November 20, 2014
Kiwi tastes a golden nugget. It's delicious.
Nuggets, by Andreas Hykade, is a short animated film about addiction. [SLYT]
Punching in a nightmare
Requiem for Rod Serling "In his work, Serling would return often to the hardships of the war-weary, but he reserved some of his most powerful observations for broken-down boxers, particularly those who failed to achieve stardom."
"What I want to talk shit on is the paradigm of the Big Idea."
"I have worked at international development NGOs almost my entire career ... I’ve been frustrated by the same inefficiencies and assumptions of my sector that are now getting picked apart in public. Like the authors, donors, and governments attacking international development, I’m sometimes disillusioned with what my job requires me to do, what it requires that I demand of others. Over the last year, I read every book, essay, and roman à clef about my field I could find. I came out convinced that the problems with international development are real, they are fundamental, and I might, in fact, be one of them. But I also found that it’s too easy to blame the PlayPumps of the world. Donors, governments, the public, the media, aid recipients themselves—they all contribute to the dysfunction. Maybe the problem isn’t that international development doesn’t work. It’s that it can’t."
Always on Twine
Laura Hudson at NYT Magazine offers a great profile of Porpentine, one of the most talented voices working in an ultra-accessible medium for crafting new interactive fiction. She also reviews landmarks in the genre from other authors. What better time to celebrate the profusion of excellent Twine games out there? Links galore inside. [more inside]
Nothing but a Berliner
This post contains nudity.
Photographic history is chock-full of people who were painters before they became photographers, but very few were in women's wear to begin with.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Erwin Blumenfeld produced this premonitory photomontage which in 1943 the US Airforce dropped in their millions over Germany cities.
Possibly his most famous early work is the series Nude under wet veil reflecting Botticelli and Cranach .
From his early Dada and Surrealist photomontages to his later New York fashion shoots, Erwin Blumenfeld insistently parodied objects of desire.
Here is an illustrated lifeline and a brief bio. from weimarart blogspot.
His fashion shots were masterpieces as were some of his nudes.
73 Thumbnails and wiki.
Photographic history is chock-full of people who were painters before they became photographers, but very few were in women's wear to begin with.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Erwin Blumenfeld produced this premonitory photomontage which in 1943 the US Airforce dropped in their millions over Germany cities.
Possibly his most famous early work is the series Nude under wet veil reflecting Botticelli and Cranach .
From his early Dada and Surrealist photomontages to his later New York fashion shoots, Erwin Blumenfeld insistently parodied objects of desire.
Here is an illustrated lifeline and a brief bio. from weimarart blogspot.
His fashion shots were masterpieces as were some of his nudes.
73 Thumbnails and wiki.
Position yourself, whenever possible, at the top of a flight of stairs.
Snip Snip goes the vasectomy
Key and Peele - Aerobics Meltdown
a "disjoined, incoherent stream of historical tidbits."
This would not make Chipotle the first major American chain restaurant to decorate with death iconography from another culture (that distinction may go to P.F. Chang's, with their terracotta soldiers), but I'm of the opinion "death by burrito" should be about portion size, and not about inadvertently invoking the wrath of an ancient deity.So it turns out those "Mayan" glyphs at Chipotle restaurants are indeed of Mayan origin, explains Taylor Jones in Slate. (Via Languagehat)
Ruin Porn Ruins Chernobyl
Photographers prowl the streets of Pripyat . ...at each new location we visited, photographers were picking up dolls and books and clothes, draping them across steel-strung beds or sitting them upright on mantelpieces. However in trying to show the truth, these visitors are slowly destroying it. [more inside]
Charles the Third, by the Grace of God, Defender of the Faith
From Wrestling Legend to Double Amputee, Kamala Keeps Fighting
The name Jim Harris probably doesn't mean much to many pro wrestling fans, however, most would be very familiar with his alter ego, Kamala. Billed as hailing from Uganda, Kamala, who never spoke, was portrayed as a dangerous, cannibalistic savage. After debuting the Kamala gimmick in Memphis in 1982, his career peaked in the mid-80s when he had a main event level feud with the biggest star of the era, Hulk Hogan. Unfortunately, as detailed in this article from the Bleacher Report, the past few years have been challenging for Harris both medically and financially, but he maintains a positive outlook. [more inside]
Fakelore, bowdlerized fairy tales and new American legends
The term "fakelore" has one basic core definition: modern tales that are similar to true folklore, the stories and traditions of a culture or group. But there are a few different takes on what exactly fakelore is, from the anti-alcohol lessons inserted in the modified fairy tales re-written and illustrated by George Cruikshank, which earned Horatian satire from Charles Dickens, to Paul Bunyan (the Red River Lumber Company produced the most well-known material; full scans - but this hasn't kept people from giving him a grave marker) and Pecos Bill (Google books preview), who were created as for marketing purposes or to replicate traditional tall tales, and more recently 'so-called "multicultural folktale" picture books [that] are a popular means for teaching about other cultures, especially in the primary grades.'
VERSION 2.0: “New Testament” expansion pack. Adds Jesus features.
1.6 “Sodom and Gomorrah” N.S.F.W. glitch identified and removed. Bible now free of “Homosexuality” virus. . .
2.7 “Jesus AutoSave” feature. Restores Jesus to previously saved form three days after data loss. . .
6.9 Limited-edition Kanye West Messiah edition available. “Yeezus” features added. . .
"Bible System Updates" by Megan Amram for Shouts & Murmurs (The New Yorker)
2.7 “Jesus AutoSave” feature. Restores Jesus to previously saved form three days after data loss. . .
6.9 Limited-edition Kanye West Messiah edition available. “Yeezus” features added. . .
"Bible System Updates" by Megan Amram for Shouts & Murmurs (The New Yorker)
Yale Wins The Shootout
Goalkeeper Saves Five Penalties - With His Face (SLYT) A soccer match between the Yale Bulldogs and the North Carolina Tar Heels comes down to the most epic penalty kick shootout you'll ever see. A sketch from Studio C.
Stink-eye? Or bored-eye? More like bird-eye: the shoebill's steady gaze
"A few days ago, my son, Lucas, and I took the train to Prague for his school break. Usually, when I visit a city, my first port of call is whatever passes for a botanical garden but when he told me that Prague’s zoo contained not only giant salamanders but also two pairs of shoebills, I could not resist the temptation..." (John Burnside's essay in The New Statesman.) [more inside]
Fashion Victims
The “arsenic” ball gown sits on a headless dressmaker’s form in the basement archives of Toronto’s Bata Shoe Museum as senior curator Elizabeth Semmelhack, wearing cotton conservators’ gloves, expounds upon its vintage (late 1860s), its provenance (Australia), its exquisite construction—and, most relevantly, its ability to kill.[more inside]
Dracula but before and lesbian
With only 4 more episodes before the end of the first season, now is the perfect time to catch up on the web series Carmilla, a modern take on the 1872 Gothic novella that launched a thousand lesbian vampire ships. [more inside]
Horrifying alternate universe what-ifs
In a world which, thankfully, is not the one we live in a goateed version of Randall Munroe also maintains a what-if blog.
To be misunderstood in your own lifetime doesn’t make you a failure
Kickended is an archive of kickstarter projects that got 0 backers over the life of their campaigns. The Grauniad discusses it with the creator, Silvio Lorusso. [more inside]
Ether One
Winter in Vogue
Thirty images of winter, created over the past century by Vogue magazine.
And then the Golden Retriever is like
EAT THIS! SNIFF THAT! SNIFF THOSE TOO! CHEW ALL THESE! SNARF THIS THING IN PARTICULAR! [more inside]
Is that an elephant in your
There are dozens of questions surrounding Magic Leap’s supposedly magical, definitely mysterious, and potentially overhyped creation. Will it be an “eyeglasses-like device,” as The Wall Street Journal has reported, or a pair of contact lenses that project images right on our eyeballs? What’s it for? Does it have practical applications? Or is it all about entertainment? And when will it be available?
Marry someone who will take care of the kids
It’s Not Your Kids Holding Your Career Back. It’s Your Husband. A new study of Harvard Business School graduates found that high-achieving women are not meeting the career goals because they’re allowing their partners’ careers to take precedence over their own. This echos earlier advice by Xerox CEO Ursula Burns to "marry down" someone who will take care of the kids.
So What, Who Cares? Email Newsletter
So What, Who Cares? by Lisa Schmeiser - What is news or pop culture without context? Every day, I'll point out three to five things that you might like to know, explaining why they matter (So what?) and who they affect (Who cares?). Archives here.
A Chat with Dionne Osborne, the Vocal Coach Who Changed Drake's Style
What I found in those recordings was that he has the most comfortable voice. It wasn't showy, and it had a very nice tone: it sounded so conversational. He wasn't singing at you, but singing to you. A lot of singers overdo it, try to bombast you, but Drake doesn't. And the average person can sing Drake's songs, and that's part of what they love.
"Plastics."
Legendary director Mike Nichols, who made an incredible debut nearly fifty years ago with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and then managed to follow that up with The Graduate, has died at the age of 83. Younger audiences may also know him for The Birdcage, the HBO miniseries Angels in America and his last film Charlie Wilson's War.
How To Write A Shitty Young Adult Novel
"Books are dead. It's sad, but it's basically true. Sure, you can eke out a decent living if you dedicate yourself to your craft, spend years researching niche topics, and fleshing out the true human characteristics of your characters–that is, if you're extremely lucky and enormously talented. Or you could write a young adult novel."
DO IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT
A group of YouTube filmmakers got three grandmothers together in Washington State who had never smoked pot before and got them high.
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