Posts with Recent Comments
Robert Towne, 1934–2024
Robert Towne, who wrote the script for Chinatown, punched up the script for The Godfather, and had numerous other writing and a few writer-director credits to his name, died July 1. [more inside]
It's still Billy Joel to me.
The Middle Aged Dad Jam Band perform a cover. With Weird Al on accordion, giving space to a rollicking performance.
"In those days television could be more didactic"
In the 1980s, the BBC explored the world of computing in The Computer Literacy Project. They commissioned a home computer... and taught viewers how to program. The Computer Literacy Project chronicled a decade of information technology and was a milestone in the history of computing in Britain, helping to inspire a generation of coders. This site contains all 146 of the original Computer Literacy Project programmes plus 121 related programmes, broken down into 2,509 categorised, searchable clips.
Historonic
"Changing nominees at this point has literally never happened before—not even once. Richardson’s assertion that “in the whole picture of American history, if you change the presidential nominee at this point in the game, the candidate loses”—so clear, so forceful, so authoritative—is totally invented."
'Is the Age of the Resistance Historian Coming to an End?
(via A&L Daily) [more inside]
Will We Ever Get Fusion Power?
This is an excellent, readable summary of why we won't see a fusion reactor in our lifetime or falling temperatures (unfortunately, the two are linked). Also worth noting is how private investment always jumps on the bandwagon once public funds have built the locomotive.
The Alternative Universe Electric F1 Series
Why You Should Start Caring About Formula E, The Alternative Universe Electric F1 Series is an excellent primer on Formula E Racing, the cars, its history, and similarities and differences to traditional Formula 1 racing. The article also covers "the penultimate rounds of season 10 at Portland International Raceway in Oregon where a pair of races took place on the final weekend of June 2024."
LGBT and Marginalized Voices are not Welcome on Threads
Macstories writer Niléane explains how Meta's rollout of new social network Threads has failed marginalized communities and artificially boosted right-wing content.
An idea to save blue-tongues
These pygmy blue-tongues are facing extinction. A controversial idea may save them and other species. A secret field in South Australia housing a group of lizards once thought extinct. Researchers hope their conservation efforts might provide a blueprint for other animals at risk of dying out due to climate change.
Not a bad list to be on
Adrienne Westenfeld at Esquire enumerates the 75 best sci-fi books of all time. Metafilter's own™ jscalzi says "well this doesn't suck" and that it's "not a bad list to be on". [more inside]
OnStar just stopped being special
As consumers in general, we've gotten very good at completely disregarding things that don't offer us anything worthwhile, even when they want to be noticed. "Banner blindness" is a particularly acute form of this adaptation to capitalism. Our almost subconscious filtering of our perception to things that seem worth the intellectual effort allows a lot of ubiquitous features of products to fly under the radar. Buttons that we just never press, because sometime a decade ago we got the impression they were useless. from the contemporary carphone by j.b. crawford [computers are bad]
Pee Wee Herman: The Documentary
Season Liberally.
Anti-MAGA spice company Penzey's is hoping their special deal - just $35 for a $50 Choose Love gift card - and their free Twilight Revolution sample bags and January 6 gift boxes - "keep hope alive and vote (and cook)" - will help spread their message about the importance of stopping the right-wing Republican agenda. [more inside]
A deliciously detailed 13th century plan. And a Tudor one, too
A New Map Of Medieval London Matt Brown for Londonist writes about work by the Historic Towns Trust. “Today, I’d like to share with you a newly created map of medieval London that is, quite frankly, astonishing in its detail.”
LinkMe: Rogue Posting Edition
comment "LinkMe:" followed by the link and maybe a one sentence description for context. Everybody has tacit permission to turn your link into an FPP if they'd like, first come first serve, with a nod back to the original LinkFilter comment. Previously… [more inside]
Scissors paper rock but keep on guessing
What beats rock? Keep on guessing and an AI will assess if your given x defeats the proceeding y. Each thing can only be used once.
"I can honestly say I've never had a complaint about any of her rides."
Top Canadian jockey Emma-Jayne Wilson made history in the fifth race at Woodbine July 11, breaking Hall of Famer Julie Krone's all-time purse earnings record for a female jockey, and you couldn't have scripted it any better.
The private pathology of the public philosophy
Hayek marvelled at this concert of unknowingness. Like a psychoanalytic symptom, prices condense and communicate fragments of knowledge that are obscure to the conscious mind. The movement of prices effects a change in our “dispositions”—what we want, how much of it we want, what and how much we’re willing to give up to get it—again, without our knowing why, or that we even had such a disposition in the first place. Hayek called this a sort of “social mind”—though, unlike the Freudian mind, he thought it must remain inaccessible. from Hayek, the Accidental Freudian [The New Yorker; ungated]
SPD aftermath & another small press round-up
According to Publishers Weekly, three months after Small Press Distribution’s failure (previously), only about a quarter of affected presses have moved to new distributors, though the Poetry Foundation has given out $130,000 in aid of a $150,000 bridge fund for poetry presses, and 21 presses in New York State have received $500-1,000 grants from the NYSCA-CLMP Forward Fund. [more inside]
A small nice thing in these trying times
As far as we are aware, Ralf Schumacher is now the winningest gay driver in the history of Formula 1. [more inside]
Hey, you guys!
Morgan Freeman, DJ (SLYT)