May 2, 2019
Let's take a trip
Madonna, yeah, that one, released a new song a couple of weeks ago. Medellín is named after the home town of her duet partner, Maluma, a Colombian reggaton artist and rapper. Here's the video [6m30s]. Here are the lyrics. Here are the lyrics translated to English. It's playful and flirty, and the song seems to be about doing hallucinogens. (Go, Madge!) Maybe you watched their performance on the Billboard Music Awards telecast. Fascinating performance, right? However, if you were actually in the audience that night, it was entirely different.
(don't) wash your chicken
USA's Center for Disease Control (CDC) has issued their say on washing chicken: Don't the comments went as well as you expect, for something so literally culturally divisive.
The world's best chalk
Why the World's Best Mathematicians are Hoarding Chalk, a short video from Great Big Story. The legendary Hagoromo Fulltouch chalk had gained an ardent following among mathematicians, but the company went out of business in 2015. A chalk that lets you do better math? Departments and individuals stockpiled it: Faculty should save this chalk for use only during their most important lectures or when working on their most important theorems. [more inside]
U=U
New study confirms 0% transmission of HIV in male couples on treatment. Final results of the PARTNER2 study published confirming zero cases of HIV transmission from condomless sex in almost 1000 male serodiscordant couples, where one partner maintains an undetectable viral load. [more inside]
"Promise me that you will say kaddish for me."
On Yom Hashoah, Gabrielle Debinski writes about growing up with stories of Mengele, the sadistic Nazi 'doctor'. Yom Hashoah this year coincides with the 40th anniversary of the death of Josef Mengele, who is known for his gruesome experiments on twins at Auschwitz. He also targeted little persons and Roma. He was never brought to justice. The horrors his victims underwent are not forgotten.
Previously: forgiveness, Dr. Gisella Perl, the Ovitz family.
Typeset in the Future
This final part of the film is visually eclectic, aurally stunning and philosophically challenging. Many thousands of words have been penned over the decades to try and fathom the meaning of the monolith, and the genesis and future of the space-baby. However, none of this act contains typography, and it is therefore of no concern to us. Let’s skip to the end credits. [more inside]
Who gives out more treats, dogs or wolves?
Wolves are more willing to help each other than dogs, according to an experiment that involved canines activating touchscreens with their noses.
Led by Rachel Dale, an animal behavior researcher at the Wolf Science Center in Vienna, Austria, the study published Wednesday in the journal PloS ONe lends weight to the idea that prosociality in dogs is primarily inherited from their wild ancestors.
"We want to send users to our paid products"
TurboTax and H&R Block Saw Free Tax Filing as a Threat — and Gutted It: An internal document and current and former company employees show the companies steered customers away from the government-sponsored free option and made them pay.
(SLProPublica by Justin Elliott and Paul Kiel)
we might’ve been talking about… “arcaders.”
The Origin Of The Term “Gamer” By Kate Willaert [A Critical Hit!] “The term “gamer” predates video games by over six centuries. The first known record of the word was found in the English town of Walsall and dates back to approximately 1422. The town’s Code of Laws, written in Middle English, condemned “any dice-player, carder, tennis player, or other unlawful gamer.” Back then, even tennis and football were considered forms of gambling, and thus were banned on any day but Christmas. And then they banned Christmas. [...] So how did “gamer” come to mean “a player of video games?” Let me tell you a little story. It begins in the world of fanzine fandom…” [YouTube]
*slaps wooden horse* this baby can fit so many ... uh nothing, in it
@melotime: for my own amusement here's a thread of my fave posts from classics tumblr [twitter]
@comradeclodius: I’m gonna do a thread of my favourite Classics tumblr posts [twitter]
achilles: when I die, mingle our ashes together so that we may be together for eternity
historians: f is for friends who do stuff together.
@comradeclodius: I’m gonna do a thread of my favourite Classics tumblr posts [twitter]
vergil can't help sneaking his love for bees into it[more inside]
...and she took a sip of lemonade from her Barbie teacup.
“I had a 16-inch waist and something on top, too, I sure did, but Barbie’s legs were better than mine.” An interview with Carol Spencer, The Chic Octogenarian Behind Barbie's Best Looks [NYT]
We planted the pollen problem
Hit full-force by spring allergies? In many cities, the bias against female trees, which bear potentially messy fruit in summer and fall, has led to exclusively planting male trees — the kind that release pollen. Which makes many people sneeze. A guest blog for Scientific American by horticulturist Thomas Leo Ogren lays out how and why this came to be. [more inside]
And I kept standing 6'1" / instead of 5'2''
The Beatles' Blackbird, sung in the Mi'kmaq language
In recognition of the International Year of Indigenous Languages, Eskasoni First Nation high schooler Emma Stevens sings a lovely cover of the Beatles' Blackbird in Mi'kmaq. Teacher Katani Julian and her father Albert "Golydada" Julian did the translation. There was plenty there to sink her teeth into, she said, noting that lyrics like "Take these broken wings and learn to fly" really resonate with Indigenous experiences in Canada. "The song is just like the type of gentle advice that we get from our elders when we feel defeated and when we feel down," she said. [more inside]
≈
Enter a measurement, and the Measure of Things will return a list of physical approximations and comparisons. For example, 30 feet is half the length of a bowling lane; 4.5 stone is about as heavy as a Dalmatian; 100 hours is about nine-tenths of the voyage of the Titanic; five billion gallons is roughly 500 times the volume of the Capital rotunda. [more inside]
a musically funny point of view
And the answer is no more 2019 than this.
an aquafresh brand-parody tumblr that was posting avengers spoilers was reportedly permabanned for hate speech, but it was actually because the account was tied to a toy story-themed community-led nazi purgeTweets Brian Feldman. For an explanation of this baffling sentence you have to read his Intelligencer post.
Data should be the new blood
But not in a very Gothic way. A Lancet editorial recommends rethinking medical data metaphors and policy. "We propose that health-care data records are digital specimens and should be treated with the same rigour, care, and caution afforded to physical medical specimens." (SLLancet) (via) [more inside]
Public, democratic ownership of the commons
“Attacking gentrification is only the beginning of a socialist response. We need to reorient our perspective to embrace land not as an extractive resource to exploit, but a part of our community to nurture, a neighbor to live with in harmony. A Green New Deal gives us the opportunity to push for democratic control of the land through policies such as land banks, community land trusts, and the restoration of Native stewardship. Before we get to how a GND must confront land-use, let’s talk about the origin of land-use policy in the U.S” It Begins With The Land: Land use has been a tool of oppression, but it can also be a tool of our liberation.
Grab an Orange Julius, and wait for your mom by the Pennys
Mall Music Muzak - Mall Of 1974 "This music was provided on LP's and was played to the general public in shopping malls, supermarkets, clothing stores and just about any other retail related environment. "
It was foul, and I loved it.
Once notorious for her racist and bigoted tweets, Katie McHugh saw the dark insides of the white nationalist movement. A long read from Rosie Gray at Buzzfeed News. [more inside]
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