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Finding a visual way to represent an inner identity can be complicated. (WaPo Gift) For much of American Sign Language's history, those who have had the most power to disseminate signs have been straight, White, cisgender people. The rise of video-based social media is allowing ASL to spread more rapidly and is empowering the Deaf queer community to exert more influence over American Sign Language. [more inside]
posted by Toddles at 10:19 PM PST - 1 comments

The Ambitious Plan to Open Up a Treasure Trove of Black History "The archive contains around 5,000 magazines, 200 boxes of business records, 10,000 audio and visual recordings, and 4.5 million prints and negatives that chronicle Black life from the 1940s until the present day."
posted by johnxlibris at 7:17 PM PST - 4 comments

Phil Agre warned us about ubiquitous surveillance--in 2001. “I've been in the military and the police, and if you had seen some of the things that I've seen then you would change your mind. You don't know what I've seen. Besides, everyone knows, having been reminded daily by the news, that evil crimes are committed every day. The real problem with your argument is that, like the argument I just addressed, it could be applied to support giving absolute power to the military and police. But then, by definition, we would no longer be a free society. We need principled arguments about the place of government force in a free society, and my purpose here is to suggest what some of those arguments might be."
posted by mecran01 at 5:37 PM PST - 21 comments

A Blind Taste Test of Thomas’, Trader Joe’s, and More But the bagels you can find in bread aisles across the country have their own distinct charm, and there’s something about their springy textures and delicate wheaty flavor that make them, well, loveable. Perhaps supermarket bagels were your family’s Sunday morning staple—a pile of sliced, toasted bagels in the center of the table, as everyone reached for peanut butter or jelly or Nutella. Or maybe they remind you of rushing out the door to catch the schoolbus, cream-cheesed bagel in hand. However you enjoyed them, supermarket bagels are delicious in their own nostalgic right.
posted by SituationNormal at 4:36 PM PST - 64 comments

How they fool ya (Math parody of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah by 3Blue1Brown)
posted by dhruva at 1:14 PM PST - 13 comments

To those who know what Oakland A’s baseball used to be, what Fisher had turned the team into was nothing short of tragic. A’s teams in the past had brought to Oakland pride and repute, as they had seemed to represent, in their character and color, their misfit swagger and underdog grit, something both essential and specific about the East Bay’s sense of self. In this way, certain of those teams had evinced something distinct about the constructive potential of pro sports writ large: how beloved local teams can bring a people together and lift a city up. Fisher’s A’s evince something very different: pro sports’ concurrent capacity for diminishment and plunder, disillusionment and grift. from The Long, Sad Story of the Stealing of the Oakland A’s [The Ringer; ungated]
posted by chavenet at 12:19 PM PST - 39 comments

New Testament scholar Laura Robinson on why Beautiful Union is unworkable as a theological book about sex.
1. The thesis of sex as an icon via which humans can look to for larger truths about God isn't reliably defined, defended or applied.
2. The argument depends on free association, terrible biblical interpretation and mistreatment of Greek and Hebrew.
3. The book redefines “generosity” and “giving” in sex to include only male self-gratification.
4. The book displays no awareness of the clitoris or the ways in which women actually do have orgasms during sex.
5. The book diminishes the role of women in reproduction while elevating men’s.
Conclusion. [more inside]
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:46 AM PST - 51 comments

"Writing for the Bad Faith Reader" by Susie Dumond (Mar 30, 2023) discusses how easy is is for writers today to get discouraged or preoccupied by the potential reactions of "the person who is looking to invalidate the art that you’re making" (quoting Melissa Febos). Dumond shares "some of the ways I avoid writing for the bad faith reader these days." Her advice to write the first draft for yourself as a way to channel the "best faith" reader, and to accept that your work is not for every reader, reminds me of two of the five laws of library science: "to every book their reader" and "to every reader their book".
posted by brainwane at 9:51 AM PST - 14 comments

Supreme Court Strikes Down Race-Based Admissions at Harvard and UNC (NYT, WaPo, NBC News) [more inside]
posted by box at 7:58 AM PST - 143 comments

CBC Ideas offers a rare balanced look at the impact of human population on climate change. Includes discussions of income disparity, fossil fuels, renewables, the racist history of population control, and many other critical issues that are seen too little in the media. Worth both a read and a listen.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 6:25 AM PST - 36 comments

For more than two decades, the biggest retro computing story in recent memory sat like a sleeper cell in a Massachusetts barn. The barn was in danger of collapse. It could no longer protect the fleet of identical devices hiding inside. A story like this doesn’t need the flash of a keynote or a high-profile marketing campaign. It really just needs someone to notice. And the reason anyone did notice was because this barn could no longer support the roughly 2,200 machines that hid on its second floor.
posted by Etrigan at 6:24 AM PST - 24 comments

Happy Pride Month! Grace Jones [Wikipedia] is still going strong. A queer icon since her first appearance in at Studio 54 in the Seventies [Pitchfork], she recently played NYC Hammerstein Ballroom [1h30m, decent audience recording] just after her 75th birthday. Grace Jones Electrifies New York With Eye-Popping — and Hilarious — Show [Variety] She sat with Jimmy Fallon in 2021 [7m20s] for a brief conversation.
posted by hippybear at 5:56 AM PST - 8 comments

The Canadian graphic artist Gerhard (previously) has just completed a major new commission inspired by the works of Memling and Breugel. You can admire it in both pencils and inks. [more inside]
posted by Paul Slade at 4:52 AM PST - 6 comments

Precarious Manhood Beliefs Are Positively Associated with Erectile Dysfunction in Cisgender Men. [more inside]
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 1:33 AM PST - 44 comments