August 28
How George Orwell Paved Noam Chomsky’s Path to Anarchism
"...Noam Chomsky himself did not come to left-libertarian or anarchist thinking as a result of his disillusionment with liberal thought. He quite literally started there." [more inside]
Precision barrow-flying: "like the Red Arrows, but slower and lower"
Precision wheelbarrowing from the Hassocks Red Barrows (video, 2 min). And a three-part video from 2009, one (8 min), two (5 min) and three (7 min). Short article about one of the Red Barrows groups in the Suffolk News. Interview (5 minutes) on Radio Devon. The retirement of the Suffolk group. [more inside]
Paint, But Wiggly
Wiggly Paint is an in-browser itch.io program built with Decker (previously) with a sort of Kid Pix vibe (also previously) that lets you paint simple images and save them as wiggly gifs. It was created as part of the Deck Month Jam in December 2023. Here are some Pokemon drawings done with it, but personally all I've done is made odd, abstract shapes, which is somehow very absorbing.
It is this absence that reminds us most potently of what is gone
Fifty years after the original walk, watching Petit gesticulate in an air-conditioned room with One World Trade Center behind him, it was hard not to feel that if the original event had been emblematic of the raw, unsupervised downtown New York of the seventies, this event perfectly encapsulated the downtown New York of today: every facet of life contained within a billion-dollar real estate development; a gluttony of high-efficiency glass, K-frames, and speculative investments. from Death Is Very Close: A Champagne Reception for Philippe Petit by Patrick McGraw [The Paris Review; ungated] [more inside]
August 27
Scientists discovered a 425-million-year-old penis
"It's very rare that you can gender fossils": How scientists discovered a 425-million-year-old penis. When a UK palaeontologist examined rocks collected from rural west England in the 1990s, he found something unexpected: a tiny fossil with a perfectly preserved penis.
Sixteen Failed Attempts to Write a Eulogy for my Father
That person was in there. I kept digging in the dirt, trying to find him, trying to get my real father out from under the wreck he’d made of himself, and I never did. [cw: death, emotional abuse, suicide]
#hashtagblessed
Beautiful terrain -- we didn't see any of it
The High Route (SLYT). Two climbers set out to traverse the entire length of North Cascades National Park in Washington on foot in just under a week. [more inside]
"Being black and being outside is revolutionary."
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper addresses the NSA (1982)
Grace Hopper on Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People (Part One) 48:39
Grace Hopper on Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People (Part Two) 40:55 [more inside]
Grace Hopper on Future Possibilities: Data, Hardware, Software, and People (Part Two) 40:55 [more inside]
That’s a helluva lot of astronaut overtime
Where the atomic nuclei are: Maurice Sendak, physics illustrator
Teenage Maurice Sendak published his first professional illustrations in a 1947 popular science book about nuclear physics, co-authored by his high school physics teacher: Atomics for the Millions. Articles in Physics Today and Ars Technica.
At Least Twice Upon a Time in Shaolin
Fraudster Martin Shkreli Must Surrender His Copies of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Unique Art Album. A federal judge in Brooklyn has sided with the crypto collective that currently owns the one-of-a-kind disk. [ArtNet]
New Every Frame a Painting!
great exhibition
Hidden beneath the streets of London, the Crystal Palace Subway is a Victorian foot tunnel and a relic of a bygone era. Opened in 1865 alongside the 'High Level' railway station, the subterranean maze features include ornate design elements, including a grand Italianate facade. [ad (also includes 9 other places)] [more inside]
Canadian PM Justin Trudeau's government announces foreign worker changes
These changes will impact foreign workers and people applying for permanent residency. The Toronto Star did an investigation about how the process is abused by employers with very little oversight from the federal government. (originalTO Star link here) [more inside]
Painterly depiction of material properties
"Furthermore, painters are not constrained by reality, meaning that they could paint materials without exactly following the laws of nature, while still evoking the perception of materials." [SLPDF] [more inside]
sunshine follows thunder
Oasis are back together. 15 years after the band broke up, they have announced a reunion tour of 14 dates in 2025 in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin, with tickets on sale on Saturday. “The guns have fallen silent. The stars have aligned. The great wait is over. Come see. It will not be televised,” the band said.
We work to create information that we will never own
This hellscape is no place for free information to thrive. The digital hoarder must take stock, and set out in search of somewhere independent from such distractions. A simple spreadsheet, maybe, a private are.na channel, a USB drive, or even a Minecraft map. What matters here is not the hoard’s form, but its capacity to be consumed outside the limits of the commodity. Free from the profit-churning debris of their social media feeds, visitors to this hoard might gain a better idea of how they, too, can use the information they find in service of principled, radical action. from Life in Fifteen Gigabytes by Bami Oke [e-flux]
Self-driving cars have got a kangaroo problem
Self-driving cars have got a kangaroo problem. Self-driving cars are a game changer for disabled Australians, but they've got a kangaroo problem. Darren waits hours and hours and hours for taxis in Queensland, and hopes self-driving cars might be the answer. But an unpredictable marsupial is standing in the way.
August 26
"Woof. Nate. Not cool man."
In a thread on BlueSky, political science professor Dave Karpf dissects Nate Silver's new doorstop of a book on gambling and risk, and finds several interesting - and disturbing - things within. [more inside]
Record-Breaking 17 California Condor Chicks Hatched at the L.A. Zoo
Record-Breaking 17 California Condor Chicks Hatched at the LA Zoo This Year. The successful breeding season offers more hope for the endangered species, which has come back from the brink of extinction due to captive breeding efforts.
"This is a historic moment for the California Condor Recovery Program and the Los Angeles Zoo’s animal care team," Rose Legato, curator of birds at the LA Zoo, says in the statement. "Our condor team has raised the bar once again in the collaborative effort to save America’s largest flying bird from extinction. What we are seeing now are the benefits of new breeding and rearing techniques developed and implemented by our team."
Why I Left The Network
Finding a therapist who takes your insurance can be nearly impossible. NPR reports on a ProPublica investigation into why therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists are leaving insurance networks and only accepting cash for treatment. [more inside]
Just a generic “Ohio” polo provided to me by my business partners
Operation Desperado: The long con of Vivek Ramaswamy A local muckraker who covers the Ohio state legislature plays a long con on the former presidential candidate.
“Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your Newsletter"
‘The Simpsons’: 34 Times the Fox Comedy Successfully Predicted the Future or, 50 Predictions From 'The Simpsons' That Came True or, The Simpsons 17 Predictions for 2024 Is Insane!. However, don't forget The Simpsons conspiracy theories that AREN’T TRUE including False ‘Simpsons’ prediction resurfaces after Trump shooting
The Origin of Adderal shortages
This Is Why You Can't Get ADHD Treatment Musician / Investigative Documentarian Benn Jordan breaks down the core reasons for the USA's ADHD medication shortage, the hassle of trying to solve it yourself, why it's so profitable for so many drug companies, the scams that have popped up in response, and the dangers of seeking treatment via the dark web.
‘A Box of Surprises’
a Rotterdam Apartment That’s Only 74 Square Feet. Two architects in the Netherlands made the most of the tiniest of spaces, “maximizing absolutely everything.” Julie Lasky for the NYT
The Cult of Wellness
We live in a time when intensity serves as a stand-in for virtue and the hardness of conviction is valued over the fuzziness of nuance. (slTOLife) [more inside]
Canada's new drake
Lewis Mallard is an "interdimensional psychedelic folk artist" who appears in public only in a mallard costume. He is behind public art installations in Hamilton (CBC), Victoria (Instagram), and most recently Toronto (CityNews). [more inside]
Won't somebody think of the database administrators?
Danny Jansen will be the first baseball player to play for both teams in the same game. [more inside]
"They like to feel like they're in a place where books matter"
The Big Squeeze
One reporter wipes away the mystery to reveal the truth, rolled up in a very thorough article that seeks to answer: Why toilet paper keeps getting smaller and smaller
hot goss
Conventional wisdom about heat islands — urban areas that are hotter than nearby rural areas because of the way the built environment absorbs and reemits heat from the sun — suggests that cities work to restore parks, trees and vegetation to keep things cool. But scientists and urban planners have found that another approach is even more beneficial to Dhaka’s predicament: conserving wetlands [mongabay] [more inside]
Best Book Review Ever
“No sense in being pessimistic. It wouldn't work anyway.”
Pessimists Archive is a project to jog our collective memories about the hysteria, technophobia and moral panic that often greets new technologies, ideas and trends. [more inside]
Werribee Zoo welcomes birth of male rhino calf
Werribee Zoo welcomes birth of male rhino calf, who already has the zoomies. Victoria's Werribee Open Range Zoo has welcomed the birth of a male southern white rhino, more than a year after the passing of a female calf.
The birb's the word ... and it's your Free Thread
A recent post on Metatalk discusses posts about birds. Ergo, have you seen, heard, or encountered any comment-worthy birds (keep it clean) recently or in the past? Perhaps hopping or waddling birds, birds which say “pew”, some clever magpies, some parakeets, a lovely pair of boobies or just any birds ... 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 [lateliestish]
August 25
"Some of these companies, they just really hate us.”
Among corporate America’s most persistent shareholder activists are 80 nuns in a monastery outside Kansas City. [The Associated Press] [more inside]
“A female Bob Dylan”, he said of her
To Anyone Who Ever Asks is a widely lauded biography by Howard Fishman of musician Connie Converse, which came out last year. Not everyone liked it, with dissenting voices including her nephew and Joyce Kittenplan on her Substack The Ambiguities [archive link]. Inspired by these reviews, and their own frustrations with the biography, folklorists and musicians Sophie Abramowitz, Sarah Bachman and Emily Hilliard started the podcast The Female Bob Dylan, whose first episode is devoted to Connie Converse. Future episodes will be dedicated to other musicians who’ve been dubbed “the female Bob Dylan”.
A nearly two-decade study of birds living in Melbourne's Albert Park
The world’s youngest glacier
It sits in one of the planet’s newest landscapes, the Gen X-era crater of Mount St. Helens, born out of the mountain’s May 18, 1980, eruption. Although the cataclysm beheaded the summit and wiped out 70% of the volcano’s glaciers, it also created an unexpectedly ideal location (high, steep surrounding walls that reduce sunlight and generate abundant rockfalls and avalanches, and decent annual snow fall) for a new glacier to form. [more inside]
Telegram CEO Arrested Stop
Telegram messaging app CEO arrested in France (Al Jazeera, NYT gift, Le Monde, France 24, BBC, Guardian) French investigators had issued a warrant for Durov’s arrest as part of an inquiry into allegations of fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, promotion of terrorism and cyberbullying. Russia’s embassy in France has demanded consular access to the 39-year-old Franco-Russian billionaire.
Adolphe Appian
"19th century French printmaker and painter Adolphe Appian trained at a small specialized art school in his home town of Lyon, and worked for a time as a graphic designer." [more inside]
for the birds
You could call it a situationist spectacle, a piece of rolling performance art or a collective satire [guardian] [more inside]
Eventually, I went into the woods enough that I stopped being afraid
I had spent countless nights in the woods consciously and subconsciously adjusting my relationship to danger: preparing for it, tempering it, overthinking it, underthinking it, ignoring it. But no matter how desensitized we had become, the more time spent in the woods, the more of a numbers game you play with injury, weather, wildlife, exposure. Just because you don’t recognize the danger, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. from Danger on the Divide by Maggie Slepian [Longreads]
August 24
Researchers say these sharks with a sassy walk could tell us more about
Researchers say these sharks with a sassy walk could tell us more about the effects of climate change. These sharks may not have an open jaw and razor sharp teeth, but researchers say they are the toughest on the Great Barrier Reef with the ability to survive in water that is extremely low in oxygen.
Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers
1953 U.S. Navy training films"Basic Mechanisms In Fire Control Computers" on how a analog computer uses many inputs to determine how to aim big guns at a target. How? With shafts, gears, racks, differentials, cams, integrators, multipliers, etc.
a rightward swing within girl culture online
On predatory marketing, girlblogging, and when anti-consumerist discourse becomes a vector for reactionary ideals. Within the broader context, however, phrases like a “personality ... built out of products” or “self esteem ... borrowed from surgeries” become incredibly loaded by framing transness – particularly trans femininity– as manufactured, inauthentic, a frivolous costume to put on. See also fascist girlbloggers. [more inside]
USS Quantum Quantum Quantum
Dr Angela Collier, a Star Trek fan, eviscerates 'Star Trek: Picard' over the course of nearly 4 hours, which is a long run-time but it seems to fly by much faster and in a more entertaining way, than an episode of the aforementioned 'Picard' - How Star Trek: Picard Ruins Star Trek. Dr Collier has created a stellar catalog of informative (and much shorter) essays on science, academia, book-reviews and AI. A quick sample - the most important material in science , The Scourge of the Shire, the postdoc exodus , AI does not exist but it will ruin everything anyway.
That is the bitter and sad story of Shakahola.
“Jesus himself did it,” he said. “Nobody killed anybody. I did nothing." Alexis Okeowo investigates the story of Paul Mackenzie, a Kenyan religious leader charged with the deaths of more then 400 people. (SLNY)
(cw: mass murder, bodily suffering, cruelty to children, sexual violence)
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