June 29, 2014
'Whoa… big brain huh… cool!'"
Lovatt reasoned that if she could live with a dolphin around the clock, nurturing its interest in making human-like sounds, like a mother teaching a child to speak, they'd have more success. - stories from the NASA- funded project to teach Dolphins to talk using LSD (among other methods. )
Beware of Wildlife: Use at Own Risk
“Pawzing Workout, Resuming Workout” [YouTube] – A black bear encounter while running in Matcheetawin Trails, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.
Defending the indefensible
Lawyers who represented Ted Bundy, Jon Venables, Charles Manson and Charles Ng discuss what its like to represent them.
Reviving Lushootseed
Zalmai Zahir (ʔǝswǝli) talks about learning Lushootseed, the native language of Puget sound, and it's history: Quoting the Ancestors [more inside]
Blackwater threatened to kill State Department investigator
Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007 (Previously on Metafilter), the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq”. Embassy officials ordered the investigators to leave Iraq immediately, and no charges were ever pressed. [more inside]
Precarity
Bounce Below
A Giant Network of Trampolines Suspended in an Abandoned Welsh Slate Mine Open to the public July 4th, 2014
Elephant Bath
A mahout is the person charged with looking after an elephant, a relationship that lasts for the duration of both their lives. As part of his responsibilities, the mahout regularly bathes the elephant in his charge, massaging its thick hide with the husks of coconuts.
No Need to Choose: History from Above, History from Below
Where does the new interest in the “history of capitalism” come from? I’d suggest the following rudiments of an answer. The financial crisis of 2008-09 has clearly placed certain issues of historicization on the agenda. If the accelerated and seemingly unstoppable drive for the “flattening” of the world through a process of neoliberal globalization since the early 1990s has not actually brought us to a permanently unfolding and self-reproducing neoliberal present, but has rather encountered severe structural problems, then how do we historicize this current time? That is, how do we understand the contemporary crisis of capitalism, in all its political and social ramifications, in relation to longer-run processes of capitalist restructuring and their logics of development and difficulty; and how do we locate the history of the present inside a larger-scale framework of periods and conjunctures? [more inside]
The walking dead of Silicon Valley
But what about those tech entrepreneurs who lose – and keep on losing? What about those who start one company after another, refine pitches, tweak products, pivot strategies, reinvent themselves … and never succeed? What about the angst masked behind upbeat facades?
The Apollo 11 flight plan
Presented for your enjoyment and perusal: the Apollo 11 Flight Plan, and other fun reading material. [more inside]
Surviving History: The Fever!
The year is 1793. In this story, you will take the role of a fictional physician, Dr. John Brooks, as he navigates a disaster of a kind not altogether uncommon in U.S. cities before the 20th century... How Dr. Brooks fares will depend entirely on your decisions. Every choice has a consequence. Choose wisely. [more inside]
Nature's Dying Migrant Worker
One-third of the food on our plate now relies on just one pollinator — the honeybee. And it’s dying. The land of milk and honey is fast becoming a land without wildflowers, thanks to insecticides called neonicotinoids. "In the past decade, in most states and especially in the Midwest, the amount of honey produced by each hive has crashed. That’s clear evidence that bees are seriously impaired, said Susan Kegley, a pesticide researcher in Berkeley, Calif., who works with beekeepers. In Minnesota, for example, production per hive has plummeted by one-third in the past decade."
The Hairpin on YouTube Beauty Vloggers
"why Frozen left me cold"
The problem with false feminism: "My friends have asked for it and I feel like the internet needs it, so I’m going to go through, point-by-point and in no particular order, the top handful of reasons people have given for thinking Frozen is a feminist triumph, and I’m going to debunk them all." [more inside]
Metallica play Worthy Farm
This weekend is the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts for 2014. Amongst a diverse range of musical and artistic acts the Saturday headline, a surprising choice to many, was Metallica. They came, they wandered around a bit beforehand, they did their greatest hits, they were LOUD. [more inside]
Moa's Ark
A disturbance of the life-bearing wind that supports the mind
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