May 10
Celebrate Madonna!
Madonna's free Brazil concert at Rio's Copacabana beach attracts more than 1.6 million fans. That's a lot of people. I wish I could see that. Oh, here! MADONNA THE CELEBRATION TOUR IN RIO FULL SHOW 04/05/24 HD [2h15m, ProShot]
Green sky at night
On Thursday, May 9, 2024, the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center issued a Severe (G4) Geomagnetic Storm Watch -- its first since January 2005.
Coinciding with a new moon, aurorae should be visible (weather permitting) much further than typical. The Northern/Western-specific current predictions from NOAO show the view line extending below 40 degrees Northern latitude. [more inside]
Do the jitterbug at a muskrat land
The Waning Reign of the Wetland Architect We Barely Know (Hint: Not a Beaver) Little-appreciated, semiaquatic, and cute-as-hell, muskrats can survive almost anywhere. So where are they? (Brandon Keim for Hakai Magazine) [more inside]
Say there is a young writer
In the dreamworld of the arts, every inanimate thing is animate, every object contains the entire world, millions of years of history and future and feeling. As she writes her story, which is ultimately her life, it can look like anything she wants. The more she thinks about it, the greater the possibilities. The more she’s cast out, the more she must innovate. The more she will be unique, the more her voice will be untamed. Whatever she is, whoever. She has lived for literature from the beginning and so literature will be her; her indomitable will shall make it so. Our young writer, still unpublished, is the essence of the word itself. Any of her books that may, that will come, be published, read—a footnote. from Every Ship Is a Passenger Too: On Publishing Today by Chris Molnar [LARB]
Rare handfish population returned to wild
Rare handfish population returned to wild after riding out marine heatwave in tank.
They've been gently coaxed out of the plastic bag and into the big, bad underwater world where they are exposed to the elements. Now, researchers have big hopes this small group of red handfish will not only survive, but thrive — the species is depending on it.
May 9
25
Meet AdVon, the AI-Powered Content Monster Infecting the Media Industry
Maggie Harrison Dupré, writing for Futurism, goes on a deep, deep dive into AdVon, a fine purveyor of content slurry.
Fear, Cynicism, Nihilism, and Apathy
Even in a state where surveillance is almost total, the experience of tyranny and injustice can radicalize people. Anger at arbitrary power will always lead someone to start thinking about another system, a better way to run society. [...] If people are naturally drawn to the image of human rights, to the language of democracy, to the dream of freedom, then those concepts have to be poisoned. [...] Here is a difficult truth: A part of the American political spectrum is not merely a passive recipient of the combined authoritarian narratives that come from Russia, China, and their ilk, but an active participant in creating and spreading them. Like the leaders of those countries, the American MAGA right also wants Americans to believe that their democracy is degenerate, their elections illegitimate, their civilization dying. The MAGA movement’s leaders also have an interest in pumping nihilism and cynicism into the brains of their fellow citizens, and in convincing them that nothing they see is true. Their goals are so similar that it is hard to distinguish between the online American alt-right and its foreign amplifiers, who have multiplied since the days when this was solely a Russian project. Tucker Carlson has even promoted the fear of a color revolution in America, lifting the phrase directly from Russian propaganda.The New Propaganda War: Autocrats in China, Russia, and elsewhere are now making common cause with MAGA Republicans to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. [SLAtlantic]
Zoom in on God's Hand
Where's the Beef? The Greatest Diss Tracks in Hip Hop
The Ringer- Greatest Diss Tracks of All Time, Ranked As the Kendrick Lamar/ Drake feud continues (apparently won by Kendrick at this point), the Ringer looks over their listing of great diss tracks in hip-hop. At the Root, Noah McGee provides a different list. Alex Petridis also weighs in on the subject at the Grauniad.
David Bowie Serious Moonlight Tour Full Show
David Bowie Live | 1983 | Sydney | Serious Moonlight Tour | Pro shot | Complete Concert [1h50m] "On the 20th November 1983, David Bowie performed his final Australian concert of the Serious Moonlight tour. This Betamax recording was taken from a sight screen feed made at that time. The first couple of numbers, plus the end have some artefacts but, as it hasn't been viewed in nearly 40 years, the quality overall has held up well. The audio was in mono and has been remastered to bring it out more." [more inside]
The Last Thing My Mother Wanted
Healthy at age 74, she decided there was nothing on earth still keeping her here, not even us. [more inside]
Katju
They said the quiet part out loud
We Will Teach You How to Read | We Will Teach You How to Read
This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. The first time you get our message, you only will only find one thread. Short fiction by Caroline M Yoachim.
Retraction Isn’t Enough
“the conclusions of this paper were disseminated to over 5 million people and less than 0.02% of them actually read the full text or the retraction notice. The result is roughly 5 million misinformed people”. What is ‘evidence-based’? [more inside]
Tim Hortons: Canadian icon but also a bellwether for politics
"Tims is always going to be able to lean on the ordinary Canadians thing in their advertising. It is a habit.” [more inside]
Does that mean all music is good now? Is nothing tacky?
How did Creed, the most hated band of the 1990s, become so beloved—and even cool? [Luke Winkie] sailed the seas with thousands of fellow lunatics to find out. [more inside]
"It was that welcome feeling that every treehouse was your home."
Set to the music of recent Hawaiian artists, The Edge of Paradise (SLYT) is a quiet, contemplative documentary on Taylor Camp, a treehouse community of war veterans and hippies that thrived on a jungle-backed beach on Kaua'i in the 1960s and 1970s (cw: black and white archival stills of unclothed community members, oral recollections of police actions against the community).
In AI, it’s easy to argue about philosophical questions over-much
So please, remember: there are a very wide variety of ways to care about making sure that advanced AIs don’t kill everyone. Fundamentalist Christians can care about this; deep ecologists can care about this; solipsists can care about this; people who have no interest in philosophy at all can care about this. Indeed, in many respects, these essays aren’t centrally about AI risk in the sense of “let’s make sure that the AIs don’t kill everyone” (i.e., “AInotkilleveryoneism”) – rather, they’re about a set of broader questions about otherness and control that arise in the context of trying to ensure that the future goes well more generally. from Otherness and control in the age of AGI by Joe Carlsmith [more inside]
May 8
How King’s College Added 438 Solar Panels to a 500-Year-Old Chapel
How King’s College Added 438 Solar Panels to a 500-Year-Old Chapel. The project sparked debate over how to decrease carbon emissions while preserving the historic structure’s architectural beauty.
The Seinfeld Roundtable
I believe this is from 2007. The Seinfeld Roundtable [1h] has the core cast plus Larry David sitting around talking about the show. Michael Richards doesn't speak much. I enjoyed it enough to share.
"The noise of being online was becoming almost too much for even me."
Steve Albini, musician and producer has died
Steve Albini, lengendary producer (engineer) and musician has died of a heart attack at age 61. He worked with everyone from Jimmy Page and Robert Plant to Nirvana, Pixies and The Breeders.
You are what ate you?
Eccentric conspiracist and Presidential candidate RFK, Jr. had brainworms. NYT: R.F.K. Jr. Says Doctors Found a Dead Worm in His Brain.
"The presidential candidate has faced previously undisclosed health issues, including a parasite that he said ate part of his brain." [more inside]
Purple Reign
A rare archaeological object – thought to be the only one of its type in the former Roman Empire – has been discovered in Carlisle, England. The remnants of the Roman bathhouse at the Carlisle Cricket Club have revealed an extremely rare chunk of Tyrian purple dye, the first of its kind ever discovered in northern Europe and possibly the entire Roman Empire. [...] Known as “imperial purple,” tyrian purple was an extremely valuable dye in ancient Rome because of its rich, vivid color, which denoted imperial authority, wealth, and status. It took a lot of resources and labor-intensive procedures to produce even small amounts, as it was made from thousands of crushed sea snails (Bolinus brandaris) from the Mediterranean. This rarity and exclusivity meant that it was more valuable than gold, sometimes up to three times as much by weight.Fun fact: If a buyer wanted to know if there was something fishy about their exquisite dye, they could always see if it passed the smell test -- read the straight poop inside. [more inside]
Is Cooking Classist? New video from Hoots
A solution that is only a solution for the people who can afford to be a part of the solution is not a solution A hour long video about cooking, food, race, gender, class and capitalism.
“...we are headed for major societal disruption within the next 5 years”
Guardian: World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target. “Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed. Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.” [Daily sea surface temperature]
Teaching others how to speak, a voice falls silent
Zoey Alexandria, voice actor, singer, and instructor for transgender voices, has passed away at the age of 29. She spent much of her adult life dedicated to helping other trans people navigate their way through finding new voices and addressing vocal dysphoria. Her YouTube channel is a valuable resource for others during and after transition. [more inside]
You are what you eat?
Perhaps you have heard of or watched the popular Netflix series You Are What You Eat: A Twin Study that launched earlier this year. The docuseries follows some participants in the Stanford Twin Nutrition Study (TwiNS): Vegan VS. Omnivore run by Dr. Christopher Gardner in which 22 pairs of twins ate an omnivorous or vegan diet for eight weeks. The results indicated improved metabolic health and received wide media coverage. [more inside]
North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs
North Yorkshire Council to phase out apostrophe use on street signs. A local authority has announced it will ban apostrophes on street signs to avoid problems with computer systems.
North Yorkshire Council is to ditch the problematic punctuation point as it says it can affect geographical databases.
The council said all new street signs would be produced without one, regardless of previous use.
“spaghettification is just 12.8 seconds away”
360 Video: NASA Simulation Plunges into a Black Hole answers the question of what it would look like to fall into a black hole. If you’d rather not, NASA also released 360 Video: NASA Simulation Shows a Flight Around a Black Hole. They also released videos explaining what is going on in the visualizations for the dive into the black hole as well as the flight around it. The press release has more information.
There is no European Google, Tesla or Facebook
Europeans have more time, and Americans more money. It is a cop-out to say which you prefer is a matter of taste. There are three fairly objective measures of a good society: how long people live, how happy they are and whether they can afford the things they need. A society must also be sustainable, as measured by its carbon emissions, collective debt and level of innovation. So which side does it better? [Financial Times; ungated]
May 7
"a permanent cessation of military and hostile operations"
The Chair
The Chair is a 24-minute NSFW short horror film with a strong sense of the uncanny which begins when a man picks up a chair from the street. [more inside]
The Sun Is Down, The Battery's Up
NYT: Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity California draws more electricity from the sun than any other state. It also has a timing problem: Solar power is plentiful during the day but disappears by evening, just as people get home from work and electricity demand spikes. To fill the gap, power companies typically burn more fossil fuels like natural gas.
That’s now changing. Since 2020, California has installed more giant batteries than anywhere in the world apart from China. They can soak up excess solar power during the day and store it for use when it gets dark. [more inside]
Monocycle Mayhem!!!
Dashing around the course on a single wheel at speeds that seem very unwise, taking hairpin turns while trying to maintain position, driver camera footage as well as drone footage... I have never seen anything quite like Monocycle Mayhem: Epic Battles Unleashed | 12 Thrilling Laps on Spanish Asphalt | Electric Unicycles [10m] It feels a bit chaotic at the start but by the midpoint I found it much easier to follow the narrative of the race. It's quite a thing to witness!
Koala briefly runs through a triathlon
Save the Whales -- All-Cetacean division
Gm•(t)-p3-itn
Originally published in 1979, 'The Akhenaten Temple Project and Karnak Excavations' is a nice shapshot of the projects overview. "Akhenaten built the Gem-pa-Aten in the third year of his reign to celebrate his jubilee festival (the heb-sed). By year six of his reign, however, Akhenaten had moved the court and royal palace to a new city in Middle Egypt, modern Tell el-Amarna. The extent to which the Gem-pa-Aten and the other structures dedicated to the Aten at Thebes functioned during the king’s hiatus is unknown." from Digital Karnak, A nice index for the history and archeology in Karnak. (Digital Karnak previously)
Neom - The Line - The Rise and Fall of Saudi Arabia
a video review by Patrick Boyle Well, what it says on the tin...
The rise of the job-search bots
Ancient Polished Granite Chambers In India With No Explanation
BARABAR, THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE OF THE FUTURE [2h] "2,300 years ago, in India, 5 chambers were carved inside enormous granite rocks. According to rudimentary inscriptions engraved at their entrances, they were purportedly offered by a king to serve as monsoon shelters against rain for a sect. WELCOME TO THE HEART OF ANCIENT INDIA, IN A FORGOTTEN CHAPTER OF ITS PAST... THAT COULD VERY WELL CHANGE HISTORY." [more inside]
France reclaims the title for World's Longest Baguette
At an incredible 461 feet (140.53 meters), the baguette baked on Sunday, May 5 has officially exceeded the previous record held by Italy. The municipality of Suresnes now holds the Guinness World Record. (SLNYT)
A fateful exit interview
Wherever the blame lies, at the heart of the story are humans operating, ruptured, in an institutional machine. Many of the 42 are still ‘deeply injured’ by the incident, said Simon, who acts as their unofficial spokesperson. As the whole affair unravelled, the diocese was already under immense strain. The COVID lockdowns set clergy against their bishops, with many priests livid at having to close their churches. Others were angered by moves to invest millions in a new wave of informal congregations meeting in pubs, coffee shops and cinemas. And throughout it all there was division and tension over the church-wide culture war about gay blessings. ‘There’s so little trust at the moment,’ Roger reflected. ‘And in London, all the anger and the issues have a face: that face is Martin Sargeant.’ from In the Shadow of St Paul’s [The Fence; ungated] [CW: suicide, misogyny, homophobia.]
That inequality lies at the heart of what we call “data colonialism”
"The term might be unsettling, but we believe it is appropriate. Pick up any business textbook and you will never see the history of the past thirty years described this way. A title like Thomas Davenport’s Big Data at Work spends more than two hundred pages celebrating the continuous extraction of data from every aspect of the contemporary workplace, without once mentioning the implications for those workers. EdTech platforms and the tech giants like Microsoft that service them talk endlessly about the personalisation of the educational experience, without ever noting the huge informational power that accrues to them in the process." (Today’s colonial “data grab” is deepening global inequalities, LSE) [more inside]
May 6
Yoink
A little activity from a Common Kestrel nest near Windsbach, Germany.
Rare oceanic phenomenon brought on by heavy rainfall
Rare oceanic phenomenon brought on by heavy rainfall. When Terry Dixon took his usual walk around the Tathra headland on the New South Wales far south coast, he encountered a rare phenomenon brought on by heavy rainfall.
Mirror Mirror On The Ball
The process of making a mirror ball. The last remaining mirror ball manufacturing factory in Japan. [14m30s] Depicts making a mirror ball. Actually pretty interesting.
administrators aim to create a more politically quietist university
Who Has the Right to “Disrupt” the University? Perhaps the most egregious example of the administrator-as-disruptor is Gordon Gee, currently the president of West Virginia University (WVU), whose administration pushed through extraordinarily deep cuts to the institution’s academic offerings last fall. During a meeting of the faculty senate, Gee said “I want to be very clear that the university is not dismantling higher education. We are disrupting it . . . And many of you know I am a firm believer in disruption.” [more inside]