October 26, 2014
Land of the Frei
In the decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants and, as recently as the 1990s, concealed the government’s ties to some still living in America.US spy agencies employed Nazis of all stripes, including SS officials with the blood of 10s of thousands on their hands, and a man described as Eichmann's mentor. They helped many Nazi war criminals immigrate to America, and protected them from prosecution. Of course they lied to Congress about it. The New York Times's Eric Lichtblau reports. (Lichtblau's reporting partner, James Risen, with whom he shared the Pulitzer Prize, continues to face jail time for refusing to turn over confidential sources to the Obama administration.)
Menagerie Phantasmagoria
Face-ism Exists
Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Your face can visibly answer this question, a Carnegie Mellon University professor argues.
How do astronauts take such great photos? Telescope lens!
Mayberry, Metropolis and Rigel VII
It was called a number of things in its fifty years of existence, but the RKO Forty Acres (which actually measured just over twenty-eight) was above all a prolific movie and television studio located in Culver City, California. It started off as a film studio during the silent era that continued prominent use in sound films including Gone With The Wind, The Magnificent Ambersons and King Kong. Later, it was widely used for television shows like Bonanza, The Adventures of Superman and, most prominently, The Andy Griffith Show. It even got used in a number of classic Star Trek episodes (and be sure to visit this site for some nice screen caps revealing Enterprise crew members walking around Mayberry). The RetroWeb has a very thorough history of the studio, complete with prodigious pictures.
It’s so starving, Aleppo, it’s so exhausted
It sounds like a jet approaching, and all of you, for a matter of instants, stare at one another, your words stifled in your mouths; but it’s only a gate that slides and shuts. A hatchet chopping firewood is a burst from a Kalashnikov; the step of a woman’s heel, a sniper shot. We look normal, in Aleppo. Fear is a cancer that wears us out only from within. [more inside]
Barbie is D'Artagnan. Really.
There had to be a way for humans to coexist with the right whales.
Chasing Bayla
Biologist Michael Moore had waited all day — really, all his life — for the whale to surface, the suffering giant he thought he could save, that science had to save. It had come down to this.
Biologist Michael Moore had waited all day — really, all his life — for the whale to surface, the suffering giant he thought he could save, that science had to save. It had come down to this.
“I wanted this to be the saddest thing I’d ever written,”
Closing a Chapter of a Literary Life [New York Times] Ahead of the American publication of his latest work, “The Book of Strange New Things,” Michel Faber discusses it and why it will be his last novel.
Pretty Persuasion
Michael Stipe of R.E.M. writes about being queer: It’s been 20 years since I announced to the world that I was queer – and that I had found the strength and the voice to say that, and to move forward with my life as a completely out, publicly queer individual.
I CAN TOLERATE ANYTHING EXCEPT THE OUTGROUP
"today we have an almost unprecedented situation...We have a lot of people...boasting of being able to tolerate everyone from every outgroup they can imagine...And we have those same people absolutely ripping into their in-groups---straight, white, male, hetero, cis, American...This is really surprising. It’s a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point...people who conspicuous love their outgroups, the outer the better, and gain status by talking about how terrible their own groups are. What is going on here?" (Slate Star Codex) [more inside]
No wonder it can't be buggered
'Phisiologus dicit quod herinatius figuram habet porcelli lactentis. Hic deforis totus est spinosus. Sed tempore vindemiarum ingreditur in vineam, et ubi viderit uvam bonam, ascendit super vitem et exacinat uvam illam, ita ut cadant omnes racemi in terram. Deinde descendit et volutat se super illos ita ut omnes racemi figantur in spinis eius, et sic portat escam filiis suis.' -- By Obrazki nunu & Discarding Images (previously), based on this medieval bestiary.
Aamir Khan discusses sexuality on Satyamev Jayate
Satyamev Jayate is an award-winning Indian talk show hosted by Aamir Khan. In this episode, he discusses sexuality with members of the LGBTQ community (1:10:39, SLYT, Subtitled).
The Secret Life of Nuns
Alex Mar writes for the Oxford American on spending time in a convent:
I traveled here, arriving just yesterday on an early flight, to answer a question that I’ve had for years: Why would a woman make the very specific choice to marry God? I’m imagining a certain kind of woman—let’s say a woman like myself, in her mid-thirties and smart and not hard-up and with a few options in life. Why would she choose to live with his many brides and very little privacy and pooled resources; to abandon any and all romantic partners, along with the possibility of ever again touching someone else’s naked body; to set aside every personal need and closely held ambition in favor of the needs of others? I wanted to understand who this woman was—call her a nun or a sister or a woman religious—and why I’ve harbored a fantasy about her since I was a young girl.
R.U.R.
Will Killer Robots Destroy Humanity? What The Future Of Robots Reveals About The Human Condition. Peter Thiel says 'Robots Are Our Saviours, Not the Enemy,' via. Brad DeLong reponds with The Rise of the Robots. Don't forget your 'Terrifying Robot Update,' especially when robots grow our food. Or maybe we'll get the Robots of Resistance, with human values.
New World Order: Labor, Capital, and Ideas in the Power Law Economy. AI, Robotics and the Future of Jobs. [more inside]
Once outsold Dickens - now called "the other Dickens"
As the nights are beginning to draw in and Halloween approaches, how about something to make the flesh creep and send a shiver down the spine? Charles Dickens was a master of the macabre, whether it’s in his Christmas ghost stories such as A Christmas Carol, in the chilling Gothic emptiness of Satis House in Great Expectations or the dirty squalor of London in Oliver Twist. But there was another novelist who most people have never heard of, whose books also offered the Victorian reading public a good helping of horror. At the height of his career, he sold more copies of his work than Dickens, who is widely thought to have been the bestselling novelist of the age. This other writer’s name was George W. M. Reynolds, and he has recently been called ‘the other Dickens’. 2014 marks the bicentenary of his birth.
(Tweet & Tell Them To Support 2FA)
twofactorauth.org is a site that catalogs digital services based on whether or not they support two factor authentication.
The Forest Man of India
How one person singlehandedly created a forest, saved an island, and changed the world. [more inside]
One World Trade Center
Tomorrow, One World Trade Center will begin the process of opening its doors for the first time, and sometime next week, the employees of Condé Nast will move in. [more inside]
And then it happens again, when you’re sixty or seventy.
"A child’s body is very easy to live in. An adult body isn’t. The change is hard. And it’s such a tremendous change that it’s no wonder a lot of adolescents don’t know who they are. They look in the mirror — that is me? Who’s me?
And then it happens again, when you’re sixty or seventy."
Ursula K. Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means
And then it happens again, when you’re sixty or seventy."
Ursula K. Le Guin on Aging and What Beauty Really Means
Russian empire changes clocks to Putin Time, expands to 11 time zones
BBC: Russia will turn back its clocks for the last time on Sunday to permanently adopt winter hours. It will also increase its time zones from nine to 11, from the Pacific to the borders of the European Union. For the last three years, Russia experimented with keeping permanent summer time, but it proved to be highly unpopular with many Russians. The Soviet Union introduced Daylight Saving Time in 1981. [more inside]
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