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comment posted at 9:48 PM on May-11-22

Laurie Anderson’s debut album Big Science was released 40 years ago this week. “The album is an immense structure, generously democratic, as approachable as it is enigmatic – and it sparks at the very least curiosity among anyone who crosses its path for the first time.” “To listen to the songs of Big Science is to feel something of this state of perpetual transience, as if it is not quite the same album you listened to 10 years ago, nor even this morning.” Laurie Anderson talks Big Science and her creative process with Studs Terkel.
comment posted at 1:27 PM on Apr-21-22

An experiment in a public reading endeavor of Chinese classic 紅樓夢 "Dream of the Red Chamber" where scholars, readers, and translators participate using the hashtag #ReadingtheStone, from Duke professor Eileen Chengyin Chow inspired by a previous public reading experiment on reading War & Peace online during the early days of the pandemic with author YiYun Li with the hashtag #TolstoyTogether.
comment posted at 8:09 PM on Apr-16-22
comment posted at 2:35 PM on Apr-17-22

Ed Park (Village Voice), "The Family Plot": "[I]f it is your husband who lies within, you might understandably refer to the chest, four decades hence, as 'that thing.'" JaHyun Kim Haboush's introduction [PDF] to her translation of The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong provides context for a "tragic episode" in a "literary masterpiece and an invaluable historical document"--one adapted numerous times, e.g. in the 2015 film The Throne (winner of many awards and selected for Oscar consideration; currently available in the US on Tubi [ad supported]). Yang Hi Choe-Wall's thesis Hanjungnok: Memoirs of an Yi Dynasty Court Lady translates relevant memoirs of Lady Hyegyeong: in chapter 1, much of the memoir of 1795, and in chapters 2 and 3, the memoir of 1805. Also, from a few years later, the royal manuscript Gisa jinpyori jinchan uigwe depicts ceremonial details, flower arrangements, etc. for an occasion honoring Lady Hyegyeong (more info).
comment posted at 6:12 PM on Mar-5-22

the saddest are these: "It Might Have Been." In an emotional excerpt from her MasterClass on resilience, Hillary Clinton reads parts of the victory speech she hoped to deliver in 2016. "In this lesson, I’m going to face one of my most public defeats head-on by sharing with you the speech I had hoped to deliver if I had won the 2016 election," Clinton says.
comment posted at 8:37 PM on Dec-9-21

Tennis star Peng Shuai has not made a public appearance since she accused Zhang Gaoli, a former Chinese vice premier, of sexual assault, sparking off discussions of #MeToo allegations. While the post was removed within minutes, the attention surrounding her has only grown as her silence has gained international attention. A statement and a few photos posted to social media supposedly by Peng Shuai by an employee of Chinese state media was unconvincing to an international audience. High-profile tennis players such as Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka, and Novak Djokovic are calling for proof of her uncoerced safety. In an unprecedented statement, the WTA CEO Steve Simon has publicly declared that he is willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business in China if Peng is not fully accounted for and her allegations are not properly investigated.
comment posted at 5:09 PM on Nov-20-21
comment posted at 4:32 PM on Nov-21-21
comment posted at 9:29 AM on Nov-22-21

This ode to the husk (Twitter thread) will take you back to a simpler time. The 90s - when young and old alike venerated the husk.
comment posted at 1:42 PM on Jul-20-21

Shakespeare in the Park: Much Ado About Nothing... is streaming live for free until early September courtesy of PBS. The play was performed live in Central Park last year. You can tell it's something special when it begins with the actors mashing together Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" with the "Star Spangled Banner". The play features "Danielle Brooks (“Orange is the New Black,” Broadway’s “The Color Purple”) and Grantham Coleman (“Buzzer,” “The Americans”) as the sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick. Tony Award winner Kenny Leon (“American Son,” “A Raisin in the Sun”) directs with choreography by Tony Award nominee Camille A. Brown (“Choir Boy”)."
comment posted at 9:11 AM on Aug-12-20

Calvin and Hobbes and quarantine [Polygon] “Calvin was looking for a way out. He was trying to escape. He didn’t like school, so he fled it as Spaceman Spiff. Bathtime, a nightmare for small children, saw Calvin turning into a tub shark or being attacked by a bubble-bath elemental. He escaped the corporeal form of a kid’s (arguably limited) body with the Transmogrifier, and most importantly of all, escaped loneliness by befriending a stuffed tiger who Calvin knew was actually real. A tiger who listened to him, who challenged him, and who ultimately loved him. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? Calvin went to school, had a loving family, but even still, he felt alone. And his imagination gave him a way not to feel that anymore.”
comment posted at 3:27 PM on May-13-20

Haetal the cat renounced from the world
full of cat snacks and became Buddhist saint.
The cat doesn't even crave for fish lol
comment posted at 6:05 PM on Jan-30-20

So, Gutenberg Didn’t Actually Invent the Printing Press -- On the Unsung Chinese and Korean History of Movable Type
comment posted at 1:08 PM on Jul-12-19

The decentralised web, or DWeb, could be a chance to take control of our data back from the big tech firms. ...a group of 800 web builders and others – among them Tim Berners-Lee, who created the world wide web – were meeting in San Francisco to discuss a grand idea to circumvent internet gatekeepers like Google and Facebook. The event they had gathered for was the Decentralised Web Summit, held from 31 July to 2 August, and hosted by the Internet Archive. The proponents of the so-called decentralised web – or DWeb – want a new, better web where the entire planet’s population can communicate without having to rely on big companies that amass our data for profit and make it easier for governments to conduct surveillance.
comment posted at 6:01 PM on Sep-12-18

In 1978 Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry established the encoding that would later be known as JIS X 0208, which still serves as an important reference for all Japanese encodings. However, after the JIS standard was released people noticed something strange - several of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters (幽霊文字).
comment posted at 1:47 AM on Jul-30-18

Someone once said that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. "But really, once you start looking, economics is everywhere in science fiction": an extensive interview with the editor of SF magazine Vector all about money, markets, crypto, Le Guin, Doctorow, scarcity and postscarcity, supply and demand, AI economic planning, digital platforms and national deficits, and what the hell economics actually even is.
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Jul-4-18

Missing Jon Stewart. Trevor Noah is smooth and charming, but he hasn’t found his edge.
comment posted at 9:22 AM on Feb-7-16

Behold Cyriak's (previously) new video for Meow the Jewels (previously) : "Meowpurrdy feat. Lil Bub, Maceo, Delonte".
comment posted at 3:25 PM on Jan-26-16

One Country, Two Systems? Although none of the booksellers have disclosed their locations, a few have been in sporadic contact with family members to communicate, in opaque terms, that they are “assisting in an investigation.” On the phone with his wife, Sophie Choi, earlier last week, Lee conveyed that he was calling from Shenzhen, specifying that he, too, was voluntarily helping with a case but, strangely, spoke in Mandarin, the standard mainland dialect, rather than his native Cantonese.
comment posted at 11:30 PM on Jan-9-16
comment posted at 4:23 AM on Jan-10-16
comment posted at 7:02 AM on Jan-10-16
comment posted at 10:07 AM on Jan-10-16

"In an age when the line between childhood and adulthood is blurrier than ever, what is it that makes people grown up?"
comment posted at 12:59 AM on Jan-7-16

Given that it's no longer widely taught in even the most prestigious high schools in the US and UK, and given the current economic climate, Why should Millennials Study the Classics?
comment posted at 6:23 PM on Jan-5-16

China's network infrastructure has been attacking open source hosting site GitHub for three days and counting. A primary source of the DDoS traffic was discovered by Insight Labs; Javascript injected into pages at Baidu. Baidu, one of the largest Chinese web properties, denies being involved. Chinese government officials have recently expressed a desire for new ways to censor the Internet. Experts speculate that the Javascript was injected by the Chinese network infrastructure, perhaps in retaliation for GitHub hosting the firewall circumvention projects GreatFire and cn-nytimes. GitHub has said little about the nature of the attack; its status pages document the ongoing, largely successful efforts to defend their business.
comment posted at 9:24 AM on Mar-29-15
comment posted at 10:38 AM on Mar-29-15
comment posted at 11:46 AM on Mar-29-15
comment posted at 11:53 AM on Mar-29-15
comment posted at 8:43 PM on Mar-29-15

But how does one reincarnate music that no human voice has uttered for millennia? Conner says a key step was to really understand the language. She carefully studied historical analysis of the stresses and intonations of Babylonian and Sumerian for hints as to how it may have sounded, and researched how language is converted into music in similar Semitic languages.

The Lyre Ensemble—singer and composer Stef Conner, ancient-lyre-builder and lyrist Andy Lowings, and engineer and harpist Mark Harmer—breathe life into ancient Babylonian and Sumerian literature and poetry.
comment posted at 4:56 AM on Jan-7-15

If your choice of hard drive is affecting the sound of your music, perhaps you can fix it up with an ambient field conditioner.
comment posted at 8:16 PM on Jan-3-15

China seeks to export its vision of the Internet. The Internet should be “free and open, with rules to follow and always following the rule of law,” Lu Wei said, in somewhat contradictory fashion, at the November conference. Asked whether he would consider allowing Facebook in, he was more direct: “I can choose who will be a guest in my home.” He wants others to assert the same power.
comment posted at 10:22 PM on Jan-2-15

What goes on in the brains of simultaneous interpreters. Miles told me about an agricultural meeting at which delegates discussed frozen bull’s semen; a French interpreter translated this as “matelot congelés”, or ‘deep-frozen sailors’. (via)
comment posted at 4:00 PM on Nov-24-14

As Western universities drag their feet, the future of China’s soft power push might be in the developing world. Confucius Institutes have been under close scrutiny recently, as many academics argue the Chinese government-funded institutes wind up restricting academic freedom at their host universities. In July, the American Association of University Professors published a report blasting the Confucius Institute model as a partnership “that sacrificed the integrity of the [host] university and its academic staff.” The AAUP recommended shutting down U.S. Confucius Institutes unless they could meet certain standards of academic freedom and transparency.
comment posted at 5:35 PM on Sep-30-14

“Those who are awake live in a state of constant amazement.”-Fake Buddha Quotes is your one-stop shopping for all quotes misattributed to The Buddha.
comment posted at 1:22 PM on Jul-7-14

The Light-Blue Puppy is a visually extraordinary India Ink-animated Soviet musical children's cartoon made in 1976, only recently translated into English. It tells the tale of a small, sad puppy who has been rejected by his peers for his unusual color, but nevertheless manages to find his way in the world (with some help from a few other colorful characters, of course). On its surface it appears to be a cute, cleverly-animated story with a simple message of tolerance.
comment posted at 1:34 PM on Jul-7-14

Zoo Animals and Their Discontents [New York Times]
comment posted at 9:18 PM on Jul-4-14

A Pallas's Cat investigates a camera! Previously
comment posted at 11:26 PM on Jun-28-14

Flann O'Brien: The Lives of Brian [VIMEO]: A documentary about Flann O'Brien aka Brian O'Nolan.
comment posted at 10:31 AM on Jun-13-14

WWDC is almost upon us, and with it comes the live-streaming keynote, delivered at 10am PST, in which Apple traditionally announces new software (and sometimes something else to boot). Rumors of an iWatch abound, but just as intriguing is the popularly-believed notion that Apple will be introducing a new design to OS X which matches last year's iOS 7, breaking clean of the Aqua interface which has defined the Mac since January 2000. Rumors abound.
comment posted at 12:30 PM on Jun-1-14

26 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico and 2,150 feet underground, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) brings new meaning to the phrase "built to last". The world's third deep geological nuclear waste repository, WIPP was designed to house radioactive material for 10,000 years. The primary challenge (keeping hazardous waste IN) was tackled by engineers. But for the secondary challenge - keeping living creatures OUT - the goverment recruited a team of geologists, linguists, astrophysicists, architects, artists, and writers. The job description included the words "the knowledge necessary to develop a marker system that will remain in operation during the performance period of the site - 10,000 years". Stymied by inevitable linguistic and orthographic drift, the group has discussed a wide array of ideas, some more fabulously demented than others (artificial moons, a nuclear containment-centric priesthood, a landscape of massive granite thorns). They intend to submit their final plan by 2028.
comment posted at 2:21 PM on May-23-14

Stephen Soderbergh's 1996 movie of Spalding Gray's Gray's Anatomy
comment posted at 8:54 PM on Apr-16-14

"[M]umbled Mandarin without the tonal shifts." SLNYT (and with diagrams and such)
comment posted at 11:24 AM on Mar-2-14

A Chinese professor, Zhang Lin, has spent years building an actual mountain on top of an apartment building in Beijing, without ever having received a permit for the construction. Ceilings are cracking in the apartments of his downstairs neighbors.
comment posted at 7:07 AM on Aug-13-13
comment posted at 9:16 PM on Aug-13-13

Cat dressed as a shark chases a duckling while riding a roomba. (SLYT)
comment posted at 6:47 AM on Apr-24-13

During the 1960s, the Shanghai Animation Studio (perhaps most famous for their classic interpretation of the Monkey King story, 大闹天宫 "Uproar in Heaven", also called "Havoc in Heaven") produced some beautiful, lyrical short films in a traditional Chinese ink painting style. Mostly wordless and featuring a mix of Western and traditional Chinese music, many of the films are available on YouTube:
comment posted at 10:59 PM on Apr-6-13

"Chinese citizens can file petitions about their grievance with so-called letters and visits offices of various levels of government organs and courts, a mechanism set up in the 1950s. Under the current system, the number of petitions filed during an official's tenure is used as a yardstick for performance evaluation, prompting local governments to use every means possible to stop petitioners and shuffle them home. It has become an open secret that local governments hire "black guards" in the capital to stop petitioners from filing a grievance, thus reducing the number of petitions that are recorded." -- A day in the life of a Beijing "black guard".
comment posted at 12:12 AM on Apr-4-13

Calvin & Hobbes GIFs
comment posted at 2:30 AM on Mar-28-13