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Reality has a surprising amount of detail
Surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality. You can see this everywhere if you look. For example, you’ve probably had the experience of doing something for the first time, maybe growing vegetables or using a Haskell package for the first time, and being frustrated by how many annoying snags there were. Then you got more practice and then you told yourself ‘man, it was so simple all along, I don’t know why I had so much trouble’. We run into a fundamental property of the universe and mistake it for a personal failing.Blogger John Salvatier talks stair carpentry, boiling water, the difference between invisible and transparent detail, and how paying closer attention to the beguiling complexity of everyday life can help you open your mind and break out of mental ruts and blind spots. [more inside]
Neither of them really need any introduction....
Classicist Mary Beard [Wikipedia] is apparently well known for studying Ancient Rome. Comedian David Mitchell has read a lot about the British monarchy. Between them they can cover Julius Caesar to Elizabeth I, and they sat down together for a conversation for How To Academy in Rulers and Power | Mary Beard and David Mitchell [1h13m].
Russian Disinformation: Anti-Semitism, Hamas, Ukraine, the Border
Disinformation has one goal: To change the perception of reality of every American....[F]ake news ... [is] actually an old term used by the Soviet Union as a reference to disinformation campaigns that the Soviets and now the Russians have long used to destabilize the West.... The Kremlin’s messaging has an extraordinary reach: In the first year of the Ukraine war alone, posts by Kremlin-linked accounts were viewed at least 16 billion times by Westerners."Bots, trolls, targeted ad campaigns, fake news organizations, and doppelganger accounts of real Western politicians and pundits spread stories concocted in Moscow." The purpose of the propaganda is to further Putin's policy goals: to recolonize Ukraine, to destabilize the West and to power the rise of fascist-friendly governments. How does Putin expect to achieve that? Through conventional warfare, indoctrination, and covert anti-semitic and anti-migrant propaganda.[more inside]
Caught 22
Sunday Scaries
How Britain got done by Getting Brexit Done
Four years on from Britain's exit from the EU, how's it going? Swimmingly, say its supporters, who argue that we should stop blaming Brexit for our economic ills. Most people in the UK have more of a sinking feeling about it, but the prospects for repairing or reversing the damage are unclear. [more inside]
Voyager 1 sends readable message to Earth
After 4 nail-biting months of gibberish, Voyager 1 is making sense again. Since November 2023, the almost-50-year-old spacecraft has been experiencing trouble with its onboard computers. Although Voyager 1, one of NASA's longest-lived space missions, has been sending a steady radio signal to Earth, it hasn't contained any usable data. Now, there may be hope for recovery.
Building an ancient robot from scratch with handtools
"Revisiting Greek Automata: Clockwork Robots from the Ancient World" is a video from @fraserbuilds, in which John Fraser makes one of 1st century Greco-Roman engineer Hero of Alexandria's self-driving cars self-propelled automata, with some help from a hand made blow-torch powered by olive oil and pit fired pottery.
Baleen whale fossil dated to 19 million years
Whale fossil in river sheds light on how pre-historic beasts morphed into today's giants of the sea.
A fossil from the distant past is rewriting the narrative of how, when, and where baleen whales — such as the blue whale — became some of the largest animals to have ever lived on the planet.
Out Of Thin Air
"Enjoy an evening of tap dancing and jazz music celebrating the art of improvisation. Watch as dancers and musicians improvise together and pull rhythm and melody “Out of Thin Air.” [56m] The program will feature Colburn School's talented faculty and musicians as well as an array of guest artists including tap legends Sam Weber and Josette Wiggan."
Glassdoor will add your info to older accounts if they can
As seen on perennial MetaFilter favourite Ask A Manager, one user shares their experience having an old Glassdoor account linked to their name due to an email. [more inside]
Fran Lebowitz interview in Sydney Australia...witty and erudite as usual
Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart
Free Mixed Media Art Supplies Compatibility Chart by Artist, Designer and Educator Nela Dunato:
"Behold: the most detailed free art mediums compatibility reference! The chart shows how different art mediums interact together and whether they can be safely layered on top of each other."[more inside]
Phreaking the memory care unit
Everyone has an anecdote about García Márquez
I decided, last year, to turn on my recorder again and ask about these past ten years since Gabo died. As I’ve continued to follow his story, Gabo, always a prankster, continues to surprise. from Ten Years without Gabriel García Márquez: An Oral History [The Paris Review; ungated]
Their Toeses Are Roses
Trevor Tordjman & Jordan Clark get drawn into the greatness of Moses Supposes [via TMN] [more inside]
"A strange Thing written upon a Glass Window in Queen Elizabeth's Time"
Madeleine Pelling (The Telegraph, 3/17/2024), "Seriously scandalous and surprisingly sexy: how the Georgians redefined graffiti" -- archived: "In October 1731, ... 'Hurlothrumbo' set out into the freezing streets of London. Armed only with a pencil and paper, he was on a most peculiar hunt. His quarry? The graffiti that lined the city's many surfaces, left behind by its inhabitants." The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany, part 1 and 2, 3, & 4. The play Hurlothrumbo. Pelling on women archaeologists in the 1780s via the Open Digital Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies. Pelling's Writing on the Wall, reviewed (archived) and at Goodreads / StoryGraph. Pelling's podcast, most recently discussing St Patrick.
The Gender Refugees
In a shocking twist, it wasn't aliens
AARO Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with UAP, Volume I, February 2024 (PDF): AARO assesses that the inaccurate claim that the USG is reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology and is hiding it from Congress is, in large part, the result of circular reporting from a group of individuals who believe this to be the case, despite the lack of any evidence. AARO notes that although claims that the USG has recovered and hidden spacecraft date back to the 1940s and 1950s, more modern instances of these claims largely stem from a consistent group of individuals who have been involved in various UAP-related endeavors since at least 2009.
Stand In Pride
"A while ago my wife introduced me to Stand In Pride, where queer people can find stand-in family members for support and indeed often for big life events — when their biological families don’t show up. And so it came to pass that a couple of weeks ago I had the singular honour of walking Taylor down the aisle to marry Ruth. Family is what you make it. Love endures." (via @chrisphin on Mastodon, with their permission and featuring lovely pictures of the wedding.) [more inside]