June 17
UK libraries and museums unite to save ‘astonishing’ lost library
[SL Guardian] From the British Library to the Brontë Parsonage Museum, a consortium of libraries and museums have come together in an “unprecedented” effort to raise £15m and save an “astonishingly important” set of literary manuscripts for the nation. [more inside]
TWO households? BOTH alike in dignity? In this economy?
SparkNotes tweets about classic literature. Do you like some memes with your classic literature? She's got you.
The world is an open book, if you open your eyes and look
On The Move was a BBC series from the 1970s that set out to address adult illiteracy - sample episode. It was a sort of "Sesame Street for grown ups". With a notably catchy theme tune. Bob Hoskins, played, Alf - the removal man who was struggling to learn to read and write. The show attracted 17 million viewers a week - (way beyond the size of its target audience) and helped make Hoskins famous. It was also responsible for persuading 70,000 people to sign up for adult literacy programmes. [more inside]
June 16
How Queer Comics Made Their Mark On History
“No Straight Lines” documents the history of queer comics and the early cartoonists who first published LGBTQA storylines. [News@Northeastern] No Straight Lines long trailer. (5m23s) No Straight Lines website. [more inside]
AP says it will no longer name suspects in minor crimes
Smac McCreanor vs Hydraulic Press
The Pink and Purple Church in the Castro
In 1979, a community of LGBTQ Christians bought an old church building in San Francisco’s Castro District. Over the next decade, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCCSF) became known in the neighborhood as the The Pink and Purple Church in the Castro. This exhibit is a visual and audio history culled from more than 1200 tapes stored beneath the floor of the church's music room and features liturgy, songs, and interviews with church members.
Flappy ball.
Dot dot dot is a game of great gravity.
The Complete List of Marxist, Un-American, Anti-White Things
Shooting the Money Cannon
Airbnb is spending millions of dollars to make nightmares go away by Olivia Carville [CW: bad things happening to short-term renters, including assault, rape & murder]
umwelt
THE (UN)NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS "People around the world ordered the life around them in very similar, even stereotyped ways, regardless of where they lived, what language they spoke, or which animals and plants they were ordering. People, it turned out, unconsciously followed a strict set of rules, universally creating a hierarchical ordering of living things based on how living things appear, that is, on similarities and dissimilarities in how they look, smell, sound, and act—the same sort of taxonomy that professional scientific taxonomists have ever been after. The countless varieties of folk taxonomies were fundamentally variations on a single theme: that same basic and effortlessly perceived natural order that people everywhere see."
We substituted the ‘I do’ for the ‘I think’
Scottish philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976) argued that many of the failings of human life, both individual and collective, result from dualist thinking that separates mind and body, with the self centred in the former. He proposed a new model in which the self is understood monistically as an agent, and thought as the negative aspect of action. Macmurray presented his views in the Gifford Lectures. [more inside]
Big boat got stuck.
Sail away. A brief but delightful tribute to the Evergreen Ever Given. (SLYT)
Cameras ain’t what they used to be
The Rise and Fall of an American Tech Giant, The Atlantic, Kaitlyn Tiffany, July/August 2021 [alternate link]: “Kodak didn’t just teach Americans to take photographs; it taught them what to take photographs of, and it taught them what photographs were for. The Kodak mythology [*], though powerful, was and is easily seen through.” *See Kodak History.
The second-most-disappointing New Mutants of the past year
Opinion: ‘These new vaccine mutants are extremely disappointing,’ by Magneto [slWaPo, "as told to" Alexandra Petri] [more inside]
The Heart of a Bowling Ball
If you think of a bowling ball as just a big, heavy ball, know that it isn't. Brendan I. Koerner, writing for Wired, disabuses us of the notion: [more inside]
June 15
"A trans anthem, right now, is for a trans person to create"
On the following pages, we've compiled 37 songs that fit that description, written by trans artists. But it's important to note: We wouldn't exactly call them "trans anthems." After all, there's not a universal "trans" experience shared by all trans folks, and there are so many identities across the gender galaxy. All of the trans, genderqueer, nonbinary, two-spirit, and gender-nonconforming musicians listed here write about so much more than gender and adversity within their bodies of work. - The Advocate in 2014 archive link [more inside]
There is no more important rule than to wear these ... Safety Glasses
The New Yankee Workshop site has 153 episodes of the show (with more to come) available for free viewing. Via.
Thunder, Thunder, Thunder
I was blown out of the atmosphere when [Grateful Dead drummer] Billy Kreutzmann said he wanted me to take a crack at writing the music to these lyrics by the late great Robert Hunter [previously]. I cried like a baby for like an hour after I hung up the phone.Bluegrass phenomenon Billy Strings [previously, previously] premiered Thunder in Louisville, KY last May.
"I Have Always Dwelt in the Shadow of My God"
The Silt Verses is an audio drama about Carpenter and Faulkner, two members of a destroyed cult returning to the religion's former epicenter to look for remnants of their faith. They must deal with horrors (both familiar and welcome but also hostile and decidedly not) as well as the suspicions of townspeople and police investigators. Also, the pair are not too fond of each other. [more inside]
Some of the First Visual Framers of African Surf in Popular Culture
What The Endless Summer Gets Right—and Wrong—About African Surf Culture by Kunyalala Ndlovu from Afrosurf via LitHub [more inside]
Getting Reconciled to It
While a bipartisan group of Senators is trying to reach agreement on a budget package, progressive Democrats in Congress are signalling opposition to the likely outlines of such a deal, and White House officials have now told House Democrats to prepare to go it alone on infrastructure. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer also announced that Wednesday he will begin the process known as reconciliation, to allow Senate passage with simple majority votes.
An Old Idea Making Cities More Affordable
Before being zoned out of existence, boarding houses gave less privileged city dwellers a place to live. Some places are bringing them back. In Reasons to be Cheerful, Diana Lind writes about a new law in the State of Washington. [more inside]
“This was meant to be a powerful curse”
"Today, chickens are perhaps most often associated with comfort foods like soup and roast dinners. In ancient Athens, however, the owners of a 2,300-year-old ceramic jar containing the remains of a dismembered chicken appear to have used the animal for something far more sinister: a ritual designed to paralyze and kill upward of 55 people." (Smithsonian Magazine) [more inside]
Stephen King: Are you afraid of the dark?
"A very calm game...with mystery and conflict"
Gorgeous and inspired by, among others, Le Guin, Book of Travels TMORPG (TINY Multiplayer... for small numbers of player per server) reaches early access on August 9 on Steam.
Practice until you get it wrong every time
The Mistake Waltz - a short ballet choreographed with intentional and comical errors that can't help but make you smile. (via Kottke)
Biographies of early medieval English women
Florence H R Scott (@FlorenceHRS, 06/13/2021): "My aim with my newsletter is to eventually have written a biography of every single woman we know existed in England between roughly 500 and 1100" [ThreadReader; "Some clarification ..." and ThreadReader for it too]. The newsletter: Ælfgif-who? Issues to date: Cynethryth: Mercia's Forgotten Queen?; Breguswith: Portents and Pendants; Godgifu: The Bare Truth Behind the Lady Godiva Legend; The North Elmham and Fairford Women: Two Black Women in Tenth-Century England; Judith: The First Crowned and Anointed Queen of Wessex... At Twelve Years Old; Æthelflaed and Ælfwyn: The Women who Ruled Mercia in the Viking Age; Hugeburc: The Earliest English Woman Writer, Who Hid her Identity in a Secret Code; and Hild of Whitby: Politician, Religious Leader, Teacher, Saint.
June 14
Zapped!
Zapping: The boisterous protest tactic that ignited early LGBTQ activism Designed to disrupt the status quo and gain support for gay rights, these theatrical tactics included everything from duck costumes to pie throwing. [National Geographic] Archive link. [more inside]
I woke up like this.
The China National Space Administration's Zhurong Mars rover has taken a selfie [image heavy link in Chinese]; and it is cute as hell. [more inside]
How Gay is Gay Enough?
"What kind of representation actually counts as gay representation? What counts as pandering? What counts as baiting? And what's the difference?" How Gay is Gay Enough? (about the anime Yuri on Ice* but also about queer representation in media in general) [more inside]
Taking inspiration from the seafood
SMILY-Didgeridoo,
a.k.a. Kazuki Kitagawa, is a didgeridoo craftsman, educator,
and performer with a distinctive style based on beatboxing. In recent years he’s achieved some publicity for
making a didgeridoo from a giant spider crab to promote the small fishing town where he lives.
An earthquake with pirates at the Southern Baptist Convention
Next week more than 16,000 Southern Baptist pastors and leaders will descend on Nashville, Tennessee. Some of them will be bringing pirate flags, part of an ultraconservative attempt to "take the ship" back. They want to take it back from people like Russell Moore, former president of the denomination's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, who wrote a pair of long, scathing letters condemning the racism and lack of support for sexual abuse survivors in the SBC's leadership. The letters have caused an “earthquake,” not just in the SBC but throughout conservative Christendom. Some are blaming the current state of the church not only on the marriage between Republican politics and the SBC, but also on the theology and institutions of white evangelicalism itself. [more inside]
"It’s a non-academic approach that I think is interesting"
Midwest Modern’s Architectural Road Trip: Josh Lipnik uses his Twitter account Midwest Modern to document regional architecture and design, creating a visual archive across space and time [Belt Magazine]. Midwest Modern on Twitter.
Foreign Exchange
Corrie Francis Parks’s absorbing stop-motion short “Foreign Exchange” is all about perspective. Through a continuously evolving landscape of minuscule stones and banknotes, mini-universes emerge that meld the two materials into culturally significant tableaus. “Between the dazzling layers of currency and sand lie connections that can be mined in infinite ways. Each person who views this film will unearth different associations filtered through their worldly experience and national background,” Parks says. Sand and Currency from Dozens of Countries Converge in an Endless Interchange of Culture and Economics [Colossal]
NYC’s Street Trees
For the data-loving dendrophiles, NYC Parks has mapped every streetside tree in the city. [more inside]
F* It, We'll Do It Live
Just before 8 AM Sunday, NPR's Scott Detrow tweeted, "Well, ten minutes to @NPRWeekend, just about none of the software we use to put on a show is working. We will be on the air either way, tune in on your local NPR member station!" Audio engineer and Technical Director Stu Rushfield broke down how they pivoted to produce the show live in a Twitter thread. [more inside]
Beyond Sociology 101
The University of Toronto's Sociology Department posts the reading lists for its PhD comprehensive exams. This is the list of books and articles that the faculty think are required for serious scholarship in these subfields; it's also a great place to look for syllabus ideas for courses in related fields. (h/t Raul Pacheco-Vega) [more inside]
A build-up of bunions
A bunion is a minor deformity of the big toe. It angles the toe outward from the foot, with a bony protrusion forming at its base. By far the most common contemporary cause of bunions is constrictive boots and shoes – with high heels often blamed for today’s bunions. It seems that shoes contributed to bunions many centuries ago too. Of the 177 individual skeletal remains we examined in our study, at least 18% had bunions. But when we dated the skeletons, we found that only 6% of people who’d been buried between the 11th and 13th centuries – long before the pointed shoe was in vogue – had suffered from bunions. The Conversation looks at the physical cost of wearing fashionable shoes in the 14th century.
June 13
Variety’s Power of Pride 2021 List
Variety’s Power of Pride List is a celebration of community and of change makers, placing a rainbow-hued spotlight on LGBTQ+ entertainers who use their power to promote inclusion.
The Historian and the Murderer
Historian Dominique Kirchner Reill: "[M]y job in the almost 80 questions that followed was not to disabuse the court of ideas of adulterous encounters but instead to explain what this strange profession of 'historian' was, and what role it played in bringing Klinger into that Astoria park on the day he died."
"The Food You Eat Is a Bloody Stew"
Untitled Theater Company #61 released a 3-part, roughly 2.5 hour adaption of Jack London's The Iron Heel. The production is enlived by songs from the IWW's Little Red Songbook. [more inside]
The Errand Friend Hang/Date
The errand hang - where you hit your homie up to accompany you while you tend to the tasks that come with adulting - the grocery run, getting a pair of pants tailored, helping you pick a new bedframe, etc. The errand hang dismisses the usual setting of a bar or a lunch. It waves off the expected script of “give me the summarized updates on your life and then I’ll give you the sum on mine.”
Instead, the errand hang dances in the sweet vulnerability that comes from the everyday. Errand hangs sing: “ok I’m a human and you’re a human and we’re going to take an intimate walk through this seemingly ordinary part of my life, but if you look closely, this moment will reveal something delightfully specific and illuminating to what makes me - me, and I want to share that with you because quite frankly - I just like your company, and even in the silence (sometimes especially in the silence) it makes me feel somewhere between warm and content to have you here beside me.” [slSubstack]
Instead, the errand hang dances in the sweet vulnerability that comes from the everyday. Errand hangs sing: “ok I’m a human and you’re a human and we’re going to take an intimate walk through this seemingly ordinary part of my life, but if you look closely, this moment will reveal something delightfully specific and illuminating to what makes me - me, and I want to share that with you because quite frankly - I just like your company, and even in the silence (sometimes especially in the silence) it makes me feel somewhere between warm and content to have you here beside me.” [slSubstack]
June 12
A moment of reflection
It Wasn’t Just Another Nightclub "Five years ago, I went to cover the Pulse shooting—and found myself unexpectedly close to the story." Ari Shapiro writing in The Atlantic. Alternate link. [more inside]
Look Ma, three hands!
Liszt's beautiful etude, Un Sospiro is a piece written using the Three-hand effect. This is a means of playing on the piano with only two hands, but producing the impression that one is using three hands. [more inside]
Today Is Loving Day
Each year on this date, "Loving Day" celebrates the historic ruling in Loving v. Virginia, which declared unconstitutional a Virginia law prohibiting mixed-race marriage — and legalized interracial marriage in every state. (Previously.)
America teaches us that America is a racist country.
Why Everyone Is Wrong About Critical Race Theory In Schools A Very Special Clapback Mailbag by Michael Harriot, from The Root "The problem with this controversy is that there is no controversy. In fact, there are more states who are trying to ban Critical Race Theory than there are schools that teach Critical Race Theory."
You Are Queer Enough
We’re here, we’re queer, and some of us have had the privilege of coming out openly to our friends and family…but are there certain stereotypes and expectations in the queer community that keep us from feeling valid? [...] Impostor syndrome tries to trick us into thinking it only shows up in the board room. But, the reality is that it can sneak its way even into the spaces where we most expect to experience belonging. In the group chat. In the Pride march. And even in our very own mindsets (gatekeepers who invalidate bi and pan folks with cis male partners — I’m looking at you!). [Autostraddle]
Climate crisis has shifted the Earth’s axis, study shows
Massive melting of glaciers has tilted the planet’s rotation, showing the impact of human activities Some scientists argue that the scale of this impact means a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – needs to be declared. Since the mid-20th century, there has been a marked acceleration of carbon dioxide emissions and sea level rise, the destruction of wildlife and the transformation of land by farming, deforestation and development.
Pro-Trump group seeks to divide Democrats by posing as leftists
"Vote against corporate interests and greedy politicians. Vote against the two party system. VOTE for our future and our children's future. Vote Jo Crain to represent Missouri in the U. S. Senate!" America Progress Now ran Facebook ads promoting Green party candidates during the 2018 US midterm elections. Who is America Progress Now? Turns out that it doesn't really exist: the ads were actually run by Rally Forge, a digital marketing firm closely linked to the pro-Trump Turning Point USA. The Guardian: Rightwing firm posed as leftist group on Facebook to divide Democrats.