August 17, 2015
Achieving a sense of peace
And now, weak, short of breath, my once-firm muscles melted away by cancer, I find my thoughts, increasingly, not on the supernatural or spiritual, but on what is meant by living a good and worthwhile life — achieving a sense of peace within oneself. I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest.Sabbath, an essay by Oliver Sacks (NYT) [more inside]
253'28"
Bangkok's struck by a bomb attack
Last night (Thailand time), its capital city, Bangkok, has been struck by a deadly blast near one of its famous shrines, the Erawan shrine, in the centre of the city. 22 casualties have been reported, with the Thai Defense Minister claiming that the attack was targeted at foreigners, towards hurting the tourism industry. At the same time, the Royal Thai Army chief and deputy defence minister General Udomdej Sitabutr claimed that the attack did not match the hallmarks of the southern separatist insurgents. Bangkok has been the centrestage of political disturbances in recent years, but this has been seen to be the deadliest attack it's suffered in years, posing a challenge to the military-led administration.
July in Osaka
You’ve decided on a life of letters. You’ve got that manuscript you workshopped getting your MFA, an agent, and a publisher. Congratulations! You’re well on your way to being a critical darling. Now all you need is a catchy title. Lucky for you, this handy guide will help you title your book, and every book you write in your illustrious career. Janet Potter (previously) at The Millions (previously)
Gerald Ford and the Onion Futures Act
By the mid-50s, onions futures contracts were the most traded product on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. In the fall of 1955, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga bought enough onion futures so that they controlled 98% of the available onions in Chicago.
As the growers began buying back onions, Siegel and Kosuga purchased short positions on a large amount of onion contracts, and driven the price of 50 lbs. of onions down from $2.50 to 10¢, cheaper than the actual bags.
Then-congressman Gerald Ford sponsored a bill, known as the Onion Futures Act, which banned futures trading on onions. [more inside]
Rube Goldberg machines in the movies
"Why simply turn on a light switch when you could light a candle which burns a string, which releases a bowling ball, which lands on a bag of air, which blows over some dominoes, which knock an action figure into a pot, which onto a piece of metal, which startles a chicken, which lays an egg, which rolls down a ramp and breaks open on a brick, then drains into a cup which weighs down a board which flips the light on?" -- Atlas Obscura takes a surprisingly uncomplicated look at Rube Goldberg machines in movies.
Hail Satan!
Fresh from defeat following their face-off with Pope Francis for the souls of Philadelphia, Papa Emeritus III and the newly remasked Nameless Ghouls of Swedish occult metal band Ghost are streaming their third record, Meliora, due out August 21st, 2015. An appropriately tongue-in-check video accompanies lead-off single Cirice. [more inside]
animated data visualization, or ambient data art
"Goals representing all 2012 NHL Stanley Cup playoff teams are arranged in a circle, with Western Conference teams on the left, and Eastern Conference teams on the right. Higher-seeded teams are at the top of the circle. The goals tally cumulative scoring for each team (rather than goals against). When a puck crosses the goal line, a musical note plays." Stanley Cup Summed Up, by Bård Edlund.
Egon is wrong. Print isn't dead.
While many in print media are moving their focus to the web, London Reconnections is doing the opposite and launching as bi-monthly* magazine!
Brought to us by master of online long form, mefi's own Lapsed Historian garius, London Reconnections digs into the least known aspects of London's transportation history as well as keeping a finger on the pulse of the latest issues facing the worlds oldest undergound.
[via mefi projects] [more inside]
"the biggest clue yet about the future of the Disney metaverse"
The Verge presents: THE ABRIDGED HISTORY OF DISNEY, 2015–2040 AD
“...a sinister flirtation with minimalist funk,”
Deerhunter - Snakeskin [YouTube] Atlanta art-rock band Deerhunter announced its seventh LP, Fading Frontier, Sunday, and premiered the abstract video for its lead single, "Snakeskin." Fading Frontier comes out Oct. 16 on 4AD. via: NPR Music
0.01 Megapixels in two colors
Kodak’s First Digital Moment
“It only took 50 milliseconds to capture the image, but it took 23 seconds to record it to the tape,” Mr. Sasson said. “I’d pop the cassette tape out, hand it to my assistant and he put it in our playback unit. About 30 seconds later, up popped the 100 pixel by 100 pixel black and white image.”
Norm Macdonald is the new KFC Colonel
Our Long National Nightmare is Over..."just a few short months later, Hammond is out for some reason and Norm Macdonald — of all people, being that he is not known to take corporate sponsorship very seriously — is in, if you caught the commercials that debuted on TV and online Sunday night..."
Giga Coaster... of love! (Say what?)
Just How Tall Can Roller Coasters Get? The New York Times tests out four Giga Coasters, super-tall roller coasters built for altitude, speed, and airtime. And there's video of each, so strap in. [more inside]
Road tripping back in time on the Old Spanish Trail
In 1915, there were many ways to drive across and around in the United States (though trans-continental routes were mostly dirt, with some improved sections). So why did a group meet that same year to develop another cross-country road, one that would take 15 years to complete, rather than tying together existing segments? Tourism to their communities, mostly, but their* Old Spanish Trail also boasted of being the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Today, you can still find remnants of that road, and there's a group of people who are trying to revive this historic highway. [more inside]
RIP Leonard Robinson, aged 51. He was Batman.
Leonard Robinson, 51, of Owings Mills, Md. died Sunday night. Robinson (seen here previously) became an Internet viral sensation in 2012 when he was pulled over by Montgomery County MD police while dressed as Batman. [more inside]
Minor-League Baseball Player Finds a Better Way to Be Out
David Denson is a first baseman for the Milwaukee Brewers' Rookie League affiliate in Helena, Montana. He has a long way to go if he wants to play in Major League Baseball -- the Rookie League is the lowest rung of the professional baseball ladder, and most players will never play a game in the bigs. Denson started his pro career with the Low-A Wisconsin Timber Rattlers last year but was demoted to Helena following an anemic .195 start to the 2015 season. Denson attributes his poor showing to hiding a secret from his teammates -- he is gay, and no active MLB-affiliated player has ever come out of the closet. [more inside]
Fast endless Bi-directional spiral with an ho scale train
Mesmerizing (SLYT)
That's intelligent design, not Intelligent Design.
Daniel Dennett, known for having previously explained thinking, religion, and consciousness, recently spoke at the Royal Institution where he did a most excellent job of explaining memes [1-hour video].
What are your favorite books? "I don’t have any."
Goodbye, Blingee. You were sweet, sexy, gangsta, and %100 crazy.
After more than 130 million Blingees made, the time has come for Blingee to ride off into the sunset. Into the sparkly, glittery, ridiculous, bizarre, amazing, soooo last decade, MySpace-era, not always tasteful, frequently juvenile,
dancing-Snoop-Dogg-tacular sunset. If you really need to glitter up all your photos, there are a couple alternatives. (Note: all links have flashing/glittering animated GIFs that people with visual sensitivies might want to avoid.)
Crisis, Biopower, Finance: Speculative Fiction resists neoliberalism
"Like all cultural works, SF is situated in a political and economic context. In ours, people are noticing that whatever carrot of prosperity capitalism seems to offer, the stick is all they ever get. SF’s heightened focus on inequality is a sign that the ideological basis of our current social order may be undergoing a significant shift." From Jacobin: "Unequal Universes."
Finally a horology post for people who like shiny things.
“Making a clock is a fascinating and satisfying experience. From the matching of the first two components, to the moment one hears the first beats of the escapement - it is as though one has created a living thing.”Ever want to build your own clock? It might be fun, especially if you’re into home machining and are bored of small projects (like building a working steam engine). You could always buy a Clock Construction Manual by John Wilding. Or you could sit at home and watch a beautiful brass skeleton clock being made over at ClickSpring. [more inside]
Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption
In which John Oliver expounds on how televangelists raise income for necessities such as a private jet or two, his faux-penpal correspondence with such a televangelist, how easy it is to set up a church for tax-exemption purposes and, with the assistance of Sister Wanda Jo Oliver, this inevitably happens...
Fall Seven Times, Get Up Eight
The Japanese women who married the enemy — "American GIs were told not to fraternise with Japanese women, but they did." Within a few years after Imperial Japan's surrender on August 15, 1945 and subsequent occupation, over 30,000 Japanese war brides married American troops and returned to the United States with them (BBC News documentary broadcast schedule).
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