butter.
Hey remember Lindsay Ellis' The Nostalgia Chick (previously) and her reviews of all things nostalgic and girly? She's done a lot more since then - Cruel Intentions- Jem! - The Craft - Mulan - and the Ne Plus Ultra of wish fulfillment Meg Ryan movies Kate & Leopold.
. . . rather than just giving poop jokes to Jar Jar.
Gray zone, schmay zone
Almost immediately upon my arrival in my first teaching job, I became the go-to guy for the Holocaust. Of course, this was partly due to my dissertation, but in larger part, I suspect, because of my Jewishness. This was fine with me for a number of reasons. First, as a junior faculty member, this identification, though merely professional, could only help in my quest for tenure. An expert on the Holocaust carried infinitely greater weight, I thought, than an expert on ministerial instability during the French Third Republic.
Dissolution: My life as an accidental Holocaust expert—and why I decided to quit
Dissolution: My life as an accidental Holocaust expert—and why I decided to quit
lods of emone
"It's a pretty obscure scandal, you probably haven't heard of it...."
Faux Philosophy News remixes stories from Leiter Reports and New APPS in the Horatian style popularized by the Onion.
Page by Page Review of the Back to the Future Novelisation
I present to you a page by page review of the novelisation of the movie Back to the Future. The review is being undertaken by Ryan North, who also creates the very funny webcomic Dinosaur Comics.
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.... and mega cities and future cops and cyborgs and deathgames and time-travelling dinosaur hunters and mutant bounty hunters and....
British sf tabletop miniature wargame Warhammer 40,000 is 25 years old today, British sf anthology comic 2000AD is 35 years old tomorrow [more inside]
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