August 20, 2021
Serenity Now
Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y love letter to the '90s - "On the minus side, SerenityOS's browser threw an exception—on the plus side, that Crash Reporter is a thing of beauty!" [more inside]
[$Your_Favorite_Wrestlers] to AEW, confirmed!
...swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop
Tales of Haven Bay
Public radio series that parodies small town Alaska, produced by KCAW of Sitka, Alaska [more inside]
If you can't stand the heat, you can still stay in the kitchen.
Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos - Video Essay
2.5 Hr SLYT. This video essay discusses intimately how we interact with social media, memes, and how it influences society and politics.
The coolsie to Nazi pipeline
Melbourne's alternative music scene has been rocked by recent revelations that one of its number is a prominent far-right agitator. Alice McNamara, formerly of 2000s punk band The Spazzys and currently proprietor of children's music education business KiddyRock, was revealed to be active in anti-lockdown, neo-Nazi and white nationalist Telegram forums under the name “Mary Manson”, as well as producing bogus medical exemption certificates for anti-maskers. (TW: screenshots of hateful discussions.) [more inside]
Increasingly Strange Stories for an Increasingly Strange Year
It’s late summer 2021, and here’s another roundup of weird audio dramas! Since many of us are facing new isolation restrictions, here’s something disturbing to raise your spirits. Most of the series are audio dramas with paranormal elements, but anthologies, fantasy, and science fiction are included. This time, a rather startling number of shows featuring the smooth voice of Soren Narnia of Knifepoint Horror are included. [more inside]
"archival practices have not changed much in over 4,000 years"
Ebla, the Official Site of the Italian Archaeological Mission in Syria gives details about the excavation of Ebla, the capital of a bronze age empire in what is now northern Syria which flourished in the third millennium BCE. Archaeologist Paolo Matthiae first explored the Tell Mardikh mound in 1963, but the site didn't receive global attention until 1975, when the discovery of Ebla's state archives was announced, an ancient library with over seventeen thousand clay tablets, casting light on life in Ebla. Outside the Ebla website, besides Wikipedia, there is historian Trevor Bryce's short overview of the history of Ebla, an interview with Matthiae from 1978 by Tor Eigeland, and archivist Greg Bradsher's essay about the Ebla archive and how it compares to modern archives.
Friday foldy fun
Learn how to make: a Froebel star (text) /\/\/\ a transforming star (text) /\/\/\ a modular bracelet (text) /\/\/\ monster corner bookmarks (text) [more inside]
Chuck Close 1940 - 2021
Photorealist painter and printer Chuck Close died yesterday at the age of 81. One of the most prominent of the photorealistic painters of the late 60s and early 70s, Close painted immense, highly detailed canvas portraits from photos he would take of himself, his friends and acquaintances, such as Philip Glass. This career of portraiture has been ascribed to his having face blindness. A restless experimenter in techniques, before the end of the 70s he had exhibited work done in rubber stamps, silk tapestry, airbrush, mezzotint, and other media -- his website has a fascinating illustrated timeline of this range. [more inside]
Image of water, deodorant, air freshener, cereal, crisps, shortbread…
UK grocer Sainsbury’s have digitized and uploaded their entire collection of store-brand packaging materials, mostly dating from the 1950s-1980s. [via @mathowie] [more inside]
These data are not just excessively similar. They are impossibly similar
Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Field Experiment About Dishonesty is a blog post at Data Colada 🍹 where researchers uncovered dishonest data meddling in a PNAS-published paper about... dishonesty. [more inside]
The Rise and Swift Fall of ‘Jeopardy’ Host Mike Richards
"From the moment of his announcement, Richards was a deflating choice. "His status as the show’s executive producer lent the sense that the months of host auditions had been rigged in his favor from the start. And his amiable blankness behind the podium suggested an empty sort of careerism that seemed to run counter to what “Jeopardy” is and does.... What Richards seemed to see in “Jeopardy,” a show he already ran, was an opportunity to put himself on camera above all else." [more inside]
Make your cat the centre of attention during family meals
Feline-friendly furniture now includes a dining table (for people) with a hole in the middle (more) for your cat to frequent. This joins the array of cat-centric domestic apparatus which includes cat trees, cat caves, window bubble pods, cat hammocks, a chaise lounge, an executive cat tree, an enchanted forest, and of course a tank. [No endorsement is given or implied. Other products are available. Your cat may reject any product bought for it.]
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