May 5, 2013
The Anarchist Revival
David Graeber’s “The Democracy Project” and the anarchist revival. "Is the current arrangement of our democracy unstable? Should we start thinking about what might come next?"
"Makes you feel kind of desperate, doesn’t it?" *Mblgpf.*
"By the time Cathy began, the sexual revolution had ended, so the strip stands as a perfect artifact of a moment when the cultural understanding of coercion changed completely—a moment when, one could argue, second-wave feminism basically died. With its baby-boomer characters, Cathy dramatizes the aftermath: the ’60s ended when it became clear that a revolutionary movement toward a just society wasn’t happening; the ’70s ended up being about trying to navigate the wreckage of the ’60s. The ’80s were largely about looking for strategies to accept injustice and inequality, and to construe that acceptance itself as a positive value.
"Cathy takes its place in this cultural progression by drilling in the notion that it doesn’t matter what the law says: you are being coerced not by the state but by your desire to be valued."
"Cathy takes its place in this cultural progression by drilling in the notion that it doesn’t matter what the law says: you are being coerced not by the state but by your desire to be valued."
Income Inequality’s Relationship to Violence
People are more likely to kill their fellow citizens as the gap between rich and poor increases. The same is not true of civil war — although you’d think people would be more likely to turn against the state rather than their neighbor as income inequality increased, this isn’t the case.
Corn-fed Congo?
"I've run these operations, and I know that food aid often gets there after everyone's dead." The new proposal to transfer the food aid budget from the Dept of Agriculture to the Agency for International Development causes a ruckus in the U.S. Congress. Why? The new plan also proposes buying some of the food in the affected countries, closer to disaster areas, instead of only buying from American farmers as the current law requires.
The chairman of the U.S. House agriculture subcommittee, Rep. Aderholt (R-Alabama), said he was concerned that removing food aid from the agriculture budget would hurt American farmers (NYT).
Aid Watch bloggers have long criticized U.S. food aid policies for risking millions of lives around the world to keep a few hundred jobs in Kansas. [more inside]
Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity
"One might think that, once we know something is computable, how efficiently it can be computed is a practical question with little further philosophical importance. In this essay, I offer a detailed case that one would be wrong. In particular, I argue that computational complexity theory---the field that studies the resources (such as time, space, and randomness) needed to solve computational problems---leads to new perspectives on the nature of mathematical knowledge, the strong AI debate, computationalism, the problem of logical omniscience, Hume's problem of induction, Goodman's grue riddle, the foundations of quantum mechanics, economic rationality, closed timelike curves, and several other topics of philosophical interest. I end by discussing aspects of complexity theory itself that could benefit from philosophical analysis."
Weird Buzzfeed
Perhaps you've heard of Weird Twitter, the loosely-organized network of Twitter users with origins in Something Awful's FYAD sub-forum.
But have you heard of FeedBuzz, Weird Twitter's take on 'listicle'-hosting sites like BuzzFeed? In the listicle spirit, below are five FeedBuzz articles you won't want to miss. [more inside]
the modern man
"I have no patience for contemporary handlebar mustaches. They anger me. They look indulgent and ridiculous. If you have a handlebar mustache, that is pretty much all you are. You are a delivery system for a handlebar mustache." Marc Maron goes shopping for denim.
youth does not need friends—it needs only crowds
'The Great Gatsby' Still Gets Flappers Wrong “The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn’t need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need friends—it needs only crowds.”
Obitfilter
Did you know you can pay to have the obituary for a non-famous loved one put in the New York Times? The family of Antonia W. "Toni" Larroux of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi did.
via Miss Cellania of Neatorama
"Waffle House lost a loyal customer on April 30, 2013. Antonia W. "Toni" Larroux died after a battle with multiple illnesses: lupus, rickets, scurvy, kidney disease and feline leukemia."The obituary goes on to make fun of four generations of family (from her father to her grandchildren), the Hancock County Library Foundation and the clergyman presiding at her memorial service, closing with the statement that "Anyone wearing black will not be admitted to the memorial."
via Miss Cellania of Neatorama
"Meeting In The Dream World"
Squirrel Sunday
Squirrels in Nova Scotia work harder. Some cute squirrel photos to help you prepare for Monday. [more inside]
Plunderphonics: bettered by the borrower
Composer/ musician/ artist John Oswald coined the term Plunderphonics in the essay "Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative," (previously) which discussed the efforts to create something new by sampling and distorting audio. Even though Oswald coined the term in '85, he has been working in the style since the late 1960s, and many people have joined in. [more inside]
Click
William Prince's short Click is very simple little horror film about a bunch of kids, an abandoned building, and a light switch that you'd better watch before it gets dark. The short was a finalist in Popcorn Horror's Blood Games short film competition. You can view the other five finalists here.
Don't turn your missiles at me, please
sasakure.UK is a Japanese songwriter/artist who often produces songs using Vocaloid, a singing voice synthesizer program (previously on Mefi).
Some examples of his works are below. WARNING: videos may contain high-fructose levels of cuteness, high pitched voices, english subtitles, retro video games, and rather depressing - even triggering - content (such death, suicide). Watch at your own risk.
- *Hello, Planet animated video | original 8-bit version: a last love song featuring a lonely robot on a journey through a post-apocalyptic world.
- NegaPosi*Continues - a girl really, really loves playing video games.
- Twee Box Puppet Show - a retro video game evolves in an unexpected way.
Embroidery That Mummifies Print Journalism
Lauren DiCioccio uses a simple needle and thread on cotton muslin to mummify and honor an endangered artifact– the printed newspaper.
The Hippest Hippie
Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog, the book that changed the world. Stewart Brand was at the heart of 60s counterculture and is now widely revered as the tech visionary whose book anticipated the web. We meet the man for whom big ideas are a way of life
The Old Believers
Alaska is home to two small villages of Russian Orthodox "Old Believers," whose ancestors left the church and their home in Siberia in 1666 in the face of state-issued church reforms. They have traveled more than 20,000 miles over five centuries in the search for the perfect place to protect their traditions from outside influences. Now, assimilation into American culture is slowly overtaking them. (Via) [more inside]
Waiter! Waiter! There's a fly in my soup!
For decades Brown Windsor Soup stood as a culinary allegory for the British empire, and was reputedly a favorite food of Queen Victoria herself. [more inside]
Photography as Technology
The George Eastman House is producing a series of nicely produced videos, each about 10 minutes long, demonstrating every major technological development in photographic process with guidance from historians, curators, and artists and illustrated by objects from their collection. There are more to come, but you can start now with The Dageurrotype, The Collodion Process, The Albumen Print, The Woodburytype, The Platium Print, and The Gelatin Silver Print.
Now the blues pile up on me, I brought it all on myself
Hey y'all! Here's your waaaaay laid back, deeeep Southern blues for the day, and contrary to the title, it's an easy pill to swallow. You dig that? OK, then, there's... [more inside]
“It seems absurd to me that the clip is censored.”
Quebec director Xavier Dolan's music video for "College Boy" (NSFW) by French band Indochine has stirred up some controversy for its gruesome portrayal of bullying.
Mostly Smith and Jones with the occasional Patel
A zoomable map of the most common surnames in Great Britain, based on the electoral rolls.
To eat, or not to eat and maybe pay the gas bill instead
Which? poll says many 'borrowing money for food' - "One in five UK households borrowed money or used savings to cover food costs in April, a Which? survey says.
It suggests the equivalent of five million households used credit cards, overdrafts or savings to buy food." [BBC]
Crowd funding, One Year Later
Welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak.
Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? This week, CNN interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone calls between Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his wife. Clemente stated that the FBI had ways of accessing those calls, and that all calls are recorded. [more inside]
Criticism of Criticism of Criticism
"One can almost hear the anticipatory echoes of something like Yelp in the context of José Ortega y Gasset’s The Revolt of the Masses (1930). The multitude, he wrote, once “scattered about the world in small groups,” now appears “as an agglomeration.” It has “suddenly become visible, installing itself in the preferential positions in society. Before, if it existed, it passed unnoticed, occupying the background of the social stage; now it has advanced to the footlights and is the principal character.” The disgruntled diner, now able to make or break a restaurant through sheer collective will. Against this leveling of critical power, the old guard fulminates. Ruth Reichl, the former editor of Gourmet, recently harrumphed that “anybody who believes Yelp is an idiot. Most people on Yelp have no idea what they’re talking about.”"—Star Wars, by Tom Vanderbilt, in The Wilson Quarterly [more inside]
"I want a bustle so big I eat my Christmas goose on it!"
The Roundabout Theatre Company in New York revived the musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood (also known as just Drood) in 2012.
The costumes got them so excited, that they couldn't resist rapping about the Victorian bustles (NSFW) (wiki, and previously). Includes Chita Rivera briefly krumping (previously).
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