July 5, 2022
Peter Brook, 1925-2022
"There can be no separating an act of theater into the political, the spiritual, the joyful." [more inside]
It isn't necessarily about getting quick in-between the tape
Matthew Fairbrother is a 17-year-old from Christchurch, New Zealand. This is his first time outside of New Zealand and he's in Europe by himself. He's racing the MTB Enduro World Series but, being short on funds, he rides up to 250km a day on his Enduro mountain bike between the events as he bikepacks through Europe. [more inside]
“Tyrants cannot stop us from doing mathematics”
The recipients of the 2022 Fields Medal, awarded every four years to recognize outstanding mathematical achievement, have been announced: Hugo Duminil-Copin, June Huh, James Maynard, and Maryna Viazovska. [more inside]
Look Inside
In the essay [PDF], Moss is not so much describing that we hate in the third person plural, but how we come to do so. Moss doesn’t argue that only white people have what he calls Parasitic Whiteness, but he notes that white people are much more susceptible to it. What is it they’re sick with? Moss metaphorizes how this particular psychic complex — a way of being, of categorizing the other, and of understanding the self — comes to take root in an individual via the social. He traces how it comes to live inside them, and how, once inside, it “infiltrates our drives” — the drives of its “host.” Once there, writes Moss, “Parasitic Whiteness generates a state of constantly erotized excitement, a drift toward frenzy. Fix, control, and arouse; want, hate, and terrorize.” from Unfree Associations [Archive] by Hannah Zeavin [CW: racism, antisemitism, fascism, neonazis, nazis, death threats, alt-right, white supremacists, Tucker Carlson, Fox News, Daily Mail]
It's all kicking off in Downing Street
July 5, 1997
Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Lilith Fair (NPR, today) touring music festival (Jessica Hopper oral history for Vanity Fair, 2019, 20th-anniversary appreciation, Rolling Stone, 2017). [more inside]
up, up, down, down, charm, strange, charm, strange, top, bottom, start
CERN has announced that "the international LHCb collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has observed three never-before-seen particles." [more inside]
Don't Define People by Their Worst Moments
A Cognitive Skill to Magnify Humanity. Krista Tippett of On Being talks to Trabian Shorters. "Shorters is a visionary who has seen and named a task that is necessary for all healing and building, for every vision and plan, whether in a family or a world, to flourish. It’s called Asset Framing — and it works with both new understandings of the brain and an age-old understanding of the real-world power of the words we use, the stories we tell, and the way we name things and people. From everyday social media, to hallowed modes of journalistic, academic, and policy analyses, we have a habit of seeing deficits — and of defining people in need in terms of their problems. This has not only doomed some of our best efforts to failure — it leaves all of us prone to cynicism and hopelessness. What’s exciting is that what Trabian Shorters proposes is not only more effective, it is simple and straightforward to grasp."
Also: Trabian Shorters and the Genius of Asset Framing. (podcast) [more inside]
It looks like a great big Lego Tylenol
Enjoy a short interview with LEGO builder Jack Carleson as he shows off his Minifigure-scale Airbus A380. This completely freestanding model weighs nearly 100 lbs and has moving flaps, working lights and retractable landing gear.
The Gazebo: One of the Internet’s First Trans Safe Spaces
Gwendolyn Ann Smith remembers when you could almost fit the entire trans internet into a single (virtual) room. This was the early ’90s, when only a few million people worldwide were on the web. Even though users were sparse, the benefits of getting online for trans people were acute. For those who didn’t live near significant numbers of other trans people, or for those who were not yet out to their loved ones, finding refuge online was an especially vital lifeline that has only grown more powerful over time. The Gazebo was a 48-person chatroom, named in honor of Lauren D. Wilson, a trans woman who died by suicide, and who dreamed of precisely this kind of safe digital space.
the feeling that you get when your eyes are wide open
Twyla Tharp and David Byrne's The Catherine Wheel is a dance piece about unhappy families, striving for perfection, war, and other things. (Includes a full recording of the stage production after a 13 minute introduction.) [more inside]
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