May 23, 2018
"Using Ludwig van like that!"
Bach at the Burger King, Theodore Gioia
Take your delinquency elsewhere could be the subtext under every tune in the classical crime-fighting movement. It is crucial to remember that the tactic does not aim to stop or even necessarily reduce crime — but to relocate it. Moreover, such mercenary measures most often target minor infractions like vandalism and loitering — crimes that damage property, not people, and usually the property of the powerful. “[B]usiness and government leaders,” Lily Hirsch observes in Music in American Crime Prevention and Punishment, “are seizing on classical music not as a positive moralizing force, but as a marker of space.” In a strange mutation, classical music devolves from a “universal language of mankind” reminding all people of their common humanity into a sonic border fence protecting privileged areas from common crowds, telling the plebes in auditory code that “you’re not welcome here.”[more inside]
thrill-er
Claudio Passavanti of Doctor Mix breaks down Michael Jackson's post-disco classic Thriller. [more inside]
A shave, a haircut and a blood pressure check.
Barbers can do a better job of delivering healthcare than doctors. "We have the health care system [in the U.S.] we do because of history and economics, not because of studies that show it’s optimally designed. Changes are most often made within the current framework; those that buck the system are usually met with more resistance."
General Tubman, a Secret Military Weapon
For Your Viewing Pleasure
CLASSIC DOCTOR WHO COMES TO TWITCH FOR SEVEN-WEEK MARATHON
Article 40.3.3
On Friday May 25th Ireland will hold a referendum to decide whether or not to repeal the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution, which was added to the constitution by referendum in 1983. The 8th amendment inserted a subsection to the Irish constitution equating the right to life of the unborn with the right to life of the mother, effectively banning abortion in Ireland in all cases bar the most severe risk to the life of the mother. [more inside]
We Sat Down With the ‘Arrested Development’ Cast. It Got Raw
Sopan Deb of The New York Times interviewed several cast members of “Arrested Development” about the upcoming 5th season of the show, debuting May 29th. When the conversation turned to the recent sexual harassment allegations against Jeffrey Tambor and, more specifically, an incident where Tambor was verbally abusive to co-star Jessica Walter, things got rather awkward, with several male actors on the show coming to the defense of.....Jeffrey Tambor. (SLNYT)
Short answer: no
Jenny Nicholson asks "Is Star Wars Forces of Destiny good?"
Where you’re the center of the accident.
The Image Book
Jean-Luc Godard's new film "Le livre d'image" (trailer) premiered in the 2018 Cannes Film Festival and was awarded a "Special Palme d'Or", since, according to Cate Blanchett, it “almost sat apart from the other films, almost outside time and space”, and so could not be considered against them. This time, Godard was present for the press conference, though in absentia via FaceTime (45min video: English; French). [more inside]
“It presents dialogue as a genuine plaything,”
Mike Bithell’s Quarantine Circular is a fantastic conversation with an alien [Polygon] “Mike Bithell’s series of short games seeks to push conversational gaming onward, within the testing constraints of tight budgets and limited development time. Like his superb Subsurface Circular, released last year, Quarantine Circular is a series of dialogue trees, peppered with simple puzzles, climaxing in a big moral choice. While Subsurface Circular offered two alternate endings, this game has six. I played through three of those endings. Game time for a first playthrough is about 2.5 hours.” [YouTube][Game Trailer] [more inside]
"[T]he images we know so well were only part of a much larger story"
Many of the 175,000 photographs in the Farm Security Association archive became defining images of the Great Depression, including Evans’s gaunt sharecropper families, Lange’s portraits of farm women with nothing left except willpower, and Arthur Rothstein’s Fleeing a Dust Storm (large image) , a surreal scene of a family fighting to keep their feet in the wind that has already ripped their farm buildings to shreds. However, thousands more images were censored, judged not to meet the strict criteria the photographers had been given for the type of images sought – a tricky brief to show the scale of the problem the association was trying to tackle, but without obliterating all hope. (Maev Kennedy for the Guardian; web gallery) [more inside]
There's Always Something Else to Calculate
The first XKCD "What If" to appear in more than a year answer's a 5-year-old's question: "If there were a kind of a fireman's pole from the Moon down to the Earth, how long would it take to slide all the way from the Moon to the Earth?"
It's got dice, it's got dungeons, it's got additional dice...
Dicey Dungeons is a new game from rad indie dev Terry Cavanagh. You choose a class, explore a dungeon, and use dice rolls to power your various equipment and special moves while leveling up to earn more dice to power new loot. Look out for the skeleton, he'll fuck you up! [more inside]
When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.
Emma Clarke is capturing Dublin's history through its old and fading signs.
The faded history behind Dublin's 'ghost signs' which are preserving a city's fading memories.
The faded history behind Dublin's 'ghost signs' which are preserving a city's fading memories.
Calvin and Hobbes talking about The Old Days
Neoclassical Economics. Best before: 1500AD
“A lot of economics professors, especially the more junior ones who are more focused on research and really trying to develop new ideas and process new data, there’s an escapism to a large extent, in that their career depends so much on getting published in high ranking journals,” he says. “That deviates from the practical problems of understanding the economy as it truly is and trying to address the policy questions that truly exist, because they’re confronted with the pressure in their own careers to develop these journal articles and the game of getting these journal articles written and published is truly a game in itself that involves so much more from observing reality and trying to make things better.” How economics professors can stop failing us.
The Black Knight Rises
Propaganda, but the good kind
God Bless ContraPoints, one of the few brave youtubers successfully taking on the alt-right - or, according to Vice, destroying it. [more inside]
Complexity: the paradox of order and disorder
The Key to Everything (Freeman Dyson reviews Geoffrey West's Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies) - "West is now making a huge claim: that scaling laws similar to Kepler's law and the genetic drift law will lead us to a theoretical understanding of biology, sociology, economics, and commerce. To justify this claim he has to state the scaling laws, display the evidence that they are true, and show how they lead to understanding. He does well with the first and second tasks, not so well with the third. The greater part of the book is occupied with stating the laws and showing the evidence. Little space is left over for explaining. The Santa Fe observers know how to play the part of a modern-day Kepler, but they do not come close to being a modern-day Newton."
Needing the Court to Evict Your Adult Son
Mark and Christina Rotondo filed a petition earlier this month against their 30-year-old son to evict him from their upstate New York house after he repeatedly refused to leave. On Tuesday, the parents attempted to settle the matter in court. Judge Donald Greenwood praised Rotondo's legal research but ultimately ruled Rotondo had to leave.
Rotondo returned to his parent's home and is considering appealing the decision.
They Sound Like Angry 12 Year Olds
Happy Wednesday morning. What are you doing today?
David Graeber has expanded his 2013 essay on bullshit jobs (previously) into a book. The Guardian has an edited excerpt. Are you a flunky, a goon, a duct-taper, a box-ticker, or a task-master? "I think," Graeber says, "we need a rebellion of what I call the 'caring class,' people who care about others and justice."
Bitcoin as explained by AI
“If I’m not an American, I’m nothing.”
sunken cities, crashed gliders and cheese
Gwenno Saunders aka 'Gwenno' is a Welsh singer, previously of The Pipettes. Her first solo album Y Dydd Olaf was sung in Welsh, her recent second album Le Kov is sung in Cornish. [more inside]
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