April 6, 2022
"You may do anything you please except eat it"
Alice B. Toklas reads her "Recipe for Hashish Fudge" (as provided to her by Brion Gysin). [more inside]
University of California withdraws employment advert
The university of California made to withdraw a job advertisement for an assistant adjunct Professor in Science that offered no salary. Throws a light on university sweat shops. Boston Globe [more inside]
Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.
The final two shows of the Spirited Away stage production will be livestreamed through Hulu, July 3rd and 4th.
This announcement was preceded by some photos of the stage production - the puppetry looks amazing, I can't wait to see it in motion.
Official Disney trailer for English dub of Spirited Away, the movie (YT). [more inside]
Ilan Manouach
Ilan Manouach is a comics artist whose works include conceptual pieces appropriating from other comics , AI-generated New Yorker comics (in collaboration with Yannis Siglidis) and a tactile language. [more inside]
Tanis: 'First dinosaur fossil linked to asteroid strike'
Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens purport to represent. The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth.
The Sentences That Create Us
How do you start writing when you’re incarcerated in prison? How do you establish a literary life without access to craft workshops, the internet, or even to the outside world? PEN America’s new writing handbook,
The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison, addresses those questions to serve as “a road map for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars.” In addition to providing guidance on developing a personal and professional writing life while incarcerated, The Sentences That Create Us provides introductions to the foundations of writing, strategies for addressing trauma in writing, as well as writing exercises developed by prison educators.
Ukraine: Perhaps the end of the beginning
It is time for another Ukraine thread. The battle of Kyiv has ended with a victory for Ukraine. The retreating Russian army left behind evidence of war crimes and genocide, and their trenches dug into the radioactive soils near Chornobyl. Russia has shifted its focus to conquering the remainder of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The West continues to announce more sanctions and send more weapons while China, India and others remain undecided on how to respond. [more inside]
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Orb
"Worldcoin promised to jump-start the global crypto revolution with an audacious plan: to give out digital money to all 7.9 billion people on Earth. […] [Worldcoin CEO Alex] Blania strongly pushed back on the suggestion that Worldcoin’s purpose was to harvest the world’s eyeballs in return for a cryptocurrency that may turn out to be worthless. That notion “is just very wrong. I don’t even know where to start, like this is just very wrong.” [...] “We didn’t want to build hardware devices — we didn’t want to build a biometric device, even. It’s just the only solution we found.”" [more inside]
They may or may not be in the kitchen. They claim their own identities.
“Auntie is a word that comes with baggage, and young Black people calling Black women over 40 years old “Auntie” in the public arena are not carrying that baggage.” Imani Perry on the complicated revival of a controversial term: I Just Might Be Your Auntie (sl Atlantic). [more inside]
Emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity
'Breathtaking' is one word for purported Arnell Pepsi doc (Breathtaking Strategy by Arnell Group, PDF). "When I did the Pepsi logo, I told Pepsi that I wanted to go to Asia, to China and Japan, for a month and tuck myself away and just design it and study it and create it," Mr. Arnell said earlier to Ad Age. "There was a lot of research, a lot of consumer data points ... and dialogue that I had with the folks at Pepsi, consumers and retailers. We knew what we were doing." The Crazy Genius of Peter Arnell "Two former business associates, who requested anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with Arnell, say Arnell carried a handgun in an ankle holster. (Arnell acknowledges only having a gun permit and says stories of him carrying it at work are "inaccurate.")" Bonus 2000s references that dated horribly! "Arnell has been compared to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, meaning you could fill a book with horror stories about his cruel behavior—screaming at people, even hitting them. "He has this remarkable capacity to be both the most intoxicating character—lovable, brilliant, seductively intellectual—and then turn on a dime and be staggeringly cruel." [more inside]
The admins turn away so they can have deniability
The vast majority of large-scale social platforms have an explicit policy of ignoring the harms or destructive actions that someone commits on any platform other than their own. When people have deliberately targeted others for abuse, spread harmful propaganda, or even bilked people out of money or opportunities, it's very common for a company to say, "That happened on another platform, and we only judge users by what happens on our own platform." That's a mistake, and it's one that is frequently exploited by some of the worst actors on the Internet.
Mining for 100-year-old denim
“When a miner got a new pair of work pants, he’d cut up the old ones and use them for lagging around pipes, so there were a lot of antique jeans buried out here.” “They can be very attractive to denim collectors. People that are really into that piece of clothing will pay upwards of $100,000 for these jeans.”
"to restore a more traditional set of aesthetics and outcomes"
After more limited trial runs in the 2021-2022 season, in March "Major League Baseball ... announced a variety of experimental playing rules that have been approved by the Competition Committee and the Playing Rules Committee for use during the 2022 Minor League season." "Consistent with the preferences of fans, these rules are designed to improve the pace of play, create more action on the field, and reduce player injuries." Minor league teams will test out a pitch timer ("to create a crisp pace of play"), larger bases, and constraints on defensive positioning ("a minimum of four players on the infield, with at least two infielders completely on either side of second base"). If the rules work well in the minor leagues this year, then MLB might alter its major league rules in the future.
The learning of the alphabet. . . required the most patience.
Beautiful Jim Key made a splash at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, but he was already famous. He was celebreated by President McKinley. He predicted Alice Roosevelt's marriage when they met. It is reported that he could perform arithmatic, make change, sort mail, read bible passages, and express political opinions. Notably, he was a horse. Jim was made an honorary member of the American SPCA, presumably because of his trainer, Dr. W. M. Key's advocacy for kindness toward animals. Some sources estimate his pledge of Jim Key Band of Mercy was signed by two million children. Sadly, the details of the Beautiful Jim Key Two-Step dance seem to be lost to time, but many other artifacts remain. [Includes some quite racist statements and slurs, all written in the early 1900s.] [more inside]
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