Posts with Recent Comments
We Didn't Start the Fire (Bardcore | Medieval/Renaissance Style Cover)
detonating civilization's pillars (or idiocracy)
@drvolts: "Now, I'd like you to think about what will happen if Trump takes over, Project 2025 is implemented, & the entire federal bureaucracy (including law enforcement branches) is staffed with ideological MAGA cronies."[1] [more inside]
Complete with Thagomizer
Rule No. 1: Don't Cry Be Rich
I wonder, boy...
Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass Dropped by Agent After Controversial Comments Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass has been dropped by his talent agent, Michael Greene of Greene Talent, following his joke about Trump. “We have parted ways after what happened in Sydney,” Greene said. [more inside]
the scripted sunset environment can be forced regardless of 'IRL' time
"Perhaps part of the beauty of taking a picture of a sunset is that while you are doing it it’s likely that a million other people are doing it as well – at exactly the same time. I love this idea of collective practice, something we all engage in despite any artistic concern, knowing that there have been millions before and there will be millions after."
Penelope Umbrico discusses her artwork Suns from Sunsets from Flickr.
Autocrats Unite
On the same page: "Trump had privately spoken about the option of allowing Putin to keep Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and the Donbas area... Putin said last month that Russia would end the war only if Kyiv agreed to drop its NATO ambitions and hand over the entirety of four provinces claimed by Moscow, demands Kyiv swiftly rejected as tantamount to surrender." [more inside]
Trump v United States
The Supreme Court has found that: "Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts." CNN NYT WaPo
She Makes Wigs Good Enough for Naomi
Shani Lechan’s wigs have been worn by cancer patients, neighborhood moms and supermodels. Her golden rule? They can’t look “wiggy.” “I looked at my best friend, who was married at the time, and I’m like, ‘I’m going to make you a wig, your wig is not good,’” Ms. Lechan said. “Then my mom wanted a wig, and then her friend wanted a wig, and this whole thing started.”
Sandra E. Garcia for the NYT
The distributed brain
Headmen, shamans, and mothers: natural and sexual selection for computational services "The human brain, which evolved to acquire, store, and process information to make beneficial decisions, is likewise energetically expensive to build and maintain yet plausibly has idle capacity much of the time. We propose that humans evolved to use advantages in information or computational resources to provide computational services to others via a language-based “network” in exchange for payments of various sorts that helped subsidize the energetic costs of the brain."
"They could have their wedding reception for the cost of a subway fare."
Couple holds wedding reception on L train (WaPo gift link) Archive link
Anyone who happened upon their car became a guest of the wedding: At one point, someone dressed as Spider-Man attended. At another, there was someone in a gorilla costume. Later, when their power source went down, killing the music, everyone clapped and made other noise so the dancing and partying could keep going. As new riders entered the party car, Jean and Valdez’s crew asked them their names and then turned them into a song. This story staved off the doom and gloom for me for a little while today. Hope it does the same for you.
They’re like an explosion in a lab
The unexpected poetry of PhD acknowledgements A lovely multimedia essay from the Australian National University’s College of Science. [more inside]
Running Out of Time: Israel/Palestine/Gaza
Brother of hostage Itzik Elgarat says Hamas claims he is no longer alive.
US Intelligence warns that the Gaza war is a recruiting boon for terrorists, as widespread anger at the US support for Israel has galvanized organizations globally.
Hamas has accepted the US proposal on the release of Israeli hostages, according to a Hamas source.
Two thirds of Israelis back hostage deal over continuing war in Gaza.
Era of Miracles: Israeli Far-Right celebrates West Bank settlement expansion. Archive.is [more inside]
I Have a Terrible Memory. Am I Better Off That Way?
From τὰ φυσικά (ta physika) to physics
From τὰ φυσικά (ta physika) to physics – In popular histories of science in Europe the history of physics is all too often presented roughly as follows, in antiquity there was Aristotle, whose writings also dominated the Middle Ages, until Galileo came along and dethroned him, following which Newton created modern physics ... In this [series] of blog posts, I shall be taking a much more detailed look at how modern physics emerged during the early modern period and the scholars who were behind that emergence... [more inside]
Pi is now 202,112,290,000,000 digits
Storagereview Lab breaks Pi calculation world record with over 202 trillion digits That’s a lot. But why stop there?
Don’t you think every hero must grow to love their algorithm?
Everything we have is going to go to Ukraine until their needs are met.
A round-up of links inside on the Russia-Ukraine war. Today is day 848 of the invasion. [more inside]
The saddest creatures in late-stage capitalism
Nearly 250 years after the publication of Adam Smith’s ‘The Wealth of Nations’ and the West has lost the economic plot
The hippos are charming -- that's plain
If you like hippos and friends then you might like Maurice Sendak on his friend James Marshall (NYT archive) [more inside]