May 31, 2016
🎼♭ There's plenty of room in the blue, ♪ for your shop and for you ... ♬
Who was Ivor Cutler? A Glaswegian transplant living in London, creating surreal and playful music and poetry, sometimes accompanying himself on harmonium, from 1959 until his death in 2006. [BBC obit | Guardian obit | Telegraph obit ] By then, he'd also appeared on the John Peel Show more times than any other artist (not counting The Fall). [ A piece on him from the BBC's "In Search of the Great English Eccentric" | BBC piece and a Guardian piece on a biopic play about Ivor's life and times, The Beautiful Cosmos of Ivor Cutler • National Theatre of Scotland's website for the play ]
Disgruntled
Huhhhrh! [ponk] [doont] [ponk] [doont] Huhhhrh! [ponk] [doont] [ponk] [doont]
Huhhhrh! [ponk] [doont] HRARGLBL [ponk] [doont]
Huhhhrh?
the best-educated low-wage workers in America
For the past month Gawker has been sharing true stories from behind the front lines of adjunct-dom: The Educated Underclass. [more inside]
"Something seems different, Herb." "Besides us being left out?" "Yeah."
Captain Disillusion (previously) has himself become disillusioned with his own show's format. Fortunately, a mentor from another era has returned to give him guidance.
Why do dancers marry welders?
This interactive chart of who marries whom may be a horrible example of data visualization, but it contains fascinating information about marriages by occupation for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. For example, actuaries mostly marry database administrators, though male actuaries in same-sex marriages prefer fitness instructors and female actuaries in same-sex marriages go for carpenters. High-earning women (doctors, lawyers) tend to pair up with their economic equals, and the most common marriage is between grade school teachers. Hints on how to read the chart inside, as you explore the more interesting parings (for example, proofreaders tend to marry optometrists) [more inside]
The Pizzle
No word on whether she heard the voice of Johnny Cash
“...in which he repeatedly referred to the penis area as “down there.”
The Many Ways The Media Gets Around Saying [Groin] By Kyle Wagner [FiveThirtyEight] It’s the oldest laugh in sports: Some poor schmoe takes a sports ball to the crotch, keels over and, once we’re reasonably sure no lasting damage has been done, the TV announcers deadpan some dad jokes while the camera pans around to giggling teammates. It’s as much a familiar sports yuk as other not-all-that-uncommon oddities, like a field player on the mound or the fat guy touchdown, only with funnier GIFs. At least, that’s how things work when the hit comes in a relatively low-stakes setting. But what happens when the stakes are raised? And just as important, when reporters are forced to write about sportsmen kicking each other in the nuts, what do they write? This week has provided some answers.
Wacky Town Names
America's a big country. From the easternmost reaches of Maine to the western Alaska islands in the Bering Sea, these United States include towns with every imaginable name. We've collected some of the more surprising examples. Because it's the last day of May and we wanna keep MeFi weird. Add your own examples, let's go wild!
Our goal is to change the way readers think about the history of movies
In order to expand the discussion of black cinema beyond #OscarsSoWhite, Slate put together a panel of cinema experts and historians to create The Black Film Canon - fifty important films by black directors, showcasing the black cinematic voice spanning over half a century. (SLSlate)
The Fire Next Time
Business of Disaster: Insurance firms profited 400 million after Sandy. An investigative report from Frontline and NPR. [more inside]
I thought being a grown up would be different
"My other fruit bowl has a teapot in it." "Fruit, in my fruit bowl? Are you mad?" Readers share pictures of their fruit bowls with the Standard Issue
“I’m weirder now than I’ve ever been.”
Diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at age 46 in 1988, social worker, artist, dancer, marathoner and activist Patricia Lay-Dorsey has documented much of her journey. [more inside]
Presence
Using photogrammetry, Claire Hentschker has extracted the physical space of Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining' from the first 30 minutes of the film and reassembled it in VR along the original camera path. [more inside]
Morph Club
The Morph Club Podcast - Two comix illustrator friends revisit Katherine Applegate's popular 1990's YA book series Animorphs! Join them as they laugh and cry about sad morphing teens and the horrible aliens who hate them. [more inside]
War of the Hashtaggers
How Toronto's craziest Twitter war ended up in court (slTorontoLife)
Gender Pay Gap Among Doctors
A new survey released by Medscape (owned by WebMD) shows that female doctors are paid significantly less than male doctors. Some of this may be due to specialty choice, but not all; the pay gap is $33,000 even among primary care physicians. A 2012 study also found that, among a study group of highly ambitious physician-researchers, women MDs make $12,000 less than men, after controlling for myriad factors other than gender (full paper).
Oh, no, it's distinctive; as a matter of fact I wish I had one!
Goiter-Ridden Creche Figures — Disease-ridden pilgrims bring a whole new level of realism to the manger scene. [more inside]
Things he learnt
A bookstore filled with mirrors
In Hangzhou, China, a new bookstore designed by XL-Muse contains mirrored ceilings as well unique designs around mirrors that provide amazing illusions, as well as a very unique "book playground".
Typhoons! Hurricanes! Earthquakes! SMOG!
"Many of the people involved in the Washington National Opera’s production of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle say their first exposure to opera came from the same source—Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoons." [SLWSJ]
“They were two close friends, sitting alone together.”
Google's 2016 Food Trends Report
Google has crunched the data on all those food-related searches you made and released a 75-page report, Food Trends 2016 [pdf]. Spoiler: bacon isn't going anywhere.
"incredibly unethical and creepy"
Me and Magdalena
Me and Magdalena is the latest single by the Monkees. This is the first single from the Monkees' 12th album, 'Good Times!', written by Ben Gibbard from 'Death Cab For Cutie'. [more inside]
Combat Juggling. No, really.
Dan Lewis's Now I Know newsletter brings us the story of Combat Juggling, and I bring it to you just because it's weird.
“Let me tell you about this business. Every truck has a bat inside.”
“You will never see a Mister Softee truck in Midtown,” he continued. “If you do, there will be problems, and you won’t see him there very long.” [SLNYT]
SAVE JEANIE
"Jeanie is actually 100 percent correct in her assessment that Ferris has been cut way too many breaks in life and should be held to a higher standard. In Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, she’s not just a petty, jealous sibling, she’s a female voice of reason raging against a society that demeans her and disregards her opinions." - On the 30th anniversary of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a reflection on the overlooked Jeanie Bueller.
Shocking!
Lightning strikes at 7000 frames per second. [SLYT]
Citizen Khan
Who'd have thought the invigorating face-slapper could be misused?
Inventions of Mine That Have Been Misused for Evil Purposes by veteran silly-person Jack Handey from The New Yorker's Shouts and Murmurs department
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