March 2, 2015
West African Zaouli dance and trance music mashup
Zaouli dance from the Ivory Coast and Captain Hook & Astrix - Bungee Jump mashup is the latest vid for the Burning Mountain Festival held in the Engadin Valley, Switzerland. Zaouli, a popular mask dance, was created in the fifties. The Gouro ethnic group is the midwestern part of Ivory Coast / Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa. According to what people say, there are diverse legends regarding the origin of the Zaouli mask and dance; yet, all come to the agreement that such legends were inspired by a very beautiful girl - 'Dzela Lou Zaouli' - daughter of Zaouli."
Here they come just in time
In 1992, three little cartoon girls that had previously only been sketches were turned into a short animated film called Whoopass Stew! by Craig McCracken. It was picked up for a series by Cartoon Network in 1993, but the short didn't get much attention. The Powerpuff Girls series eventually debuted in 1998, and ran until 2005. And they're coming back in 2016. [more inside]
All Other Food Stands Are Terrible
Grab Them By The Eyes is a new Flash strategy game about advertising. By Terry Cavanagh of VVVVVV fame.
How period trackers presume/impose heterosexuality, fertility, feminity
Maggie Delano discusses the crushing assumption of heterosexual fertility planning written into the very code of period tracking apps. A participant in the Quantified Self movement (described here by the wonderful Whitney Erin Boesel), Delano articulates for us the often-hidden, unique needs of women who are infertile or partnered with women, trans men and those not sexually active. I felt keenly her frustration at the way period trackers can never be 'neutral' or customisable outside of certain prescribed limitations, which have nothing to do with usability and everything to do with cultural expectations.
If you’ve never needed the welfare system, consider yourself lucky
"Play is all about fun; what’s there to study?"
The Unlikely Life of Afghanistan's First Female Taxi Driver
"The Unlikely Life of Afghanistan's First Female Taxi Driver" profiles Sara Bayahi, believed to currently be Afghanistan's only female taxi driver. That may not be the case for long, though, as she is teaching other women to drive in defiance of cultural taboos.
“We aren’t judged by the worst mistake we ever make."
The country’s largest state university system says it doesn’t discriminate against former prison inmates. Applicants say otherwise. [more inside]
Please wear 25-D glasses
Join Mr. Piggy on an adventure through time and space in the short, animated film Mr. Piggy Dies in 25 Dimensions. [SLV NSFW]
Accuracy in reporting
38 / 50
In Nebraska, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon has struck down the state's anti-SSM laws as unconstitutional. He has issued an injunction allowing the state until March 9th to appeal.
The Death of a Missouri Politician
Tom Schweich, Missouri's state auditor and a candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary, died in an apparent suicide on Feb. 26. [more inside]
A Ranking of 1980s Fantasy That Would Please Crom Himself!
I have travelled back to that time to bring forth the Ultimate 1980s Fantasy Epic Ranking List Post! Single Link Tor Blog Post offering many further links, nostalgic euphoria and the inevitable objection to individual rankings.
You don’t need to be persuaded / You are being annotated.
Earlier this month, ...[(Rap) Genius] (previously)... quietly introduced what could become its most significant feature—the ability to annotate any page on the web. Currently in beta testing, the new functionality lets users add genius.com/ to the beginning of any URL to access a version of the page on Genius. The page is fully annotatable, so users can highlight and annotate any text on the page and view others’ annotations. The only public announcement of this feature so far is a mysterious, meme-bending billboard on Canal St. in NYC.
Those Who Wrote in Small Letters
For much of the tenth century, the Qarmatians enjoyed supreme power in northeastern Arabia, exacting tribute even from the caliphs in Baghdad and Cairo. They were an esoteric Isma'ili Shi'ite sect from the oases of the desert fringe and the islands of the Persian Gulf, where they built themselves an egalitarian utopia—"probably the only communist society to control a large territory, and to endure for more than a generation, before the twentieth century." Utopia, however, depended on the agricultural labor of thirty thousand Ethiopian slaves and the proceeds from constant raiding and pillaging. In 930, the Qarmatians stormed Mecca, killed thousands of pilgrims at the foot of the Kaaba, and removed the Black Stone to Bahrayn. A year later, they identified the Mahdi, their prophesied redeemer, in the form of a young Persian prisoner. They believed that once he assumed control of the Qarmatian state, he would lead them to even greater triumphs... [more inside]
KVLY-TV
If I asked you where the tallest structure in the Western hemisphere was located, would you say North Dakota? [more inside]
This is Criminal
Criminal is a podcast with "Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. The show’s producers [Phoebe Judge, Eric Mennel, and Lauren Spohr] are full-time radio people, but Criminal is what we do when we go home at night." Part of the Radiotopia collective, Criminal delivers fascination and intrigue in every episode.
Oddly soothing shapes and colors in motion
Fewer Women Run Big Companies Than Men Named John
Fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John, a sure indicator that the glass ceiling remains firmly in place in corporate America. Among chief executives of S&P 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James. We’re calling this ratio the Glass Ceiling Index. (SLNYT, inspired by a 2-page PDF report from Ernst & Young which computed analogous numbers for board directors.)
[more inside]
First-ever snapshot of the dual nature of light
Scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have captured "The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave" (images of the photo and the microscope in right hand column) using "EPFL’s ultrafast energy-filtered transmission electron microscope – one of the two in the world." The EPFL's explanatory video: Two-in-one photography: Light as wave and particle. Reference: Simultaneous observation of the quantization and the interference pattern of a plasmonic near-field. Nature Communications.
Rousey Demolishes Zingano - Is Cyborg Next?
Cat Zingano is one of the greatest mixed martial arts fighters in the world. She was the first woman in UFC history to win a fight by technical knockout, the first woman in UFC history to win Fight of the Night (awarded to both participants in the most impressive bout on a card) and was 9-0 in her professional career, with only one of those fights going the full five minutes (she won by unanimous decision).
It took Ronda Rousey 14 seconds to beat her in the headliner match of UFC 184. [more inside]
Sadness is a legitimate emotion.
Pre-therapy, this is the only thing I was ever taught, implicitly and explicitly, about sadness: It is bad.Journalist and author Mac McClelland explores the relationship between recovering from PTSD and learning how to live in the presence of sadness: How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad. [more inside]
You do not want it. If you've got it, you should definitely try to get rid of it, fast as possible. Whatever you do, don't subject other people to it, because they do not like that.
Sadness can be legitimately problematic, absolutely. If your sadness comes from seemingly no place or even an obvious place but keeps you from participating in life or enjoying anything and refuses to abate no matter how long you go on letting it express itself, you of course can't keep living like that. But culturally, we aren't allowed to be sad even for a little while. Even when it's perfectly sensible. Even when, sometimes, we need it.
Isaiah 2:3-4
Introducing Wunderland Kalker: Come for the nuclear breeding facility, stay for the locomotive themed roller coaster and
flying elephant.
The Color of Pomegranates, rescored by Nicolas Jaar and Juno Reactor
When Martin Scorsese introduced his Film Foundation’s newly restored version of The Colour of Pomegranates at the Toronto film festival in September he told the expectant audience they were going to witness images and visions “pretty much unlike anything in cinema history”.For a taste of what has been restored, you can watch the entire unremastered film in two parts on YouTube, and the whole film in lower quality on Archive.org. For another novel experience, you can view a much higher quality of the film with a new score by Nicolas Jaar, and see a lower quality version with the new score by Ben Watkins AKA Juno Reactor, as commissioned by the Bialystok Film Festival in Poland last year. Juno Reactor had previously used visuals from Pomegranates for the video of "God is God." [more inside]
The 1969 Armenian film, voted 84th best of all-time in the most recent Sight & Sound magazine greatest movies poll, only gained a belated official release in western cinemas in 1982, but even the cinephiles and critics who have lauded the film with such extravagant praise since should now prepare to see Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece afresh.
This story is about the guards.
My Fellow Prisoners by Mikhail Khodorkovsky [New York Review of Books]
I’m writing these notes because I want people who care about these things to know what I have personally experienced in prison. Over time I’ve turned from an ordinary victim into an interested observer, and I’ve discovered that for many people the prison world remains terra incognita. And yet in our country one in every hundred people is currently in prison; one in ten (maybe by now one in seven) of the male population passes through prison at some point in their lives. Moreover, prison has a terrible effect on the majority of both prisoners and guards. It’s not yet clear, in fact, which group is affected more. Society has to do something about this human tragedy. And for a start people need to know about it.
It's Not Crazy, It's Sports
It's Errol Morris Week at Grantland. Six short documentaries created by Academy Award winning filmmaker Errol Morris (previously) will be rolled out this week. The first, entitled The Subterranean Stadium, about a league of electric football players, was posted today.
The man with the golden arm
At age 14, James Harrison had major surgery and required 3.4 gallons of donated blood. As soon as he turned 18, he began donating blood himself, and it was discovered that his blood contained an antibody that, when given to Rh- mothers of Rh+ babies, prevents Rhesus disease. [more inside]
Either I'm a sexual deviant, or they're wrong
Did Amazon Sink the Queen of Online Erotica? - Phoebe Reilly, Vulture
"Engler is an underappreciated pioneer, a self-proclaimed feminist in furry-cat slippers. To put her crowning achievement demurely, she challenged the book-publishing industry's denial of women's appetite for sexually explicit books. She wrote tawdry, lowbrow novels, and published hundreds of others, that freed romance from its lame euphemisms well before Fifty Shades of Grey, and she did so in a digital format long before the Kindle and the iPad allowed e-books to flourish.
"To put it less demurely: There were readers out there, lots of them, who didn't want to read about thick manroots. They wanted hard cocks. So that's what Ellora's Cave gave them. Easily and often."
"Thank you. Goodbye."
"Thank you. Goodbye." Director Vania Heymann (previously, also of Interactive Bob Dylan Video fame) has set his sights on Israel's upcoming elections, and leant his considerable cinematic talents to a local change campaign. The result is a compelling minute-long commercial highlighting the power of voting. (SLYT)
A lie spread by turkeys who don't want to be stuffed
Perhaps no other classical composer was as obsessed with good food and wine as Gioachino Rossini, who claimed he would only visit America if his close friend, legendary chef Antonin Carême, accompanied him. Because of his culinary devotion, many dishes are named "alla Rossini." One of the most decadent is Tournedos Rossini, a heart-stopping combination of beef filet, fois gras, butter, black truffle, and Madeira. In honor of Signor Crescendo's birthday on February 29, here is a recipe for that infamous dish. And while it’s cooking, how about some bel canto? [more inside]
"In Chinese, mei-mei means sister."
Best friends forever: Separated in China, 2 girls reunite in U.S.
Mae and Mai spent the first years of their lives in the same orphanage in southern China, before they were adopted by families on opposite coasts of the United States. They were inseparable in China. As close as sisters. They ate together and played together, and even after they were moved to separate foster families in the same town, they went to school together and often shared meals at one girl’s home. Adoption may have saved their lives, but they both lost someone they loved.
This week, four years after the best friends were split up, the girls reunited in Oakland, where they’re receiving treatment for the same genetic blood disease at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.
The Mass Murderer on Your $20
He was the worst kind of populist, and believed in a shortsighted, cheap, selfish populism. The kind of populist who sneers at wussy bleeding-heart Americans like Ralph Waldo Emerson and their moralizing against Indian removal when there’s cheap land to be had. The kind who rages at the expertise of elitist eggheads like Nicholas Biddle and Henry Clay putting regulations in the way of easy profits. The kind who’s absolutely OK with Southern postmasters ripping up abolitionist pamphlets in the mail.If the Reagan people want to put Ronald Reagan on the $20 bill and boot Andrew Jackson off, I’m all for it.
« Previous day | Next day »