February 9
John McPhee’s “The Pinball Philosophy”
Written in 1975, near the end of several decades when public pinball machines were illegal in New York City, this article by the nonfiction master John McPhee (h/t: OmieWise) describes a shootout (“flipout”?) between two grandmasters of the game. [more inside]
What Makes This Song Stink is back!
Pat Finnerty is finally back with a new episode of What Makes This Song Stink, on the topic of the song "Lonely Road." Suggested talking points include hot tub fates, The Fuckin Songs, misguided covers, and excessive tattoos.
It's 2:00 AM. Who wants infinite scrolling wikipedia!!
A glimpse into the psyche of a right-wing subculture taking shape
Just as punk aesthetics or hippie imagery became absorbed into the mainstream zeitgeist, so, too, did the sentiments of SOF—with its belligerent anticommunism and antiestablishment bonafides—become a critical undercurrent within America’s military and police subculture—one that prioritizes indiscretion and officially sanctioned vigilantism against everyone from perceived “communists” to migrants fleeing the very countries that were destabilized with the help of SOF. From the hinterlands to the frontier, the suggestions and advocacy organized by Bob Brown and his merry band of mercenaries finally coalesced. We now live in a world in which opaque, decentralized organizations play a significant role in enforcing empire. from Playing War [The Baffler; ungated]
a surefire way to cripple lifesaving research
Starting Monday, the National Institutes of Health will only reimburse 15% of “ indirect” costs. NIH announced the cuts Friday.
Universities across the US are facing immediate and dire budget shortfalls for expenses like utilities, hazardous waste disposal, and administration.
Will legal challenges happen fast enough to save the US biomedical research system? [more inside]
Darling it’s better, down where its wetter…
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion aims to use the temperature difference between surface and deep-sea ocean water to produce electricity. (YT animated) In theory OTEC offers continuously and predictably available power. A one-page explainer and basic schematic (both NOAA). [more inside]
‘I ain’t hungry. I’m starving for this s—.’
Today is Super Bowl LIX. For the eighth time, it will be played at the New Orleans Superdome. In a rematch of the 2023 game, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs will play quarterback Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia Eagles. If the Chiefs win, they'll be the first team to win three Super Bowls in a row. If the Eagles win, it'll be the second SB victory in the history of the franchise. [more inside]
The Foreign Language That Changed My Teenage Son’s Life
"I worried about his ability to fit in. But then he fell in love with Russian — and on a trip to Central Asia, he flourished." (NYT gift link, archive)
We see each other... and scream "hey skate fam!"
Kyle Dutcher is known in the roller skating world as Push. He has been roller skating in Atlanta since the early aughts. When he was on the show Wife Swap he took his new wife roller skating; it's a thing he and his family do together. He is part of Atlanta's Silver Fox Squad a group of over-50 men who encourage healthy lifestyles and looking sharp. He works on trees by day and skates at night, both of which help him manage his Tourettes Syndrome which he talks openly about.
Push's YouTube channel. More great skaters at SkateLyfe TV.
Welcome to the club of Joseon
Leenalchi is a Korean band that pairs traditional pansori vocals and melodies with bass-driven grooves. Their first album, Sugungga, is an interpretation of a classic Korean epic and opens with the hypnotic Tiger is Coming. The group has released several new songs in recent months including Bird and Look At Me Look At Me. Also featured in these videos are frequent Leenalchi collaborators Ambiguous Dance Company. [more inside]
The trading house of Sulaja E.gi-ba-ti.la
In 606 BCE, Sulaja E.gi-ba-ti.la (shortened to Egibi, and meaning "O Sîn, the one you gave, may he live!", more about Babylonian names here) ran a wholesale business in Babylon selling barley and dates. The trading empire he and his descendants built survived five generations and would live through events so dramatic that many are still remembered today. [more inside]
Some AI restrictions in Europe, but..
The European Commission has clarified eight AI use cases banned within the EU. Although good, the rules mostly limit the damages from spurious correlation, but even there broad contain terrorism exemptions. At the same time over the pond.. [more inside]
Red Markets RPG
"Red Markets is a game with zombies, but it is not a game about zombies. It is a game about paying your bills. Feeding your family. Affording your rent. Keeping your car running, your laptop charged, your gun oiled. Paying the doctor to bandage your scrapes and paying a therapist to salve your damaged psyche. And most importantly, it is a game about your life savings: both in the literal and fiscal sense." [more inside]
Our sex is the best sex says an XX from Gen X
But I cannot shake a strong hunch that what we are seeing among middle-aged women is a function of the specific generation currently occupying those years. This is a cohort of women with formative experiences that do not resemble those of the generations surrounding them: a generation that began having sex earlier than any other on record, that stayed on the singles market for years longer than their parents, that is continuing to have sex even amid a broader sexual decline. I do not think it is a coincidence that the women I’ve written about thus far are part of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980. from Why Gen X Women Are Having the Best Sex [NYT; ungated]
February 8
Framing emptiness: an exhibition of inscribed Renaissance frames
Tanja Lemke-Mahdavi and Olaf Lemke describe their exhibition of 15th and 16th century Italian and Spanish frames with painted and gilded inscriptions, all of which once had an intimate connection with the paintings they held, explaining and commenting on them.
(The Frame Blog also has an archive worth checking out)
Natalie Merchant Sings the Treasures of a Nation
Library of Congress: "The singer, songwriter, activist, and folklife advocate helped us mark the opening of the new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery with a very special concert presentation... Alongside a few of Natalie’s own compositions, and a few old popular compositions, the concert featured mostly traditional folksongs which have connections to the unparalleled archival collections of the American Folklife Center."
New prehistoric turtle species discovered in NT museum collection
A 13-million-year-old species of turtle has been discovered after its fossil sat in a display case at an Northern Territory museum for decades. An expert says there could be countless more undiscovered animal fossils in their collection. (Australia).
In memoriam Donald Shoup
The Alexander Piano is the longest grand piano in the world
Starting at age 15, Adrian Alexander Mann built a grand piano in the garage, from scratch. The piano is extraordinarily long, because the strings have none of the winding usually found on piano strings so that they can be of a manageable range of lengths.
When I was 14 I asked my piano teacher how long a bass a string would need to be if it had no copper on it at all. The answer was “Adrian the string would be so long it would go on for ever!” so with this in mind I did an experiment where I could find that measurement.... [more inside]
"No Wonder Everybody Loves This Show!"
If you need a break from doomscrolling: Ke Huy Quan has just done a Puppy Interview for Buzzfeed. [more inside]
This is not as much fun as I had thought it would be
On July 1, 2023, a Pentagon official at NASA headquarters calmly stated, ‘We see these metallic spheres all over the world, making maneuvers we can’t explain…moving at Mach 2 against the wind, with no apparent propulsion.” This was a government scientist, discussing objects that defy the laws of physics, in a briefing where the Pentagon and NASA were sharing findings like this after a year of study.
This should have been front-page news. Instead, it barely made a ripple in the mainstream media. from NASA’s Metallic Orbs: The Surprising Briefing Everyone Missed [more inside]
DC reporters check your sources for mistresses named "Ellie"
Newly detected near-Earth asteroid has astronomers’ full attention [WaPost 2025-02-02, gift link]
[At announcement, last Wednesday, the] likelihood of impact was very low, just 1.3 percent... Astronomers are making further observations and refining calculations for future orbits of Asteroid 2024 YR4. By Friday, the impact probability edged upward to 1.6 percent.In the week since the article was published, the probability has gone up further, to 2.3% (check the current probability at NASA/JPL).
The most wholesome and adorable story you need today
Leo Kelly is an 11-year-old beverage critic, and he already has the power to change restaurant menus. (NYT gift link). "This is the effect of Leo Kelly, now 11, who has been reviewing the drink for roughly half of his life as the “Shirley Temple King.” In short videos on Instagram, and occasionally on TV, he ranks Shirley Temples on a 10-point scale, considering factors like color, carbonation and the quality of the grenadine." [more inside]
"Someone who spent a lot of his past not being able to picture a future"
SOUR: An essay in The Player's Tribune written by Ettore Ewen, better known to the world as WWE wrestler "Big E Langston". He reflects on growing up as the son of a Carribbean preacher in Florida, surviving depression and body dysmorphia while being a football star and champion powerlifter, finding friendship and innovative ways to promote Black excellence as part The New Day tag team, and feeling gratitude after a career-ending neck injury.
“I'm from Bosnia, take me to America”
Salvatore Ganacci advises you about middle school. His Take Me To America is (perhaps) about trying to be a good son. Elsewhere, Salvatore chooses an onion, avoids the police, invents Grakour, deals with a problematic carrot, and visits 1980s Japan. The Vedran Rupic trilogy of Salvatore videos consists of Boycycle, Step-Grandma, and the award-winning [CW: weird violence] Horse.
"Leave rocks for your old age—they're easy"
In 1881, when he was half through his adult life, quintessentially American painter Winslow Homer upstakes and went to England. For a year and a half he lived in a sea front hotel at Cullercoats, near the mouth of the River Tyne. He hung out with fisherfolk (men to the sea, women to the shore) and captured their lives and the weather on canvas. “Never put more than two waves in a picture; it’s fussy.” He might have been particularly (chastely) en-mused by 15 y.o. Maggie Jefferson [14min National Gallery UK documentary] whose image appeared in many of his paintings. It seems to have been a turning point in his life and his development as an artist. Exec Summ in Folk Song [5min YT] by Stuart Gray. (Winslow Homer MetaPrev 2003)
Wooden buildings: Architecture both old and new
In Sweden, eco-minded architects are have designed the "world's largest wooden city", an "urban environment infused with the serenity of a forest", with construction commencing this year. Naturally, interesting wooden architecture is not a new thing, even for large buildings... [more inside]
A man went looking for America. And couldn't find it anywhere . . .
Easy Rider (1969) trailer Easy Rider is a 1969 American road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda, and directed by Hopper [more inside]
Vivien Sansour's Palestine Heirloom Seed Library
"The first year that the Hudson Valley Seed Company tried growing yakteen at their farm in upstate New York, the heirloom variety of Palestinian gourd quickly spread until its vines were sending their tendrils across a full acre of land. Born of a partnership with the artist, researcher and conservationist Vivien Sansour, that pilot plot was just one of many pieces of evidence supporting Sansour’s thesis: that saving Palestinian heirloom seeds could benefit not just Palestinians, but could help feed an entire planet in crisis. Sansour is the founder of the Palestine Heirloom Seed Library, a project that began in 2016 to conserve Palestinian heritage and culture by saving heirloom seed varieties and telling the stories and history from which they emerged."
An investigation—and a thought experiment
Does RFK Even Lift, Bro? Come for the thoughtful dissection of the fitness of a strange old man. Stay for the delicate connection drawn from fitness and age related body dysphoria to gender dysphoria. [more inside]
Initial excitement gives way to disillusionment
The internet and its associated gadgets stir reactions remarkably like those once directed at the press. In some quarters, futurist technophilia; more commonly, alarm at the social, political and cultural impact of these innovations, combined with neurotic dependence upon them. If Flaubert were writing his Dictionary of Received Ideas today, ‘Can’t live without it, but thunder against’ could very well be the entry for ‘iPhone’. The challenge for writers as well as readers remains that of trying to come to terms with destabilising media without being dominated by them. How, in other words, can imaginative literature navigate an ocean of online text and exploit the creative potential of digital technologies? from Elegance and hustle [Aeon; ungated]
February 7
"... a ruthless defender of all that exists."
"One gets the sense that politics has gone off, like a cell phone, in the darkened theater of Pamela Paul’s mind. It is worse than wrong: It is rude." She is departing the pages of the NYT.
"Weather is wrong"
'Walking with Weather'
"McGuckian lives in the province of ‘whatever you say, say nothing’, a motto which has become the only sustainable way of engaging in a society so divided. To announce your political views in such a context can not only be awkward but actually dangerous. At the personal level, McGuckian is writing about the most personal traumas of gender and sexuality, parenthood, family and friendship." From:
Does it matter if you don’t understand Medbh McGuckian
"McGuckian lives in the province of ‘whatever you say, say nothing’, a motto which has become the only sustainable way of engaging in a society so divided. To announce your political views in such a context can not only be awkward but actually dangerous. At the personal level, McGuckian is writing about the most personal traumas of gender and sexuality, parenthood, family and friendship." From:
Does it matter if you don’t understand Medbh McGuckian
The Rise and Fall of Howard Johnson's
"Howard Johnson's had a powerful position, at its peak possibly a higher market share of the chain restaurant industry than McDonald’s has today. Yet the company’s glory days lasted less than thirty years." [more inside]
How to tell the difference between Australian crows and ravens
How to tell the difference between Australian crows and ravens.
The mournful caw of a crow is part of Australia's bush soundtrack. But is it the sound of a crow or in fact a raven? It depends on where in Australia you are. Here are some tips on identifying these intelligent but often maligned creatures.
Licking the AI Boot
At this point, refusing to use AI, and especially LLM tools is an act of resistance. Give them no quarter. Purge them whenever you find them. Turn off Copilot. Poison any data that you put out into the world, and make it as difficult as possible for AI bots to train from your data. Treat the people who mindlessly boost AI as collaborators. [more inside]
Stories of powdered sugar
From the poem Gate A4 by Naomi Shihab Nye:
She was laughing a lot by then. Telling of her life, patting my knee,
answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool
cookies—little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and
nuts—from her bag—and was offering them to all the women at the gate.
To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the
lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same powdered
sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie. [more inside]
Show me the dead pixels, let loose the sphere that would roll astray
So here’s my real hot take: focusing on immersion in video games is at the detriment of having them being appreciated as craft. Interesting games writing makes you pause and consider intentionality and authorship. Immersion, at least as its popularly used to refer to getting “lost” in a game, doesn’t leave space for the pleasures of engaging with the gameworld as artifice. from Good game writing goes to heaven, bad game writing gets shared on the internet by Florence Smith Nicholls
Marooned on an island for 6000 years
Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, hosted a tiny population of the world's only remaining mammoths for 6000 years after they were stuck there by receding ice sheets, kept away from the humans who hunted the rest of the species to extinction. [more inside]
Ultraviolet Grasslands RPG
"There is a distinctive attitude and vision which simply leaps off the page. Groping for antecedents to compare the grasslands to, I suggest that this might be what you’d end up with if Hayao Miyazaki adapted Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun: It embodies a seemingly impossible nostalgia for something so alien it shouldn’t be able to resonate with our own sense of a lost past… and yet somehow does, capturing a serene beauty which is nevertheless filled with pulse-pounding savagery." [more inside]
🤘🤘 16 the only number that's the perimeter and area of a square 🤘🤘
Spiritbox just droppped the video for No Loss, No Love and it's a simultaneous kick to the eardrums and eyeballs, with a great mix of screaming, spoken word, and massive visuals. It's from their new album that comes out in 28 days. Also, Courtney is Poppy. [more inside]
Hopes second-ever discovery of night parrot egg will aid conservation
Hopes second-ever discovery of night parrot egg will aid conservation. Researchers hope the discovery of a night parrot egg in Western Australia, second only to one found in Queensland, means the once-thought-extinct bird's population is beginning to recover.
Welcome to the Future
The work of Dutch editorial cartoonist Tjeerd Royaards for Trouw over the past couple of months captures this historical moment. Knowledge of Dutch not essential. [more inside]
IanOnYouTube
Why Am I 30 years old working a dead end retail job? This is a kind of YouTube video I haven't seen for a long time. Most popular YouTubers nowadays make their living from YouTube, produce slick, polished content, and give the impression of being super successful. This guy is actually cleaning the floor in this video, as part of his job. Seeing someone so genuine, hardworking, and economically challenged, it's touching how many people are donating, now that his channel has, due to some YouTubular quirk, massively blown up.
Building Consensus Through a Common Enemy
"In a way, one can assume that Charles Bukowski is used both as a common interest for forum members and a pretext for like-minded people who, after exchanging knowledge and information about their author, feel safe enough in the community they have built for broader conversations about other culturally-related topics." [more inside]
Vailala Madness
The cargo cult metaphor is commonly used by programmers. This metaphor was popularized by Richard Feynman's "cargo cult science" talk with a vivid description of South Seas cargo cults. However, this metaphor has three major problems. First, the pop-culture depiction of cargo cults is inaccurate and fictionalized, as I'll show. Second, the metaphor is overused and has contradictory meanings making it a lazy insult. Finally, cargo cults are portrayed as an amusing story of native misunderstanding but the background is much darker: cargo cults are a reaction to decades of oppression of Melanesian islanders and the destruction of their culture. from The origin of the cargo cult metaphor [Ken Shirriff]
February 6
Escapism for free at your local internet video rental store
Warner Brothers has just released 33 of their classic movies onto YouTube for free. Here's the full playlist. Selections include: | The Incredible Mr. Limpet. | Oh, God | Waiting for Guffman | Mutiny on the Bounty | True Stories | SubUrbia | Plenty of gems and just as many questionable/stinkers to be watched, but if you've never seen one of these and have an hour or two to spare, you could do much worse than a slice of any of these free pies, just sitting there on the windowsill. Mmmmm.... I can smell the blockbuster checkout aisle they have hostess pies...
'I, Willie Sutton'
In 1953, Quentin Reynolds wrote the first "biography" of Bank Robber and Jail Breaker, Willie 'The Actor' Sutton. (Hoaxed the same year by George Dupre) The "Memoir", ' Where The Money Was" title is derived from the infamous Q&A: " why rob banks/ that's where the money is". Sutton also mentions Sutton's Law.
"Willie Sutton Would Love The CTV Ad Business'
"A wake-up call: Why bank robber Willie Sutton may have important lessons for modern media executives"
'Willie Sutton Rule: What It is, How It Works'
Thing is, no one is 100% sure if Sutton even said it, not even him.
'The unexpurgated search for Willie Sutton'
"Willie Sutton Would Love The CTV Ad Business'
"A wake-up call: Why bank robber Willie Sutton may have important lessons for modern media executives"
'Willie Sutton Rule: What It is, How It Works'
Thing is, no one is 100% sure if Sutton even said it, not even him.
'The unexpurgated search for Willie Sutton'
James Foley’s “Glengarry Glen Ross”
First-Ever Photographs of the Elusive Mount Lyell Shrew
See the First-Ever Photographs of the Elusive Mount Lyell Shrew, Finally Caught on Camera in California. A group of young researchers captured and photographed the animal on a three-day expedition to the Eastern Sierra Nevada.