September 11, 2020
"Everyday life was more than crinolines and carriages."
Victorians, Vile Victorians is a Facebook group which posts a vignette or short story inspired by an image from the Victorian Era. Read tales about bustle variations, fancy poultry houses, nature photography and... this guy. There is a Penny Dreadful every day at 6am British time. All original fiction plus some cross-posting of Victorian-adjacent niftiness. For those of you not Facebook-enabled please enjoy the British Library's Victorian Britain in 1,500 original prints (weird soap ads, Obaysch the hippo as photographed by the Count of Montizón, and, of course, Her Most Gracious Majesty The Queen)
In the Game of Zones, you win or. . .
You lose. George R.R. Martin's proposal to build a 7-sided castle of a library was rejected by the Santa Fe Historic Districts Review Board after objections by more than 40 neighbors. [more inside]
Those who were not there can form no idea of it
The old veterans couldn’t wait to come. Roads ran thick with automobiles and horse buggies. Most arrived on the nation’s sprawling rails. A few walked more than 100 miles. An 85-year-old man, fearing his son would prevent him from going, crawled out a window and caught a train. Altogether, an estimated 50,000 of the blue and gray trekked to the Great Reunion, a grand commemoration at iconic Gettysburg, on that battle’s 50th anniversary: July 1 to 3, 1913. History professor Thomas R. Flagel remembers the final reunion at Gettysburg for the Saturday Evening Post.
Serving Rage Bait to Far-Right America
For Right Wing Watch, reporter Jared Holt takes a deeper look at The Post Millennial, a Canadian right-wing media outlet serving far-right rage bait to American pro-Trump audiences (and current home to right-wing writer Andy Ngo). See also Part Two, where Holt looks at the close relationship between The Post Millennial and far-right propagandist and One America News Network figure Jack Posobiec.
Britain’s railway exists as a legacy of slavery
Gareth Dennis explores how investors who profited from the slave trade provided the capital to build Britain's railway and interviews Loraine Martins, Network Rail's Director of Diversity and Inclusion (London Reconnections). Previously: UCL's Legacies of British Slave-ownership database .
"Do that one again, you whispered."
"There's a ghost in your house. There has been since you moved in. You don't call the house 'haunted'; it isn't scary. The ghost is quiet and kind. They seem to care about you." "Ghosts" is a story by Blue Neustifter about "identity, support, and choosing to live." YouTube video (11 minutes, captioned) of the author reading it aloud. Neustifter posted an earlier version of this story as a Twitter thread. Content notes by the author: "second-person ('you') protagonist that is implied to be transfeminine; dysphoria; depression". [more inside]
The Wrecking Crew: You've heard them play but do not know their names.
Music lovers will be astonished at the influence The Wrecking Crew wielded over rock and pop music in the 1960s and early 1970s. These unsung instrumentalists were the de-facto backing band on hit records by The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra, Sonny & Cher, Elvis, The Monkees and many more. These dedicated musicians brought the flair and musicianship that made the American “West Coast Sound” a dominant cultural force around the world.
Guided bus transit systems
Hackaday has a look at Adeleide's O-Bahn, a guided bus system built in the 1980s and still running. The concept is also used a few other places in the world, as sort of a compromise between light rail and regular bus routes.
SuperDole (RIP?)
An ode to Pandemic UI (thread) - "The extra unemployment insurance benefits that were handed out by the U.S. government in the early months of the pandemic to people rendered jobless by Covid-19 represent one of the most extraordinary and successful programs in the nation's history. The $600-a-week in assistance, often referred to as 'pandemic UI', was so generous that it caused an unprecedented spike in Americans' disposable income."[1,2,3] [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »