September 5
World's Oldest Library is Treasure Trove
St. Catherine's Monastery, built c.550, houses an astonishing array of manuscripts. New research is being carried on all the time, especially on palimpsests. Languages are being recovered/discovered, and one scientist blogged about what it was like to work there UC Berkeley Conservator. Ohio State Univ. is also doing research into the slavic connections Scriptoria Slavica. The monastery has been a pilgrimage site for centuries and a crossroads meeting place for many faiths St. Catherine's Monastery
OoooOoooooOooO Ooh Oooh Ooooooooo
Horse-Riding Librarians Were the Great Depression’s Bookmobiles
The Pack Horse Library initiative, which sent librarians deep into Appalachia, was one of the New Deal’s most unique plans. [more inside]
Opera Singers Dubbed With Dial-up Modems
Opera Singers Dubbed With Dial-up Modems. (this is a link to a single 19-second YouTube video. Don't @ me.)
“After Auschwitz, there were no laws.”
Vidal Sassoon: Anti-fascist warrior-hairdresser. Towards the end of his life, the famous hairstylist recounted his days as part of the 43 Group, a group of Jewish British ex-servicemen who fought the fascist organisations they encountered at home on their return from the Second World War. The UK was the only country in Europe other than Franco's Spain to allow fascist parties after 1945. [more inside]
You are listening to Los Angeles ATC
Watch a live stream of Los Angeles Airport's main runways. Actually, an incredible simulation. Actually, it's a simulation of a live stream. Actually, it's a large-scale 3-D rendering of LAX (and its sky conditions) rendered with accurate airplane models (and airline livery) arriving and departing based on their transponder data and other info (the YouTube description provides a complete list of resources with links). LAX air traffic control provides the soundtrack. [more inside]
September 4
"Every year about around this time it happens."
On the year, domestic box office is down 6.2 percent. The sky is falling
No basis for a system of government
A seven-year-old girl found a four-foot sword in Cornwall, England, in "the same lake where King Arthur's Excalibur was said to have been hurled."
“It's-a me, Mario!”
Is Mario a human? Yes. There is some disagreement. Is Mario a plumber? Not anymore, he's retired. Is Mario Italian or Japanese? Italian. What is Mario's last name? Mario. Are Mario and Wario related? Maybe? Not. Is Mario older or younger than Luigi? They're fraternal twins. And Mario is older.
And I'll go into people's houses at night and wreck up the place!
On Sunday, reports leaked of President Trump's plan to end DACA for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, with likely a six-month phase-in of the enforcement. Rebuking North Korea for their latest nuclear test, he also criticized South Korea for "appeasement" and on trade, and suggested he would cease trade with any country that continued to trade with the DPRK. Meanwhile, the Justice Department just admitted in court that Trump's much-disputed accusation that "Obama wiretapped Trump tower" was indeed false.
Our house had the biggest catio, our house had all the summer shade...
The Catio Is a Patio for Your Cat Because You Win, Cats. You Win. A what? The basic idea is to build a frame-and-wire enclosure that opens to a window or door in a home. From there, cats can let themselves in and out, but will not be able to roam beyond the enclosure boundaries. Take a look for yourself with 11 outdoor enclosures purr-fect for cats: Portland Catio Tour. Some catios are equipped with separate restroom facilities. Some cats aren't so keen on the catio in the winter.
There Is Power In A Union
Happy Labor Day USA! The holiday came about due to the 1894 Pullman Strike and Boycott in which national guardmen shot into a crowd and killed 4. Today, thousands take to the streets to demand higher wages (Twitter moment) as McDonalds workers in the U.K. enact their first ever strike. Canada wants the USA to get rid of union-breaking 'Right-To-Work' laws as part of NAFTA talks and the People's Policy Project (previously) presents a simple bill to pre-empt any Right-To-Work action.
Also, was there a strike in space in 1973?
Really not kidding about the chapstick
What Is Toxic Masculinity? - Doctor Nerdlove - part of what makes toxic masculinity so damaging: it ignores and diminishes anyone who doesn’t fit that narrow range of “man”. The only measure of worth is pain; who causes it and who endures it. We worship the hero but we ignore the caregiver. We praise the person who rescues the endangered, but not the ones who give to the needy. We admire soldiers, but spare few thoughts for the people who make sure that those soldiers don’t need to go to war.
Hieronymous Bosch piñatas
Life-sized piñatas representing some of the grotesque, odd, and intriguing figures of Hieronymous Bosch's painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights. (Website of the artist, Roberto Benavidez is here).
"I couldn't afford to go to film school; I learned from the library"
The trailer (post title), and The Guardian review of Ex Libris: New York Public Library: "The most prominent theme is the divide between rich and poor, and what the NYPL means in different neighbourhoods. The gorgeous main branch on Fifth Avenue with its marble lions serves a different function than the outposts in the economically disadvantaged outer boroughs. On Fifth Avenue, a “Books at noon” guest like Richard Dawkins will wax about the Enlightenment; off Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx, the community huddles up for job interview tips ... More than any other civic institution, it is a place for the betterment of everyone in every conceivable way, and if this ends up being Frederick Wiseman’s last film I can think of no better swan song." [more inside]
Clothes shop sells clothes
John Lewis (the British one) have taken the decision to remove gendered labels from all children's clothes. There has been some backlash. Piers Morgan weighs in, whilst others point out that this isn't new. [more inside]
Science, class, and democracy
"I’m going to repeat that dictate: 'In democratic times, one ties the poor to oneself more by manners than by benefits.' As the front row acts more like aristocrats, their ability to win the goodwill of the populace wanes. Period. You can’t just institute, say, a universal basic income and expect the rabble to shut up at last and love you. ... To the extent that scientists and researchers are enveloped in front-row culture, I think many of them are deeply unable to see this. A lot of my exasperated scientists friends wring their hands about the need to explain things to regular people. Few of them think about the need to connect with those people, on a democratic basis – not through representative politics, but through democratic interactions, as equals." [more inside]
Train ride to Coney Island, 1987
Lets take a ride back in time thirty years and catch the train to to Coney Island! Ankh necklaces! Big hair! Gnarly fashion and grungy train cars. On this, the last day of the summer high season in the United States lets get sentimentally throwback like we should at the end of summer. [SLYT: 7:18, a foreign and familiar America]
September 3
They're wagon camels
Shadowy figures
If you take a stroll around Redwood City, California, you might get the sense that something isn't quite right. Pay particular attention to the shadows. Notice how they seem to misbehave? Flowers sprout from the shadows of bike racks, mailboxes turn into shadow monsters, and shady monkeys hang around atop parking meters. What's going on?Damon Belanger: Art — Design — Instagram
ding ding ding!
"Chamberlain! I challenge!"
Back in May, it was announced that Netflix would be producing a limited series prequel to the classic Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. And in keeping with the spirit of the original, the new series will feature all new puppetry and animatronic characters. For fans of the original film who also have an artistic bent, the filmmakers have decided to hold a very unique contest: Design your own creature for the series and Jim Henson's Creature Shop will bring it to life.
Truckers Testers Cookers Racers
Long-haul trucking, forensic investigation, innovative cooking, endurance racing—by women. Even though women have been in the haulage industry for a long time, people are still surprised when a woman drops out of a semi's cab. In a university, there's a club whose members study and investigate real crime cases; there's only one young man in the group Girl Detectives. In Nashville, there's a restaurant owner who's been confounding the local food style for quite a while A Woman's Kitchen. And there an all-woman endurance race in the desert Rebelle Rally.
Together We're Heavy
10 years later, 2007's The Polyphonic Spree: The Fragile Army 12 tracks
Rest in Power
10 NINE 8 SEVEN 6 FIVE 4 THREE
IT’S BEEN M0RE THAN 13 YEARS SINCE A P0ST AB0UT Y0UNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES
(IT WAS AB0UT THEM MENTI0NING US! MENTI0NING THEM HYP0THESIZING AB0UT THE DPRK ATTACKING THE ROK!)
SINCE THEN, THEY’VE PERSISTED IN THEIR L0VE 0F M0NAC0 & FLASH ANIMATI0NS 0F TEXT 0VER SWEET, RHYTHMIC JAZZ. NEW WORKS INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:
BACK IN THE R.0.K • AH • SUPER SMILE •
THE AXIS 0F THE UNIVERSE RUNS THR0UGH Y0U • WANT T0 D0 G00D? KN0W H0W T0 SH00T A SEMIAUT0MATIC HANDGUN? • LET A HUNDRED ARTW0RKS BL00M, WILT, AND DIE • SUBJECT: HELL0 • AOMARI AMORI
So Many Bad Guys, So Little Time
"I don't really [portray] many people who I don't think are abusing their power. I chart these guys... My mercury is rising and when it gets to a certain point, I'll start drawing." -- Robbie Conal: Meet the Godfather of Guerrilla Street Art (Sarah Linn, KCET) [more inside]
Can All the Sad Adults Please Step Away from Our Back-to-School Display?
“Helden sterben nicht!”
• Why Does Everyone Hate Mercy? by Apple Cider [Medium] Despite Mercy being posed as the angelic medic of the popular team shooter Overwatch, she, or the people who play her, might as well be the Devil with the way that many complain about her at every opportunity. Their ire covers a multitude of sins but a lot of it centers around her being a female character, a popular support hero, as well as one that exemplifies peacefulness and collaborative team effort. However, these same design choices, as well as the playerbase that have followed her in, have made Mercy a lightning rod for the obvious derision in the competitive gaming community about who plays support, as well as what we assume about their abilities. It is incredibly gendered at times, and that’s not a coincidence.
A thread on the official Overwatch forums [Blizzard] reads with a giant headline in the familiar font face of the game, “Why aren’t there more female eSports (sic) players?” A forum-goer could believe that it is a serious question and would be further explored with nuanced, respectful discussion. Instead, the first post is the dry fart of a punchline: “because they are all Mercy mains.”[more inside]
New food preservation tech seems to have Amazon interested.
An update to an old tech of just using high pressure. They've known that high pressure (hundreds of MPa) can inactivate a number of microorganisms (through some Bacterial spores survive) since the late 1800s. Also called Pacalization. New tech called Microwave Assisted Thermal Stabilization (MATS) was developed at Washington State University for the Military. Benefits is it only takes minutes at an elevated temp with the pressure where current pressure cooker method takes an hour which severely degrades the taste, texture, and nutritional content. They're talking about things like Beef Stew in a sealed pouch that lasts for a year with a taste/texture worth eating. Another link states that Europe has a project called "HIPSTER" that is examining the same tech.
The Mouth that Roared
Magnitude 6.3 Seismic Event in North Korea from largest nuclear weapon tested by DPRK to date. Experts suggest the nuclear detonation may be as high as 120 kilotons, possibly a boosted atomic (fission) bomb or a small hydrogen (fusion) device (as reported by the DPRK).
Seismic data suggest a cave-in related to the explosion, raising fears of a release of radioactive material. Most global leaders have been responding to the nuclearization of the DPRK with sober caution. Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump have not been among them.
Running Through the Magic Forest (with bonus eccentric synthesizers!)
Things are a bit rough these days. Do you need some exceedingly happy music? Then The Happiest Guys In The World may be a cure for what ails, with their 1999 summer jam Hey Hey It's The Vegetable Man. Come inside for further info and highly unique synthesizers! [more inside]
I'll make it this time / I'm ready to cross that fine line
Steely Dan’s Walter Becker Dead at 67 | Becker was born Feb. 20, 1950 in Queens, N.Y., and was raised in the borough community. Initially a saxophonist, he took up the guitar as a teen. He encountered his future partner Donald Fagen as a student at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, while playing a gig at the local club the Red Balloon. [more inside]
Road trip!
A road trip through west USA - This is the remembering of 3,500km journey in west United States in 2013. This [movie] is made of 344,118 Google StreetView images, fetched with some home made scripts and a lot of patience. [more inside]
"Why so serious?"
"... The Joker’s catchphrase was the most common response to BBC Culture’s poll of 177 critics last year to determine the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century. Very few comedies made that list, apart from Wes Anderson’s confections and a few Pixar romps. That canon of modern classics showed how very often ‘what makes us laugh’ is neglected when assessing cinematic greatness. [...] So this year BBC Culture decided to get serious about comedy. We asked 253 film critics – 118 women and 135 men – from 52 countries and six continents a simple: “What do you think are the 10 best comedies of all time?”" The result: The 100 greatest comedies of all time. [more inside]
September 2
The amazing, eerie sense that someone else is just “on your wavelength"
Somebody died; these are her friends
Seattle artist Briar Bates had one final wish before her death from cancer; for her friends to perform a water ballet entitled "Ankle Deep" in the wading pool at Volunteer Park.
Weaponizing ridicule
"Venezuelan women stripped off their pants and threw them at riot police, taunting the already demoralized young men to “man up” and put them on. Jeering crowds laughed at the confused paramilitary forces, chanting for them to “wear some pants” and side with the people against the tottering Maduro dictatorship. Suddenly, the truncheon-wielding, helmeted police and their armored vehicles didn’t seem quite so menacing." An essay on the potential military uses of ridicule.
Little Horribles
Little Horribles were a series of collectible porcelain statues produced by the figurine producer Hagen Renaker. Although more famed for their animal statuary, the horribles were a line of grotesque (but endearing) monsters, often with surreal and cartoony looks. Designed by the artist Nell Bortells (a brief memorial here), you can take a look at the creatures at a number of online galleries from collectors. One blogger does a deeper dive on a specific figurine, showing how it's a direct reference to Salvador Dali's Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War).
"people forgot they were there"
A Team of Women is Unearthing the Forgotten Legacy of Harvard’s Women 'Computers' by Alex Newman. From 1885 to 1927 over 80 women computed and analyzed astronomical data for Harvard University. Said data, mostly in the form of glass plate photographs, is in the process of being digitized by the Harvard Observatory as part of the DASCH Project. If you would like to know more about pioneering female astronomers such as Williamina Fleming or Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the Harvard Observatory has compiled some links. If you would like to take part in making their work available to the public, take part in Project PHaEDRA and transcribe their logbooks.
“How do you keep calm when you see such terrible things?”
The answer is none.
How much more creepy can you get than a wasp nest built around a baby doll? Bonus: toddlerpedes! (Jon Beinart previously, previouslier)
Thirty years and still dooting
Doot! Doot! The One and Literally Only Nardwuar: He calls himself the Human Serviette. We call him one of the brightest, weirdest stars in the world of CanCon. His show, Nardwuar the Human Serviette (previously), has been airing on CiTR 101.9 FM since 1987. To mark the show's 30th anniversary, the station will be broadcasting a 20-hour marathon of Nardwuar’s interviews ("ranging from Jay-Z to Michael Gorbachev, from Destiny's Child to Wesley Willis to everything in between") starting at 9:00 p.m. on September 21 until 5:00 p.m. on September 22. [more inside]
Why Is It So Hard for Wrongfully Convicted Women to Get Justice?
"In the early morning hours of June 30, 1995, a fire sparked to life in Kristine Bunch’s mobile home. It fanned out across the floor and climbed up the walls, then formed an impassable barrier across the middle of the trailer. Bunch, 21, snapped awake in the living room. Her three-year-old son, Tony, shrieked for her on the other side of the flames." (Mother Jones) [more inside]
55 of the best free fonts for designers
55 of the best free fonts for designers. Sometimes in the world of free fonts, you get what you pay for. But Tom May (at art and design blog Creativebloq.com) has found the best free fonts by professional designers from a range of countries including Spain, Argentina, Indonesia, Brazil, Sweden, Greece, Latvia, the UK, Uruguay, Finland, the US, Ireland, and Canada. The fonts are arranged into eight categories: serif, sans serif, handwriting, vintage and retro, brush, tattoo, graffiti and "unusual". [more inside]
I was the wealthiest, most powerful person Brown knew, and I had $67
Teaching white students showed me the difference between power and privilege. Southern black boys like me were more likely to end up incarcerated than working beside white faculty at so-called elite liberal arts colleges. [more inside]
"It’s definitely a tokenization.”
"Even after World War II, a conflict we typically characterize as an unambiguous moral necessity, veterans disrupted an emerging nationalist, anti-communist consensus. Robert Saxe, the author of Settling Down: World War II Veterans’ Challenge to the Post-War Consensus, told the New Republic, “A lot of World War II veterans came back and had some pretty significant critiques of America.” Those critiques ranged from dissatisfaction with the military itself, where the divide between officers and enlisted men reflected broader class tensions, and with civilians, who benefited from a wartime economic boom without risking their lives in battle." The Invisible Veterans Of The Left [more inside]
Signal detection breakthrough
University of Copenhagen makes low noise breakthrough They make a micro-membrane (with deposited aluminum) that is one side of a capacitor in a resonant circuit. So radio signals at that resonance are *much* larger than the noise floor.
They then pick up the radio signal by bouncing a laser off the membrane => radio signal turned into optical
"The numbers are impressive. The new device has a room temperature sensitivity of 5 picoVolts per (Hz)^1/2 at a frequency of 1 Mhz. In other words, it does the same job at room temperature that physicists could only dream of doing at the temperature of liquid helium."
We all float down here
Kaitlyn Tiffany read her first Stephen King novel, IT, this summer... she kept a diary. [more inside]