July 29, 2014
Feminism, stereotypes, and Nicki Minaj's album cover (NSFW)
Nicki Minaj (autoplaying video) is a singer, rapper, songwriter and actress who is known for her outlandish outfits, makeup, and wigs, and gutsy, lyrically skilled rapping. She creates personas or "masks" in her music and videos to communicate her message. Recently, she released an album cover online to promote her new release, Anaconda, and to create buzz. Boy did it. (All links NSFW.) [more inside]
The poem that defined a town
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death! [more inside]
It isn’t fit for humans now,
There isn’t grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death! [more inside]
How the World Looks to Your Hubcap
“brighter than a thousand suns"
What happens if you get hit by the main beam of a particle accelerator like the LHC?.
"Well, fortunately (unfortunately?) we don’t have to guess, as this exact scenario actually happened to Anatoli Bugorski, a Russian scientist, way back in 1978."
Cat countries, dog countries
Where cats are more popular than dogs in the U.S.—and all over the world. We all know there are only two types of people in the world: cat people and dog people. But data from market research firm Euromonitor suggest that these differences extend beyond individual preferences and to the realm of geopolitics: it turns out there are cat countries and dog countries, too.
A Walk on the Wild Side
Will Self and Robert Macfarlane Walk Wild Britain
We met on the sea wall beneath the lowering weirdness of Bawdsey Manor and bonded over the bizarre extent of its rock garden: how had it come to be there? Xenoliths – Robert said – that was the technical term for rocks brought from another place. He was indeed handsome, fit and disarmingly charming; and as we loped on along the shingle crunching and chatting it became abundantly clear that our problem that day was not going to be an awkward silence. There are two main types of walk so far as I’m concerned – and I expect Robert would agree: the determining factor is not a walk’s length, whether up hill or down dale, if it is sleeting or shining, but only accompanied/unaccompanied.[more inside]
No lump of clay needed.
“If you lose sight of your keys for the better part of 20 seconds, you should consider them lost,” says Jos Weyers, a Dutch lockpicking guru and security consultant. “If you find them later, consider them a souvenir.” The App I Used to Break Into My Neighbor’s Home
The achievement that couldn't be unlocked
Christine Love prankishly included an achievement in her visual novel Hate Plus that could not possibly be achieved. But gamers have refused to take no for an answer.
Im kiddinf lol
Creepy texts get even creepier when they're read out loud. Creepy Text Theater
[NSFW SLYT]
Dinnertime cosplay
Multiple websites are out there to help you dine like an anime character. Typically, they consist of anime screencaps plus either adapted or invented recipes that attempt to replicate the dishes. Okonomiyaki, dainty strawberry cakes, gyoza, Ponyo's ramen, coffee jelly, you name it!
There's the earnest Real Anime Food. Then there's the sillier Recipes for Weebs, which has functional indices. Anime Recipes hasn't updated in a year, but it has a long list of recipes, including the fish pie from Kiki's Delivery Service. [more inside]
Incredible truths and barely credible lies
"Welcome to The Unbelievable Truth, the panel game show about incredible truths and barely credible lies. I am your host, David Mitchell. The rules are as follows: each panelist will present a short lecture that should be entirely false save for five pieces of true information which they should attempt to smuggle past their opponents – cunningly concealed amongst the lies. Points are scored by truths that go unnoticed while other panelists can win a point if they spot a truth or lose points if they mistake a lie for a truth."Having recently concluded its 13th series, the show has amassed 81 episodes. For your listening pleasure: [more inside]
This Book
"Back in May 2014, the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction launched the #ThisBook campaign. The aim was simple: to find out which books, written by women, have had the biggest impact on readers." The results were announced today. Check out the final Top 20, agree or disagree on Twitter, or discuss your personal lesser-known favourites on the Guardian's Books Blog.
the purity myth
Living Books About Life
"... a series of curated, open access books about life — with life understood both philosophically and biologically — which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences." Although they offer "frozen PDFs," these books—on topics like biosemiotics, animal experience, and air—are curated collections of links to open access science articles, reviews, interviews, podcasts, sometimes with embedded sounds and videos. They have ISBN numbers and editors vetted by the Open Humanities Press, which is generally a gold mine of interesting books and journals. They feel perfectly at home on the open internet, evoking hope and nostalgia for a flourishing academic world wide web, without paywalls and login screens. [more inside]
The Beauty of Iran
23-year-old Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji takes some amazing photographs and 360° shots of Iran's historical sites. [more inside]
Navicular! Strobilaceous! Pandurate! Botryoidal!
Whether your object's shaped like a ship, a pine cone, a violin, or a bunch of grapes, this handy cheat sheet from Barbara Ann Kipfer's Flip Dictionary will tell you the suitable Latinate adjective. [more inside]
The New Face of Hunger
“This is not your grandmother’s hunger,” says Janet Poppendieck, a sociologist at the City University of New York. “Today more working people and their families are hungry because wages have declined.”
Imogene Coca : Sid Caesar :: Ginger Rogers : Fred Astaire
Imogene Coca was the hilarious counterpart to Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows, the ground-breaking 1950s sketch comedy show. (Here they are in the classic Auto Smashup.) She won an Emmy and a Peabody for her work on the show, had a long career in television, and later made an impact as Aunt Edna in National Lampoon's Vacation, as Ms. Dipesto's mother in Moonlighting, and on the stage. [more inside]
Her Noise - The Making Of (2007)
Her Noise - The Making Of (2007) - running time ~60 minutes. The video documents the development of Her Noise between 2001 and 2005 and features interviews with artists including Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether, Peaches, Marina Rosenfeld, Kembra Pfhaler, Chicks On Speed, Else Marie Pade, Kaffe Matthews, Emma Hedditch, Christina Kubisch and the show's curators, Lina Dzuverovic and Anne Hilde Neset. The documentary also features excerpts from live performances held during Her Noise by Kim Gordon, Jutta Koether and Jenny Hoyston (Erase Errata), Christina Carter, Heather Leigh Murray, Ana Da Silva (The Raincoats), Spider And The Webs, Partyline, Marina Rosenfeld's 'Emotional Orchestra' at Tate Modern, and footage compiled for the 'Men in Experimental Music' video made during the development of the Her Noise project by the curators and Kim Gordon, featuring Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke. [more inside]
For a foot stompin' Tuesday
Lizzie Miles (1895-1963) was a blues singer from New Orleans. (Her music was recently featured during the closing credits of Blue Jasmine.) Less well-known are her two half-siblings, blues singer Edna Hicks (1895-1925), and jazz trumpeter and vocalist Herb Morand (1905-1952). [more inside]
Sponge cake for everyone!
I Accidentally Started a Wikipedia Hoax: A stoned college prank involving the history of the children's book series Amelia Bedelia takes on a life of its own.
Ebola reaches Nigeria's largest city
A man has died in Lagos of Ebola virus. What's worrying is how he got there - by plane, with 100 other people. [more inside]
The Tough Realities Behind Vinyl's Comeback
If we’re talking about vinyl in 2014, we have to talk about Jack White. In April, rock‘n’roll’s self-appointed analog evangelist celebrated Record Store Day by teaming up with United Record Pressing in Nashville to put out the “World’s Fastest Released Record.” At 10 a.m., White and his band recorded a live version of his new album Lazaretto’s title track at his own Third Man studios, then drove the masters to United, where it went immediately onto a 7” press, before ending up in fans’ hands at the Third Man store. From start to finish, the process took 3 hours, 55 minutes, and 21 seconds.
Staying dry in the one of the wettest cities in North America.
"One of us has to go back. Would you go back?"
As North Vietnamese forces marched towards Saigon in 1975, Citibank employee John Riordan (Warning: Autoplaying video) was ordered by Citibank to burn everything important and evacuate. In Hong Kong, he and his manager discussed the situation of their Vietnamese coworkers, who were in grave danger because they had worked for an American company. [more inside]
Mother Fair Trade
Drinking a mug of fair trade coffee? Give thanks to the memory of Edna Ruth Byler, mother of the fair trade movement in the U.S. [more inside]
“Norm is a setting on a dryer, and reality is a mass hunch."
As part of their State of Sex issue, Dazed and Confused magazine presents an oral history of the trans magazine Original Plumbing [previously]. Amos Mac, co-founder and editor, asks five people in NYC who identify on the trans spectrum what being "trans in America" at this moment in time means to them. Dating columnist Arisce Wanzer discusses the challenges of dating as a transwoman of color (nsfw). Legendary NYC drag den mother Flawless Sabrina talks the ethics of identity politics and her mentorship of gay and transgender youth. [more inside]
After the App Goldrush
The app market is becoming a mature, developed industry, with vastly increased commoditization compared to its early days. Competition is ubiquitous, relentless, and often shameless, even in categories that were previously under-the-radar niches. Standing out requires more effort than ever, yet profits are harder to come by than ever. Full-time iOS indie developers — people who make the majority of their income from sales of their apps, rather than consulting or other related work — are increasingly rare.App Rot: Marco Arment (creator of Instapaper and early Tumblr CTO) wonders if the heyday for app makers is over even when Apple and Google have paid out a combined $15B to developers in the last 12 months.
A good guy with a gun
In 1963, Robert Dowlut was convicted of shooting two people: a shopkeeper during a robbery, and then his girlfriend's mother later the same night. Six years later, he was released from prison by a ruling from the Indiana State Supreme Court, due to a flawed police investigation. Today, Dowlut is the general counsel of the National Rifle Association. As the NRA's top lawyer, he has been a key architect of the gun lobby's campaign to define the legal interpretation of the Second Amendment.
The NRA's Murder Mystery: a great longread from Mother Jones.
The NRA's Murder Mystery: a great longread from Mother Jones.
Prepare for a significant decline in gang activity.
Yeah, that's right.
The location of the photograph used on the Boards of Canada - Music Has The Right To Children album cover has been found. See it on Google Maps.
"If you care about WisCon, rebuild it."
Last year at WisCon 37, I told a Safety staffer that I had been treated by another attendee in a way that made me uncomfortable and that I believed to be sexual harassment. One big reason I did was that I understood from another source that he had reportedly harassed at least one other person at a convention. I learned that she didn’t report him formally, for a lot of reasons that aren’t mine to say. I was in a position where I felt confident I could take the hit from standing up and telling the truth. So I did.Elise Matthesen talks about what happened after she reported being harassed at Wiscon 37, in a post also posted at C. Lundoff, Mary Robinette Kowal, Stephanie Zvan, Sigrid Ellis and John Scalzi's respective blogs. [more inside]
I didn’t expect, fourteen months later, to have to stand up and tell the truth about WisCon’s leadership as well.
‘Put anything you want in me’ said Space to Time, ‘and you'll see.’
Leo Vroman, a Dutch scientist, artist and poet who lived in the US for many years, died in February of this year. Elsevier Connect did a great article back in 2012. It's rare that we see people who are great poets as well as passionate scientists. Leo Vroman was both; he needed more than just one outlet for an exceedingly curious and creative mind.
His was an extraordinary life; he was a survivor of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, who managed to be reunited with his fiancée Tineke after the war. They married and remained together until his last day. [more inside]
From Above
How the US Stumbled into the Drone Era [WSJ] As ubiquitous as Predators, Reapers, Global Hawks and their ilk may now seem, the U.S. actually stumbled into the drone era. Washington got into the business of using drones for counterterrorism well before 9/11—not out of any steely strategic design or master plan but out of bureaucratic frustration, bickering and a series of only half-intentional decisions.
Virginia is for Lovers
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the decision overturning Virginia's ban on Same sex marriage:
"We recognize that same-sex marriage makes some people deeply uncomfortable. However, inertia and apprehension are not legitimate bases for denying same-sex couples due process and equal protection of the laws. Civil marriage is one of the cornerstones of our way of life. It allows individuals to celebrate and publicly declare their intentions to form lifelong partnerships, which provide unparalleled intimacy, companionship, emotional support, and security. The choice of whether and whom to marry is an intensely personal decision that alters the course of an individual’s life. Denying same-sex couples this choice prohibits them from participating fully in our society, which is precisely the type of segregation that the Fourteenth Amendment cannot countenance."[more inside]
Even The Stars
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