October 10, 2015
A Brief Look at 12 of Microgenres, from associated artists
The Fader recently collected insights from artists associated with 12 microgenres of the past 15 years, from electroclash to vaporwave, but they left out sound samples. That's remedied, below the break. [more inside]
Pretty floating spheres of water
RED 4K Video of Colorful Liquid in Space. "Once again, astronauts on the International Space Station dissolved an effervescent tablet in a floating ball of water, and captured images using a camera capable of recording four times the resolution of normal high-definition cameras. The higher resolution images and higher frame rate videos can reveal more information when used on science investigations, giving researchers a valuable new tool aboard the space station. This footage is one of the first of its kind. The cameras are being evaluated for capturing science data and vehicle operations by engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama." [Via]
"Sometimes you open up the barrel and it's empty. Heartbreak city."
With friends like these
Governor General's Literary Awards
The finalists for Canada's Governor General's Literary Awards have been announced. Winners to be announced Oct. 28. Categories, as usual, are fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction, children's literature (text and illustrated), and translation.
Lou Reed was a monster
“A cowboy needs a horse, a fireman needs a dalmatian.”
“Every cliché was born for a reason. But why does a cop need a doughnut?” Cara Giaimo, in Atlas Obscura: The Long, Sweet Love Affair Between Cops and Doughnuts.
Do you know what a Hobart is?
Hobart® Mixer - Learn The Basics About Hobart Mixers | Making maple icing for donuts using a Hobart H-600 T commercial mixer | A200 Hobart Service | An upstart: Ferneto Planetary Mixer
The time when Chrysler built a car that featured a turbine engine.
In the early sixties, Chrysler built a concept car that included a turbine engine in a body built by Ghia. They provided the cars to families for extended test drives. The Olson family loved theirs. [more inside]
What's it like to be an animal?
The Speed of Animals. If you're six feet tall, 10 miles per hour probably doesn't feel very fast. But what if you were just six inches tall, like a squirrel? It would feel quite a bit faster. This site shows the actual speeds of animals and how fast they would be going if they were your size.
Heart Moving Phone
SHARP and Tomotaka Takahashi have announced a new phone, a cute robot that interacts with you. (via)
Lee Moses, soul man of mystery
If you love grit in your R&B and funk in your guitar, you might love the deep, deep soul of singer/guitarist Lee Moses. (Wikipedia) Born in Atlanta, Moses worked with producer Johnny Brantley, recording only a handful of singles in the late 60s and one album, Time and Place, in 1971. A remastered anthology of his work was released in 2007 under the same title. [more inside]
Your Network at Play
The Washington Post has a puzzle to see how well you understand social networks. The day’s political issue: whether baseball caps are fashionable. More explanation and the solution below the jump. [more inside]
Shade Court Is Adjourned
Last October, the Mostly Honorable Judge Kara Brown of Jezebel took up her gavel to make very official rulings on whether the concept of "shade" is being overused in the media. Last Friday, Judge Brown retired Shade Court, saying "I feel that I’ve done all I can for these people." [more inside]
A gene for gay?
A controversial talk by Tuck Ngun at the ongoing American Society of Human Genetics 2015 meeting in Baltimore presented evidence of epigenetic mechanisms associated with homosexuality in discordant male twins (i.e., one gay, the other straight). The conference organizers and news outlets quickly trumpeted that scientists had discovered epigenetic markers capable of predicting the sexual orientation of a male; however, the reaction of scientists at the meeting was less enthusiastic. Ed Yong at the Atlantic wrote a particularly thorough takedown. Criticisms centered around the small sample size (37 pairs of twins), the fact that the samples were taken from saliva (whereas you'd expect epigenetic variants influencing sexuality to occur in the brain), and the fact that the predictive model they developed was not terribly predictive (67% accuracy). [more inside]
In Battlestar Galactica, fracking causes pregnancy.
Premature birth and problem pregnancies near fracking wells A new study in the US's 'fracking capital' Pennsylvania has found that pregnant women who live near gas fracking wells are far more likely to give birth prematurely or develop problems during their pregnancies. [more inside]
Reddit, Florence 1400
A year ago, someone took a well-composed photo of a fight in Ukranian Parliament. This prompted the creation of a small subreddit that finds photos (many soccer-related), that look like they're from the Renaissance - r/AccidentalRenaissance. Here are a few post samples: Pence & Morse * Ukraine * The Orchestration of Heisenberg * Maldini * The Accused, Etc.
"Hope is the enemy."
"Caring for a patient suffering from dementia means coming to terms with the frustrating paradoxes of memory and language." A thoughtful, philosophical first-person essay. [more inside]
Sketches Tolkien Used to Build Middle-Earth
"HOW DID J.R.R. Tolkien create The Lord of the Rings? The simple answer is that he wrote it. He sat down in a chair in 1937 and spent more than a dozen years working on what remains a masterwork of fantasy literature and a genius stroke of immersive worldbuilding.
The more complicated answer is that in addition to writing the story, he drew it. The many maps and sketches he made while drafting The Lord of the Rings informed his storytelling, allowing him to test narrative ideas and illustrate scenes he needed to capture in words. For Tolkien, the art of writing and the art of drawing were inextricably intertwined." [more inside]
Photographs of Bangladesh
The state of mental health in Bangladesh - a photo essay. Other photos from Bangladesh by Allison Joyce.
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