November 26
"See that? Touch that and you're fucking dead"
Dan, you know coin-ops. Fediverse user "Dan Fixes Coin-Ops" explains about different kinds of coin-ops you might like installed in your small business. (single link Mastodon post). [more inside]
A theater of commerce
These advertisements—or subway cards as they’re better known—are what I term subway reading, as they offer us a uniquely democratic example of what passengers were actually reading rather than what they read voluntarily. It is in this unprecedented breadth of viewership that we can dig deeper into how these subway cards shaped social reproduction in the form of “good behavior” on the subway. Specifically, this subway reading invites us to question how we can read the Subway Sun as a reaction to the threat of a radically unclassed and unprecedentedly diverse space. from Advertising Etiquette: On Shaping the New York City Subway [more inside]
November 25
The museums and heritage institutions of the city of Antwerp
The Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp has put a collection of 14,000 woodblock prints online as Public Domain / CC 0 high resolution TIFF images with tags and search capabilities. Faves: a lumpy fish, a happy fetus, the earth is spherical, a view of the sky, a priestly (?Vulcan) blessing. Aside from woodblocks, there is a large collection of other images and objects from their collection here, although most of these seem not to be tagged. [more inside]
The day a sheep farmer found WWII German seamen on a remote beach
The day a sheep farmer found WWII German seamen on a remote West Australian beach.
From the moment Keith Baston picked up the phone on November 25, 1941, the story of HMAS Sydney's last battle would be intertwined with his family for generations.
Borg-Warner, Simpson, Glide-o-matic Turbo-matic, Panhard and Levassor...
Since the earliest days of the motor car, engineers have tinkered together
various means of connecting the engine to the ground. While the wheel rapidly
became the norm for the ground/vehicle interface, many different engine/wheel
coupling techniques have been, and still are, being tried. The history of the
automotive transmission (pdf, 1975) provides an interesting insight into the development of the automobile and its drivetrain, and illustrates how the marketplace has and will
govern the design of the motor car.
See also: The History of Automatic Transmission Fluid (youtube playlist).
St. UX
'A canonical belief, centuries old, in the “loss of community.”'
The Myth of the Loneliness Epidemic (Claude S. Fischer, Asterisk magazine)
Lord Howe Island's cloud forest makes unbelievable recovery from vermin
Lord Howe Island's magical cloud forest makes unbelievable recovery from vermin. The forest at the tip of Lord Howe Island's highest peak is an otherworldly place alive with animals and plants not found elsewhere on Earth. But it's taken radical action to save it.
Mrs. French's cat is missing
As the man says in Pontypool, "In the wake of huge events, after them and before them, physical details they spasm for a moment; they sort of unlock and when they come back into focus they suddenly coincide in a weird way. Street names and birthdates and middle names, all kinds of superfluous things appear related to each other. It's a ripple effect. So, what does it mean? Well... it means something's going to happen. Something big. But then, something's always about to happen." Has reality ever seemed to bend right in front of your eyes? For me, it might have been when I found out last week that Build A Bear now makes a mothman. Reality is collapsing. There are no rules.* This is your weekly free thread. [more inside]
Google’s empire is under siege
American police are legally permitted to lie in interrogations
History and some consequences of police permitted to lie in interrogations. The essay has a history of the law and how some cases were adjudicated in favor of the police, descriptions of the police handle interrogations in countries where they aren't allowed to lie to suspects, and how lying in interrogations (legal) slips over into lying at trials (not legal but not punished), and false convictions resulting from lying to suspects.. [more inside]
Funny Books: Booker Prize Edition
Ouch!
In a nation's first, a health department in southwest Idaho bans administration of COVID-19 vaccines (AP News). 💉🦠🇺🇸
It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Cassette Vision
The Epoch Cassette Vision was a moderate success. But in 1983, that all ended, when Nintendo and Sega released new consoles, which had more advanced hardware that allowed for better graphics and games stored on ROM. Epoch went from dominating the cartridge-based game market in Japan to a distant third practically overnight. But it’s not like they were unaware of the issue with the µPD777 they had tied themselves to. In 1984, Epoch launched their last, best hope at regaining their video game success. Imagine, if you will, a cassette vision: but super.
a strain of deliberate perversity
At the level of infrastructure, R.E.M. showed how a band could break through to mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal. Their spiky but lovable sound and their alternative approach to that sound’s promotion and distribution influenced two generations of American bands. from How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music [The New Yorker; ungated] [more inside]
November 24
Pasadena's Other Parade
Pasadena is famous for a spectactular parade showcasing the glorious weather of Southern California, but that one is a bit polished. In 1978, a number of the regulars at Chromo's Bar and Grill (long gone, but it existed in Old Town Pasadena along the Rose Parade route - now it's an HVAC office), decided that Pasadena needed a people's parade - and thus was born the Occasional Doo Dah Parade on a rare New Years Day with no Rose Parade (It doesn't happen on Sunday!). View the official parade archive. Chromo's patrons took advantage of the early campers providing a captive audience and marched through the still run down Old Town. [more inside]
How lesbian escort agencies became a form of self-care in Japan
Ethnic democracy means democracy!? What a country!
"The liberal democratic nation-state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalisation, regionalisation, universalisation of minority rights, multi-culturalism and the rise of ethno-nationalism. While Western countries are decoupling the nation-state and shifting toward multicultural civic democracy, other countries are consolidating an alternative non-civic form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation."[more inside]
🅆🄷🄴🄴🄻 🄾🄵 🄵🄾🅁🅃🅄🄽🄴
To the moon!
Inside this site you'll find lots and lots of information, photos, videos and diagrams from NASA's moon landing programme, Project Apollo. There's also lots of material from the Mercury, Gemini, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz projects. All of the material on this site is from NASA sources. Although most of it is available from various NASA sites, the pages on this site have all been reformatted and arranged to make finding and browsing as easy as possible.
"You must have felt so alone."
A music video for Sade's 'Young Lion,' dedicated to her trans son Izaak. From the TRAИƧA compilation (previously), it's her first new song in six years.
Reno Dakota, I'm no Nino Rota, I don't know the score
The Magnetic Fields: NPR Tiny Desk Concert "The band, featuring the complete original lineup, performed without drums and an almost entirely acoustic set, with the exception of Sam Davol's electric cello."
Alice Brock Has Died
Who was Alice Brock you might ask? None other than Alice of Alice's Restaurant fame. Arlo Guthrie announced that Alice Brock, his dear friend and inspiration for his song Alice's Restaurant died a week before Thanksgiving. Born Alice May Pelkey in New York City, Brock was a lifelong rebel who was a member of Students for a Democratic Society among other organizations. [more inside]
ice, ice...
"When the icebreaker breaks the ice and it flips upside down, it's covered with beautiful golden algae, and krill feeding on the algae. It's colourful and full of life, like a coral reef." [bbc]
Disappear here
After spending years probing authors’ lives for clues to their work—and, far more often, fielding requests from writers who would kill for an ounce of media attention—I find myself most in awe of those who insist on never explaining themselves. from What the Internet Age Is Taking Away From Writers [The Atlantic; ungated]
November 23
A Radical Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea
A Radical Approach to Flooding in England: Give Land Back to the Sea. The idea was to turn what had been farmland into salt marsh, an ancient ecosystem that soaks up water as the tide comes in and releases it as the sea retreats. The marsh acts as a natural and hugely effective bulwark against flooding, absorbing and slowing tides before they can encroach inland. Even last winter — the wettest anyone in the area could remember — the village at one edge of the peninsula did not flood. Paths through the marsh remained passable. A steep bank, covered with grass and significantly higher than the old flood wall, now borders the river. [more inside]
Are we sure it's not an weather octopus performing a live report?
Giant Pacific Octopus is captured on video battling currents created by BC's recent bomb cyclone. Longer video from CBC and an excerpted video from Global cut with an interview with a representative from Ocean Networks Canada which captured the footage. [more inside]
"I have unironically spent hours playing this game"
What this thing is, is an artifact of the sharpening that these apply to the video, where there can become sort of ripples in high-contrast areas. And when you point a camcorder at a TV, there is a lot of high contrast going on. It creates almost terrain-like structures, and if you hold the camera at the right angle, it sort of looks like you're flying through them. It's like a flight simulator, and it's really neat and very weird [...] So yeah, just turn on the TV, make sure it's on the right channel and junk, and then just point your camcorder at the TV, and you'll get a magical game.YouTuber @DeclanDoesCameraThings explains how to turn a vintage camcorder into a hypnotic makeshift fractal flight simulator. [more inside]
"The Organization is a Future Adversary"
How decentralized is Bluesky really? Christine Lemmer-Webber, co-author of the ActivityPub standard, wrote about ATProto, the protocol underlying Bluesky. [more inside]
Play Money
SpendTheirMoney.com is a simulation game where players spend a wealthy individual's fortune in a virtual marketplace. This content is for entertainment and educational purposes only. The simulation uses fictional representations of wealth associated with public figures. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Snake On A Plane
This plane flight from the Western Australian town of Broome was going to be delayed because of a wild snake onboard, until a passenger identified it as a harmless species of python and gently removed it. (Stimson's python - Antaresia childreni - is often kept as a pet worldwide due to its small size, docile temperament, strong feeding response, resiliency and easy captive care. It is often seen as a good beginner species for keeping reptiles, particularly snakes.)
sticktoitiveness
Archaeologists discovered a carefully engineered combustion structure, or hearth, used to produce tar from resinous plants such as rockrose [nih] (Cistus genus). Tar served as a critical adhesive, enabling Neanderthals to attach stone tools to wooden handles—an innovation that predates similar techniques by Homo sapiens by over 20,000 years. [archaeologynews/sciencedirect]
Are you declaring war on the United States, Bob?
The history of a persistent fascination
How did we come to believe that what was codified in the notion of extra virginity captures the essence of what olive oil is and always was? The underlying assumption is that oil production has a timeless quality, and is based on practices and technology that have stayed constant for centuries, if not millennia, only to be corrupted by new industrial methods between the 19th and 20th century. It’s another version of the misleading narrative that portrays traditional practices as static, non-creative and destined to be wiped away by modern technological innovation. In Silicon Valley’s lore, disruption and radical innovation are positive values. In the case of oil, and food more generally, it’s come to be the opposite: innovation corrupts venerable traditions and threatens people’s health and identities. But the model of change underlying both narratives is similar. And it’s wrong. from The flavour of mechanisation [Aeon]
November 22
YO ALERT! YO ALERT! YO ALERT!
In the year 2096, spacefaring teenagers Roxette and Trip (possibly playing a VR simulation) stumble upon an SOS signal from an uncharted world inhabited by large-headed, high-strung humanoids (and a supernatural menace played by Tim Curry). Assigned to a space station they rechristen Hacker Command and overseen by the AI S.A.L., they remotely scour this strange new world for accidents, disasters and terrorist attacks, and report them to International Rescue, the organization popularly known as... the Thunderbirds!? These are seven of the thirteen episodes of Turbocharged Thunderbirds, the bizarre 1994/1995 repackage of the classic 60's puppet (aka SUPERMARIONATION) series Thunderbirds. More info can be found here and here. [more inside]
Congratulations to SoylentNews.org - now owned by its members.
On Nov. 15, web discussion forum Soylent News completed its transition from proprietary ownership to community control. Site admin janrinok reported, "After almost 2 years and a lot of hard work by many people, we have finally achieved what we set out to do. On Wednesday, the Linode servers were decommissioned, and the site is now completely independent and running on its own hardware. All the site data and the domains belong to the community - yes, you own this site." [more inside]
Police find shoe thief at a Japanese kindergarten is actually a weasel
Police find shoe thief at a Japanese kindergarten is actually a weasel. Police in southwest Japan installed cameras after nearly two dozen children’s shoes went missing from Gosho Kodomo-en kindergarten in Fukuoka. The culprit? A weasel.
Yes, chef
Jeremy Allen White lookalike contest in Chicago draws more than 50 participants, won by Glenview therapist [more inside]
Capitalism is to blame
Baby Evacuation Aprons. You need to "grab your vest and just stuff as many babies as humanly possible in its giant kangaroo pockets before running out the door." (Hat tip: Scopeofwork.net)
A bit of joy. Go there, stay there.
Robert Lindsay showing how they do the Lambeth Walk. Performing the song at a Tony awards show, sometimes in the mid 80's. [more inside]
Emperor penguin found on beach has been released
An emperor penguin found malnourished on an Australian beach has been released into the Southern Ocean after a period of recovery.
(Including 20 days of free fish, and a veterinary check.) The text article at the link includes a cheerful 2 minute video of the release itself. [more inside]
Whatever happened to fascism?
'I still believe the puzzle of U.S. (non-state) political violence, particularly far-right political violence, is not “why is there so much,” but why, given our relative legal leniency towards violent speech, freedom of association for radicals, the widespread availability of firearms, and a long, violent history of rightist street action against racial minorities and leftists, is there still so little.' In Will the Streets Run Red?, Dan Trombly examines the tensions between Trumpism and a more traditionally violent fascism.
"Now I am 'that guy,' the conscience of Africa"
How to Write about Africa is a posthumous collection of essays by Binyavanga Wainaina. The satiric title essay, which went viral in 2005, began as "rambling email to the editor" of Granta, as he recounted in How to Write About Africa II: The Revenge. After publishing a celebrated memoir in 2011, he published a "lost chapter" from it in 2014, I am a homosexual, mum. He was interviewed about that essay on NPR. He died in 2019. The posthumous collection was reviewed by Alexis Okeowo in the New Yorker and Jeremy Harding in the London Review of Books. The latter discussed Wainaina on the LRB podcast with Thomas Jones, highlighting the piece It’s Only a Matter of Acceleration Now, about interviewing Youssou N'Dour. [Many previouslies: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
Dance steps and pickpocketing on the very verge of the abyss
Satire is just dark comedy’s alibi, a way for critics to render their attraction to the genre compatible with morality and self-respect. War is a satire on war in the same sense that getting shot is a satire on guns, or being trampled to death by a hippo is a satire on evolution, or junkies are a satire on drugs, or a piss stain is a satire on clean pants. from Céline's War [The Point; ungated] [CW: problematic writer]
November 21
Georgia abortion ban
“They did what they were supposed to do. This is why we need them,” said Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, one of the groups challenging Georgia’s abortion ban in court. “To have this abrupt disbandment, my concern is what we are going to lose in the process, in terms of time and data?” [propublica]
The season of Rankin and Bass
Most of Australia’s First Nations languages don’t have gendered pronouns
Most of Australia’s First Nations languages don’t have gendered pronouns. Here’s why. Australia’s 460 First Nations’ languages see the world in unexpected ways, revealing perspectives on the natural and spiritual worlds.
The art of the grift
Economic mutualism in the US
“We can look to one another to solve the most intractable problems we encounter in our lives.” An essay mostly about a book on forming mutually supportive economic structures. Examples of past successes; no details on the laws that changed to make them harder, though the outline of Reagan and roll-ups is clear; suggestions for what is needed now. [more inside]
You can't say them on TV. On Bluesky, however...
Bluesky, but just the blue bits. (NSFW)