August 7, 2019
You’re not going to go into dire straits buying an octopus
Nicolas Cage on his legacy, his philosophy of acting and his metaphorical — and literal — search for the Holy Grail. (NYT)
• I would hope there are ways of teaching nouveau shamanic acting that don’t involve acquiring ancient artifacts.
• The cat — a friend of mine gave me this bag of mushrooms, and my cat would go in my refrigerator and grab it, almost like he knew what it was. He loved it.
• I don’t know if I’m going to say that’s why I bought the Rhode Island property. But I will say that is why I went to Rhode Island, and I happened to find the place beautiful. [...] What I ultimately found is: What is the Grail but Earth itself?
• I would hope there are ways of teaching nouveau shamanic acting that don’t involve acquiring ancient artifacts.
• The cat — a friend of mine gave me this bag of mushrooms, and my cat would go in my refrigerator and grab it, almost like he knew what it was. He loved it.
• I don’t know if I’m going to say that’s why I bought the Rhode Island property. But I will say that is why I went to Rhode Island, and I happened to find the place beautiful. [...] What I ultimately found is: What is the Grail but Earth itself?
"Your blood is on the hands of ICE and this administration"
Families "Are Scared To Death" After A Massive ICE Operation Swept Up Hundreds Of People (BuzzFeed). ICE arrested about 680 people in a series of workplace raids at agricultural plants in Mississippi. Children of those arrested were "left alone in the streets crying for help" as local schools instructed bus drivers to ensure they weren't dropping off children at empty homes. This is a topical US politics thread focusing on immigration. [more inside]
Constellations from Around the World
Eleanor Lutz (July 29, 2019): "To make this map I used data from Stellarium, an open-source planetarium software ... Some of my favorite constellations were the Stars of Water, Rabbit Tracks, and the Hippopotamus, and I also really liked the star names The Oath Star, Lady of Life, and The Hand of the Mouse." Image. Source code. See also Lutz's ongoing series of maps covering Mercury, Martian topography, Martian geology, the Solar System, and more. Lutz previously. Stellarium previously.
Fear Inoculum
13 years since their last release, TOOL has released the first song from their new album Fear Inoculum.
David Berman (Silver Jews, Purple Mountains) Dead at 52
The beloved poet and singer-songwriter returned this year with a new album and was about to begin touring.
The Scam-Baiting Art of Kitboga
Kitboga is the streamer who exposes callcenter scammers. Over the years, he's role-played at Edna, Nevaeh, Chad and others characters pretending to fall victim to scammers but ultimately exposing them on live streams. Like today's stream where Kitboga played two characters in conversation, "drove" to Walmart Walgreens and discovered that Edna had a totally not fabricated grandson who lives in... Idaho, New York. Enjoy his best clips and Youtube channel. Obviously there's a remix or two to listen to.
'I am really shy'
Coming Soon to the US: Negative Yields?
“There may come a time in the not-too-distant future when investors don’t expect to collect fixed interest payments from sovereign debt obligations, nor do they expect to earn anything from parking their cash in a savings account.” Brian Chappatta of Bloomberg explains a blog post by Joachim Fels proposing “It is no longer absurd to think that the nominal yield on U.S. Treasury securities could go negative.”
Toxic In-Laws
My In-Laws Are Careless About My Deadly Food Allergy! Ask Polly (Heather Havrilesky) goes off on what she dubs the worst in-laws ever.
"Waiter, there's a squash in my guac!"
The high price of avocados in the US this summer is caused by a combination of an increasing demand plus California's smallest crop in over a decade, partly due to last year's heat wave. This has caused some taquerias to resort to surreptitiously substituting avocado in their guacamole with Mexican grey (or calabacitas) squash and tomatillos. [more inside]
Anatomy of a failure: How an XQ Super School flopped
An ambitious new high school, concentrating on practical application. A $10 million grant from Steve Jobs' widow. A mayor and school district that had bought in. So what went wrong?
Awww... such a pwecious subversion of boundaries
How to explain the pervasive power of cute? What accounts for the persistence of Pokemon, Minions, emojis, depressed egg characters, fingerless Japanese kitties as a phenomenon? Is it the cuteness response that draws out our natural tendency to protect and nuture? Or is it a bit darker, fudging familiar boundaries like childhood and adulthood, or a play to subvert our own sense of power?
Whim on the Lintels
There is something of the jealous monogamist about fandom, something of the checker for digital traces of the beloved’s secret life. Who hasn’t been there? But wouldn’t it be better if we hadn’t?
A short essay by Emily Ogden on fandom and amateurism. [more inside]
In Syria, War and Modernity Are No Match for the World’s Oldest Soap
Dragons To Slay
“It is perhaps this undercurrent of moral logic that made fairy tales such ripe fodder for British socialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the recent collection Workers Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables, and Allegories from Great Britain, editor Michael Rosen notes that fairy tales show their politics “less overtly, often as personified social conflict.” The literary tales gathered in Rosen’s collection, by contrast, were adapted and written purposefully to “alert, reform, enlighten, provoke, and educate.” Seizing the Means of Enchantment: What Fairy Tales Can Teach Us About Class and Wealth in the Age of the Mega-Corporation (Catapult)
I'll take "trivia questions" for $200, Alex
Ever wanted to roll your own trivia quiz? Get advice from quizbowl master Yogesh Raut or get it from professional quiz-writer Paul Paquet.
take one picture a day and keep it no matter how it turned out
Starting 40 years ago, before it was common in the age of digital photos, blogs and social media, Jamie Livingston took one Polaroid photo a day, until the day he died in October 1997. The collection was a private archive until Hugh Crawford digitized the images and posted them online. "Initially it wasn't meant to be looked at by anyone. A group of us were putting on an exhibition of the photos and the site was a place where we could look at the pictures while we talked on the phone." Because it's a site for friends, and a posthumous collection, there aren't descriptions or even captions, just a timeline and the photos. Other people found the site, and discovered Jamie Livingston's life through his photos (Mentalfloss, 2008). [more inside]
why do you build me up
The Brick Experiment Channel does wordless, lightly-annotated build experiments with lego bricks and gears and motors. How fast a wheel? How heavy a weight? What if you built a submarine inside a plastic pitcher? [more inside]
“Symbolizing, like, just how far this nation has fallen ..."
The Surreal Story of a Trump-Loving Artist’s War With the Smithsonian. In which an evangelical artist turns pro se litigant in his quest to display his Trump mural at the National Portrait Gallery.
Straight up self-insert fanfiction
A visual novel-esque smartphone game conducted via text chats, phone calls, and social media feeds, BTS World sees you manage the South Korean boy band BTS in its early days. "After winning a ticket to see the band in concert, you find yourself whisked back from 2019 to 2012, the year before the group’s debut ... What struck me the most while playing, however, was how much the game itself reads like straight fanfiction."(Polygon)
Les Simpson
So, each episode of the Simpsons is dubbed into two different versions for French markets. There's a Quebec French version, and a France French version.
Fans of the Quebec dub hate the European dub, and vice versa. [more inside]
Silver sweetness: adopt a senior pet from the shelter
The benefits of adopting a senior pet: This series of print ads from The Animal Protective Association of St. Louis featuring shelter animals has an adorable and silly theme: “Grown-Ass Adult." Along with the hashtags #grownassadult and #adoptadult, this campaign showcases all the reasons why adult animals make great companions. I used to volunteer at the Humane Society of Huron Valley in Ann Arbor and fondly remember the day that someone adopted three bonded elderly kitties that needed a new home together. Here's to our companion animals and all the ways they make our lives better. [more inside]
Move fast and break butts
"I’m excited to share with you the design process behind Buttsss, the most daring collection of round and beautiful butt illustrations in the universe. You can use these graphics in your pitch deck, product screens, marketing campaigns, business presentations, and motivational speeches." Intro video.
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