August 20, 2020
Jerome Ellis transcribes one of his performances
“Treating different things the same way may generate as much inequality as treating the same things in different ways.” [more inside]
The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective
In Communism, the future is certain; it is only the past that might not be. My parents taught me that good people get rewarded while evil gets punished. My teachers at school taught me that if you work hard, you will succeed, and if you never try, you will surely fail. When I picked up the book, I was studying math at Cambridge University and, as I looked back at the standardized tests and intense study that had defined my life until then, I could see no uncertainty. [more inside]
What's The Matter With Kansas Democrats?
It seemed like an inspirational story - a young upstart successfully challenging a long serving legislator on a progressive platform. But the dream has quickly turned to a nightmare for Kansas Democrats, as it has come out that state House candidate Aaron Coleman has a history of gendered violence, having bullied one woman into attempting suicide and releasing a nude photo of another when she refused to give him more. (SLNYT) [more inside]
maybe even better than a Mike Bloomberg speech
One of Youtube's treasures is Defunctland (previously, also previously), which expertly plumbs a century's worth of theme park and Disney arcana with well-researched humor and verve. Tonight, Defunctland released its first feature film, a professionally-directed deep dive into a bizarre Disneyland space-rock band so obscure it doesn't even have a Wikipedia page yet: Live From the Space Stage: A HALYX Story.
shiny chocolate
Come on in, the brine is fine!
Hey, remember those brights spots on the Dwarf Planet Ceres that the Dawn spacecraft discovered in 2015? It's probably salt from an evaporated water that reached the surface from an underground ocean.
"Dio you really want to do this?"
The Pleasure of Watching Charlize Theron Throw a Punch. "It’s not just that Theron throws her punches with force and precision, or executes her stunts successfully; this is not a matter of a capable action star hitting her marks. Watching Charlize Theron fight has become one of the singular pleasures of contemporary American cinema, as close as we’re going to get to the endorphin rush of watching Gene Kelly dance, or Judy Garland sing, or Charlie Chaplin pantomime."
How will you redistribute your wealth?
How will you redistribute your wealth? Fund Justice is a tool for browsing organizations, fundraisers, Black-owned businesses, and bail funds around the US. Many organisations are listed and there's a way to submit new ones via a Google Form. [via mefi projects]
Bannon Indicted
Steve Bannon indicted in scheme to defraud donors to campaign pledging to build border wall.
Federal prosecutors in New York announced Thursday that Steve Bannon, President Trump's former White House chief strategist, has been indicted along with three others for allegedly defrauding donors to a $25 million fundraising campaign to build a wall along the southern border.
Take Back Your Legacy
Misha Green’s new series Lovecraft Country (HBO) follows two Black families as they travel through the Jim Crow North confronting monsters both supernatural and human. In the first episode (free in the US), a road trip montage strikingly echoes Gordon Park’s iconic Segregation Story photo series, and includes a voiceover from James Baldwin’s 1965 debate against William F. Buckley Jr. [more inside]
More fun
After a long day of playing in the forest while their juvenile counterparts were at Orangutan Jungle School, an active congress of orphaned baby orangutans at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation in Indonesia adorably piled themselves into wheelbarrows in order to catch a ride back to the nursery where they’d be safe and well-fed
212-Story Building in Melbourne
In Microsoft Flight Simulator a bizarrely eldritch, impossibly narrow skyscraper pierces the skies of Melbourne's North like a suburban Australian version of Half-Life 2's Citadel... Apparently this building can be traced back to a typo in OpenStreetMap. [more inside]
decline and fall, 2020
“Western melancholy” can be understood as the ultimate consequence of our community’s acceptance of the incapacity to stop devastation of the environment and climate change by transforming the social and economic models responsible for those problems. Full text
"Surprisingly, all excreted beetles were alive and active."
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