April 30, 2020
Famous People’s Bookshelves
In quarantine, people are inadvertently exposing their reading habits A highbrow listicle for the NY Times set. I found this enjoyable. YMMV.
Bad Seed TeeVee
Nick Cave has launched a 24/7 streaming channel of his music on YouTube. In the past few hours, I've seen about a 50/50 mix of live performances and videos and one very brief interview. Link to the channel.
There will be pillaging and raiding.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla [Official Game Trailer] “Ubisoft is adding Vikings to its Assassin series. Valhalla stars Eivor, a Viking raider, as he or she (players will be able to chose the gender of their character, as well as customize their look) leads clans “from the harsh shores of Norway to a new home amid the lush farmlands of ninth-century England.” From there, players will build settlements through customization and upgrades, while also raiding fortresses and forging alliances. The game is expected for launch for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Stadia, as well as Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5.” [via: The Verge] [more inside]
The Islamic History of Coffee
Sufi Muslims in Yemen would boil up the grounds of their coffee cherry leaves and pass around a dark potion as they prepared for a night of dhikr, or meditative chanting. A sixteenth-century Muslim writer named Abd al-Qadir al-Jaziri noted the habits of the mystics: [more inside]
Art, angle, balance. This will age well. 8/10
Rate my Skype/Zoom room (SLTwitter account). For Twitter-averse, LA Mag also wrote a short piece with embedded highlights: This Twitter Account Is Savaging Politicians’ and Pundits’ Skype Environs
The Deconstruction
The Deconstruction is a global creative collaboration event held online (and in real life) for artists, makers, creators, students, parents, and everyone else! "This year's theme is about rethinking the spaces between us and “Deconstructing Distance”. During a 48-hour window you re-imagine the topic and create something completely new with resources you already have on hand.
It can be a game, a piece of art, an invention, a song, a solution, a poem, a pizza." [more inside]
Fifteen Monsters All In A Row
Rage Within the Machine
OpenAI's newest unholy creation is Jukebox, a pop-music-generating neural network bringing you hits like Kanye West's "Lose Yourself", an alternative Rickroll, the Verve Pipe singing about pasghetti, and 7,000+ more samples.
Maintinaing a little bit of (ab)normal in unusual times
People are finding new ways to maintain normalcy in unusual times, and makeup routines are no different. Well, they are and they aren't. Enough talking, time for videos: face masks can reduce the total makeup time [YouTube], or you could put makeup on the mask [YT]. Otherwise, you could make a tiny face above your mask, which may or may not be inspired by Tim and Eric [via Mltshp]. Alternatively, a cloth mask with a clear plastic portion over the mouth [Lex18] allow others to see more of your face, which also benefits those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Here's a video tutorial to make similar masks, and another tutorial [YTx2].
Men give up reading a book before page 50
Turns out men give up on books they don’t like way more easily than women do (LitHub): According to a recent study of ebook usage in the UK, conducted by the Audience Agency, men are likely to give up reading a book before page 50, while women more often make it to page 100 (at least). [...] And don’t blame television. “Netflix binge-watchers aren’t necessarily less likely to finish reading a book,” wrote Sophia Woodley and Oliver Mantell, the authors of the report. “If they are genre fans on Netflix and are reading a genre book, there is in fact a positive correlation.”
Spinosaurus fossil shreds history of swimming dinosaurs
This story of a new discovery of additional tail bones reshapes what we know about Spinosaurus. Previously.
Long time, waiting to feel the sound
Long Distance Runaround is a single from Yes's 1971 album Fragile. Originally written as a B-side to Roundabout, the song became a radio hit on its own. Though extremely short by Yes standards, the song still manages to cram in plenty of delightful prog-rock flourishes, including a key change and some rhythmic shenanigans. Also true to the band's nature, the songwriting credit is a source of acrimony and passive aggression. [more inside]
A Different Flavor of Marathon
The Doctor, The Disease, and The Division
Outside the hospital, cut off from friends and family like everyone else in New York, I’ve spent much of my social isolation on my PC. I keep logging into Ubisoft’s accidentally, unfortunately prescient 2019 online action game The Division 2. Here I am, a physician in a time of pestilence, spending my few free hours playing a game set in a fictional America torn apart by plague.
A Mile an Hour
Separation has been forcing people to think about others
Humans are not selfish by nature Despite the scam artists taking the opportunity to capitalize on the fears of others, the pandemic and social distancing has caused many to have an overwhelming need to comfort and care for others.
The Man Who Runs 365 Marathons a Year
A different portrait of an extreme endurance runner, from Outsideonline: One day, Michael Shattuck started to run. He liked it, so he ran longer, sometimes for as many as 65 hours each week. He never wanted to stop. What was he running from?
It's a big swamp
“Malaysia” was shorthand for a gigantic fraud—possibly the largest in financial history—in which, beginning in 2009, billions of dollars were diverted from a Malaysian sovereign-wealth fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) into covert campaign-finance accounts, U.S. political campaigns, Hollywood movies, and the pockets of innumerable other recipients. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »