May 20, 2015
The Shape of Inequality
danny devitos smug cat face looking out over everything i do, forever
How long animals live (in ISOTYPE)
the most emotionally affecting music is what was popular when I was 13
Super Micro Paint = Super Macro Fun 🎨
"I made a web toy that simulates a doodling and animation toy from an alternate timeline 1990s. Create 2 color, 32x16 pixel, four frame animations. Then transform your creations into gifs resembling a cheap LCD, an LED matrix, a vacuum fluorescent display, and more." Via MetaFilter Projects. [more inside]
The Empathetic Camera
Frank Norris and the Invention of Film Editing: "At the heart of American author Frank Norris’ gritty turn-of-the-century fiction lies an essential engagement with the everyday shock and violence of modernity. Henry Giardina explores how this focus, combined with his unique approach to storytelling, helped to pave the way for a truly filmic style."
No Longer Wanting to Die
SLNYT - Suicdal treatment-resistant depression vs. DBT One man's experience with dialectical behavior therapy, or DBT.
Previously, and again. [more inside]
English 111 / Comp Lit 115
Experimental Writing Seminar: Constraints & Collaborations. In addition to setting out a few dozen writing exercises, the online syllabus for an introductory course taught by Charles Bernstein (poet and co-editor of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E) links to a variety of poems, poetry generators, and prose experiments on the web. [more inside]
we should do a tumblr side project
MAD MEN INTEGRATED. (Warning: Tumblr, GIFs, digital strategy.)
Breaking Ranks with the Unexamined Silences of Their Parents
"To all these ends, the third- , fourth- , and fifth-graders at Lower were to be divided once a week for five weeks into small groups according to their race. In 45-minute sessions, children would talk about what it was like to be a member of that race; they would discuss what they had in common with each other and how they were different, how other people perceived them, rightly or wrongly, based on appearance. Disinhibited by the company of racially different peers, the children would, the school hoped, feel free to raise questions and make observations that in mixed company might be considered impolite. The bigger goal was to initiate a cultural upheaval, one that would finally give students of color a sense of equal ownership in the community. Once the smaller race groups had broken up, the children would gather in a mixed-race setting to share, and discuss, the insights they had gained."
The story of one private school's attempt to teach children about race and the reactions of the parents and children involved in the pilot year.
The story of one private school's attempt to teach children about race and the reactions of the parents and children involved in the pilot year.
Unplug before sailing.
Elements
It's been a few years, but Neutral has finally released a new escape-the-room game: Elements! [Previously.]
And Yet No Tom Clancy
What do the Dreamweaver Manual, Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, and an academic article on wage inequality in France have in common? They were - amongst many others - on Osama bin Laden's Bookshelf. (hat tip to jessamyn)
A week in Yemen
Sana'a, Green Arabia, Ta'izz: Maciej Cegłowski long in coming three part travelogue about his week in Yemen. [more inside]
A gorgeously tiled and carved Moroccan court, at a reduced scale
Building the Moroccan Court at the Metropolitan Museum of Art [slyt, 17m44s] "In 2011, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, which house the Museum's renowned collection of Islamic art. A vital part of the installation was the Patti Cadby Birch Court, a Moroccan court built by a team of experts—from curators and historians to designers and craftsmen—over many months.... This video documents a marvelous journey from Fez to New York, and the creation of a twenty-first-century court using traditional fifteenth-century methods."
How Much Do Athletes Make?
Salaries, attendance figures, social media footprints, and other data from 17 pro sports leagues worldwide. Ever wondered who earns more, NBA athletes who went to college in Ohio or players in the Scottish Premier League? Or who has a higher payroll, the Minnesota Wild or the Kolkata Knight Riders? Or who has more twitter followers, Aston Villa or the Hiroshima Toyo Carp? Wonder no more.
Bob's Black Powder Notebook
"For almost thirty-five years black powder shooting and the many fascinating activities allied to it have been an important part of my life. Hunting is my primary black powder shooting interest, and most of my activities revolve around that, but historical reenacting, trekking and the study of life in this country in mid-eighteenth century get a fair share of my attention. This page is simply my musings about these interests, my experiences and thoughts about many aspects of the hobby. Because life is more than black powder, a few other topics are included. Hopefully, something here will strike a sympathetic chord with the reader, and add to their enjoyment."
Self-Inflicted Wounds
Several recent developments reveal how political and institutional fragmentation in the United States has produced self-inflicted wounds for the U.S. abroad. In all of these instances, America’s ability to exercise economic power in the world has been deliberately curtailed through decisions made unilaterally in Washington by American political leaders.
Scott's Hirsute Sweaters
I don't know who Scott is but his sweaters are freaking awesome: Thick, Fuzzy & Warm * Pink Unisex * Sweaterdress * Turtlenck Exclusive * Long-Fiber Extra-Fuzzy * Hood * Mittens * Extremely Rare Retro * [who? * via]
Born from a bruise
Myfanwy Collins writes about her fear of dying, cancer scares and a history of cancer in the family. (SLButter)
ARE FEMALES HUMAN?
We Are Always Listening
Eavesdropping on the population has revealed many saying “I’m not doing anything wrong so who cares if the NSA tracks what I say and do?”[more inside]
Citizens don’t seem to mind this monitoring, so we’re hiding recorders in public places in hopes of gathering information to help win the war on terror. We've started with NYC as a pilot program, but hope to roll the initiative out all across The Homeland.
Growing up as a child research subject
If I do something clumsy or awkward, a sort of mental flag pops up in my head, and it bears a chimp’s face. Once someone caught me, at 13, picking my nose in school: was that a lingering habit from my time among the chimps? Our family cats hated me because I could not keep my hands off them; even more than usual for a small child, I always wanted to pick them up. Perhaps furry things seemed more welcoming to me than they did to other children. In my early 20s, I caught myself sitting cross-legged at a desk chair. That’s a regular habit of mine, but on that day I happened to be sitting in a courtroom — as counsel at a defense table. I blamed the chimps then, too. But that’s what I tell myself, of course. I don’t tell others about the chimps much.In "Monkey Day Care," Michelle Dean writes for The Verge about her recollections of being a child participant in primate research, her frustrating attempt to find out more about the study, and about the history of and ethical questions about such research.
You let me down but Chavo never once did.
2 music video takes on the squared circle were (coincidentally) released this week: The Mountain Goats' The Legend of Chavo Guerrero and A Tribe Called Red's Suplex (ft Northern Voice). [more inside]
2 videos from 1 band making electronic music with sampled choral vocals
Do you like electronic music, sacred music, twitchy dancing, bouncing balls, and repeated images? Then you might like the music video for "Three Songs", by Lakker (Directed by Eileen Carpio.)
Do you prefer your electronic music with a lot more distortion and wub, and your videos to have close-ups of heads? Then you might like the video for "Mountain Divide" a bit more.
Do you prefer your electronic music with a lot more distortion and wub, and your videos to have close-ups of heads? Then you might like the video for "Mountain Divide" a bit more.
“Being unseen is devastating, and so is not seeing.”
The Inexplicable by Karl Ove Knausgaard [The New Yorker] Inside the mind of a mass killer.
It was out of this world that the thirty-two-year-old Anders Behring Breivik stepped when, on the afternoon of July 22, 2011, he set out from his mother’s flat in Oslo’s West End, changed into a police uniform, parked a van containing a bomb, which he had spent the spring and summer making, outside Regjeringskvartalet, lit the fuse, and left the scene. While the catastrophic images of the attack, which killed eight people, were being broadcast across the world, Breivik headed to Utøya. That was where the Workers’ Youth League had its annual summer camp. There Breivik shot and killed sixty-nine people, in a massacre that lasted for more than an hour, right until the police arrived, when he immediately surrendered.
Can a single conversation change minds on divisive social issues? No.
A field experiment conducted by UCLA Political Science graduate student Michael LaCour made big news (including a This American Life Episode) when LaCour and Columbia professor Donald Green published their paper in Science about how a 20 minute conversation with gay canvassers change many people's minds and led them to support same-sex marriage. It turns out though, that LaCour made the whole thing up. [more inside]
Decapitated Tombstone \m/
"I would rather see the many other women's stories I haven't seen"
To be honest, I can't think of another Avenger whose story Natasha could have swapped with who wouldn't, in some way, raise questions of whether the story was influenced by gender stereotypes. If she had Tony's story, she'd be the one who messed up and wouldn't listen, who created the need for a rescue. If she had Cap's story, she'd be the one who tries to keep everyone from being vulgar – the behavior cop. If she had the Hulk's story, she'd be the one whose superpower is being carried away by her uncontrollable emotions. If she had Thor's story, she'd be the one who doesn't have very much to do and is omitted from a large stretch of the movie. If she had Hawkeye's story, she'd be the one who just wanted to go home and be with the kids.Any of these things could look like a stereotype. Linda Holmes (who else?) looks at the criticism of Joss Whedon for the background he gave Black Widow in the latest Avengers movie and argues that it's not the specific role Black Widow plays, it's the scarcity of meaningful, different female characters in Hollywood blockbusters that's the problem.
The Great Cocaine Treasure Hunt
He'd heard about this sort of thing down here, even on Culebra—drugs that had been tossed overboard or dropped from a plane, missing their target and washing ashore. It was almost funny. He'd been walking around the island for nine years now, looking for something to smoke, thinking, Okay, God, where's my bale? And here it was, perhaps: forty, fifty, sixty pounds. Think of how long it would last him! Still, it was wrapped so thoroughly in plastic and rubber, he couldn't tell for sure what he was dealing with. Weed, he hoped. But it could be coke, or something else. He wasn't certain it was worth the risk. In an effort to buy more time, he dragged the package up the beach, dug a depression near the rocks, and covered it with leaves and debris.
Leave Us the Counterpoint
"I like my music polyphonic. If you think I meant anything else, you know what I meant." So Lord Peter Wimsey tells Harriet Vane in Dorothy L Sayers's classic novel, Gaudy Night, this year celebrating its 80th birthday. But as Mo Moulton writes in her essay with personal interruptions on The Toast, "Of course he did mean something else, and not only Harriet but the reader understands exactly what: that his ideal relationship, like his ideal music, is produced by the combination of equals rather than the hierarchy of melody and harmony, or man and wife." [more inside]
The Master of the Apocalypse
László Krasznahorkai, the Hungarian author, wins the 2015 Man Booker International Prize. Awarded for his work, including the only recently available in English Satantango, and the The Melancholy of Resistance (1993 Book of the Year in Germany). Master of the long sentence his work has won praise from critics as a writer who is "fascinated by apocalypse, by broken revelations, indecipherable messages" [See New Yorker link above] and has been praised by many writers, including Susan Sontag, who described the apocalyptic vision of his writing as inviting comparisons to Melville and Gogol.
He has collaborated extensively with Hungarian film director and master of the long take, Béla Tarr, including a 7 hour production of Satantango (SLYT) and Tarr's bleak, final work The Turin Horse (SLYT, Hungarian, turn sub-titles if required).
Lovingly and expertly translated into English by British poet and Hungarian-born George Szirtes and more latterly by the Hungarian translator Ottilie Muzlet, Krashnorkai caused something of a literary sensation when he visited New York in 2012.
As usual The Guardian has a useful summary of, and guide to, his work including many useful links. None are better than the author's own website. I would also recommend the interview with him in The White Review to read what the author has to say for himself.
Previous love for Krasznahorkai on Metafilter can be found here and here.
« Previous day | Next day »