September 27, 2015
RIP Peter Dean Rickards
Peter Dean Rickards, the self-taught photographer, writer, and filmmaker whose work helped to both define and complicate the aesthetic of modern dancehall and challenged easy assumptions about Jamaican culture and art, passed away at the end of 2014. (All links may be NSFW.) [more inside]
Lovecraft on the Tabletop
"You should be comfortable with a soldering iron"
Netflix releases schematics and code for The Switch, an open-source microcontroller-based hardware switch that can turn on the TV, dim your lights, order food, and silence your phone. A video of The Switch in action.
The improvised note ... some weird territory of you and me
Sofia Samatar's "Skin Feeling" evokes "What it is to be encountered as a surface, to be constantly exposed as something you are not." Samatar is an English professor, an SFF writer, and a person of color engaged in diversity work on her campus, and among other things, her essay reflects on multiple incidents of indecent exposure, Charlie Parker's "Relaxin' at Camarillo" and the university housed in what was once the largest mental hospital in the world, the book On Being Included, and being made a symbol of diversity (a topic that fellow SFF writer Kate Elliott recently addressed as well). [Samatar link via Savage Minds and Elliott link via N. K. Jemisin.]
“Scarves fit well w/the greater variety and more casual, youthful look,”
The Understated Elegance of the Airline Scarf by Troy Patterson [New York Times]
“Though the scarf coordinates with contemporary gender politics, it also conjures an old romance of the skies, stirring visions of aviators in open cockpits with white silk rippling at their throats and of fighter pilots wearing flight scarves printed with roaring beasts. It is also polymorphously practical. Heather Poole, a flight attendant and writer, has described scarves deployed as ad hoc bikini tops, improvised curtain ties and all-purpose utility tools: “I’ve seen a scarf used as a lanyard, a belt, a sweatband, a ponytail holder, a napkin and a compression bandage.”
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Rendezvous
1976. Sunrise in Paris. French film director Claude Lelouch mounted a camera on his Mercedes and went for a spin. [more inside]
SPIKE JONES!!! (gunshot, slide whistle)
Here's a full Spike Jones special from 1952. Here's another one. Here is a short series of clips with his costars talking about Spike Jones and Live TV. Also from the Spike Jones Show: Tchaikovsky - Poet and Peasant Overture - I'm Going To Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter - 12th Street Rag (featuring the bottom half of Elvis) - Flight of the Bumblebee - That Old Black Magic - The Black And Blue Danube - The Shiek of Araby (warning: a bit culturally insensitive) - Clink! Clink! Another Drink - the "All Girl Band" Medley - Hits Medley (with Jim Backus at the start!) - and their famous version of Cocktails For Two. There's plenty more among the uploads from YouTube user SpikeJonesEstate. A documentary, The Spike Jones Story - Part 2. The best of Spike Jones. [more inside]
RIP Honey Lee Cottrell, photographer
Photographer Honey Lee Cottrell died on September 21st of this year. She was a cofounder and the first staff photographer for the lesbian erotica magazine, "On Our Backs". Some of her photography may be found in the Digital Culture of Metropolitan New York. Her papers will be cared for by the Cornell University Library Human Sexuality Collection. [more inside]
I am now nineteen years old. I am now tired.
An untitled poem from NLU Delhi's student newspaper. Trigger warnings for rape, sexual abuse, and pedophilia.
Wildlife Comedy Photography is a thing
The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards* showcases wild animals caught in amusing, unflattering, or otherwise hilarious poses. The shortlist:
part 1, part 2
(*Google thinks this site has been hacked. Proceed cautiously.)
Last time you were better for only three seconds.
"It's fake and its real, and sometimes, when the stars align, something happens that is both real and fake simultaneously." Mat Ricardo, a professional entertainer, describes a moment from the professional wrestling scene.
This Goes All the Way to the Queen
"An amulet, a treasure hunt, and a legion of readers mobilized by the false patterns our brains create to make sense of the world around us. "
Jess ZImmerman discusses 1979's treasure-hunt sensation, Masquerade.
Silica Valley
Adam Davidson,The V.C.s of B.C.
Through a series of incredibly unlikely events, archaeologists have uncovered the comprehensive written archive of a few hundred traders who left their hometown Assur, in what is now Iraq, to set up importing businesses in Kanesh, which sat roughly at the center of present-day Turkey and functioned as the hub of a massive global trading system that stretched from Central Asia to Europe. Kanesh’s traders sent letters back and forth with their business partners, carefully written on clay tablets and stored at home in special vaults. Tens of thousands of these records remain. One economist recently told me that he would love to have as much candid information about businesses today as we have about the dealings — and in particular, about the trading practices — of this 4,000-year-old community.[more inside]
Happy Belated Batman Day
Oh, sure, Batman Day is getting too commercial, but more importantly, it's on the wrong day. Kotaku's Evan Narcise uses the basic question of "When did Batman become Batman?" to take a look back at one of the Dark Knight's lesser-known villains and plotlines: The Wrath, a reverse-Batman whose parents were criminals killed by a police officer.
"Don't bring any weapons on this mission." "D'accord."
They were there to skate, dance, have fun.
In 1972 & 1973 26 year old photographer Bill Yates shot scenes at the Sweetheart Roller Skating Rink in rural Florida. Then he moved away to attend the Rhode Island School of Design, eventually becoming well known for his aerial photography. Forty years later he dug out the negatives from the fall and spring he'd spent hanging out at the rink, and began scanning them. Video of the artist discussing the work on his website for the project.
Where the children sleep
Two million children are fleeing Syria, this is where they sleep.
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