September 5, 2019
Tobacco use in episodic programming is rising
The popularity of streaming combined with the pervasive rise of smoking in episodic content points to an emerging threat to a new generation of Young Americans. Truth Initiative® first reported on this issue in 2018 with the study “While You Were Streaming: Tobacco Use Sees a Renormalization in On-Demand Digital Content, Diluting Progress in Broadcast & Theaters.” In the year since then, the danger has only grown. While you were streaming: smoking on demand. Netflix adopts a new smoking policy in response to Stranger Things backlash (Decider)
I gained glory, not without many trials.
Alexander the Great’s death is an unsolved mystery. Was he a victim of natural causes, felled by some kind of fever, or did his marshals assassinate him, angered by his tyrannical ways? An autopsy would decide the question, but it is too late for that.
"When you listen to the birds, they can tell you a lot"
One of the great conservation success stories is the reintroduction of Atlantic puffins to islands off the coast of Maine, with
a record-setting number of breeding pairs reported in summer 2019.
However, like all good things in life, puffins are threatened by climate change. The problem? In recent years when the water has gotten a few degrees warmer, the fish that the puffins can find to feed to their young is the wrong shape: [more inside]
Don't Drive Like My Brother
Car Talk's Long Goodbye: an interview with Ray Magliozzi, former cohost of the NPR mainstay Car Talk, on the show's history, its legacy, and his relationship with his departed brother. And for dessert, a podcast interview with Ray on the brothers' surprisingly conflicted feelings about cars and car culture.
…he has revealed how scorpion venom targets the “wasabi” receptor TRPA1
What Chili Peppers Can Teach Us about Pain: U.C. San Francisco researcher and Breakthrough Prize–winner David Julius talks about capsaicin, opioids and snake vision (Scientific American) [more inside]
WINFILE.EXE
This morning when you woke up, did you even slightly suspect that today you would find out that Microsoft has re-released the classic Windows 3.1 File Manager, updated and working on Windows 10, on both GitHub and the Microsoft Store? [more inside]
“It’s hard to tell the truth about ourselves,” Phair writes.
Liz Phair has _Horror Stories_, the first of two planned memoirs, being released next month. She sat down with former Blender editor Rob Tannenbaum to talk about the book, her music, her image, and her family.
and sends the hippo back out again
Humans playing Hungry Hungry Hippos is a thing. Usually with baskets or buckets on some form of wheeled platform, sometimes with each human attached to a bungee cord. [more inside]
Contextualizing a scientist's work for understanding
How to clean your dangling whale
It's annual cleaning time for the whale at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Livestreaming of the cleaning starts soon [FB] (1:30pm Eastern time).
The rise of anti-trans “radical” feminists, explained
Known as TERFs, trans-exclusionary radical feminist groups are working with conservatives to push their anti-trans agenda. Online roots of the term TERF originated in the late 2000s but grew out of 1970s radical feminist circles after it became apparent that there needed to be a term to separate radical feminists who support trans women and those who don’t. Many anti-trans feminists today claim it’s a slur, despite what many see as an accurate description of their beliefs. They now prefer to call themselves “gender critical,” a euphemism akin to white supremacists calling themselves “race realists.”
A long form article about the origins and current tactics of TERFs.
Goes around, comes around
In primo article "Soul on Wheels:How music for the roller rink impacted the club" online-EM-gossip site Resident Advisor takes a long look -- through the eyes of veteran DJs like Big Bob Clayton and Moodyman -- at how skating long-predated the dance club scene ... and lives on. [more inside]
Drawing Criticism
The secrets of covering a well stocked library
“Man in Fog” delivers exactly what the title promises—a shadowy figure, noir to the grayscale bone, smoking a pipe in the inky foreground. An image like “Man in Fog” can be quite evocative, Morrison said, until you start seeing it everywhere. “And the more I looked, the more books featuring it I found,” he said. “This would have been around 20 years ago. It was only when I started blogging, very late in the day, that I had an outlet to inflict this on other people.”
What happens when you launch Google Chrome for the first time on Windows
When I launched Google Chrome for the first time (and let it sit for a minute), 32 requests were made, and 7.26 MB of data downloaded. [SLTwitterThread] [more inside]
Forces of Chaos
How can chaos be used as a political force? Chaos has long been recognized as a potent weapon in warfare. New research has revealed the role it plays in political battles, essentially by tapping marginalized groups whose goals are to gain status by disrupting or destroying the existing political structures. These chaos-inducing actors may have no agenda other than dragging down political "elites," which may explain why some may find both Trump and (Bernie) Sanders viable options. It may also explain phenomena like Jesse Ventura in Minnesota, despite his rejection of the comparison to Trump. The study ties the impact of this phenomenon to social media disinformation campaigns. [more inside]
Who Benefits From Market Fundamentalism?
“The grand neoliberal experiment of the past 40 years has demonstrated that markets in fact do not regulate themselves. Managed markets turn out to be more equitable and more efficient. Yet the theory and practical influence of neoliberalism marches splendidly on, because it is so useful to society’s most powerful people—as a scholarly veneer to what would otherwise be a raw power grab.” Neoliberalism: Political Success, Economic Failure (Prospect) “To anyone who lived through the Clinton years — or merely remembers the Obama era — the discrediting of neoliberal ideas that were once sacrosanct among Democrats is nothing short of astonishing.” The Sunset Of Neoliberalism (Jacobin)
"Learn. Fight. Win."
"There are a lot of people doing excellent work documenting the rise of white supremacy and fascism in research, journalism and activism. When I pitched this piece to my editors at NationofChange, I was thinking a quick 700-word piece that I could pretty much write off the top of my head. That was not to be. I asked twitter about who they follow for info about anti-hate anti-fascist news and activism and my shortlist was, shall we say enlargened. So with the urging of NationofChange, I decided to do something a little bit more comprehensive." A guide to the people, books and sites that you should be following to become educated on the real threat of white extremist violence in the USA, put together by photo journalist Zach D Roberts for nonprofit news and activism organization NationofChange.
It Didn't Start with the Bedbugs
In New York Times Columnists vs. the Haters: A brief history of overreaction, Ashley Feinberg details NYT opinion pieces reacting to criticism.
Which birds can’t play cricket? Ducks
Earlier this week, a rather eccentric cricket match between two British sports clubs was 'won' by the Island Sailing Club. What's unusual about this annual competition is that it takes place in the middle of of one of the UK's busiest shipping lanes. [more inside]
You’re the Best, [Insert Character Here]
As Daniel LaRusso finds his tournament rhythm in The Karate Kid, we watch him plow through a number of challengers in a montage set to music: "you're the best...around...nothing's gonna ever keep you down!" That song is now iconic - it’s a popular callback reference - but it was written for a different fighter. [more inside]
“...the teacher yelled at me for painting the sun green.”
How A Colorblind Artist Makes Magic Cards & Video Games [Kotaku] “Paul Scott Canavan is one of the best artists working in entertainment today, with a list of clients and employers ranging from Wizards of the Coast to Valve to Games Workshop. He also used to be an art director at Axis Animation, a company responsible for cinematic video game trailers and intros. So if you’ve ever played Magic, or Destiny, or League of Legends, you’ll likely have seen something he’s worked on. Canavan is also colorblind, and shared the news of his condition recently on Twitter, to the shock and amazement of peers who had no idea. Which was kind of the point; he’d decided that it was time to show that, hey, despite whatever superficial hangups others might have about a colorblind person working as an artist, it actually wasn’t an obstacle to pursuing a successful career in the field.” [more inside]
The mystery of Geedis has been solved
The Early New Testaments
The Testaments, Margaret Atwood's hotly-anticipated followup to The Handmaid's Tale, is only five days away from release – unless you're one of 800 Amazon customers who received the book early. Indie booksellers are incensed that Amazon has broken the strict embargo with likely zero consequences. As Rachel Cass of Harvard Book Store noted, "[Customers] won't know or care about embargoes; they will just see that Amazon can supply them a book and we can't. They might not come in next time."
A Library for Bartenders
"The bartending profession has a rich and varied history that only recently has come to light during the past two decades. Vintage cocktail and distillation books filled with recipes, techniques, and management procedures are being unearthed and collected at an unprecedented pace." These volumes may be out of the reach of most bartenders, but the EUVS Digital Collection has you covered. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »