August 18, 2022
Advanced Wood
Stronger Than Steel, Able to Stop a Speeding Bullet—It's Super Wood! - "Simple processes can make wood tough, impact-resistant—or even transparent." [more inside]
What to Actually Do About an Unequal Partnership
"I find the entire situation pretty infuriating. For those who carry the bulk of the unpaid labor load, it’s a root cause of burnout. ... I’ve seen this sort of inequality fester and create relationship-breaking resentment; I’ve seen people complain and then gradually, over the years, reconcile themselves to it. And no matter how much theory you read, no matter how much you believe in cultivating a different way of dividing labor than your parents or grandparents did, so many relationships ... fall into these bullshit rhythms and norms that, once established, are incredibly difficult to change."
Mike Burrows: 1943–2022
People do not generally become famous for designing bikes, but if anyone ever did, it's Mike Burrows. Always an iconoclast, he contributed important designs and innovations to cycling. He died on August 15 from lung cancer. [more inside]
Stuck in a building with no light and secular, godless, atheist teachers
How Christian fundamentalist homeschooling damages children
Why did she stick with homeschooling for so long, despite her difficulties? “We were convinced that it would be better for our kids not to have an education than to be educated to become humanists or atheists and to reject God,” Garrison says.[more inside]
You've got mail!
Are you looking for a definitive timeline on the history of email, along with references? Here you go.
Top of the Charts in 1400 BCE
Want to hear (a version of) the world's oldest known complete song? Germanic-Nordic experimental folk collective Heilung have recorded a version of the Hymn to Nikkal, a paean to the Moon Goddess Nikkal which is the only complete piece among the 3,400-year-old Hurrian Songs. The songs were inscribed with both words and musical notation in cuneiform on clay tablets, and were excavated from the ancient Amorite-Canaanite city of Ugarit in northern Syria. Vocalist Maria Franz says "The rhythm in that text is just so weird; it’s so alien. I’ve never heard anything like it.”
it's BUNYA NUT season in the northern hemisphere right now
There was a bunya nut on the side of the road next to a bunya bunya (or, false monkey puzzle tree) the other day. I knew monkey puzzle tree nuts are edible, so I took it home and read up on it and checked a sledgehammer out from my local tool library and cracked it open and harvested its kernels. It's unusual around these parts (California) and, like me, my neighbors had questions, so I thought you might, too. Here's some articles on the bunya nut and its trees and history. [more inside]
GET OUT OF HERE BAT!
We made this for you if this is your thing [from The Onion, at a stretch it's "NSFW"]
The Cost of Call Out Culture
We cannot afford to lose more voices In their newsletter “Things that Don’t Suck” Andrea Gibson writes “I am a poet and author who has been speaking on social justice issues for the past two decades. Since social media became a thing, messing up and accounting for my mess-ups publicly is a part of my daily life, and I am intimate with the ways non-stop public criticism can erode any individual's wellness. Below are ten of my personal perspectives that support me when navigating call-out culture. My hope is that this will reach people whose feedback tactics are detrimental to the wellbeing of others, as well as those who have grown so afraid of making a mistake they have decided to make nothing instead. We cannot afford to lose more voices in the fight against facisim. To take down systems of oppression, we must stop taking down each other––so let’s chat this through.” [more inside]
It’s the future now, and everything cool on the internet is about God
At the heart of all this motion is a lust for crawling through someone else’s ambiguity, in staring at a post or profile for longer than the machine’s trained you to, in the toothsome frustration of trying to figure out what’s a revelation, what’s a dark joke, and what’s just the result of a chemically imbalanced brain and an eternally available keyboard. […] You can’t really make a name for yourself as an authenticity-poster and then pivot to posting unhinged textsprawls. Well, you probably can, and people probably will as this type of online life drips into the mainstream, but it will be in mimetic microdoses.— Intimacy and the Machine: Godposting – or: New Internet Esotericism, by Biz Sherbert (Sept 2021) [more inside]
“How could there be only one method?”
The Ghost of Workshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War Still Mold Our Paths Into SFF Writing by S.L. Huang is a long, historically grounded critique of creative writing workshops that follow the University of Iowa model. While the examples Huang takes come primarily from the science fiction and fantasy workshops, her criticisms and proposals are widely applicable. Over the next few days Huang will be sharing various facts and observations she had to cut out of her essay on her Twitter feed, starting with this thread.
Thunderstorm? Skip the shower
Most people are familiar with basic thunderstorm safety, such as avoiding standing under trees or near a window, and not speaking on a corded phone (mobile phones are safe). But did you know you should avoid taking a shower, a bath or washing the dishes during a thunderstorm? James Rawlings, Physics Lecturer for Nottingham Trent University, explains why it's not safe to shower during a thunderstorm for The Conversation.
A carefully-researched comic about wealth inequality
A comic about wealth inequality in New Zealand, but applicable almost everywhere else as well. "Imagine you're invited to a dinner. There are 10 guests, 10 seats at the table, and 10 plates of food. But then you all sit down to eat and one person gets served nearly 6 meals. 5.8 meals to be precise..."
"They stole my turbomolecular vacuum pumps for my fusion reactor!”
Editor and writer Max Read investigates the wild story of the man who bought Pine Bluff, Arkansas. [more inside]
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