June 30, 2023
Exit laughing: Actor Alan Arkin dies at 89
The Second City alum won an Oscar late in the game for “Little Miss Sunshine” and was memorable in “The Russians Are Coming,” “The In-Laws” and “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”
Deadly marine creature could lead to new medications
Deadly marine creature could hold the secret to development of new medications. Deadly cone snails reared from eggs in a laboratory aquarium uncover a potential treasure trove of new venoms for medication development. [more inside]
What does an old lady know about sex toys? Plenty.
Beloved Canadian sex educator, legendary host of the "The Sunday Night Sex Show" and "Talk Sex With Sue Johanson", Sue Johanson has died aged 93. [more inside]
“Renton says it’s a miracle that he made it out of adolescence alive.”
He’s The Trans Son Of An Anti-Trans Influencer. It’s His Turn To Speak. A long article by Christopher Mathias about Renton Sinclair. [CW: attempted suicide, conversion therapy]
ok now what
Static electricity attracts ticks to hosts "Thought ticks were terrifying? They just got worse. Turns out they can use static electricity to launch through the air onto hosts, including you! " [paper]
Walking Out the Door
While entering associate classes have been comprised of approximately 45% women for several decades, in the typical large firm, women constitute only 30% of non-equity partners and 20% of equity partners ... [and] the number of lawyers named as new equity partners at big firms has declined by nearly 30% over the past several years ... The critical question, of course, is why? What is it about the experiences of women in BigLaw that result in such different outcomes for women than men, and why do even senior women lawyers have so many more obstacles to overcome? These core questions drove this first-of-its-kind study ... through the perspective of more than 1,200 big firm lawyers who have been in practice for at least 15 years.(direct link to the report [pdf]) [more inside]
Otterly delightful!
KOTSUMET is a YouTube channel that posts videos about two domesticated otters named Kotaro and Hana who live in Japan. :-)
I Like Nearly Everyone I Meet
They're just chippin', chippin' away, all day, every day, their own way.
Mike's Videos of Beavers is a Youtube channel from Mike Digout in Saskatoon, who posts videos of beavers.
Twitter now requiring login in order to view site
Obi-Wan Slash(es) Maul
The Sith Academy ran from June 1999 to June 2001 and was a series of parodic stories by many different authors creating a shared continuity, not unlike the Star Wars "extended universe" books, except that these stories starred Darth Maul, the villain from 1999's The Phantom Menace with less than six minutes of screentime. Here Maul is given a rundown apartment, a series of rage-inducing jobs, a pet cat, and a growing supporting cast with characters like "Darth Mary Sue" and padawan "Ben-Wa". Also, Maul has sex with Obi-Wan Kenobi. A lot. [more inside]
"Remember: if you heard it, no you didn't."
LASS: Latinos against spooky shit! Jonathan Perez Galvan, the TikTok creator whose videos often go viral, explains why "A scary movie with Latinos in it wouldn’t last an hour and a half. It would be more like five minutes." [more inside]
"Eliminating loan forgiveness for 43 million Americans"
Supreme Court rejects Biden student loan forgiveness plan (WaPo, Reuters), protects website designer who won't do gay weddings (WaPo, ABC, side note) [more inside]
Claw & Order, Jersey Shore edition
In New Jersey, cheating at boardwalk games is considered especially heinous. On the Jersey Shore, the dedicated detectives who investigate this malicious mischief are members of an elite squad known as the Legalized Games of Chance Control Commission. These are their stories. (archive.today link) [more inside]
👍👍👍👍👍
Offer, Emoji, Consideration A Saskatchewan court has ruled that (in certain circumstances) an emoji can constitute a digital signature accepting the terms of contract.
The history she can talk about as a witness
Happy Pride Month! At the end of this long month of Queer Women In Music, I'm bringing us back around to where we began. Ginny Berson, co-founder of Olivia Records, put out a book in late 2020 [Olivia On The Record, publisher link]. Being in the midst of the pandemic, the book release event was an online event [1h30m, Berson begins speaking in earnest at 24m30s]. It's a quiet and poignant look back across at a time and movement that fostered so much beyond its imagining. [more inside]
Who Killed Google Reader?
“I think of you and dream of you, and my first waking thought is of you”
Driven by Love or Ambition, Slipping Across the Color Line Through the Ages by Rachel Swarns in the New York Times, a short account of the life of “Clarence King, a Yale-educated white man who worked as a geologist in the 1800s and dined at the White House, lived a secret life as James Todd, a black train porter with a wife and five children in Brooklyn.” Link via the substack of naturalist David B. Williams, who describes King’s discovery of glaciers in the Pacific West.
Elvis Presley Sings ‘Baby Got Back,’ via AI
Dustin Ballard has reimagined Elvis Presley singing the lyrics from 1991's Sir Mix-A-Lot single “Baby Got Back,” in the style of his hit 1956 song “Don’t Be Cruel”. [more inside]
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