November 21, 2014
Exciting New Developments in Slurping and Drooling and Hurrrr
For over sixteen years, the webcomic Jerkcity (previously over twelve years ago, wow) has provided beloved characters and (largely worksafe, except for maybe #191 and #5014 although they lack nudity) vulgarity. But more recently, the Jerkcity experience has been expanded by collaborative fan efforts that have been integrated into the main site (along with other site updates like tags and dialogue transcripts): redrawing project Jerkcity HD (some comics NSFW) and audio dramatization project Jerkcity Hi-Fi (if you're using headphones, you might want to turn them down a little when you listen). Too many details on these and other fan-efforts (and how people can contribute) inside. [more inside]
Sharon Isbin: Classical guitarist extraordinaire
Sharon Isbin is the Founder and Chair of the Guitar program at Julliard; she is widely heralded as one of the best classical guitarists on earth. To get you started, give a listen to the sublime nature of Isbin's gift as she plays the exquisite Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega [more inside]
ಠ_ಠ
DisapprovalLook.com, for all of your look of disapproval needs, plus numerous variations.
When My Mom Was an Astronaut
Jennifer Peepas (aka Captain Awkward) writes about infinite parallel universes from the perspective of an adopted child.
The honest alternative to Kickstarter
Introducing WorkHarder, a “non-funding online platform for creative projects.” From Daily Show producer Jena Friedman, there's now a wonderful solution for all the artists out there who can't find enough friends to give them easy cash. [more inside]
The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.
In space, no-one can hear you click every once in a while
Orbits are hard [SLFridayTimeWaster]
Ursula K. Le Guin on writing and freedom at the National Book Awards
On Wed Nov 19, 2014, in an awards ceremony emceed by Daniel Handler-aka-Lemony Snicket, Ursula K. Le Guin gave "the most ferocious speech ever given at the National Book Awards." Le Guin's acceptance speech for the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters touched on the Amazon vs Hachette throwdown and the practice of art in an age of capitalism. Video. Transcription.
Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.
How To Make Streaming Royalties Fair(er)
Women in Academic Science: A Changing Landscape
A new paper in the journal Psychological Science in the
Public Interest Provides a detailed and comprehensive look at the gender gap between men and women in academic science.
Their (surprisingly optimistic?) conclusion?: Barriers to women’s full participation in mathematically intensive academic science fields are rooted in pre-college factors and the subsequent likelihood of majoring in these fields, and future research should focus on these barriers rather than misdirecting attention toward historical barriers that no longer account for women’s underrepresentation in academic science.
Their (surprisingly optimistic?) conclusion?: Barriers to women’s full participation in mathematically intensive academic science fields are rooted in pre-college factors and the subsequent likelihood of majoring in these fields, and future research should focus on these barriers rather than misdirecting attention toward historical barriers that no longer account for women’s underrepresentation in academic science.
Akai Gurley
Last night, a 28 year old man named Akai Gurley was shot to death in a stairwell by an NYPD officer who was patrolling the Pink Houses in East New York. Gurley and his girlfriend had decided to take the stairs because the elevator was taking too long. Police Commissioner Bratton said today that the victim was “a total innocent” and called the shooting "an unfortunate accident." [more inside]
The Real Lolita
Sally Horner was abducted by Frank La Salle in 1948. In Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Humbert Humbert asks: “Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Lasalle [sic], a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done to eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?” In Hazlitt magazine, Sarah Weinman tells the whole story & explores the similarities between Sally & Dolly. [potential triggers]
You make me days sour and my nights rancid. (SLCH)
The first son is named Royce, the second son is named Preston, the third son is named Lance And Blake (two names for just one son), and the fourth son is the dreaded Laramie. Which one of my toxic sons are you? Take this quiz to find out!
The Illuminati Have A Website
"The Illuminati Organization is an elite collective of political leaders, business owners, entertainment celebrities, and other influential members of this planet. By uniting leaders of the world in an unrestrictive, private domain – free of political, religious, and geological boundaries – our organization helps to further the prosperity of the human species as a whole." The Illuminati sorta previously on Metafilter.
Were the Midterms Actually Bad News for the GOP?
A GOP columnist for the Houston Chronicle argues that the midterms signaled "spectacular, catastrophic failure" for the GOP. The columnist, Chris Ladd, identifies himself as a "GOPLifer." His assertion that the overwhelming Republican win on November 4 continued a very negative long term GOP demographic trend and ongoing failure to establish an appealing political platform has been recently highlighted by Lawrence O'Donnell and Daily Kos.
This spider rollin', they hatin', and tryin' to catch it to host larvae
The (Golden) Wheel spider is a huntsman spider native to the Namib Desert of Southern Africa. Like most other huntsman spiders, Wheel spiders don't spin webs, but build burrows in the sand that are reinforced by their silk, in an attempt to hide from their primary predators, the parasitic Pompilid or Spider Wasp. Enter the gymnastic abilities (and source of the name) for the Wheel spider, where the spider will curl up and roll down slope up to 1 meter per second to escape. But Wheel spider isn't the only huntsman to utilize a unique method to flee down hill. There's also the Moroccan flic-flac spider, named for the flic-flac motion of some gymnastic maneuvers (German video; turn on captions and translation for some assistance; description in English). The movement of this spider have inspired some robot designs (more information). And there are other "wheeling" insects, because it's faster to roll than run downhill. If the documentary footage of the Golden Wheel spider is all too serious, here are some clips of the Wheel spider set to music: let the good times roll, and this spider rollin' they hatin'.
Quite Pretty Until the Shoveling Starts
[Chewie pauses by a pier-glass to slick down his hair]
In 1978, the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back was penned by a writer named Leigh Brackett. She passed away shortly thereafter and the script underwent a number of changes, first by George Lucas, before Lawrence Kasdan developed the final and more well-known screenplay.
Brackett's initial draft is available for download here. The blog at starwarz.com highlights some of the more notable changes, such as Darth Vader not being Luke's father (though Luke's father appears as a character as a ghost Jedi on Dagoba), and a distinct lack of Boba Fett and carbon freezing. (Empire recently on the Blue) [more inside]
'that's when it ... got started: When I began thinking I was special'
Since September 11, 2001, according to the START terrorism database, there have been twenty lethal terrorist attacks in the United States, resulting in the deaths of forty-six people. There have been, at most, a handful of assassinations. According to the FBI, from 2001 to 2011, there have been nearly 250 mass shootings, defined as the death of four or more people. According to USA Today, whose data on mass shootings is considered at least as reliable as the FBI's, there have been 191 mass shootings since 2006, with 34 described as "public" shootings—seemingly random events, stranger to stranger. Nearly a thousand people have died; many more have been wounded. What America feared after the 9/11 attacks—that it would be perpetually attacked by outsiders calling themselves Americans—finally has transpired, only with an awful twist: It is perpetually attacked by Americans who call themselves outsiders.[more inside]
One of the oldest questions we have about ourselves.
Personhood Week: Why We’re So Obsessed with Persons, by Virginia Hughes (@virginiahughes), National Geographic:
"People have been trying to define personhood for a long time, maybe since the beginning of people. The first recorded attempt came from Boethius, a philosopher from 6th-Century Rome, who said a person was 'an individual substance of rational nature.' Fast-forward a thousand years and Locke says it's about rationality, self-awareness, and memory. Kant adds that humans have 'dignity,' an intrinsic ability to freely choose. In 1978, Daniel Dennett says it's intelligence, self-awareness, language, and being 'conscious in some special way' that other animals aren't. The next year Joseph Fletcher lays out 15 criteria (!), including a sense of futurity, concern for others, curiosity, and even IQ."[more inside]
Intersex Awareness
Inter/Act Youth is a group for young people with intersex conditions or disorders of sex development (DSDs) who share their stories with the world. Their parent organization is Advocate for Informed Choice, a legal group that works to stop irreversible "corrective/normalizing surgeries" on infants who cannot consent to the medically unnecessary procedures. [more inside]
They still do not sell t-shirts.
27 years after their recording, Fugazi gives their first set of demos an official release. Alternative Press checks in with an appreciation (with SoundCloud streams of the entire release). The Washington Post recounts the band's early years. [more inside]
Tchotchkes of our inner lives
There is more to passwords than their annoyance. In our authorship of them, in the fact that we construct them so that we (and only we) will remember them, they take on secret lives. Many of our passwords are suffused with pathos, mischief, sometimes even poetry. Often they have rich back stories. A motivational mantra, a swipe at the boss, a hidden shrine to a lost love, an inside joke with ourselves, a defining emotional scar — these keepsake passwords, as I came to call them, are like tchotchkes of our inner lives.
Ian Urbina looks at The Secret Lives of Passwords for the NYT Magazine. (Possible trigger warning - opens with Cantor Fitzgerald looking for passwords the day after 9/11.) [more inside]
How to Endear Yourself to an Asian Woman Writer
Here Be Dragons
People in the US are usually surprised when I say that my Thai mother lives in Ireland. “How did that happen? That’s so strange.” Strange, and their little laugh that accompanies the statement, are code for their assumptions about the education and mobility of this foreign woman of color, who in this case is my mom. She most recently worked for Salesforce, a fast growing tech company headquartered in San Francisco. When she moved to Singapore it was to work for Intel, another large tech company. She is ambitious and accomplished. She defies the stereotypes. My dad runs up against a different stereotype. That he, a white American man, lives in Thailand is not unusual. White American Men have more world-conquering powers according to a general, Western, unexamined assumption of normalcy.
Liberal Dude Erotica
A tale of music and memory unspooled through a schoolgirl's mixtape
Groove Is in the Heart celebrates the ritual of recording a compilation tape in the days before the infinite jukebox of the internet. [5-minute Guardian microplay] [more inside]
Conventionality Belongs to Yesterday
1980 Frankie Valli & The Commodores - Grease - Lots of white pants and rhinestones and people having fun. [more inside]
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