June 27, 2013
Free Nelson Mandela
The point being, an angry song about a political prisoner in South Africa, held captive for 21 years (at the time of writing), and written and performed by a bunch of chippy former pop stars who appeared hellbent on throwing their success back in the faces of their fans, has no business being this happy, this celebratory, and this powerful.
Mike Cervenak Is Not Crash Davis Or A Prospect
Like a lot of us in our mid-30s, he has found his career has landed somewhere between optimal happiness and utter futility. These days, Cervenak is more valuable for his reliability than his potential. He would be a tough guy to lose but not a particularly hard guy to replace. He is organizational depth. He is not a prospect. [more inside]
Moones - Better Energy - Drunk In Session
You can control how drunk Moones are in their newest music video for Better Energy. (SLYT, enable youtube annotations)
Shwa Keirstead
Wagner's Dark Shadow: Can We Separate the Man from His Works?
Nike Wagner, the composer's great-granddaughter, puts the question that this raises in these terms: "Should we allow ourselves to listen to his works with pleasure, even though we know that he was an anti-Semite?" There's a bigger issue behind this question: Can Germans enjoy any part of their history in a carefree way?
Go To The End In Your Underwear
the CBO on elderly demographics and long-term care
Rising Demand for Long-Term Services and Supports for Elderly People (pdf, 574 kb) - "By 2050, one-fifth of the total U.S. population will be elderly (that is, 65 or older), up from 12 percent in 2000 and 8 percent in 1950. The number of people age 85 or older will grow the fastest over the next few decades, constituting 4 percent of the population by 2050, or 10 times its share in 1950. That growth in the elderly population will bring a corresponding surge in the number of elderly people with functional and cognitive limitations."
Bewilderment, speculation and plain old fashioned abuse
"If Shirley Jackson’s intent was to symbolize into complete mystification, and at the same time be gratuitously disagreeable, she certainly succeeded" - The New Yorker takes a look at the over 300 letters in reaction to The Lottery
Twelve Tones
"It's just one of those days where you wake up thinking that if you jazzed up Stravinsky's Owl And The Pussycat it'd be awesome..." [SLYT] [more inside]
These shoes have a way of shutting the whole thing down.
Much note has been made of Wendy Davis's 13 hour filibuster in Texas . Now the oft-photographed shoes she was wearing are getting their due.
"If it were up to her, our every last dollar would go to her brother."
"A quarter of U.S. households have a member with special needs. More than 8% of kids under 15 have a disability, and half of those are deemed severe. What we share in common with the parents of all those special-needs children is that our kids have almost nothing in common [...] "Saying you study autism is like saying you study the world of non-elephant animals." Special-needs parents do share one thing: the eviscerating cost of our children."
Paying for a Special Needs Child. [more inside]
An oft-overlooked Conan bit from 1997
Cat March
Cat March. SLYT (Based on the Mitchiri Neko video game.)
"The greatest trainwreck...ever."
SNL's Bill Hader, Rob Klein, and Jon Solomon discuss "Song for Daddy", the sketch with host Justin Bieber that never made it past dress rehearsal.
The Comfortable: “The Torso-twist-with-arm-resting-on-back-of-couch”
Modify Linux Font Rendering
If you are like me and always tinkering with UI fonts in Linux... Just tripped over Infinality which is a set of pretty nifty FreeType patches. Got it installed and my painfully tweaked Linux font settings look lovely.
Looking good, Billy Ray! Feeling good, Louis!
"Ahh, Cat Juggling. The sport of kings. Crazy, crazy kings."
I Like to Juggle With My Cats [slyt | probably not what you expect]
Libertarianism's sordid relationship with Pinochet.
“I have not been able to find a single person even in much maligned Chile who did not agree that personal freedom was much greater under Pinochet than it had been under Allende.” Political Scientist Corey Robin documents the connection between libertarian theorist Friedrich von Hayek and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. According to Robin, Hayek met Pinochet "came away from Chile convinced that an international propaganda campaign had been unfairly waged against the Pinochet regime (and made explicit comparison to the campaign being waged against South Africa’s apartheid regime). He set about to counter that campaign."
Libertarians have accused Robin of "smearing" Hayek. [more inside]
Explore design
The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum is the only museum in the nation devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. While its home, the grand Andrew Carnegie mansion in Manhattan, is currently undergoing a major renovation, you can still experience the richness of the collections through its Object of the Day blog. Recent highlights range from scratch & sniff wallpaper to the elegant simplicity of an Eames dining chair.
A Little Chemical Education
An article entitled '8 Foods We Eat In The U.S. That Are Banned In Other Countries,' purporting to expose the rampant toxicity of American processed foods, was posted on Buzzfeed. Here's a response from research chemist Derek Lowe (of Things I Won't Work With fame, previously).
Translating the 'Zibaldone' of Giacomo Leopardi
“Fifteen years of diary entries. From 1817 to 1832. Some just a couple of lines. Some maybe a thousand words. At a rhythm ranging from two or three a day to one a month, or even less frequent. Suddenly, translating Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone it occurs to me that if it were written today, it would most likely be a blog.”—Tim Parks writes of the challenges of translating from this “collection of personal impressions, aphorisms, profound philosophical observations, philological analyses, literary criticism and notes” written by “the finest Italian poet after Dante.” Meanwhile, a team based at the University of Birmingham have prepared the first-ever complete translation of the Zibaldone into English, which is due for publication next month. [more inside]
Is there any point to the 12 times table?
Opening Pandora's music box
A couple of days ago song writer David Lowery blogged about the low royalty rates streaming music service Pandora paid him, compared to terrestrial broadcasters: "My Song Got Played On Pandora 1 Million Times and All I Got Was $16.89, Less Than What I Make From a Single T-Shirt Sale". Understandably, this caused a bit of a commotion in music blogging circles, but perhaps this was unjustified. Michael Degusta does some digging and finds out that actually, Pandora paid $1,370 for these million plays in royalties. He also explains that Pandora actually pays more royalties than terrestrial radio stations.
seeing pixels is kind of like seeing behind the curtain
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