Posts with Recent Comments
The Age of Dip
I have thoughts about dip. Particularly the 4-way ‘Dip Selection’ that became popular in Britain in the mid-1990s. And therefore I also have thoughts about the specific context of class narratives and family economies that emerged then. Holly Pester on dip for dinner [Vittles] CW: Eating Disorders
You're No Steve Rogers!
The teaser trailer for Captain America: Brave New World has dropped! Looks like a bit of spy thriller and features our first look at Giancarlo Esposito in the MCU.
"He is not a forgiving cat"
Woody Harrelson reads a letter on stage, from novelist John Cheever to a friend who had burdened him with a cat, who would then become... vivid (6 minutes). From Letters Live, which has many such missives.
If something can tell a story, chances are that it can tell your story
“You must not talk about the future. The future is a con. The tarot is a language that talks about the present. If you use it to see the future, you become a conman,” says Alejandro Jodorowsky, maker of cult films El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre, and the unmade psychedelic Dune; writer of the legendary graphic novel series The Incal; and practitioner of the tarot. from Untold Fortunes: A Reading List on the Creative Uses of the Tarot [Longreads] [more inside]
Survey of the ocean floor discovers submarine canyons
First-of-its-kind survey of the ocean floor discovers submarine canyons full of unique marine life. Ever wondered what the ocean floor around Australia's coast looks like? A first-of-its-kind survey has uncovered new information about underwater canyons.
A dance to the music of death
Death and the human A look at how the artistic figure of death taking people has changed over centuries, with links to sources. (SLPublic Domain Review)
savoir faire
our real question is: Are you still up? [McSweeney's]
Crows and Magpies Snatch Anti-Bird Spikes to Build Their Nests
Crows and Magpies Snatch Anti-Bird Spikes to Build Their Nests.
Birds in Europe are prying up the metal barbs, meant to repel them from roosting on buildings, and using the devices as nesting material.
on edge?
Once we move away from the idea that borders mark the edge of territory, we can see how immigration controls create divisions and hierarchies within individual nation-states [g: against borders] [more inside]
A black hole 20,000 times bigger than the Sun
A black hole 20,000 times bigger than the Sun could help us understand how galaxies evolved.
Astronomers catalogued 1.4 million stars to find the black hole, 18,000 light-years from our Solar System, in the Milky Way.
The Great Lightbulb Conspiracy
Back in the day, planned obsolescence was something not to take lightly. Meet the Phoebus cartel.
Rangers find six surprise joeys in pouches of endangered rock wallabies
"Phenomenal news": Rangers find six surprise joeys in pouches of endangered rock wallabies.
The tiny new brush-tailed rock wallaby arrivals were discovered by elated rangers during an annual check as part of a breeding program at the Barrington Wildlife Sanctuary on the New South Wales Mid North Coast.
Save the Dog
And She Has an Adorable Cat!
Gab Smolders is a gaming YouTuber from the Netherlands. She makes very entertaining playthroughs of a large variety of games. He cat, BB, occasionally makes an appearance. [more inside]
"I don't want nothing anymore; I want everything."
At first, I wrote: sobriety has made me ruthless. But it hasn’t, any more than it was ever going to make me selfless. Ruthlessness is just something I’ve excavated from myself since I quit drinking, this frantic drive to snatch up what I want. Writer Rax King on sobriety. [more inside]
If you're here for Euclidean Doom, you're in the wrong room
Non-Euclidean Doom: A 2022 talk by Luke Gotszling about taking the already-very-slightly-wrong value of pi encoded in iD Software's seminal 1993 title Doom and pushing it into actually-quite-wrong values to see what will happen. (Nothing good will happen.)
"Our Creator's voice in colour"
Artist Alex Janvier has died at 89. His art uses a visual language reminiscent of Miró & Kandinsky to express the cultural & spiritual traditions of his Dene heritage. A survivor of residential schools, Janvier's career stretched over five decades, culminating with a major retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in 2017. His conversation with a NGC conservator is available on YouTube. Samples of his work can be found on his website and on his Instagram feed. His most prominent works include a massive ceiling mural at the Canadian Museum of History and a floor mosaic at Rogers Place (home of the Edmonton Oilers.) [more inside]
Noise Nightmare
A great mosaic – a great False Self – is itself a work of art
Did Sontag and Steiner get along? Don’t be silly. Like two positively charged particles, they were kept apart by powerful forces of repulsion. They ‘disliked and mistrusted one another,’ Boyers says; ‘the loathing they came to have for each other clearly had much to do with the sense that there was room on the current scene for only one such person.’ It seems hardly worth saying that Sontag and Steiner were alike not just as critics but as psychological case studies. Two False Selves, two mosaic-builders, busily building. If there is one true thing about a False Self, it’s that it loathes and despises other False Selves, perceiving in them, of course, the falseness that it can perceive in itself only at the cost of its existence. from The Devouring Mind by Kevin Power [Dublin Review of Books; ungated] [more inside]
Mon aéroglisseur regorge de MeFites ... and it's your free thread
Have you learnt, or tried to learn, a second (or third or fourth language)? Either fully, partially, or just a few essential phrases? Did you learn by accident, deliberately, for a trip or holiday, or were you forced to learn at school? Do you still use it? Do you intend or want to learn a language? ... Or write about whatever is on your mind, in your heart, on your plate or in your journal, because this is your weekly free thread. [Post inspired by a 1970's song, Wikipedia detail] [Most recently] Also ... [more inside]