April 23, 2019
Life Gave Me Fifteen Lemons
"I got fifteen lemons in the mail from a California friend with a lemon tree. This is what I did with them." An illustrated essay by MeFi's Own jessamyn (further story background on mefi projects). Includes secret messages, ideas for a lemon menagerie, and a variety of foods/meals. Also features community, and friends near and far. 🍋
The Black Feminists Who Saw the Alt-Right Threat Coming
Before Gamergate, before the 2016 election, they launched a campaign against Twitter trolls masquerading as women of color. If only more people had paid attention. In 2014 Shafiqah Hudson noticed an odd hashtag purporting to be from black feminists arguing against father's day. But the language these accounts were using read to her as a parody of AAVE, and some of the photos were of people she knew didn't use twitter. This led her and I’Nasah Crockett down a racist rabbit hole that led to 4-chan, right before gamergate. [more inside]
FILTRATE
Monkey business
Two gorillas have been photographed posing for a relaxed selfie with the rangers who rescued them as babies... Because they've grown up with the rangers who rescued them, they are imitating the humans and standing on two legs is their way of "learning to be human beings".
Generational Theory, As Exemplified by The Avengers (MCU)
"Steve also comes out of the ice as a 27 year old. In 2012. Steve’s also an emotional Millennial, with similar experience of economic collapse & attack and disaster." Author CZ Edwards provides a deep dive into generational theory (and callouts of its bullshit) through insightful character analysis supported with plenty of historical details.
Close To Home: A Conversation About Beyoncé's 'Lemonade'
We asked Professor Regina Bradley and writer dream hampton to share their dialogue about the visual album with us, to show the many directions Lemonade is sending people, knowing the two of them don't come to the art or the artist from the same place, knowing they require different things if they're to feel represented, knowing that feeling is a major factor in what's happening right now culturally, but it's not the only thing.Close To Home: A Conversation About Beyoncé's 'Lemonade'
Hillside Letters in the Western Landscape
In the western part of the United States, whole communities succumb to the urge to display their school or community pride by stamping their initial on the sides of mountains. Some are painted on stone, some are overlaid with painted concrete or rocks, and some are created by strategically clear-cutting dense vegetation. [more inside]
American Mexican Food
The United States of Mexican Food is a project by Eater and Gustavo Arellano about the wonderful varieties of Mexican food in the US that are uniquely American.
Welcome to the United States of Mexican Food: The canonical dishes of regional Mexican-American food, from ACP to hot tamales, plotted from California to Georgia [more inside]
Welcome to the United States of Mexican Food: The canonical dishes of regional Mexican-American food, from ACP to hot tamales, plotted from California to Georgia [more inside]
"It was then that I realized the true power of the yodel."
Back in the early 1990s, Wylie Gustafson was the go-to yodeler for quirky TV ads, when the fad was yodeling and surf music. A little start-up that was first known as Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web (Wikipedia) and became the biggest internet index site (1996 site capture on Archive.org) wanted to get in on the action, and Wylie was hired for the Ya-HOOO-ooo! Yodel (YT), in what was supposed to be a regional commercial, for a one-time payment of $590.38. Then Gustafson heard his yodel on a superbowl ad (YT) and realized it wasn't just a one-off regional commercial clip he provided. So requested an appropriate payment for his ubiquitous yodel, but after he was offered another $590, he became the yodeler who sued Yahoo! (The Hustle). [more inside]
“Did he just call us g--d--- communists?”
“There are definitely days when I wake up now and I am, like, I am not equipped to do this,” Innamorato said later. “But I’ll figure it out. It’s a system. There are rules. It’s imperfect because it’s run by human beings, and I’ll figure it out.” These Women Were Elected As Democratic Socialists, Now They’re Trying To Figure Out What That Means (Washington Post)
Baby T rex goes on sale on eBay, sparking paleontologists' outcry
YOUNG (BABY) T-REX TYRANNOSAURUS DINOSAUR FOSSIL US: $2,950,000.00, Free Expedited Shipping: Most Likely the Only BABY T-Rex in the World! It has a 15 FOOT long Body and a 21" SKULL with Serrated Teeth! This Rex was very a very dangerous meat eater. It's a RARE opportunity indeed to ever see a baby REX... [more inside]
Perhaps the fabella will soon be known as the appendix of the skeleton.
Textbooks will tell you that the human body contains 206 bones. But sometimes, there are 208. The fabella, a small bone in a tendon behind the knee, was lost over the course of early human evolution, but these days it’s becoming more common, according to a study published this week (April 17) in the Journal of Anatomy.
Snot’s dripping. I’m honestly looking for a small dark place.
The main difficulty lies in the fact that the body, which is smarter than the mind, does not want to consume these peppers. Giri Nathan writes on tasting the Carolina Reaper pepper (clocking in at 1,560,000 Scoville heat units) at the NYC Hot Sauce Expo.
"a chill of arctic iciness down the spines of the many people"
The Anarchists Who Took the Commuter Train, Amanda Kolson Hurley writes about the Stelton colony, founded 1914, near New Brunswick, New Jersey. An anarchist intentional community, the Stelton colony centered around the Ferrer Center and Modern School. [more inside]
A normal failure
How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer (Gregory Travis, IEEE Spectrum)
Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737’s dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3. None of the above should have passed muster.
Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737’s dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3. None of the above should have passed muster.
Do you really want to know?
My Search for a Boyhood Friend Led to a Dark Discovery A surfeit of ugly knowledge is a feature of our age. But when information is everywhere, some things are better left buried.
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