May 22, 2018
the fraternal president
Après plusieurs propositions controversées de droit du travail, les cheminots, les étudiants, contrôleurs aériens, et les fonctionnaires en France sont en grève, perturbant le pays.
Macron déterminé à réformer la SNCF, il promet d'aller «au bout» [more inside]
The Jo-Boat Boys
When Pittsburgh's rivers were full of houseboats.
RAMM:ΣLL:ZΣΣ
The Spectacular Personal Mythology of Rammellzee by Hua Hsu is a fine introduction to the works of New York graffiti artist, sculptor, rapper, and painter Rammellzee, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 49. Known to hip hop afficionados for Beat Bop, his collaboration with Jean-Michel Basquiat and K-Rob, which was the subject of a Spin oral history. To get a feel for his aesthetic, this interview excerpted from the documentary Guerilla Art is a good place to start. If you want to know more, Alexxa Gotthardt wrote a good overview of his career and hip hop historian Dave Tompkins reminisced about Rammellzee and placed him in context.
Return to mother!
Aronofsky, allegory, authorial intent and auteurship. The Partially Examined Life discusses Darren Aronofsky's philosophical 2017 film mother!.
Between two worlds
Anais Granofsky, who played Lucy Ferndandez on Degrassi has a life story filled with as much drama and pathos as her fictional counterpart. [more inside]
Who is Arthur Chu?
Airing on PBS, new doc explores ups and downs of growing up—and growing in stature—online. The documentary on the polarizing Jeopardy champion airs tonight. And speaking of polarizing, here's Ken Jennings opinion of how Chu played the game: Jennings on Chu
literally, “the method of dyeing and printing”
Enough about you, let's talk about life for a while
Alanis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill has been made into a musical opening May 24th at the American Repertory Theater. NPR has a piece with Diablo Cody. [more inside]
This Man Made Presidents Sound Like Presidents
Richard N. Goodwin, husband of Doris Kearns Goodwin and (among other things) speechwriter for politicians from John F. Kennedy to Al Gore has died of cancer at age 86 [more inside]
"He became corrupted! Soon his crime makes him old before his time."
He was young and handsome, his mother’s pride and joy—but he died in torment, blind, sick and paralyzed—at the age of seventeen. If only he’d known the perils of masturbation, then he might have lived a better life.
There are ways to prevent this tragedy (NSFW).
There are ways to prevent this tragedy (NSFW).
'It's an Anime Titty Holocaust'
Steam Is Cracking Down on Visual Novels [Motherboard] “Fans of visual novel games and adult-themed anime games around the world woke up to some troubling news this morning. According to several independent developers, Steam, the largest digital storefront for computer games, is cracking down on a number of games that feature scantily clad cartoon women. According to these developers, Valve, the company that operates Steam, has given them until the end of the month to remove adult content from their games. If they don't, Valve will boot their games from the store.” [more inside]
"Rickey Henderson crushed souls with unprecedented efficiency."
In the latest episode of Dorktown, SB Nation editor and national treasure Jon Bois, along with compatriot Alex Rubenstein, discuss the career of the Arsene Lupin of the baseball diamond, Rickey Henderson, and how his shattering the stolen bases record is a feat you just don't see anymore. (SLYT) [more inside]
I browse MetaFilter
Eyebrows, we all have them, but what are they actually for?
AWS: Amazon Web Surveillance
The ACLU has obtained new documents detailing law enforcement usage of Amazon's facial detection software known as Rekognition. The Bezos-owned Washington Post reports that the sheriff’s office of Washington County, Ore. pays Amazon between $6 and $12 a month to scan footage of potential suspects against a database of 300k mugshots, and the service has even been used to identify guests at a recent royal wedding. [more inside]
A Forgotten War on Women
"In 1918, 1,121 people in Michigan were “hospitalized at the expense of the state” because the authorities believed they had STIs. 49 were men; 1,072 were women, and one of them was a 19-year-old, impoverished white woman named Nina McCall. She was arrested, forcibly examined by a local health officer named Dr. Carney, deemed infected with gonorrhea and then syphilis, pumped full of arsenic, and imprisoned at the dilapidated Bay City Detention Hospital for three months. Like so many others, she found the courage to fight back. But instead of staging a prison riot or burning down the “reformatories,” as some of her incarcerated sisters did, Nina did something perhaps even more audacious for a working-class woman of her time. She took her tormentors to court."
[+] - - - --->!!!<--- - - - [-]
Psst, kid, you wanna see some magnets colliding at a thousand frames per second
You have a graph. It’s very dense. You have this elliptic operator...
Now-retired Baltimore Ravens guard and center John Urschel discusses his favorite mathematical theorem (one for the graph theory fans), among other things. This is generally what people do at My Favorite Theorem.
Beyond Love
Robert Indiana, the American Pop Art artist, has passed away at the age of 89. His work featured bold shapes and colors and declarative words inspired by advertising. Sadly, his last days were marred with accusations of isolation by his caretakers and lawsuits being filed. [more inside]
Dovey Johnson Roundtree 1914 - 2018
I'd only cry in the rain.
Corbynomics and Keltonomics
The great transformation: Labour's proposals to democratise the economy - "This analysis mirrors Polanyi's of the Soviet Union. A centralised system of economic management, he said, took power away from ordinary people. Labour therefore proposes a different sort of public ownership. Local authorities, trade unions and workers, all of whom are seen as more responsive than expert panels to local needs, would play a greater role in the management of services. Councils would help run regionally owned utilities, for instance. '[N]ational state ownership of the grid and infrastructure of electricity and gas sectors could be combined with local, regional and community ownership', the report says." [ALTERNATIVE MODELS OF OWNERSHIP] [more inside]
We sleep in a well made bed
There is no depression in New Zealand;
there are no sheep on our farms,
There is no depression in New Zealand;
we can all keep perfectly calm.
Everybody's talking about World War Three,
everybody's talking about World War Three,
but we're as safe as safe can be,
there's no unrest in this country [more inside]
If the moon is cheese, Jupiter must be bacon.
NASA's Juno spacecraft has been on a 2-year photoshoot assignment, and here are a few of the best snaps. [more inside]
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