August 27, 2018
“The Lyndon Johnson books by Caro, it’s our Harry Potter”
John Koblin writes the puffiest of puff-pieces for the NYT: “Conan O’Brien’s Unrequited Fanboy Love for Robert Caro”
For years Mr. O’Brien has tried to book the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Power Broker” and the multivolume epic “The Years of Lyndon Johnson.” And for years Mr. Caro has said no.
And this little earworm went Doot Doot Doot all the way home
Firestorm 1991
In a year of extreme wildfires, it is interesting to recall the story of Firestorm 1991 in Eastern Washington and North Idaho (by Jess Walter).
"Do not despair of our present difficulties"—Sen. John McCain
Though McCain's farewell statement asked his fellow Americans to "give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country", Trump rejected initial plans for a White House statement praising his rival (Washington Post). Earlier today, ABC's Karen Travers (@karentravers) noted, "Flags at the White House were lowered to half staff this weekend for the passing of John McCain but this morning they are back to full staff.", while CBS's Mark Knoller (@markknoller) reported that Trump "[w]as asked to reflect on the legacy of Sen. McCain, but declined. Sat silent and cross-armed as press pool herded out of the Oval Office." But late this afternoon, the White House issued a statement that Trump "signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of [McCain's] interment". However, CNBC's Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) observed that although "the White House flag is now at half staff, [the f]lag atop the White House’s Executive Office Building is still fully raised now[….]" Trump will not attend McCain's funeral, as per the late senator's request (NY Daily News). [more inside]
A Tele-Robotic Garden on the World Wide Web
"A robot as gardener, a flower bed as international meeting place in the World Wide Web. You can control a robotic arm via WWW in order to observe and tend the garden. Sow and water the plants, or simply get together in the Chat Channel with other telegardeners from all over the world." [more inside]
Because I still see the boy.
Survivors of Vermont orphanage abuse come forward. Christine Kenneally investigates horrific stories of child abuse by nuns at a Burlington orphanage and the subsequent legal struggles.
Content warning: violence against, torture, rape, murder of children. (SLBuzzfeed)
The Story of Why I Left Riot Games
"So this is it. This is going to be the thing." That’s what I remember thinking as I left the room where I had just finished a conversation with two female mentees. I had wondered for some time when there would be an incident serious enough that I had to talk to leadership about unacceptable behavior in the workplace, and here it was.
If corporations can be legal persons, why not rivers?
Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time. Inspired by indigenous views of nature, a movement to grant a form of legal “personhood” to rivers is gaining some ground — a key step, advocates say, in reversing centuries of damage inflicted upon the world’s waterways.
Basically, Henry is a Very Good Birb
Just a little fluff for your Monday afternoon/evening. As it were.
STOP, YOU'RE [DUMBIFYING] ME
Having trouble articulating your thoughts lately? Not quite up to snuff, intellectually — or at least not the whipsmart organizer of ideas you're sure you used to be? Maybe you're just breathing bad air. [more inside]
One of New York’s Most Unlikely Friendships
Miriam Toews' new novel Women Talking is Mennonite #MeToo
Miriam Toews' new novel, Women Talking has been described by some as Mennonite #MeToo. It was inspired by the horrific sexual assaults in the closed, ultra conservative Mennonite Manitoba Colony in Bolivia: men in the community drugged and raped over 100 women and girls in the community nightly over a period of years. Initially, the community's male elders dismissed the women's reports as either fantasy or the work of Satan, but eventually eight men were caught and convicted (previously on Metafilter). “I’ve always been trying to challenge the patriarchy, specifically of my Mennonite community, but I’m concerned with the suppression of girls and women especially, and any place in the world that falls under fundamentalist, authoritarian thinking,” says Toews. “I think in my work, and in my life, I’ve always been attempting to, as they used to say, stick it to the man.” [Content warning: descriptions of sexual assault, mention of suicide.] [more inside]
High Rise
“Gentrification is not quite the right word for what’s happening here. Midtown is no derelict precinct primed for an influx of the affluent. What’s emerging instead is a vision of where development is headed next: toward a culture of the secessionist city. The techno-libertarians, machine fanatics, and psychopaths of Silicon Valley have long dreamed of an exit from regular society, through colonization of the seas and the stars. In the form of the supertall, they may have found, for themselves and others like them, an elegant solution: one that gives them a society apart, a realm of perfect exclusion and perfect control, but nevertheless leeches off the encircling polity while entrenching the political influence of the rich.” The Needles and the Damage Done (The Baffler)
Yosemite Finally Reckons with Its Discriminatory Past
Pioneers, the government, even John Muir helped kick out Native Americans from their homes on national parks. But in Yosemite, the Miwuk Tribe is getting its village back. [more inside]
Benjamen Walker
Back in 2005, Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything podcast got its first Front Page Post on Metafilter. In the late 2000s, he was working at WNYC (previously). Then he had a show on WFMU (previously), which he left to restart the ToE podcast for PRX's Radiotopia network. [more inside]
The beauty of black life, jazz giants to ordinary neighborhood residents
In 1973, when photographers Beuford Smith and Joe Crawford began working on The Black Photographers Annual, black photographers had few outlets for publishing work about ordinary black life that didn’t fit the news cycle of the day. For their first issue, Smith and Crawford gathered images from well-established photographers such as Roy DeCarava and photos the legendary James Van DerZee had made during the Harlem Renaissance. But what made The Black Photographers Annual so influential is that it gave a platform for members of the Kamoinge collective and numerous other photographers who had photographed a variety of stories and subjects. [more inside]
US First Female Soldiers
The "Hello Girls" forged a path for women soldiers and are now getting recognized for their service. The bilingual team of women served on the front lines of battle, connecting 26 million calls for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. They served at military headquarters and outposts in the field alongside the American Expeditionary Forces in France, connecting the front lines with supply depots and military commands. They became known as the ‘Hello Girls”
Yet despite this service — and despite taking a military oath —the Hello Girls were denied veteran status and benefits when they returned home.
White Dirt
Making Peace With the Age-Old Practice of Eating White Dirt, Chuck Reece for The Bitter Southerner
Against The Stream No More
Against The Stream, a Buddhist meditation society founded by punk rocker Noah Levine, is shutting down its meditation centers after multiple women came forward with allegations of assault, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct by Levine. An internal investigation concluded that with multiple women, Levine violated the Third Precept of the Teacher’s Code of Ethics, namely, "to avoid creating harm through sexuality." Levine is the author of the best-selling memoir Dharma Punx, as well as the founder of a for-profit drug and alcohol treatment center called Refuge Recovery. [more inside]
“Time is a flat circle.”
True Detective Season 3 [YouTube][Teaser Trailer] “The teaser focuses on Wayne Hays, played by Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), who is trying to figure out something from his past. Much like the first season, the third looks like it will use fragmented memories and multiple timelines to tell a twisty story. Ali’s Hays is a detective from Northwest Arkansas, but the show is set in the Ozarks — a region that is spread over four different states: Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto will be credited with writing the entire season, much like the series’ first season.” [via: Polygon]
Winners and losers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
This year's 10 Best Joke competition winners.
(Previously.)
And this year's Comedy Award winners.
Comedians at the Fringe voted for their own favourite comics. [more inside]
The first WAGs: A 1970s All Black wife on rugby and women’s lib
The man from the rugby union is resolute. If he lets us in, the floodgates will open. You’ll want fancy stuff to drink, he says. But, he says, moist-eyed with magnanimity, if you’d like to help out in the kitchen with the other ladies, you’re more than welcome. [more inside]
White Space
Based off of what we know right now, the Moon and Mars are devoid of life, so this colonizing language is not actually putting other beings at risk. But, there is the risk that the same racist mythology used to justify violence and inequality on earth — such as the use of frontier, “cowboy” mythology to condone and promote the murder and displacement of indigenous people in the American West — will be used to justify missions to space. In a future where humans potentially do live on non-earth planets, that same racist mythology would carry through to who is allowed to exist on, and benefit from, extraterrestrial spaces. The racist language of space exploration by Caroline Haskins [via Katexic]
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