August 24, 2018
Stickeen: The Story of a Dog
John Muir's terrifying experience on a glacier, in a storm, with a remarkable dog (c. 1880)
I have known many dogs, and many a story I could tell of their wisdom and devotion; but to none do I owe so much as to Stickeen. At first the least promising and least known of my dog-friends, he suddenly became the best known of them all. Our storm-battle for life brought him to light, and through him as through a window I have ever since been looking with deeper sympathy into all my fellow mortals.
When you’re designing superhero suits, it all comes down to the crotch.
Battle of the Bulge: Why We’re So Fascinated by Superhero Codpieces If you're into this topic, then you're probably REALLY into this topic. If not, then...not.
Abby the Spoon Lady
Spoons 🥄 Chris Rodriquez and Abby the Spoon Lady. A simple diversion for a Friday night.
No more champagne dreams, nor any caviar wishes
Robin Leach, famed host of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", has died just before his 77th birthday.
A House for Mr Soyinka
A House for Mr. Soyinka If the estate's location deep in the bush inconvenienced his visitors, he clearly delighted in their discomfort. Evocative interview with a robust 84-year-old Wole Soyinka that coincides with news of the death of his fellow Nobel in lit recipient, V S Naipaul. Soyinka gives Naipaul the credit he deserves for Biswas and the tribute he merits for his lifelong reprehension of everything, especially Africa.
Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine
IDBEHOLDS
The Story Behind DOOM's Cheat Codes [YouTube][Mini-Documentary][15:08] “A look at the story behind DOOM's cheat codes, and the person responsible for making them a (virtual) reality.”
Punishing people rather than improving places
Eric Klinenberg writes about Philadelphia and their quest to improve places in order to reduce crime.
RISO: people should not lose their ideals, then there would be no future
The RISO-Graph, a machine that duplicates like a mimeograph but dispels ink like a screen printer, turns 60 this year. The copier has come a long way from its humble 1958 beginnings in a small home in Tokyo, where it was a home-grown alternative to expensive emulsion ink imports, thriving until offset-laser-screen-printer hybrids came on the market in the late 1980s. Risographs have found a new, vibrant life as fast, inexpensive art production machines, documented on the Stencil site, a RISO wiki for artists, designers, and printers. With non-standard soy-based ink colors, the Atlas of Modern Risography includes details about which machines and inks each shop carries. [more inside]
“I would never run, never. I don’t know where they got that from."
The New York Times called dozens of the Queens party machine’s nominees for county committee. The candidates for 21 seats were running without their consent. Only four candidates The Times spoke to said they were running on purpose. Some no longer even live in New York. Meanwhile, more than 60 members of the progressive New Queens Democrats sought nomination but were disqualified for paperwork technicalities by the Board of Elections - whose commissioners are chosen by county political bosses.
"A car that has a JSON parser implemented in Bash 3"
A former Tesla employee, who worked on their IT infrastructure, is posting in a subforum of a subforum, a little-known place for funy computer forgotten by time. His NDA has expired. A single link Twitter thread with screenshots of text.
sir do you have any idea how unidentifiably you were flying
Tom Gran is an illustrator, animator, writer, and director who started 2018 with a little challenge to himself: "every day I add another character to a giant fight scene until it gets so giant I probably won't even be able to upload it to Twitter anymore."
10,000 pages of Yukon Indigenous language material published online
Parents’ Red Queen’s Race
“Parents are worried that, unless their kids accumulate extraordinary amounts of skills and accomplishments, they’ll be stuck as mere workers. Based on the way this country treats workers, that is a legitimate concern. But the more that families take on this work, the more competing they all have to do to keep pace.” When did parenting become so fearful? (The Outline)
A Regular Expressions Sandbox
Regular Expressions 101 is an online sandbox for writing and testing regular expressions. It supports PCRE, Javascript, Python, and Go syntax and has a well-designed visualization, explanation, and performance evaluation interface.
"But here is the rub: He said this in 1969."
Why Do We Continue To Be Surprised By Gentrification? "Part of what many people find so irritating—or dangerous, depending on how much you have at stake—about upwardly mobile young people moving to working-class city neighborhoods is the sense of frivolity, of flightiness, they carry with them." (SL article in Belt Magazine by Daniel Kay Hertz)
My time has come!
IS IT JUST ME, OR DID I JUST PULL OFF THE GREATEST TWITTER SCHEME OF ALL TIME????? Read the first word of my tweets to find out....
For Female Candidates, Harassment and Threats Come Every Day (SLNYT)
The abuse already common in many women’s everyday lives can be amplified in political campaigns, especially if the candidate is also a member of a minority group. Four days before the 2016 congressional primary in her Northern California district, Erin Schrode woke up to tens of thousands of messages. They were everywhere: in her email, on her cellphone, on her Facebook and her Twitter and her Instagram...
The Humanities Are in Crisis
People have been proclaiming the imminent extinction of the humanities for decades. A best-selling volume in 1964 warned that a science-focused world left no room for humane pursuits, even as Baby Boomers began to flood the English and history departments of new universities. Allan Bloom warned about academics putting liberal ideology before scholarship in 1987; humanities degrees quickly rose. While coverage of individual academic disciplines like musicology, history, or comparative literature often deals with the substance of scholarship, talk of the humanities in general always seems to focus on their imminent extinction. In 2010, Wayne Bivens-Tatum provided a useful walk through the first 50 years of the humanities crisis, until about 1980. Because of this long history, I’ve always been skeptical of claims that the humanities are in retreat. But something different has been happening with the humanities since the 2008 financial crisis. Students are abandoning humanities majors, turning to degrees they think yield far better job prospects. But they’re wrong.
Five Tracks From Book Of Travelers, Gabriel Kahane
How the Amtrak Dining Car Could Heal the Nation, a NYT article by Gabriel Kahane (you might remember his piece Empire Liquor Mart, which was chatted about here a while back) whose train trip inspired a live show [NewYorker] and has culminated in the release of his latest album, Book Of Travelers. Five tracks have had official videos released: November, Baltimore, Model Trains, Little Love, What If I Told You [more inside]
Suspuriousa
The new full trailer for the Suspiria remake has dropped... but what about this previously unknown actor, Lutz Ebersdorf, playing Dr Jozef Klemperer? Could there be more than meets the eyes here... or not? (previous)
Happy 30th Birthday IRC
IRC has been used for 30 years. Did you know that it was developed at the University of Oulu? Simple link FPP for us olds.
British Quarry Hid Art During WW II
For four years, a disused slate quarry in a remote mountain in North Wales became home to some of the world’s greatest artistic masterpieces. In specially constructed air-conditioned underground chambers the priceless treasures in the collection of London’s National Gallery sat out the days of the Second World War safe from Luftwaffe bombers and Nazi art hunters.
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