September 18, 2014
Shake your silk-maker
The dance of the peacock spider "With their ornately-colored bodies, rhythmic pulsations, and booty-shaking dance moves, male peacock spiders attract the attention of spectating females as well as researchers. One such animal behavior specialist, Madeline Girard, collected more than 30 different peacock spider species from the wilds of Australia and brought them back to her lab at UC Berkeley. Under controlled conditions, she recorded their unique dances in the hopes of deciphering what these displays actual say to a female spider and how standards differ between species.'
Global population likely to hit 11 bn +
New global population predictions published in Science today says that world population stabilisation is unlikely this century, with an 80% probability that world population, now 7.2 billion, will increase to between 9.6 and 12.3 billion in 2100, greatly exceeding previous consensus figures that settled around 9 billion, and is expected to keep growing next century. More in the Guardian.
BoJack Horseman's radically funny sadness
BoJack Horseman Is the Funniest Show About Depression Ever
BoJack Horseman is a weird cartoon about a washed-up sitcom star (who's a horse), a snappy social criticism of the entertainment industry, and the kind of in-jokey cartoon designed to tickle the internet. It's also one of the most aggressive portraits of depression I think I've ever seen. Look past the anthropomorphic animal characters and the satire of toxic celebrity culture: This show is radically sad. I love it.Netflix Original's animated series BoJack Horseman stars Will Arnett, Amy Sedaris, and Alison Brie. It co-stars Aaron Paul and Paul F. Tompkins and has a long and impressive list of guest stars. [more inside]
Following the light of the sun, we left for the Oldhammer World
From humble beginnings as a tabletop game shop in London in the late 1970s with an exclusive contract to distribute Dungeons & Dragons in the United Kingdom, Games Workshop soon moved into producing its own games, most notably the wildly successful Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40,000. Over the years, the company has transformed itself into a slick marketing machine, dedicated to selling its own (expensive) products to an ever-younger demographic, while managing to live up to its reputation as the big bad corporation of tabletop gaming. For fans of the spirit and style of the Games Workshop of their youth that aren't interested in the company's products today, there’s Oldhammer: an Internet community dedicated to playing Warhammer as it existed in the 1980s. [more inside]
Ah dubba wevwa, aaah ... ACH!
Baby sings the baby blues. In baby. "Flipo" is accompanied by his father, Flavio Rigatozzo, on guitar.
The Wasabi Challenge!
Wasabi is the most difficult plant to grow commercially. "The first thing to know about wasabi - or Wasabia japonica, as it's officially known - is that you have probably never tried the real thing.
That light green paste nestled next to the pink ginger in your box of sushi? It is most likely a mix of mustard, European horseradish, and food colouring.
In fact, by some estimates, only 5% of the wasabi served in Japanese restaurants around the world comes from the rhizome, or root, of a wasabi plant."
"For nearly 30 years, Brian Oates has, in his words, "pig-headedly" devoted himself to a single pursuit: setting up the first commercial wasabi farm in North America." [more inside]
The Word Will Out.
Building the future in the present in Rio de Janeiro favelas, which are getting active online.
Thanks to young community reporters people in Rio and all over the world are getting a more accurate, clearer picture of what's happening in the city's favelas.
In 2011 Augusto Paim & MauMau published a two part comic Inside the Favelas (see previously).
A couple of interviews with 19 year old Michel Silva of the online magazine Viva Rocinha ( and FB).
Thanks to young community reporters people in Rio and all over the world are getting a more accurate, clearer picture of what's happening in the city's favelas.
In 2011 Augusto Paim & MauMau published a two part comic Inside the Favelas (see previously).
A couple of interviews with 19 year old Michel Silva of the online magazine Viva Rocinha ( and FB).
Oranges are not going to be able see my tweets.
I let Apple's QuickType keyboard take over my iPhone, Josh Lowensohn, the Verge, via Predictive poetry, Mark Liberman, Language Log.
#WomenTweetScienceToo
This is Science Magazine; this is one of their featured front-page stories (date stamped 17 September 2014 8:00 am): "The top 50 science stars of Twitter", by Jia You. The list has 46 men and 4 women. [more inside]
that’s like adding three more Floridas, inhabited entirely by seniors.
Big Dog, Small Person
The twisted world of sexual organs
"...it’s a world so full of carnal conflicts of interest and deception that only now are biologists getting to grips with all of its ins and outs, including an understanding of why human sex may be about pleasure rather than pain."[via BBC] [more inside]
Apple's canary is missing
Needs a bottle feeder.
Yoga ball chair was too bouncy? Standing desk left you yearning for motion? Treadmill desk got you scrambling to keep up? Behold the latest in office fitness and productivity! The Hamster Wheel Standing Desk!
"Let me tell you something, Elvin."
Thirty years ago this month, NBC premiered "The Cosby Show" and changed the television landscape. And though people will rightly remember it as a groundbreaking show for African Americans (and sweaters), Slate's Jason Bailey argues that it was just as important in its feminism.
The Jack Kirby Of Porn: Celebrating The Happy Hunks Of Tom Of Finland
ComicsAlliance explores the work and legacy of Tom of Finland (mostly SFW), the legendary homoerotic artist whose work is now available in a limited edition stamp set
“Lovers of print are simply confusing the plate for the food.”
International Read an E-Book Day:
The new holday -- "holiday"? -- is the brainchild of OverDrive, a major e-book distributor. OverDrive is the country's largest provider of e-books to libraries; it handles e-books from 5,000 publishers, including major Penguin Random House, Macmillan, HarperCollins, Perseus, Wiley, and Harlequin. If you've ever checked an e-book out from the L.A. Public Library, it was provided by OverDrive. To celebrate International Read an E-book Day, Overdrive will be giving away tablets and e-reading devices at the readanebookday.com website and through social media. Readers are asked to "tell their story of what eBooks mean to them" and use the hashtag #eBookDay to be eligible.via: L.A. Times
Chef Stories
Amy Glaze writes How To Talk Like A French Chef:
I’m not learning the kind of French I intended to. The other night on one of my days off, I ordered a cocktail at an upscale restaurant that I had never heard of before. It was a mixture of rum and spirits with fruit juice. It sounded interesting but a little too sweet for my taste. I asked the server if it was dégueulasse (deh-guh-lass), which I thought meant ‘gross’.and The Chocolate Chip Caper:
My hands are permanently blood stained (out out damn spot!) and no matter how much bleach or hydrogen pyroxide I use it won’t go away. They are swollen from gutting hunted animals by hand and getting pricked by tiny bullet shattered bones – so much so, that I can’t even get my engagement ring over my knuckle let alone make a tight fist. The scars on my hands, wrists and arms from cooking and accidents (like the time I tripped on a box left on the floor and landed hands first onto our massive hot plate stove burning the entire side of my hand and wrist) are obscene.[more inside]
um… is that "blood" or "lipstick"?
Writer Creates “Color Thesaurus” To Help You Correctly Name Any Color Imaginable
"Y bien zapateao!" - Happy 18th of September!
Los Picantes sing a cueca about being an expatriate - La Cueca del Patiperro, including one paya dedicated to those flying the flag abroad, wherever you are! [more inside]
We Are The Robots
The Vocoder, a short New Yorker video (11:30) about the military origins of the vocoder. The vocoder—the musical instrument that gave Kraftwerk its robotic sound—began as an early telecommunications device and a top-secret military encoding machine.
Cold calling
The Grandparent Scam
Every day, phones are ringing in homes across the country. Maybe yours. On the line: organized teams of con artists trying to bilk you out of thousands of dollars by impersonating your loved ones.
I was so tall. You were older then.
Can we talk about how much the gossipy young girls who cluster in the schoolyard must feel like children to her? And Susan has forgotten about being a child. She is the blessed, the chosen, the promised. Susan has decades on them, wars, loss and betrayal, victory and growing fields, the trust of her subjects. It was a visceral thing, to have all those lives under her protection and to know that her subjects slept safe, peacefully, on dark nights. Here, on this drab concrete, her people are untouchable, indefensible; her self is vanished, her kingdom gone; she can feel the loss like a wound. She has lost her power, but that trust, that responsibility remains. It circles her ankles, trips her in the school hallways.Can we talk about Susan Pevensie for a moment? (A followup to this.)
Well, women are used to worrying over trifles.
Trifles is a powerful, brief, one-act play written by Susan Glaspell and published in 1916. It is for this play (and a short story version of it entitled "A Jury of Her Peers") that Glaspell is best known today, but she deserves to be better appreciated: "Her plays received better reviews than those of Eugene O’Neill, and in 1931 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her play Alison’s House [pdf summary]. . . . Glaspell was the co-founder with her husband George Cram Cook of the Provincetown Players (1916-1922), the Little Theatre that did most to promote American dramatists, and her diplomacy and energy held the group together for seven years. It was largely thanks to Glaspell’s intervention that O’Neill’s first plays were performed, and she played a major role in stimulating and encouraging his writing in the following years."
« Previous day | Next day »