September 11, 2013
By VLADIMIR V. PUTIN Published: September 11, 2013
A Plea for Caution From Russia (SLNYT)
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
The Phantom Zone
"In comic books, as in the moving image, the frame is the constituent element of narrative. Each page of a comic book is a frame which itself frames a series of frames, so that by altering each panel's size, bleed or aesthetic variety, time and space can be made elastic. Weisinger and Boring's Phantom Zone took this mechanism further, behaving like a weaponized frame free to roam within the comic book world. Rather than manipulating three-dimensional space or the fourth dimension of time, as the comic book frame does, The Phantom Zone opened out onto the existence of other dimensions. It was a comic book device that bled beyond the edge of the page, out into a world in which comic book narratives were experienced not in isolation, but in parallel with the onscreen narratives of the cinema and the television. As such, the device heralded televisual modes of attention." - Daniel Rourke on Superman's Phantom Zone (well, kinda...)
Because I’m old and lame now
Why Would Anyone Buy a Cassette Tape? "I went back to the merch table to see what was on offer and saw - among other things - a cassette tape. I figured that participating in a weird economic trend would be worth the $5, so I bought it. Needless to say, I don't own anything that could play a cassette tape."
And this is why we torrent
Disney has announced plans to rerelease The Little Mermaid to theaters on September 20. However, the rereleased film has been synced with an iPad app that gives users the ability to play games, sing-a-long to the movie and interact with the characters. While in the movie theatre.
TIFF Short Films
For the duration of the Toronto International Film Festival, TIFF has posted the short films they're screening this year on Youtube. You can watch them all, but if you only watch one, check out Noah, which is not safe for work and which I thought was pretty great.
Letter to Teachers.
A letter from a Sandy Hook Parent. Nelba Marquez-Greene lost her 6 year old daughter, Ana Grace, in the Sandy Hook tragedy. Her son was in another part of the building, heard the shooting, and survived. Nelba composed this letter to this country's teachers.
feeding time
He's got 99 Jobs (but Steve ain't one)
Huge water reserve found underneath Kenya
Scientists have found an underground water reserve in Kenya. So large that it could meet the entire country's water needs for the next 70 years.
Hello World Quiz
The new technology intellectuals
All debates about ideas are shaped by their material conditions...Technology intellectuals work in an attention economy. They succeed if they attract enough attention to themselves and their message that they can make a living from it. It’s not an easy thing to do.
He's not an officer, so I let him open the door, right?
The National Archives' Media Matters blog recently highlighted several newly digitized military etiquette training films from the late 60s and early 70s. These included a series of three films aimed at the difficult intersection of military service and gender dynamics for the members of the Women's Army Corps: The Pleasure of Your Company (background post), Mind Your Military Manners, and Look Like a Winner (background post). Bonus film for the guys: How to Succeed with Brunettes.
Jerry Bruckheimer and the Holy Grail
What if Jerry Bruckheimer had made "Monty Python and the Holy Grail?"
Our movement was built of sex positivity
The 30th annual Dallas Pride parade and festival, which will take place this weekend, has come under some controversy since the organizers announced the need for the event to be family-friendly and said nudity and lewd behavior will no longer be tolerated. [more inside]
Our journey, as is the sea of stars
Get lost in 75 forum pages full of amazing photography taken in China (Central North China chase Star Travels). The itinerary (You can also step through just the images from the itinerary link and avoid the forum posts. First link processed through Google Translate. This is not photography done by tourists. These guys are good.
gary, king of the humans
HTML Giant reviewer AD Jameson reviewed the movie The World's End. He didn't love it at first. Then he thought about it more. Then he thought about it a lot. [Warning, every link in this post contains spoilers] [more inside]
Word Magazine, Back from the Dead
"Sadly, because much of Word was built with old timey web applications that no longer exist, the content here only covers the years 1995-1998. The archive from 1998-2000 is in pretty bad shape, with various broken links and missing images and sounds. Happily, we’re in the process of slowly restoring it." [more inside]
Predatory algorithms & Ultrafast Extreme Events
The Dada Baroness, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874-1927) was born in Germany, moved to the U.S. (and was arrested for wearing men's clothes in 1910) and lived in New York City from 1913-1923. She may have been involved with the submission of Fountain to the 1917 exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists (Previously); she also made an assemblage Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, and the plumbing assemblage God is attributed to her, photographed by 1918 flu epidemic casualty Morton Schamberg. She was known to wear a coal scuttle as a hat, with postage stamps on her cheeks; historians have called her America's first performance artist. In the 1920s she was friends with Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay. Her writing was preserved by Djuna Barnes and was finally published in 2011 by MIT Press as Body Sweats: The Uncensored Writings of Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven edited by her biographer Irene Gammel and Suzanne Zelazo
Project Be
Brandan Odums makes important and beautiful art in the ruins of New Orleans's 9th Ward [more inside]
Good Will Batman
What if Batman was the next Ben Affleck in Good Will Hunting? (slyt,nsfw language)
Juggling + Ceramic Art = Dangerous Games
Jo Kamm is a ceramic artist. He's also a member of the Kansas City Juggling Club. He's found a way to combine his passions.
The Waste Lands
Working conditions inside the mine were appalling. The miners had to crawl around in the hot dark stopes on their knees, bent almost double, working in dreadful conditions gouging out the blue asbestos which was in very thin bands in the hard rock…working conditions in the mill were even more appalling than the mine. Milling was a dry process where the ore was ground down and the fibre then extracted. Conditions were so bad that the men needed flood lights to see through the dust at midday. The men worked in these clouds of asbestos dust for hours on end, when only one minute at such concentrations to blue asbestos fibres would have been enough to cause lung cancer or mesothelioma.
[more inside]
Savor your newspaper. This is what it feels like when it’s gone.
Gabriel Stein reflects on the end of the The Rocky Mountain News, his father's decades-long career there as an editorial cartoonist, and the silver lining he sees in the billionaire acquisitions of The Washington Post and The Boston Globe.
Shrinky Chihuly comes with child-size eyepatch
Elementary school students are using Shrinky Dinks to make beautiful Chihuly-style minisculptures. And so can you! You don't need to buy official Shrinky Dinks - just save your #6 plastic and Chihuly it up.
There is a man wandering around California with three mules.
His name is Mule, and he has been wandering for 29 of his 65 years. He has a website, and a presence on Facebook, but otherwise lives a very simple life, traveling on foot with his three mules, sleeping mostly outside and living hand to mouth. In his effort to make a statement about urban sprawl and our increasing dependence on cars, he often faces harassment from police. If you ever have come across him, it is a sight you will not forget.
NSA Shares US Citizens' Communications with Israel
A new story in The Guardian shows how the NSA routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first filtering it to remove information about US citizens.
The memorandum of understanding (published here in full) shows that the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain the phone calls and emails of US citizens. This goes against earlier Obama administration claims that there were strong safeguards in place to protect Amercans' communications.
Helped making more than just the economy scream
"Kissinger and, to some degree, Bush have been what we call Pinocheted. This is a new verb in the lexicon of the human rights movement since Juan Garcés’s accomplishment in getting Pinochet arrested. They have faced the issue of, when they travel abroad, will they be subpoenaed and questioned for crimes that they supported or participated in or instigated?" -- On the fortieth anniversary of that other 9/11, Democracy Now talks about the role Nixon and Kissinger played in getting the 1973 Pinochet-led coup against the Chilean government off the ground, as part of its larger coverage of the coup and its effects.
Sell Yourself!
Lincoln Logs: Interesting playthings typify the spirit of America
John Lloyd Wright might not have the renown for the architectural creativity of his father, but John found inspiration in his father's work and designed toys that are still being made today. I'm talking about Lincoln Logs. [more inside]
(guitar noise) weeEEE-WEEeeoo (/guitar noise)
The Steve Miller Band had a number 1 song (for one week) in 1974 with The Joker, a terrific song about a picker, a grinner, a lover, and a sinner all rolled into one.
One of the most famous lines in the song deals with The Joker's various nicknames - the Space Cowboy, the Gangster of Love, and Maurice (an odd nickname for sure). The nickname Maurice is allegedly earned due to the singer's tendency to "speak of the pompatus of love." Putting aside why you would call a guy Maurice for that reason - and why the existing alternative nickname The Gangster of Love would not cover it - the lyric raises the question of just what the heck the "pompatus of love" is. (The "pompatus of love" lyric was not limited only to The Joker, it also features in another of Steve Miller Band's oeuvre, Enter Maurice, and it is spoken by Wolfman Jack in The Guess Who's "Clap for the Wolfman"). [more inside]
Dos a Cero
After (intentionally?) missing a last second penalty kick, the US Men's National Team beat Mexico in Columbus by a now famous final score. Following the game, the team watched Honduras hold on for a 2-2 draw against Panama which officially cemented the team's slot in the 2014 World Cup. An unassuming venue [autoplay video], Crew Stadium was the first purpose-built soccer facility in the US, and it has become the preferred location for the US to take on its most-powerful CONCACAF rival.
Like a Prickly, Grouchy, Floating Bath Toy
Baby hedgehog Boat! [slyt | cute]
Japan energy: the sun also rises
Abe's Nuclear Energy Policy and Japan's Future: "Japan has nearly doubled spending on solar power projects to $20 bn and ramped up renewable energy capacity equivalent to six nuclear reactors, pointing the way to a sustainable and cheaper alternative to nuclear energy." [more inside]
Subtract the urban element that created it
All Always Was is a hip hop video by historian himself. You can download his album Earth Beasts Awaken. Its all quite beautiful.
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