September 19
Steam men
all that is solid melts into air
The Dirty Secret Of The World's Plan To Avert Climate Disaster - Abby Rabinowitz and Amanda Simpson, WIRED.
The UN report envisions 116 scenarios in which global temperatures are prevented from rising more than 2°C. In 101 of them, that goal is accomplished by sucking massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—a concept called “negative emissions”—chiefly via BECCS. And in these scenarios to prevent planetary disaster, this would need to happen by midcentury, or even as soon as 2020. Like a pharmaceutical warning label, one footnote warned that such “methods may carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale.”... Today that vast future sector of the economy amounts to one working project in the world: a repurposed corn ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois. Which raises a question: Has the world come to rely on an imaginary technology to save it?[more inside]
2018 surplus of $45 billion, with a B.
“Apple’s revenues come from purchases made by consumers across the entire wealth distribution, but the moment that money hits Apple’s ledger it comes under the control of the elite: most shares of Apple, like most shares of stock in general, are owned by the wealthy. While stock markets have reached record highs in recent years, fewer Americans own stock than ever before, with the top 10 percent of the wealthiest households owning 84 percent of all stock in 2016. (According to economist Edward Wolff, this is up from 77 percent in 2001.) The bottom 80 percent of households, by contrast, own just 7 percent of stocks. The preponderance of Apple’s income is transferred to shareholders, who largely fall into the upper echelon of the economy. - Apple redistributes more wealth upward than any corporation or country on the planet.“ Think Different ( Boston Review)
Canon Fodder
Where's the country music on Pitchfork's Best Albums of the 1980s?
"I didn't want to be the last person to look away"
I reviewed police documents, interviewed witnesses and experts, and made several pilgrimages home to Texas to try to understand what exactly happened to Wyatt — not just on that night, but in the days and months and years that followed. Making sense of her ordeal meant tracing a web of failures, lies, abdications and predations, at the center of which was a node of power that, though anonymous and dispersed, was nonetheless tilted firmly against a young, vulnerable girl. Journalists, activists and advocates began to uncover that very same imbalance of power from Hollywood to Capitol Hill in the final year of this reporting, in an explosion of reporting and analysis we’ve come to call the #MeToo Movement. But the rot was always there — even in smaller and less remarkable places, where power takes mundane, suburban shapes.
"How Hannah Stands Up to Schizophrenia"
Hannah Bryndís Proppé-Bailey talks about how stand-up comedy and football help her deal with schizophrenia (autoplaying video, may blow dust into eyes) for UEFA’s Equal Game project. Earlier this year Hannah Jane Cohen interviewed her about her comedy.
“WHOA!”
Humanism
You Might Have Earned It, But Don't Forget That Your Wealth Came from Society - "The distribution of that wealth doesn't rest on markets or on social perceptions of who deserves what but on the ability of the powerful to use their power to retain whatever of the value society generates that they can." (via) [more inside]
No, I Will Not Debate You
In a new longform piece, Laurie Penny explains why debate is not going to save us from
fascism, that arguments defending bad faith debate are disingenuous, and why she won't debate those operating in bad faith. (SLLongreads) [more inside]
September 18
Food, glorious food
25 Restaurants That Seriously Need To Chill TF Out
22 Crimes Against Food Serving Committed By Restaurants SOME OVERLAP DON'T @ ME
25+ People Who Never Figured Out How Food Works
20+ Memes For People Whose Religion is ‘Food’
21 Of The Laziest Things People Have Ever Done To Food LAST THREE ARE NOT LAZY FOR SOME FOLKS
22 Crimes Against Food Serving Committed By Restaurants SOME OVERLAP DON'T @ ME
25+ People Who Never Figured Out How Food Works
20+ Memes For People Whose Religion is ‘Food’
21 Of The Laziest Things People Have Ever Done To Food LAST THREE ARE NOT LAZY FOR SOME FOLKS
The long run.
Oh, and that man? Buried with an axe.
"I know that sounds absurd, like PC culture gone amuck. Men are, on average — and I don’t mean to disparage the capability of individual men here — less competent on the battlefield. Their higher center of gravity makes them less stable. Their voices are too guttural and low to carry well across the din of battle. Testosterone makes them prone to irrational behavior and leaves them poor candidates not just for leadership roles but even subordinate roles. Their larger body mass makes them easier targets for missile weapons and less capable of the sorts of guerrilla tactics that vikings favored on their raids. To say nothing of how men are socialized to constantly bicker with other men."- Some Viking Warriors Were Probably Men
I can't remember the last time a singer gave me chills like this.
Bent Knee's phenomenal album Land Animal is a study in contradictions: haunting at once effervescent, and metal and poppy and contemplative all at the same time. In short, it is a fantastic time.
Party Rock Dogma
Party Rock Anthem has the same BPM as the Evangelion Opening and I hate it Now show me the reverse, coward. Good idea!
The womenly women of New Zealand
New Zealand women won the right to vote on 19 September 1893 - 125 years ago today*. In doing so, New Zealand became the "first self-governing colony in the world in which all women had the right to vote in parliamentary elections."
Join us to celebrate Suffrage 125: Women, the Vote, and Activism [more inside]
It settles my beef with Carl Jung and his one-man Canadian cover band
It is no wonder that old ideas of the masculine persist, in a kind of camp afterlife, transmitted largely via jokes we really mean and ironies that aren’t fully ironic.Philip Christman writes an essay on contemporary masculinity, "What Is It Like to Be a Man?"
I stopped writing when we saw the new, bad MRI.
Last year, Rob Delaney (of Catastrophe and Deadpool 2) started writing a book proposal about his two-year-old son's brain cancer. He never finished it, because Henry died in January. This week, Rob published some of what he had written. Content Warning: medical description of childhood cancer
Adumbrated sex mars rationality
Forging Islamic science
Fake miniatures depicting Islamic science have found their way into the most august of libraries and history books. How? [more inside]
160,000 letters seized by British warships will be scanned and published
"You can't love me anymore if you don't answer. I will now stop writing. I give up." A cache of 160,000 letters, posted between 1652 and 1815 but seized by British warships and never delivered, will be scanned and posted online for all to see. A large percentage have never been opened. For many that were, it's tragic to imagine that they were never received: an indentured servant writing to her father, apologizing for whatever she did wrong and begging him to send clothes because she doesn't have any, or a wife writing to her distant husband saying that he must not love her any longer because he is not responding to her letters.
Can one movie revitalize a community?
Banana Mob Rule: Produce, Blackmail and the Mafia in Ohio
Frank Oldfield was the Postal Inspector who took down America’s first organized crime ring, The Society of the Banana (Politico). The Black Hand or "Society of the Banana" terrorized new Italian immigrant communities in parts of the US by mail. An Ohio history writer contends that organized crime didn't start in the U.S. in Chicago or New York, but in Marion (Marion Star). The grip of "la mano nera" spread across the Mid-west, as tracked by postal inspectors (Littleton Independent, 1909). The story of how a postal worker brought them down was almost lost forever (Vice) -- in part because Oldfield's family feared retribution, generations later.
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Freddie Oversteegen
Uncommon People
In 1999, Channel 4 sent Pulp's Jarvis Cocker around the world to investigate outsider art and interview its creators; the result was a fascinating three-part series:
Part one (France).
Part two (US).
Part three (Mexico, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and India).
A full list of the featured sites (some of which no longer exist) is posted here.
Matilda turns 30
Illustrator Quentin Blake imagines Matilda at 30. “I am sure that someone who had read so many books when she was small could easily have become chief executive of the British Library, or someone exceptionally gifted at mental arithmetic would be perfectly at home in astrophysics. And if you have been to so many countries in books, what could be more natural than to go and see them yourself?”
Would you like to see something A M A Z I N G?
Pick a number, any number and this fun little site will show how it is the sum of three palindromes! It doesn't seem like it should be possible, but it always is, in any base, and most of the time there's more than one way to do it.
But I Like You
Higher. Further. Faster.
The first trailer for Captain Marvel has dropped.
Моё имя — твой страх, кровоточит на губах
“Enjoy every sandwich.”
What’s the best way to cut a sandwich? [The Takeout] “Today, we focus on the most vexing question to confound mankind since whether a hot dog is a sandwich.” [more inside]
September 17
You have teamwork and courage and magic in your blood
Blair Braverman (previously) came home to some minor tornado wreckage last July, so she decided to recruit some of the pups for a clean-up party: Twitter | Threadreader
Read to the end for a bedtime story.
Read to the end for a bedtime story.
The E-1027 House: Scandals and Death
Eileen Gray’s E-1027 French villa hasn’t lived a charmed life: It has survived desecration by Le Corbusier, target practice by the Nazis, a drug den etc. The house certainly had optimistic—and idealistic—beginnings. “One must build for the human being, that he might rediscover in the architectural construction the joys of self-fulfillment in a whole that extends and completes him,” Gray wrote in the 1929 issue of L’Architecture Vivante. “Even the furnishings should lose their individuality by blending in with the architectural ensemble.” The villa was intended as a peaceful retreat for Gray and her then lover, Romanian architect, critic, and editor of L’Architecture Vivante, Jean Badovici, who had partially contributed to the project’s design.
Drosophila Titanus
ᑐᙵᓱ
Anaana's Tent, a Canadian children's show that broadcasts in Inuktitut, the language of the Inuit peoples of eastern Canadian Arctic, has just added an English version to its programming that teaches Inuktitut words throughout. This, one of the executive producers, Neil Christopher, told Huffington Post, is "for those Inuit and others whose first language isn't Inuktitut but want to learn". Can't access Canadian TV? You can still learn a few things! [more inside]
Spring forth, but don't fall back
The European Commission rules to abolish Daylight Saving Time in 2019, in response to a survey that showed 80% opposition to the twice-annual changing of clocks. Assuming that the move passes the European Parliament and local parliaments, EU member states will decide in April 2019 whether to permanently remain on summer or winter time. [more inside]
Cycling at 183.93 miles per hour
Denise Korenek just set a 'paced bicycle land speed record' - essentially cycling behind a vehicle and using the drafting (slip-streaming) to achieve very high speeds.
New study released for effects of ACE (adverse childhood experience)
Some groups affected more than others (surprise). When researchers first discovered a link in the late 1990s between childhood adversity and chronic health problems later in life, the real revelation was how common those experiences were across all socioeconomic groups.
But the first major study to focus on adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was limited to a single healthcare system in San Diego. Now a new study — the largest nationally representative study to date on ACEs — confirms that these experiences are universal, yet highlights some disparities among socioeconomic groups.
Lancaster Stands Up
“In Manheim Township, a historically conservative area where Weaver canvassed for LSU, Democrats won all 6 school board seats. Dianne Bates, a progressive millennial, won her Borough Council race in arch-conservative Millersville. Elizabethtown hadn’t had a Democrat on the town council since the 1970s, but last fall they elected an IBEW member, Bill Troutman.” A Grassroots Uprising In Amish Country Begins To Find Meaning In Politics.
Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection: swamp bunker with 8 million dead fish
Ten miles south-east of New Orleans are some World War II structures (Google streetview), including 29 concrete bunkers. You can go hiking in the area, or you could visit 7 or 8 million dead fish in two of those bunkers. They are the Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection, the largest fish archive in the world, which has only grown in recent years as it took in at least part of University of Louisiana at Monroe's fish collection, which that university was divesting due to reduced funding. [more inside]
The caribou guardians
In a quiet pen in B.C.’s northeast corner, pregnant caribou cows and their calves are fed hand-picked old growth lichen, provided 24-hour armed security and are the subject of one of Canada’s boldest and most experimental efforts to save a species from extinction. [more inside]
Not all nursery rhymes are nice nursery rhymes
Boing Boing: “Spiders blamed after broken siren played creepy nursery rhymes randomly at night to UK townsfolk. The Ipswich Star reports on what one local described as 'something from a horror movie.'” BBC: “For several months she would hear the rhyme, which would go away only to come again another day.” Ipswich Star: “It was waking me up in the night, it was absolutely terrifying. I heard it at all times of the night - 1am, 2am, 4am - it was sporadic, sometimes it would play once, other times it was over and over.”
American Farmers Are in Crisis
September 16
They Scare Because They Care
"Haunters Against Hate had its genesis in some very negative speech from a group who reviews haunted attractions in the Ohio Valley area referencing the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting tragedy in the summer of 2016. They decided to take a stand in opposition to such speech; and more importantly, in support of LGBTQ actors, staff, friends and family. Haunters Against Hate stands by, always watching for hate speech or discrimination against anyone on basis of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran’s status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression and responding appropriately: Because hate is the scariest thing of all." [more inside]
The point of life isn’t to prolong youth, but to have grown up.
Why you should throw your children's art away. Mary Townsend writes: If it’s the act of making the art that’s useful and good for children, then let this part of the art live, and then let its results die. Like its aesthetic quality, the output of children’s artistic efforts is incomplete. Throwing it away actually does everyone a favor. It completes the artistic life-cycle, allowing ephemera to be just that: actually ephemeral.
Mustachioed Monkeys
Entranced emperor tamarins! turn off the sound, it is annoying
“Your highs are Olympian, your lows like a plunge into the River Styx”
10 Brilliant Retellings of Classical Myths by Female Writers [Literary Hub] “There’s something about our oldest stories that never gets old. Rereading classical mythology is for me an exercise in surprise and recognition mixed together. There are things I’ve always missed in a myth, the previous time around, that strike me as utterly vital to understanding its meaning. I believe that myths hit us somewhere below the brain, at some irrational, dreamlike level that somehow feels truer than ordinary stories. When I read Ovid’s myth of Apollo pursuing Daphne, “one made swift by hope and one by fear,” and the nymph metamorphoses into a laurel tree to escape the amorous god forever, it disturbs and thrills me in ways I find hard to explain.* [...] The books in this list are the smartest, most beautifully wrought adaptations of classical myths I’ve ever encountered—and they all just happen to be by female writers.” [more inside]
Linux Kernel adopts code of conduct
Linus Torvalds:
"This week people in our community confronted me about my lifetime of not understanding emotions. My flippant attacks in emails have been both unprofessional and uncalled for. Especially at times when I made it personal. In my quest for a better patch, this made sense to me. I know now this was not OK and I am truly sorry."The Linux Kernel has adopted a formal code of conduct.
what made this guy want to spend so much cash in secret?
The Billion-Dollar Mystery Man and the Wildest Party Vegas Ever Saw Tom Wright and Bradley Hope just shared an excerpt from the prologue of their book, "Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World", touted as the definitive account of the 1MDB scandal. (previously), focusing on the man still at-large, Jho Low.
(twitter link to the article) Naturally, he's not taking it standing down, and his lawyers have been sending out legal letters to bookstores around the world. Back home, the book is selling fast and pirated PDFs are being freely shared. At the same time, Clare Rewcastle-Brown has also launched her own book of her investigative journalism on the scandal, in Malaysia no less, a fact unimaginable before the last election. Welp, Happy Malaysia Day!