August 28
Star Wars Episode 8: Clark Griswold's Jedi Adventure
Mr. Plinkett examines Star Wars Episode 8 The Last Jedi and argues that the movie is actually a comedy of errors, like National Lampoon's Vacation (minus the actual comedy), where nothing make sense and everyone is disturbingly stupid.
American Beauties - The story of the plastic bag.
Essay examining the history and impact of the humble plastic bag. They catch in the wind, gather on the street, and clog our trash cans. How plastic bags came to rule our lives, and why we can’t quit them.
The river site, 63 years later
The first sign, pointing us off the asphalt and down the dirt road, is riddled with bullet holes. We knew to expect this, but it’s still shocking. A spray of perforations, haphazard and angry. One took out the last letter in body. One hit just above the a in black. One pierced right between the first and last names, severing Emmett from Till. This is where it ended, somewhere near here on unincorporated land in Tallahatchie County, a few miles north of the village of Glendora, Mississippi. Siddhartha Mitter on Emmett Till for Popula.
Here They Come Again
While the #MeToo movement has had success with unveiling abusers in the media, there has been a question about the long term, with the individuals involved looking to return to public life. Writing forJezebel, Anna Merlan reports on the wave of trial balloons being floated by those that had been named as abusers and the pressure being placed on the movement to "move forward". (SLJezebel)
All the Ways It Doesn’t Matter…and the One Way That It Does.
Mastering Obama's Voice
The Woman Behind The Presidential Curtain A charming and fascinating story about the Office of Presidential Correspondence during the Obama Administration.
“We are all victims of fraud in the marketplace of ideas”
Today, The Verge is publishing an interim edition of Sarah Jeong’s The Internet of Garbage, a book she first published in 2015 but has since gone out of print. After a year on The Verge’s staff as a senior writer, Sarah recently joined The New York Times Editorial Board to write about technology issues. The move kicked off a wave of outrage and controversy as a group of trolls selectively took Sarah’s old tweets out of context to inaccurately claim that she is a racist. This prompted a further wave of unrelenting racist harassment directed at Sarah, a wave of coverage examining her tweets, and a final wave of coverage about the state of outrage generally. This is all deeply ironic because Sarah laid out exactly how these bad-faith tactics work in The Internet of Garbage.
What Not to Read in High School
The current literary canon for high school is wrong and should be fixed. The whole concept of the “canon” is less essential to our culture, especially as we see how many people were kept out of this canon, and how many were prematurely thrust into it. There are more good writers publishing more good books now, and they’re being disrespected by our obsession with a narrow set of “timeless” stories that are in fact showing their age.
The sticker price: sixteen thousand dollars.
The New Yorker on 25 years of Magic: the Gathering.
The Secret Garden
"The oral history of how a scientist found a rainforest on top of a mountain, then led a team of 28 scientists, logistics experts, climbers, and others to a place where humans had not set foot for a century or more."
The New 1930s.
“The hearings in 1935 that were held before the Labor subcommittee on the Lundeen Bill are a remarkable historical document, “probably the most unique document ever to appear in the Congressional record,” at least according to the executive secretary of the IPA. Eighty witnesses testified: industrial workers, farmers, veterans, professional workers, African-Americans, women, the foreign-born, and youth. “Probably never in American history,” an editor of the Nation wrote, “have the underprivileged had a better opportunity to present their case before Congress.” The aggregate of the testimonies amounted to a systematic indictment of American capitalism and the New Deal, and an impassioned defense of the radical alternative under consideration.” Are American Workers Really Opposed to Socialism? The lost history of the Worker’s Bill, a radical 1930s era attempt to change Americans’ relationship to work.
“BE A HOLE.”
Hopi-less: How Kachina Became Donut County [Rock Paper Shotgun] “Five Two years ago, GDC 2013’s Experimental Gameplay Workshop featured a game that had the crowd cheering and applauding in delight. It was Ben Esposito (The Unfinished Swan) with Kachina. This year’s GDC revived an old favourite of the show, the Failure Workshop. This was a chance for developers to share the stories of their disasters, and the good or bad that came from them. And during it, Esposito generously and honestly told an engrossing and humbling tale of how Kachina became Donut County [Official Site], and the hard cultural lessons he learned along the way.” [YouTube][Trailer] [more inside]
Stop Buying "Native Inspired" Designs
Brands need to do more to prove they're using this imagery in a respectful way—and hiring Indigenous people to design it [more inside]
It is time to check that your buns are suitably firm to the touch
As Autumn arrives, British supermarkets fill with Christmas foods and distant cousins in the thirteen colonies drink their pumpkin spice lattes, everyday is so wonderful. The Great British Bake Off, a show famous for baking and infamous for scandal - not forgetting the biggest controversy of 2016 - returns tonight [series 9 on Wikipedia]. While past winners watch, twelve bakers will do battle, with Manon Lagreve tipped by some to win. The first week is biscuit week; a future episode will be a vegan week (and here's a brownie recipe), plus a Danish week. In the UK, it's on Channel Four at 8pm. Turn on your ovens, MeFites... [FanFare]
KING of CHICKEN LEGS / Using 100 Chicken Legs / Prepared by my Daddy
The Indian Filmmaker Who Made His Dad’s Village Cooking a YouTube Sensation (Priya Krishna for The New Yorker). Jaymukh Gopinath cooks huge meals -- everything from 100 chicken legs to huge Prawn Masala and 15 KG Butter Chicken Recipe, and entertains millions around the world, as Village Food Factory on YouTube. Because he makes so much, leftover food is donated to local ashrams. [more inside]
The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages
Superlative feats have always thrilled average mortals, in part, perhaps, because they register as a victory for Team Homo Sapiens: they redefine the humanly possible. If the ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes can run three hundred and fifty miles without sleep, he may inspire you to jog around the block. If Rojas-Berscia can speak twenty-two languages, perhaps you can crank up your high-school Spanish or bat-mitzvah Hebrew, or learn enough of your grandma’s Korean to understand her stories. What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us?
America eats its young
The Incredible, Rage-Inducing Inside Story of America’s Student Debt Machine. "Why is the nation’s flagship loan forgiveness program failing the people it’s supposed to help?"
What Socialism Looks Like in 2018
Capitalism, Socialism, and Unfreedom - "Minimal government doesn't remove power from our lives." (via) [more inside]
And no-one ever knew.
The Dover Boys ReAnimated Collab has been releCONTEXTUALIZE THIS POST, BIGGERJ! CONTEXTUALIZE THIS POST, BIGGERJ! CONTEXTUALIZE THIS POST, BIGGERJ! Hey, we're getting in a rut!
August 27
“The Lyndon Johnson books by Caro, it’s our Harry Potter”
John Koblin writes the puffiest of puff-pieces for the NYT: “Conan O’Brien’s Unrequited Fanboy Love for Robert Caro”
For years Mr. O’Brien has tried to book the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Power Broker” and the multivolume epic “The Years of Lyndon Johnson.” And for years Mr. Caro has said no.
And this little earworm went Doot Doot Doot all the way home
Firestorm 1991
In a year of extreme wildfires, it is interesting to recall the story of Firestorm 1991 in Eastern Washington and North Idaho (by Jess Walter).
"Do not despair of our present difficulties"—Sen. John McCain
Though McCain's farewell statement asked his fellow Americans to "give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country", Trump rejected initial plans for a White House statement praising his rival (Washington Post). Earlier today, ABC's Karen Travers (@karentravers) noted, "Flags at the White House were lowered to half staff this weekend for the passing of John McCain but this morning they are back to full staff.", while CBS's Mark Knoller (@markknoller) reported that Trump "[w]as asked to reflect on the legacy of Sen. McCain, but declined. Sat silent and cross-armed as press pool herded out of the Oval Office." But late this afternoon, the White House issued a statement that Trump "signed a proclamation to fly the flag of the United States at half-staff until the day of [McCain's] interment". However, CNBC's Eamon Javers (@EamonJavers) observed that although "the White House flag is now at half staff, [the f]lag atop the White House’s Executive Office Building is still fully raised now[….]" Trump will not attend McCain's funeral, as per the late senator's request (NY Daily News). [more inside]
A Tele-Robotic Garden on the World Wide Web
"A robot as gardener, a flower bed as international meeting place in the World Wide Web. You can control a robotic arm via WWW in order to observe and tend the garden. Sow and water the plants, or simply get together in the Chat Channel with other telegardeners from all over the world." [more inside]
Because I still see the boy.
Survivors of Vermont orphanage abuse come forward. Christine Kenneally investigates horrific stories of child abuse by nuns at a Burlington orphanage and the subsequent legal struggles.
Content warning: violence against, torture, rape, murder of children. (SLBuzzfeed)
The Story of Why I Left Riot Games
"So this is it. This is going to be the thing." That’s what I remember thinking as I left the room where I had just finished a conversation with two female mentees. I had wondered for some time when there would be an incident serious enough that I had to talk to leadership about unacceptable behavior in the workplace, and here it was.
If corporations can be legal persons, why not rivers?
Should Rivers Have Rights? A Growing Movement Says It’s About Time. Inspired by indigenous views of nature, a movement to grant a form of legal “personhood” to rivers is gaining some ground — a key step, advocates say, in reversing centuries of damage inflicted upon the world’s waterways.
Basically, Henry is a Very Good Birb
Just a little fluff for your Monday afternoon/evening. As it were.
STOP, YOU'RE [DUMBIFYING] ME
Having trouble articulating your thoughts lately? Not quite up to snuff, intellectually — or at least not the whipsmart organizer of ideas you're sure you used to be? Maybe you're just breathing bad air. [more inside]
One of New York’s Most Unlikely Friendships
Miriam Toews' new novel Women Talking is Mennonite #MeToo
Miriam Toews' new novel, Women Talking has been described by some as Mennonite #MeToo. It was inspired by the horrific sexual assaults in the closed, ultra conservative Mennonite Manitoba Colony in Bolivia: men in the community drugged and raped over 100 women and girls in the community nightly over a period of years. Initially, the community's male elders dismissed the women's reports as either fantasy or the work of Satan, but eventually eight men were caught and convicted (previously on Metafilter). “I’ve always been trying to challenge the patriarchy, specifically of my Mennonite community, but I’m concerned with the suppression of girls and women especially, and any place in the world that falls under fundamentalist, authoritarian thinking,” says Toews. “I think in my work, and in my life, I’ve always been attempting to, as they used to say, stick it to the man.” [Content warning: descriptions of sexual assault, mention of suicide.] [more inside]
High Rise
“Gentrification is not quite the right word for what’s happening here. Midtown is no derelict precinct primed for an influx of the affluent. What’s emerging instead is a vision of where development is headed next: toward a culture of the secessionist city. The techno-libertarians, machine fanatics, and psychopaths of Silicon Valley have long dreamed of an exit from regular society, through colonization of the seas and the stars. In the form of the supertall, they may have found, for themselves and others like them, an elegant solution: one that gives them a society apart, a realm of perfect exclusion and perfect control, but nevertheless leeches off the encircling polity while entrenching the political influence of the rich.” The Needles and the Damage Done (The Baffler)
Yosemite Finally Reckons with Its Discriminatory Past
Pioneers, the government, even John Muir helped kick out Native Americans from their homes on national parks. But in Yosemite, the Miwuk Tribe is getting its village back. [more inside]
Benjamen Walker
Back in 2005, Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything podcast got its first Front Page Post on Metafilter. In the late 2000s, he was working at WNYC (previously). Then he had a show on WFMU (previously), which he left to restart the ToE podcast for PRX's Radiotopia network. [more inside]
The beauty of black life, jazz giants to ordinary neighborhood residents
In 1973, when photographers Beuford Smith and Joe Crawford began working on The Black Photographers Annual, black photographers had few outlets for publishing work about ordinary black life that didn’t fit the news cycle of the day. For their first issue, Smith and Crawford gathered images from well-established photographers such as Roy DeCarava and photos the legendary James Van DerZee had made during the Harlem Renaissance. But what made The Black Photographers Annual so influential is that it gave a platform for members of the Kamoinge collective and numerous other photographers who had photographed a variety of stories and subjects. [more inside]
US First Female Soldiers
The "Hello Girls" forged a path for women soldiers and are now getting recognized for their service. The bilingual team of women served on the front lines of battle, connecting 26 million calls for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. They served at military headquarters and outposts in the field alongside the American Expeditionary Forces in France, connecting the front lines with supply depots and military commands. They became known as the ‘Hello Girls”
Yet despite this service — and despite taking a military oath —the Hello Girls were denied veteran status and benefits when they returned home.
White Dirt
Making Peace With the Age-Old Practice of Eating White Dirt, Chuck Reece for The Bitter Southerner
Against The Stream No More
Against The Stream, a Buddhist meditation society founded by punk rocker Noah Levine, is shutting down its meditation centers after multiple women came forward with allegations of assault, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct by Levine. An internal investigation concluded that with multiple women, Levine violated the Third Precept of the Teacher’s Code of Ethics, namely, "to avoid creating harm through sexuality." Levine is the author of the best-selling memoir Dharma Punx, as well as the founder of a for-profit drug and alcohol treatment center called Refuge Recovery. [more inside]
“Time is a flat circle.”
True Detective Season 3 [YouTube][Teaser Trailer] “The teaser focuses on Wayne Hays, played by Oscar-winner Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), who is trying to figure out something from his past. Much like the first season, the third looks like it will use fragmented memories and multiple timelines to tell a twisty story. Ali’s Hays is a detective from Northwest Arkansas, but the show is set in the Ozarks — a region that is spread over four different states: Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas. True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto will be credited with writing the entire season, much like the series’ first season.” [via: Polygon]
Winners and losers at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
This year's 10 Best Joke competition winners.
(Previously.)
And this year's Comedy Award winners.
Comedians at the Fringe voted for their own favourite comics. [more inside]
The first WAGs: A 1970s All Black wife on rugby and women’s lib
The man from the rugby union is resolute. If he lets us in, the floodgates will open. You’ll want fancy stuff to drink, he says. But, he says, moist-eyed with magnanimity, if you’d like to help out in the kitchen with the other ladies, you’re more than welcome. [more inside]
White Space
Based off of what we know right now, the Moon and Mars are devoid of life, so this colonizing language is not actually putting other beings at risk. But, there is the risk that the same racist mythology used to justify violence and inequality on earth — such as the use of frontier, “cowboy” mythology to condone and promote the murder and displacement of indigenous people in the American West — will be used to justify missions to space. In a future where humans potentially do live on non-earth planets, that same racist mythology would carry through to who is allowed to exist on, and benefit from, extraterrestrial spaces. The racist language of space exploration by Caroline Haskins [via Katexic]
August 26
Even contains a Ressikan Flute
Stage 9, named after the Paramount location used to film episodes of several Star Trek shows, is a Unreal Engine 4-powered recreation of the USS Enterprise D, inside and out. You can download it now!
what... what happened in Alberta
The stirring story of how Alberta became the first place in the world to banish the rat (and the twelve thousand page Wikipedia edit war about it)
Context in courtship: how do singing mice decide when to sing?
𝗗𝗼𝗴: 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚍 𝚝𝚘 𝚍𝚘 𝚒𝚝. 𝙸 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚗'𝚝 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚎𝚍. 𝙴𝚟𝚎𝚛.
In honor of National Dog Day (previously), here's a heartwarming story of hunger and determination. [h/t joycehealy]
Mindblindness goes both ways.
The ‘double empathy problem’ The author asks other authors and their readers to realize that most portrayals of this minority are from the outside and "research" done on characters use the equivalent of the orientalist gaze. Never allowed to speak for themselves, their behaviours are itemised, but not actually understood. The observer, meanwhile, is assumed to be neutral, authoritative and wise. This creates a simulacrum of the Orient, packaged for the consumption of the West. If it happened only once, it would barely be a problem; but reproduced endlessly, each skewed representation gives life and context to the next. The literary trope of autism has that same kind of memetic contagion. [more inside]
The SFE quarrels its way into being encyclopedic
Neil Simon master of comedy dead at 91
Hit the road @jack send toot
If Social Media is a part of your life but you're also sickened by nazis you've probably considered Mastodon as an alternative. But rather than a straight-up Twitter clone based on the open standards Mastodon has some real and significant differences that may be confusing at first. Fortunately this video should help get you up to speed: Intro to Mastodon 101