June 6
Binge Watching
"Binge Watching" is a sci-fi short film by Nigerian-British filmmaker Nosa Igbinedion which was recently screened on DUST (previously). "In the near future, a woman comes across a VR film where she will experience a tense encounter with a pair of policemen… through the eyes of a black man." (possible trigger warning as it depicts an assault from the victim's POV.) [more inside]
Pipe line, blue note
Röhrenblues Armin Küpper : Tenor Sax with acoustic pipeline delayed looping.
(via MLTSHP, where Armin's Pipelinefunk was posted.)
(via MLTSHP, where Armin's Pipelinefunk was posted.)
Gay and Proud
From the Library of Congress: Footage of the first Gay Pride Parade in New York City in 1970.
Yay! Giant isopod in Japanese aquarium poops for first time in 2 years
A momentous event took place in Toba Aquarium on 26 May, when the keeper of the facility’s five giant isopods discovered fecal matter in their tank. This would be the first time since April of 2018 that even a trace of poop had been found. Notorious for their slow digestion, giant isopod eating habits can range from swiftly and viciously eating the face off a live shark, to not eating at all for five years. (Sometimes when their keepers try to feed them, the giant isopods will just play with their food and pretend to eat.) Some responses from Japanese citizens on hearing about the happy event: “This is the most relaxing news I’ve heard in months.” “Giant isopods make people happy by pooping. I want to be a giant isopod.” Giant isopods previously on Metafilter.
A procession of performers wearing smart suits and enigmatic smiles...
Smashed Peacock - Is it a play? A juggling act? Cabaret? A musical? Dance? A comment on gender or race? It's all of the above with a bit of opera. (sl vimeo | via progosk in an earlier thread)
Human Flesh Story: Donuts
How about some weird stop-motion animation: Human Flesh Story: Donuts
Terrible Art in Charity Shops Has a Challenge for You ...
Surprise! People love to recreate not only great and famous artworks, but also terrible amateur paintings. Remember the Getty Museum Challenge? Previously on MeFi. This one is even more hilarious! (Facebook group is private, but Sad & Useless Humor has a round up of outstanding accomplishments)
Gnats From the Far-Off “Western Ocean”
As China comes into greater conflict with the West, and the United States in particular, now is a good time to consider the long arc of this relationship. In the West, Chinese history is commonly framed as having begun with the first Opium War, giving the impression that European powers always had the upper hand. But from the first direct contact between East and West—the arrival of the Portuguese in south China in the early 16th century—the Chinese were dominant. When China Met the West by Michael Schuman, from his forthcoming book Superpower Interrupted
Laws of Financial Gravity
Issac Newton, Daniel Defoe and the Dynamics of Financial Bubbles. "A famous anecdote tells of Sir Isaac Newton realizing large gains in the early stages of the South Sea Bubble, but then losing all that and more by buying back in at the top. On the other hand, the fact that the author of Robinson Crusoe was also associated with that episode of extreme investor exuberance is little known. And that is a pity, since Daniel Defoe’s words, as well as Newton’s actions, are very illuminating about an important aspect of bubbles that deserves much more attention. This is the social network element..."
Should we rethink cop shows?
Cop shows are undergoing a reckoning as the nation confronts policing in the streets. On TV, cops are always the main characters. [more inside]
A philosopher's song
Soundness is an Illusion, a musical summary of the many principal types of logical fallacies encountered in argument. From the same artist, songs concerning The Ultimate Source of Morality, and the hazarding of the journey from Mythos to Logos.
June 5
Stone Love Bass Odyssey
John Taylor, bassist for Duran Duran, has been working during lockdown. He recently did a reddit AMA, he has an Instagram channel in which he chats with other musicians [I am not an Instagram member but I did look at the summary page available to me], and he has a YouTube "bass tutorial" channel Stone Love Bass Odyssey which so far has covered Girls On Film, Planet Earth, and Rio. [more inside]
Two more sources of old-new and new-new music
If your music playlists or collection is getting stale, here are two more sources for your enjoyment. The first: Terminal Passage on YouTube, who uploads and shares a wide variety of sounds, from Japanese prog Flied Egg (Discogs) from 1972 to modern chillhop from Channel Aria Sound (linking to their YouTube channel), there's something new every day. If you're looking to support Black artists and labels in general, or in the last few hours of this Bandcamp Friday (if you're reading this too late, it'll be back on July 3, 2020), here's a volunteer-managed spreadsheet of 1000+ Black Producers / Artists / Labels, with notes on where the artist or label resides, and the style(s) of music to expect, from well-established groups to up-and-coming artists.
"You boys need a role model? His name is Captain America"
Why Do We Love To Hate Concrete?
An essay on the satisfaction of hating concrete architecture: Hating and demolishing concrete feels so good because eliminating concrete as a remnant of 20th-century experiments in social government – from liberal to totalitarian – creates literal space to erect buildings that reflect new values.
Remember This House
The 2017 documentary I Am Not Your Negro (SLYT trailer) is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson and takes its script from Remember This House, a manuscript by James Baldwin left unfinished following his death in 1987. The film's narration is entirely from the book and is accompanied by photos and video clips that cover the the history and culture surrounding the deaths of Medgar Evers, Malcom X, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as the early beginnings of the BLM movement. I Am Not Your Negro is available on several streaming sites including Amazon.com
You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. -Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott
Ready or Not, Here Comes the NBA [The Ringer] “On one side is law enforcement, some with badges covered and weapons raised—the face of a system of oppression. On the other is the looming threat of the coronavirus, which has now killed more than 100,000 Americans. Our present moment is trapped in that tension. All the while, the NBA’s board of governors is planning a trip to Disney World. Topics of the day include a play-in tournament for the eighth seed, resort assignments, and whether players and coaches will be allowed to golf. [...] On Thursday, the league approved a plan for 22 teams to resume the season in Orlando on July 31, and picking up with eight regular-season games before the commencement of a full-fledged playoff.” [more inside]
When was the last time you bought water in a plastic bottle?
Millions of people drink mineral water every day that has previously been transported thousands of kilometres around the world. Often in plastic bottles, always at the expense of the environment. But almost everywhere in Europe we have great tap water, of high quality and inexpensive. Which is why we, the Duisburg Public Services, decided to hold up the mirror to the water industry. (SLYT)
OK Boomwar
"Documents obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a Pentagon war game, called the 2018 Joint Land, Air and Sea Strategic Special Program, or JLASS, offered a scenario in which members of Generation Z, driven by malaise and discontent, launch a 'Zbellion' in America in the mid-2020s." [original document] [more inside]
you might be woken up by a SWAT raid by the Dept of Education
The Legend of ANNA
Revisiting an American Town Where Black People Weren’t Welcome After Dark Most people I met in Anna, Illinois, wish the racist lore behind the city’s name would go away.
So why hasn’t it? [more inside]
No Country for Old Age
The Evening of Life In our society, to come directly to my point, old age is understood and framed in ways that lead inevitably to its devaluation. Its status is low and arguably is falling. On its face, such a claim might sound preposterous. Surely, the opposite is true. From the Social Security safety net to the Americans with Disabilities Act, from the positive portrayals of older people in popular media to near-record life expectancy, this is unquestionably the golden age of the golden years, a time of “No Limits. No Labels,” to quote an AARP slogan. -- Joseph E. Davis goes long in The Hedgehog Review
when a simple ha won’t do there’s always hahahaaaa, haaahaaa, hahahahaha
Whoooaaa Duuuuude: Why We Stretch Words in Tweets and Texts (Wired): "Stretchability is a powerful linguistic device that visually punches up a written word, imparting a wide range of emotions. That goes for the gooooooaaaaaaal of a soccer announcer, a teenager’s exasperated finallyyyyy, and a surfer’s aweeeeeesome. And booooy are they popular on Twitter. Writing today [May 27] in the journal PLOS One, the researchers detail how they combed through 100 billion tweets, mapping how often these words are stretched, and how far they are elongated—haha versus hahahahaaaa, for example. [...] That can be particularly powerful on a platform like Twitter, whose inherent brevity doesn’t exactly encourage nuanced communication. Those extra letters add some oomph to a brief message, making it more attention-grabbing. “You're taking what we would think of as the dictionary text and you're turning it into something visual,” says Danforth. “It can't be ignored when you see 20 As in a row.” [more inside]
Black Lives Matter Plaza
In Washington, DC, the capital of the USA, 16th Street runs directly into Lafayette Park, across from the White House, the residence of the President. That street now sends a message to the current resident, thanks to DC's Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Dude, do I know you?
2020 has been a counterintuitively strong year for music releases. Madrid rock quartet Hinds released their third album today, The Prettiest Curse, adding pop sensibilities to their lo-fi aesthetic, and singing in both English and, for the first time, in Spanish.
Listen here. [more inside]
Lessons from History
After an Egyptologist Tweeted Instructions on How to Knock Down an Obelisk, Protesters Tried It Out on a Confederate Monument. It Worked. Art history doesn’t usually have much to offer in the way of practical, directly actionable lessons. But Sarah Parcak, a renowned professor of Egyptology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, recently plumbed humanity’s cultural past to offer some very concrete advice. On Sunday, she posted detailed, step-by-step instructions on Twitter (including a helpful diagram) for how to tear down an obelisk, culled from her research into ancient Egypt. (For every 10 feet of monument, you need 40 or more people; use rope attached to a chain; everyone should wear gloves; pull hard in unison from either side.) [more inside]
Pietra Dura: Painting in Stone
"Though it’s today one of the lesser-known ‘decorative arts’, the technique of pietra dura is highly prized and widely used, and can be found in settings ranging from antique jewellery boxes to the walls of the Taj Mahal." [more inside]
June 4
6489
It is the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, when the Chinese government killed their own citizens for protesting. Thousands of Hong Kongers defy the police ban to commemorate the event. [more inside]
13 Minutes To The Moon
BBC World Service brings us the audio series 13 Minutes To The Moon. Season 1 is the story of the Apollo program from its beginning to the Apollo 11 lunar landing, across 12 episodes and bonus moments, totaling something like 10 hours of audio documentary. Season 2 is about the Apollo 13 mission, so far with 6 episodes and some bonuses, but Episode 7 is on COVID delay. The entire series is available as a podcast, and can be found wherever you do that kind of thing.
Celebrated at last: Henry Johnson, and the Golden 13
On June 5, Albany, New York, commemorates the life and work of Henry Johnson, and awards the Henry Johnson Award for Distinguished Community Service to a community member who goes above and beyond the call of duty. While Johnson was one of the United State’s first heroes of World War I, he was among the last to be recognized by his country (Times Union) in any lasting fashion. He leads the ranks of forgotten black Americans with notable military records, like the Golden 13, the first black men to attend officer candidate school (The Daily Beast). [more inside]
Direct Links to Movies Below the Fold
"We are using our streaming platform, the Criterion Channel, to highlight films that focus on Black Lives [and] we’ve taken down the paywall on as many of these titles as we can, so even if you aren’t a subscriber you can watch them for free." [more inside]
Topher's Breakfast Cereal Character Guide
So let’s take a quick peek beneath the glitter
Black Death, COVID, and Why We Keep Telling the Myth of a Renaissance Golden Age and Bad Middle Ages
Amsterdam 4K
sRGB ≠ 256
How this wallpaper kills your (Android) phone SLYT
One number in one pixel is enough to send your phone into this spiral of doom. [more inside]
One number in one pixel is enough to send your phone into this spiral of doom. [more inside]
What Is an Anti-Racist Reading List For?
An anti-racist reading list means well. How could it not with some of the finest authors, scholars, poets, and critics of the twentieth century among its bullet points. Still, I am left to wonder: Who is this for? [more inside]
a single disk labeled "NINTENDO: HOT ROD TAXI, FINAL."
30 years later, a lost Days of Thunder NES game has been recovered from 21 floppy disks [Ars Technica] “In one of the most unreal data-recovery projects we've ever heard of, a seemingly lost NES game has been unearthed—as archived on a single hard drive backup, spread across 21 5.25-inch floppy disks. A joint effort led in part by the Video Game History Foundation began earlier this year with a pile of leftover CD-Rs, floppies, computers, and other errata donated by the family of late programmer/designer Chris Oberth. The results, thus far, are one fully functioning game whose code had to be recovered, then compiled, to run on original NES hardware.” [Days of Thunder NES Gameplay]
Herb Stempel, 1950s game show whistleblower, dies at 93
“that may be alright for Will Self or one of those fellas”
An Occult Psychogeography of Hawksmoor’s London Churches
There was a time when I used to hate London. I thought of it as a compound of tourist hotspots, rude locals and (admittedly quite useful) airports. Back then, I didn’t have much interest in graphic novels, either. My opinion on both has since reversed, and it’s in no small part due to the incomparable work of speculative historical fiction that is From Hell; written by Alan Moore, and brought vividly to life through the artwork of Eddie Campbell. The following tour of London was inspired by the book – a gruelling 45-mile route visiting lesser known occult locations spread across the British capital, and connecting in its path a whole world of mythologies from Queen Boadicea to Jack the Ripper. Make sure you’re sitting comfortably… this won’t be a short post.[more inside]
A diabolical hairbrush
Since the dawn of written communications, missives sent by card or letter have been the source of both joy and pain for recipients. During times of epidemics, however, the mail is viewed with extra wariness. […] That’s as true today as it was in the late 19th century, when—before sanitizing sprays and disinfectant wipes—American post offices responded to persistent yellow fever epidemics with perforating paddles used in the fumigation of the mail. [more inside]
Unexpected films for unexpected times
If you need a break from all the awful, there's a lot of joy to be found in watching Anne Marsen dance through crowded NYC streets in GirlWalkAllDay. Or take your pick from a ton of other Movies That Are Unlike Anything You've Seen Before.
Morgan Vogel, 1986-2020
Morgan Vogel, 1986-2020. A series of short remembrances of Morgan Vogel / Carrie Bren / Tracy Auch / etc, comics/music/video artist.
June 3
ABOUT... FACE!
Death and surrender to power in the clothing of men. The evolution of The Punisher, big trucks, and militarized toxic masculinity as an illustrated webcomic.
Oh, your pickup has a lift? That's cute.
The Incredible Story of the US Army's Earth-Shaking Off-Road Land Trains
You need to get 500 tons of supplies from Fairbanks, Alaska to the Arctic Ocean—a journey of about 400 miles through pure wilderness. There are no roads, very few airstrips, and endless ice. You're going to have to withstand minus 68 degree temperatures. Also, nuclear armageddon is on the menu if you're not quick about it. You, my friend, need a LeTourneau land train.[more inside]
The Hartzian View
The Great American Breakup Political scientist Louis Hartz accurately described the United States’ underlying cultural hyperindividualism. Is the next logical step the dissolution of the centralized federal state to become more like the EU? [more inside]
The International Archive of Dreams
It's the !nternational Archive of Dreams. Dreams categorized by theme. Submit yours; read others.
Anti-Racism can’t begin and end with a hashtag
Performative Allyship Is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead) "If you recognize yourself in some of these descriptions, know that this doesn’t mean I’m saying you don’t care, or that you’re a bad person, or a racist. Just that you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking that your activism can begin and end with a hashtag. But systemic racism doesn’t care about your hashtags and your outrage. People have been hashtagging #blacklivesmatter for eight years, and young black men are being killed in the street for jogging. It’s critical to realize that if your allyship is performative, you are excusing yourself from engaging with the tough and messy conversations necessary to address the root causes. The conversations that will actually bring about change. And you’re easing your guilt with the empty advocacy of keyboard warrioring when what you really need to be doing is advocating with your actions." Here are four things to do.
"There is a period in which I owe my silence"
Former Defense Secretary James Mattis has publicly denounced the Trump Administration [sl The Atlantic] Pretty much what it says on the tin. Mattis has broken his silence and come out in public condemnation of the President. The celebrated general had previously argued that it would be inappropriate and unproductive for him to do so.
Where murderous chokehold cops still earnin' a livin'
"F*ck it, why wait." Run the Jewels 4 has been released by Killer Mike [@killermike] and El-P [@therealelp], the duo behind Run the Jewels. The album is available for free, with an option to donate to the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Program. [more inside]
Today in Coronavirus study news: This is fine
Studies That Most Likely Led WHO to Halt Hydroxychloroquine COVID-19 Trials are Under Fire Amid Questionable Data from Surgisphere (The Science Times, June 3, 2020) Other COVID-19 studies also drew from Surgisphere datasets. [more inside]