September 5, 2014
What it's like when the Family Business is Porn
Sticks! Amazing!
"People thought I was a freak. I kind of liked that"
"Just when it must have felt as if everything was going wrong, not least the relationship with [David] Bailey, which was in freefall, and her career, which had been derailed by severe late-onset acne that left her face swollen, it got worse. She was arrested during a drugs bust for possession of cocaine. Scarred and looking rough, she bore no resemblance to the kind of woman who might find herself on the front cover of Vogue. The police, holding her in custody for the night, refused to believe that she was either a famous model or the daughter of wealthy parents who could easily afford bail. 'In a way, I was stripped of my identity completely,' she says." A rare interview with Penelope Tree from The Observer in 2008. [more inside]
Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids
"Since 2007, Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids has invited brave Canadians to read their childhood and teenage writing… out loud in front of an audience." This summer, CBC recorded and broadcast a 10-date tour. Episodes. Podcast.
[Writing] fiction is much closer to a sort of dreaming
Marilynne Robinson discusses her novels, fiction, and religion at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University in 2009.
Dr. Robinson talks about writing and the Middle West at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Dr. Robinson talks about writing and the Middle West at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Spiderdog, Spiderdog, does whatever Spiderdog does!
Giant spider prank [SLYT]
True Music Facts Wednesday
"I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me."
You're not as busy as you say you are. "According to sociologist John Robinson, or better known as “Father Time” to his colleagues, most people have around 40 hours of free time per week." [more inside]
Cheap Thrills and free music from Klint, Hervé and friends
Looking for some instrumental, funky, downtempo and slightly sinister soundtrack music? Klint, who as worked on soundtracks before, including Snatch, has released his own soundtrack album, Nothing Left Of Us (stream and download for a limited time from Soundcloud). News of this new album comes from Cheap Thrills Music, a label run by Joshua 'Hervé' Harvey. Both Cheap Thrills and Hervé have more tracks and mixes up on Soundcloud, including plenty of streaming sounds a few free downloads from each, though that's more of deep and dirty house, as heard in Hervé's Hate On Me mixtape (stream/dl), and from the "Tear The House Up" from Hervé x Zebra Katz (Official Music Video, NSFW lyrics).
Showdown at Cremation Creek
Via Open Culture, three songs by David Bowie with Klaus Nomi on Saturday Night Live in 1979. [more inside]
NFL Fandom Map
A county-by-county breakdown of NFL fandom across the United States, or: nowhere is home for a Jets fan.
Why Amazon Has No Profits (And Why It Works)
Twenty miles and a world apart
A Duke University summer intern attempts to provide empowerment to migrant farmworkers and their children through the federal Migrant Education Program, and discovers firsthand the many obstacles to that mission.
At the beginning of summer Eric promised his girlfriend Sara he’d come back to Charleston on weekends. He enjoys the first few trips back, hanging out with Sara and enjoying burritos and tequila shots at Juanita Greenberg’s Nacho Royale, a popular hangout near campus. But it doesn’t take long for Eric to notice a surreal disconnect between affluent Charleston and the much larger part of Lowcountry where farmworkers live. “It’s only twenty miles from the center of Charleston to a tomato pickers' camp on Jones Island,” says Eric. “And it’s like nobody in Charleston knows. Or cares.”
He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.
"...To Make Streets Safe, You Must First Make Them Dangerous."
"If you need a sign to tell people to slow down, you designed your street wrong." Going from "Forgiving Highways" to "Self-Explaining Roads": A longitudinal look at the Dutch and American responses to motor vehicle traffic safety. [more inside]
Spaceman, I always wanted you to know...
How do you say controversial in your Terran language?
The top 40 space movies, as decreed by the Telegraph. (Deslided)
"So help me God."
An airman at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada has allegedly been denied the ability to re-enlist after he refused to use the words "so help me God" in his oath. On September 2, the Appignani Humanist Legal Center sent a letter (pdf) on his behalf. Up until last fall, Air Force Instruction 36-2606, which spells out the active duty oath, had a provision where an airman could omit the words, but that was dropped last October.
I might as well call this “Don’t Read This Article”
How to Know When it’s Time to Euthanize Your Dog
The most important thing to be alert for is The Look. It’s capitalized because it is a Real Thing. At some point near the end of its life, your dog will make eye contact with you. There will be something about that particular eye contact that you will recognize when you see it. Your dog will tell you, as clearly as if they had it notarized, that they are ready to go.At Dear Prudence, Pet Euthanasia and Can I Lie About It?
...the subject of euthanizing her has come up at home and briefly in the vet’s office. Is this wrong? And if we decide to go down this path, am I obligated to be honest about why she was put down when relatives and friends ask?
S.C. DMV being sued by gender non-conforming teen
When 16-year-old Chase Culpepper went to a South Carolina DMV to get his driver’s license in March, he was told to remove his makeup before officials would take his photo. (Buzzfeed) [more inside]
Help scientists categorise whale song... also, why do whales sing?
Whale.fm is a project (which you can contribute to!) to help "marine researchers understand what whales are saying." - really it's a project looking at the effects that manmade sound has on marine life, but what whales are communicating with their songs is still a really interesting question, so I've listed some relevant links in extended description. [more inside]
Joseph Scott Morgan
(1)I still remember the first time I smelled brain. It was my grandfather, cracking open the skulls of squirrels he’d killed. They’d scamper down the sides of pecans and live oaks among the Louisiana timbers where I grew up, enter his sights—then, oblivion. (2) At 21, he started sweeping the floors in a morgue in New Orleans’ Jefferson Parish. When he assisted with his first autopsy, his stomach proved as unflinching as his curiosity. In the late 1980s, he became one of the country’s youngest medicolegal death investigators, logging 7,000 autopsies and 3,000 next-of-kin notifications around New Orleans, then Atlanta. (3) Morgan relates gruesome tales of true crime scene experiences while weaving in parallels from his own (often dark) adolescence in Louisiana. After so many years of performing autopsies and doing one of the most horrific and traumatic—and generally unrecognized—jobs, Morgan was diagnosed with severe PTSD and forced into retirement from fieldwork. (Warning: Very disturbing photos in the first and third links. Very detailed talk of murder, suicide, and prostitution)
Gotta get backing, Time
...while [Time Inc.] claims that none of its titles lose money, it has seen earnings fall by nearly 65 percent since 2006. The number of advertising pages in the flagship Time has dwindled by 50 percent over the past five years. Even People is sputtering: Newsstand sales slid 12 percent last year, and the news budget has been cut in half. Layoffs have become an annual rite. In the past four years, Time Inc. has churned through three CEOs and endured nine months during which there was no single executive running the company.New York Magazine on Time Inc., the split from Time Warner, native advertising and the company's attempts at digital media. [more inside]
Here's one Atwood novel you'll never get to read
Atwood has just been named as the first contributor to an astonishing new public artwork. The Future Library project, conceived by the award-winning young Scottish artist Katie Paterson, began, quietly, this summer, with the planting of a forest of 1,000 trees in Nordmarka, just outside Oslo. It will slowly unfold over the next century. Every year until 2114, one writer will be invited to contribute a new text to the collection, and in 2114, the trees will be cut down to provide the paper for the texts to be printed – and, finally, read.Margaret Atwood's next novel won't be published until 2114. (Katie Paterson, the Future Library, Katie Paterson previously))
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