August 18, 2014
Escalating Tensions in Ferguson, Missouri
We are now entering day 10 of protests in Ferguson, MO, protesting the murder of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by local law enforcement officer Darren Wilson on August 9th. [more inside]
Don Pardo, 1918-2014
Don Pardo, announcer for Saturday Night Live, The Price Is Right and Jeopardy!, has died. [more inside]
Spidey Spidey Awesome: The World of Disneycartoys
Somewhere on the internet Barbie, Elsa, and Anna are BFFs. Disneycartoys is a mashup of doll, action figure, and play-doh "unboxing" videos which often break out of the unboxing genre and evolve into full-on crossfic narratives, featuring Barbie, the Disney princesses, and occasionally an effeminate Spiderman.
A look back at the funky, psychedelic, soulful 70s in Nigeria
According to the Daptone Gold compilation liner notes (auto-playing music, click on "Biography"to read the notes), written by Pitchfork contributor Douglas Wolk, "the world capital of soul" has moved from the US ("between Memphis and Detroit, with occasional stopovers in New Orleans, Cincinnati and elsewhere") in the 1960, to Lagos in the 1970s, then it went into hiding, finally reappearing in Brooklyn, with Daptone Records. Let's go back - why Lagos in the 1970s? [more inside]
California Drought Update
All of California remains in drought with over 80% in worst categories of 'extreme' or 'exceptional' drought. Reservoir levels are 50% below average. (previously) [more inside]
A signature song not just for an album, or for a film, but for a career
I Know Times Are Changing: Anil Dash dives deep into Prince's Purple Rain.
Damn video rental outlets and cheese stores selling Argentine parmesan!
Has your neighborhood become 'upscale'? Take a San Francisco gentrification quiz from 1985 and find out. In 1985, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a tongue-in-cheek quiz allowing readers to see if their neighborhood had turned upscale. It's interesting to see how many of these types of business no longer exist (travel agencies!) and to think about what some of the others have morphed into almost three decades later.
Apartment Houses of the Metropolis
Breathtaking Russian dancing - men in uniform
Amazing Russian dancing men in uniform Don't know much about this, but thought you'd like it.
"See you next year at the halloween parade" - Lou Reed's New York at 25
Lou Reed's New York LP hit the quarter-century mark earlier this year. "Meant to be listened to in one 58-minute sitting as though it were a book or a movie," New York couples an unusually accessible rock style with some of most topical lyrics of Lou's career. "Protesting, elegizing, carping, waxing sarcastic, forcing jokes, stating facts, garbling what he just read in the Times, free-associating to doomsday, Lou carries on a New York conversation--all that's missing is a disquisition on real estate." - Robert Christgau
Get caught between the twisted stars, the plotted lines, the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York. [more inside]
Get caught between the twisted stars, the plotted lines, the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York. [more inside]
Oh No Ross and Carrie
Ross and Carrie are "curious investigators who love asking questions about spirituality, fringe science, religion and the paranormal." They investigate by joining religions, attending events, trying out alternative treatments, and just generally participating in anything weird. [more inside]
In the horror community, the guy who gets all the other guys together
Director, writer, and producer Mick Garris releases videos of his interviews with people in the horror and sci-fi entertainment industry at his new website, Mick Garris Interviews. There is also a YouTube channel. An introduction can be found at the about page. According to The Nerdist, interviews will be released at the rate of one per week. Interviews already uploaded: a four-parter with Director John Carpenter (here's Part 1 YT), and one segment with John Badham, director of Dracula (1979) and, incidentally, Saturday Night Fever (1977).
"My heroes have always been pocket cowboys."
You go!
The 2014 Hugo Award Winners were announced at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon3. The Hugo Awards are "the premier awards in the Science Fiction field, given annually for over 50 years in over a dozen categories." [more inside]
A heart rather than a phone call.
A Memoir Is Not a Status Update by Dani Shapiro [The New Yorker] "What would have become of me if I had come of age as a writer during these years of living out loud?"
human connection with & despite algorithmic curation
I quit liking things on Facebook for two weeks. Here's how it changed my view of humanity [more inside]
Streamers in the solar flux
They saw "birds entering the solar flux and igniting, consequently become a streamer," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. BrightSource concentrated solar plant is a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays. Estimates range as high as one streamer every two minutes at a single plant, though this is disputed. A Federal report (PDF) is "occasionally gruesome".
34 Panoramic Shots gone disturbingly wrong, wrong, wrong.
34 Panoramic Shots which illustrate why leaving all the photography decisions to your phone software, is not always the best decision Do not click link if you don't want to see images which simulate bodyhorror. Think videodrome-esque. As per usual YMMV. [more inside]
How to talk Australians
Delhi College of Linguistics presents How to Talk Australians. (YouTube playlist).
I go to the syege.
Speke latyn lyke a scoler!
“I am almoost beshytten”: A 16th Century English to Latin Textbook
Here is a direct link to the start of the phrasebook
“I am almoost beshytten”: A 16th Century English to Latin Textbook
Here is a direct link to the start of the phrasebook
Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself
Your body is home to about 100 trillion bacteria and other microbes, collectively known as your microbiome. Naturalists first became aware of our invisible lodgers in the 1600s, but it wasn’t until the past few years that we’ve become really familiar with them. This recent research has given the microbiome a cuddly kind of fame. We’ve come to appreciate how beneficial our microbes are — breaking down our food, fighting off infections and nurturing our immune system. It’s a lovely, invisible garden we should be tending for our own well-being. But in the journal Bioessays, a team of scientists has raised a creepier possibility. Perhaps our menagerie of germs is also influencing our behavior in order to advance its own evolutionary success — giving us cravings for certain foods, for example.
Maybe the microbiome is our puppet master.[more inside]
Google and CSU team up to advance the state of artificial intelligence
Evolving QWOP gaits is the first work that samples video from the QWOP game to drive the fitness function of a genetic algorithm, which allows a fully autonomous simulated runner to kind of slowly shuffle forward, effectively achieving human-like levels of performance.
occasionally, she wears flannel.
when my boyfriend proposed, I cried — more like panic tears. but I wasn't certain I should end it — until I met her
It was born in the stables. It died in the snow.
The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles Jon Bois (previously) writes what Spencer Hall called "the world's first CFL-seaventure-GIFstory novella" covering Tim Tebow's future as a Toronto Argonaut and a whole lot more.
Run you cowardly Italian!
On 16 April 1746, the Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart fought loyalist troops commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. In 1964, Peter Watkins wrote and produced a docudrama for the BBC, from the perspective of a documentary crew on the ground, depicting the battle and its aftermath: Culloden. [1:12:14]
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