July 5, 2023
Australian highschool library has mummified Egyptian head
This Australian high school's human head and a mysterious note pose questions about ancient Egypt. With mystery surrounding its origins, the mummified head poses all sorts of questions about the past.
"my own personal comment: lmao, it's fucking dogshit"
On July 1st, G/O Media (previously, previously, previously, previously, previously) announced they would be publishing articles created by AI. Today, under the byline Gizmodo Bot, the first AI article, an error riddled chronological listing of Star Wars stories was published. The James Whitbrook, deputy editor of Gizmodo and io9 responded, releasing a statement. (sorry, Twitter link)
Note, the article in question has not been linked. There's no need for it to get any more clicks.
"We watched him/swallowed by the crowd"
In 1936, Edwin Denby co- wrote: "Horse Eats Hat" with one Orson Welles, age 21. Denby was a dance critic and poet. 'Denby and Balanchine: A Dance Critic’s Work'. 'On an Edwin Denby NYC Traffic Sonnet' is a wonderful look at one of his poems. The Folks at Pennsound has a collection of spoken material. In 2016, the NYPL staff contributed, 'Edwin Denby: Memory, History and Documentation'.
Stupid Rerun Tricks
[MLYT] During his run on Late Night, David Letterman would do intros before reruns - but occasionally, he'd go a little further. Speeding up the episode to cram extra footage in, watching the episode alongside the viewer and offering commentary... but these pale in comparison to the time he had a rerun redubbed by different people - including voice actors from the 60's Speed Racer dub. [more inside]
We’ve added a psychic hotline button to your web browser!
The LLMentalist Effect: How chat-based Large Language Models replicate the mechanisms of a psychic’s con.
London Medieval Murder Map
"Each pin represents the approximate location of one of 142 homicides that occurred in the City of London in the first half of the 14th century. Click on a pin to read the story behind the event." One can filter by gender of victim, private or public location, year, weapon and ward, and switch between two maps of different dates. There are statistics by gender, occupation, day of the week, social space etc. There is a video about the project, and media coverage when this was published in 2018 included articles in the Guardian and the Smithsonian magazine.
A Tentacle that Shrinks and Swells with an Exquisite Sensitivity
They wanted it because they’d just gone through a bad breakup and needed an edge in the volatile dating market; because porn had warped their sense of scale; because they’d been in a car accident, or were looking to fix a curve, or were hoping for a little “software upgrade”; because they were not having a midlife crisis; because they were, “and it was cheaper than a Bugatti Veyron”; because, after five kids, their wife couldn’t feel them anymore; because they’d been molested as a child and still remembered the laughter of the adults in the room; because they couldn’t forget a passing comment their spouse made in 1975; because, despite the objections of their couples therapist, they believed it would bring them closer to their “sex obsessed” husband (who then had an affair that precipitated their divorce); because they’d stopped changing in locker rooms, stopped peeing in urinals, stopped having sex; because who wouldn’t want it? from Inside the Secretive World of Penile Enlargement [ProPublica & The New Yorker; ungated] [more inside]
“What are we learning when we discover that someone was not good”
We knew he was not benevolent exactly (well, some of us knew) but there was the sense that he was suffering on the same side as us. Why we believed we were reading him for moral instruction in the first place I have no idea, but it did prefigure the primary way we construct morality now: to be paying attention. To everything. That means you.–Where be your jibes now? is an essay by MeFi’s own Patricia Lockwood about David Foster Wallace.
There's No Vengeance Like Petty Vengeance
There's a new collection of Stories From The Readership at Ask A Manager, and this time, the topic is the petty moments readers remember from work. [more inside]
Fungus-Eating Flowers:Orchids, Climate Change, & the Nature of Evolution
Popular since collectors first obsessed over it in Victorian England, the charismatic orchid now commands millions of dollars in research. Far from just pretty faces, orchids are allowing scientists to ask fundamental questions about how plants interact with other species in their environment and about the very nature of ecology and how we classify organisms. (archive.today link)
Bringing midnight straight to my heart
Rick Froberg, co-founding member of bands Drive Like Jehu and Hot Snakes has died at the age of 55, announced his long-time friend and collaborator John Reis. Appreciations from NPR ("Rick Froberg was the perfect punk vocalist"), Pitchfork ("5 Essential Songs"), and The Guardian ("Froberg was a lightning rod") [more inside]
My biggest thrill was to be at the label that had Prince.
Former VP/Creative Services for Warner Bros, Laura LiPuma, recounts her career in graphic design [3h11m, CW: Prince stories], from her uprooting to leave for Los Angeles, her freelancing years, and finally getting hired at WB. Starting with the 1999 era and going through Lovesexy, she's responsible for the look and feel of much of how Prince presented through his music release imagery.
"#19 Pickleball Club and #33 Teriyaki Blitz"
Subway to switch to freshly-sliced meats (Today). The largest sandwich chain in the US (Nation's Restaurant News), which is also rolling out new sandwiches (CNN, Food Network), is currently for sale (Reuters). No changes have been announced to the 'bread.'
“I just wanted to make food,” Lou said.
"Please be informed, the notification read, that your business, the Sunlight Cafe, has been designated a Moderately Impactful Business. This replaces your current designation as a Negligibly Impactful Business. The Moderately Impactful Business designation comes with increased governance requirements which are listed below. Note that our decision may be appealed and is considered probationary until the appeals process is complete." In the short scifi story "Sunlight" by Shauna Gordon-McKeon, one woman loves that the little café she runs with her wife has become a community space. But her wife doesn't. [Disclaimer: Shauna is a friend.]
what's old is new again
The Best Reviewed Games of 2023 (So Far) [IGN] The snowball of games delayed out of 2021 and 2022 has settled in 2023, coalescing into the most exciting games lineup of the decade so far. 2023, arguably, marks the proper start of the PS5 and Xbox Series X generation with Unreal Engine 5 support building and an increasing number of developers dropping support for last-gen hardware. Each of the three console manufacturers has at least one blockbuster release scheduled this year — Starfield for Xbox, Spider-Man 2 for PlayStation, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for Nintendo — complemented by a generation-best third-party lineup that includes Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil 4, Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Street Fighter 6, Diablo 4, Final Fantasy 16, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, Hades 2, and Mortal Kombat 1. Five Six months through 2023 and already the year has lived up to its lofty expectations.
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