October 5
Elton made the music. Bernie made the words. History made it a legend.
45 years ago, October 5, 1973, Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was released. Possibly Elton John's/Bernie Taupin's best, but you also can't discount his band who contributed mightily. You probably know a bunch of songs off of it even if you never intended to. Nearly the entire release is worth chewing through; it's One Of Those. It's still a bold double album, 45 years later. Let's listen! Full Album Playlist, ~75m. Side One: Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding, Candle In The Wind, Bennie And The Jets [more inside]
Drops of water
‘Human impulses run riot’: China’s shocking pace of change Thirty years ago, politics was paramount. Now, only money counts. China’s leading novelist examines a nation that has transformed in a single lifetime
October 4
The Art of Japanese Funeral Flowers
The lavish display of funeral flower arrangements is only 30 years old. But it's become really big business. A lot of money is spent on funeral flowers in Japan. In fact, in 2006 Beauty Kadan became the first publicly traded Japanese company specializing in funeral flowers when it listed itself on the Mother’s section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Youkaen, a general flower company that entered the funeral flower business in 1972 now says that roughly 75% of their 50 billion yen in sales (roughly $44 mm USD) comes from their funeral flower segment. [more inside]
The Viruses That Neanderthals Spread to Humans
Deep in Human DNA, a Gift From the Neanderthals. "Long ago, Neanderthals probably infected modern humans with viruses, perhaps even an ancient form of H.I.V. But our extinct relatives also gave us genetic defenses." "The two ancient hominin groups swapped genes, diseases, and genes that protect against diseases, according to a new study."
"The idea is for humanity to be attracted by its own viscera"
With his work, Javier Pérez (previously) reveals his inquiries and reflections on mankind, using a language full of intense metaphor and imbued with a strong symbolism,” a statement says. His works contain an intrinsic dialectic, showing how weak can be the boundary between concepts seemingly opposite such as the natural and the cultural, the inside and the outside or life and death. The idea of cyclical fluctuations, circularity, temporality and impermanence are some of the artist’s recurring themes.
A Flower of Precocious Depravity
"The formerly upright ballet had taken on the role of unseemly cabaret; in Paris, its success was almost entirely predicated on lecherous social contracts. Sex work was a part of a ballerina’s reality, and the city’s grand opera house, the Palais Garnier, was designed with this in mind. A luxuriously appointed room located behind the stage, called the foyer de la danse, was a place where the dancers would warm up before performances. But it also served as a kind of men’s club, where abonnés—wealthy male subscribers to the opera—could conduct business, socialize, and proposition the ballerinas. [more inside]
Nobel Prize winner Donna Strickland & physics' problems with sexism
Canadian physicist Donna Strickland (University of Waterloo) has become the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Physics in 55 years (previous discussion of Strickland in MeFi Nobel post). Strickland and French physicist Gérard Mourou shared half the prize for their laser technique called chirped pulse amplification. She is only the third woman ever to win for physics, illustrating the field's continuing problems with sexism. This past weekend, at a conference hosted by CERN intended to address the issue of gender bias, prominent Italian physicist Alessandro Strumia claimed that women are worse at physics than men and lectured a group of predominantly young women scientists about "the dangers of gender equality." [more inside]
First Nation water is cheap for companies, unavailable for residents
Canada is home to 60% of the world’s lakes and one-fifth of the world’s fresh water, yet there are currently 69 indigenous communities with long-term boil water advisories (Gov't of Canada, Water in First Nation communities), which means tens of thousands of people haven’t had drinkable water for at least a year. Meanwhile, working legal ambiguity to their favor, Nestlé extracts water on expired permits for next to nothing, paying the province of Ontario $503.71 (US$390.38) per million litres (CBC, Nov. 26, 2017). But they pay the Six Nations nothing, despite their pumps pulling water out from Six Nations treaty land. In response, the Six Nations are suing the province, in a case before the superior court of Ontario. (Alexandra Shimo for the Guardian, Oct. 4, 2018) [more inside]
HUD And Its Discontents
"Indeed, the real-estate industry grew in tandem with and helped to popularize racist, even eugenic ideas about African Americans, including the notions that Black residents negatively impact property values, are undesirable neighbors, and pose an existential risk to communities and neighborhoods. As early as the 1920s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards had threatened professional discipline against any agent who disrupted segregated neighborhood racial patterns." How Real Estate Segregated America (Dissent)
always online?
Low Tech Magazine [previously] has built a solar-powered version of their homepage. How To Build A Low-Tech Website
DIY-abetes glucose monitors
"By some estimates, as many as 2,000 people around the world have used a home-built pancreas, cobbled together mostly via social media and the free-code clearinghouse GitHub. Tech support consists of parents and patients who use Facebook Messenger or email to help newcomers fix bugs or revive busted equipment. There are plenty of potential converts: In the U.S. alone, about 1.3 million people have Type 1 diabetes, and there are indications the technology could also help some sufferers of Type 2, the group that accounts for most of the world’s 422 million diabetes cases…. [more inside]
Today's menu: Virginia possum
For gentle enjoyment of our impending decay: the Virginia Museum of Natural History's dermestid flesh-eating beetle live cam. More details here. "When the colony is really active, they can be given a mouse whole - without skinning or gutting the specimen - and finish it in a single day."
This post is not a hoax
To "expose the reality of 'grievance studies,'" three scholars submitted 20 "hoax" papers to a variety of journals. Seven were accepted. The authors say their goal was to expose an "undeniable problem in academic research on important issues relevant to social justice." Critics say it reveals only that it's easy to lie to people who assume honesty. Dubbed "Sokal squared," after the 1996 hoax article "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity," the incident has generated robust debate on Twitter.
BARTENDER: “What is this, a joke?”
So a racehorse runs into a bar... [YouTube] “Reuters reports that a racehorse got loose and busted into a bar near the racecourse in Chantilly, France, about 30 miles north of Paris. The filly’s trainer said that he lost control of the animal as he led her from the stables (where some scenes in the James Bond movie A View To A Kill were shot) to a racecourse, and stated that “the young horse has a fondness for running off.”” [via: The Takeout]
Go home birds, you're drunk
Spy chips found on server motherboards
Bloomberg reports a major supply-chain hack. After Apple, Amazon and others started to see unusual behaviour in servers from SuperMicro, investigations found chips on the motherboards that shouldn't have been there. Disguised as other components, the chips reportedly intercepted and modified low-level code, creating back doors for remote exploitation. But who put them there?
Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend
Who was the "One Tin Soldier?"
"Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below..."
The song, written by Canadians Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, became a Northern American sensation when Skeeter Davis recorded the single, which also coincided with the Billy Jack phenomenon. [more inside]
"Listen, children, to a story
That was written long ago,
‘Bout a kingdom on a mountain
And the valley-folk below..."
The song, written by Canadians Dennis Lambert and Brian Potter, became a Northern American sensation when Skeeter Davis recorded the single, which also coincided with the Billy Jack phenomenon. [more inside]
October 3
The little lost computer that could
A man finds a Commodore 64C left outside for a decade. Will it still work? I was given a Commodore 64C that had been left outside for a decade or more in rural Oregon. It dealt with everything mother nature could throw at it while it sat outside; rust, water damage, even an ant colony. Could this machine possibly still work?
The Weird of Wendy Pini
A biographical sketch of Wendy Pini The life and work of Wendy Pini, co-creator and illustrator of ElfQuest and occasional Red Sonja Actress(!) - from the pre-elf days to the recent completion of the quest. content warning: some references to abuse and death
Are you ready for some fat bears?!?
"On Wednesday, October 3rd, Katmai National Park and Preserve kicks-off Fat Bear Week 2018 to determine which gluttonous giant sits atop the brown bear oligarchy of obesity. The annual march madness-style competition, now in its fourth year, pits commonly seen bears on the Bear Cam against one another to decide which bear indeed, looks the fattest. The public is encouraged to vote on Katmai National Park and Preserve’s Facebook page in head-to-head matches each day beginning October 3rd. The bear whose photo receives the most likes will advance to the next round, until one bear is crowned “Fattest Bear” on Fat Bear Tuesday, October 9th." [more inside]
Morbidly beautiful medical illustrations
Dr. Frank Netter was a surgeon during the great depression, though as a child growing up in Manhattan, he aspired to be an artist. As it turns out, Netter became both a great artist as well as a doctor [NSFW] […] His use of color is in line with schemes used in classic pulp novel illustration, and he used real patients for his subjects when depicting various medical issues, such as a man suffering the after-effects of a brain injury[…], or what goes on inside the human body during a fit of unbridled rage. [NSFW] Netter’s paintings and illustrations are as remarkable as they are often strange and off-putting at times. [more inside]
Tomorrow Never Knows
Geoff Emerick, Beatles engineer, passes away at 72. Many comments on @thebeatles, Paul pays tribute to Geoff. Without a doubt, he threw himself whole-heartedly into the adventure.
a Zulu groove bomb
Blinded in the age of 5 due to illness, Steve Kekana was one of the most successful south african musicians of the eighties, and actually one of the first to take his band to perform overseas. In 1980 he probably had a big continental-european hit called "Raising my family", that tooped the charts in Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria etc. "Bushman" was another hit from this era (reminds me Sting & The Police), and so "Africa". Most of his work is collected in an english-album compilation "The English Album". [more inside]
The Elevator-Phobes of a Vertical City
It’s hard to live in any urban area if you are anxious about elevators. Somehow, these New Yorkers make it work. [more inside]
He makes Patrick Bateman look like Mr. Rogers
The official trailer for Vice, the Dick Cheney biopic starring Christian Bale and directed by Adam McKay (The Big Short), has dropped.
(w/ Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.)
(w/ Amy Adams as Lynne Cheney, Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, and Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld.)
at some point they backtracked on scrotality
Natural selection has sculpted the mammalian forelimb into horses’ front legs, dolphins’ fins, bats’ wings, and my soccer ball-catching hands. Why, on the path from the primordial soup to us curious hairless apes, did evolution house the essential male reproductive organs in an exposed sac? It's like a bank deciding against a vault and keeping its money in a tent on the sidewalk.Why are testicles kept in a vulnerable dangling sac? It’s not why you think.
Understanding Reality: What Hallucinations Reveal
Hallucinations Are Everywhere: Experiences like hearing voices are leading psychologists to question how all people perceive reality.
A Good Wolfenoot to You!
This November 23rd you can celebrate the first Wolfenoot. Jax Goss's 7-year old son invented a holiday called Wolfenoot, and the internet got very excited to join him in celebrating. #Wolfenoot has lots of pictures of doggos and plans to donate to wolf sanctuaries and animal shelters. [more inside]
Afrobeats Worldwide: Nigerian Musicians making the new global pop
Kelefa Sanneh wrote for the The New York and recently profiled ten Nigerian musicians and groups who are changing the sound of global pop, including brief bios of each and a description of how they fit (or don't fit) into the Afrobeats sound. "But isn't Afrobeat old?" Yes, but this is Afrobeats plural. For more context, last year Fareeda Abdulkareem wrote for The Culture Trip and provided An Introduction to Afrobeats, Nigeria's Beloved Music Genre, but wait, there's more! If you have the time, start with an hour long audio-history of Nigerian music from Afropop Worldwide. Even more music and links below the break. [more inside]
The Philanthro-Capitalist Class
“First, for years, they allowed problems to fester—real problems like declining social mobility, what trade was doing to America, issues around cities and gentrification. Every time you say Lean In is going to fix gender equality, or one charter school in Bed-Stuy is going to solve education, or you’re going to have some kind of tote bag that saves the environment—every time we were promulgating phony change, that is not doing real change. It is crowding out real change and redefining change so we cannot do more ambitious change.” Why Real Change Won’t Come From Billionaire Philanthropists - “Just as the firm dodged the collapse of those toxic securities, it dodged the public’s thirst for justice. The e-mail’s recipients—and the very affluent in general—would capture most of the gains from the long recovery. A Times analysis of Federal Reserve data last year found that, while the average American household was still thirty-per-cent poorer, in net worth, than in 2007, the top ten per cent of households were twenty-seven per cent wealthier than before the crisis“ After the Financial Crisis, Wall Street Turned to Charity—and Avoided Justice - Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All, on the win–win business- and plutocrat-friendly philanthropy of today’s rich (Jacbonin Radio)
Fingertip Universe
Nikon Small World in Motion Annual Winners 2018-2011 — beautiful microscopic movies and digital time-lapse photomicrography. (See also Nikon International Small World Photomicrography Competition Annual Winners 2017-1975).
The Tenacious Spirit of Servitude
For NYC sommelier Yannick Benjamin, integrating disability and hospitality was the only way forward.
SPOIDS
Spiderween: An Arachnophobe-Safe Guide To Spiders. "I think everyone deserves a chance to learn about such an amazing corner of the animal kingdom, and so for an entire thirty-one entries in a row, we're about to go over some of the most interesting spider species, spider habits and spider superpowers without a single realistic spider in view. Instead, we're substituting the real animals with anthropomorphs I believe I've designed to capture as much of a spider's 'character' or 'personality' as a four-limbed, two-eyed, endoskeletoned biped ever reasonably could." [more inside]
"No, I can assure you it sucks in many other ways"
Scott Galloway, 2018 Code Commerce
NYU professor Scott Galloway speaks at the 2018 Code Conference and calls again for the breakup of big tech (Amazon, Facebook, Google) with lots of data and insight. Galloway predicted the Amazon acquisition of Whole Foods weeks before it happened.
October 2
Ju-Jitsu Suffragettes
In 1914 suffragettes learned to fight back. It’s Edwardian Era Glasgow, circa 1914, and the stress mounting in St. Andrews’s Hall is unbearable. Flocks of Suffragettes and policemen are waiting for the woman of the hour, Emmeline Pankhurst, to magically surface and fight against her own arrest — the tension is so palpable, you could cut it with a knife. Or karate-chop it, which is exactly what “the Bodyguard”, a top-secret secret society of feminists, decided to do. They were corseted, they were clever, and they could flip a man over like a pancake. [more inside]
We're talking away
24 Years of The Interactive Fiction Competition
2018's IFComp has seventy-seven entries, which is actually less than 2017's seventy-nine entries - a long way from 1995's twelve. This year shows a continued trend of browser-based online games, although ADRIFT and Z-code based games still make a showing. This year's organizer is Jacq, who previously organized IntroComp, which helps IF writers consider try new things out and gauge reactions before finishing the whole game. [more inside]
Science fiction is for real, space opera is for fun
Bobo Yéyé: Belle Époque in Upper Volta
Volta Jazz :
Wêrê Wêrê Magne,
Mama Soukous,
Djougou Malola
When Burkina Faso Vibrated with a New Culture [more inside]
Wêrê Wêrê Magne,
Mama Soukous,
Djougou Malola
When Burkina Faso Vibrated with a New Culture [more inside]
Life, Death, and John Prine
When my wife had been in labor for 16 hours, I played her John Prine’s “Everything Is Cool.” She’d begun gasping instead of breathing, climbing into the tub to gather herself. As Prine’s fingerpicking rang out from a tiny speaker, she closed her eyes and smiled. […] When my daughter died two years later, the song rang out again into the stricken silence at her service. This time, it felt like a hymn.
Pitchfork's Jayson Greene talks to John Prine about his latest album, The Tree Of Forgiveness, and discusses how he came to Prine's music.
Also, the heartbreaking official video for "Summer's End" dropped last week. [more inside]
Pitchfork's Jayson Greene talks to John Prine about his latest album, The Tree Of Forgiveness, and discusses how he came to Prine's music.
Also, the heartbreaking official video for "Summer's End" dropped last week. [more inside]
Dear Dads:
Dung beetle worms in PNAS
From Ed Yong: "TFW your genitals are full of sexually transmitted worms, and that's great news for your kids" (and you're a dung beetle). [more inside]
Even God is uneasy, Say the moist bells of Swansea.
And who robbed the miner?/Cry the grim bells of Blaina. A little-known poem discovered by Pete Seeger became a popular folk standard and subsequently recorded hundreds of times by various artists. Besides the original, most folksy version by Pete Seeger (1964 live performance linked, but originally recorded live for the 1958 album, "Pete Seeger and Sonny Terry"), the most famous version is probably by The Byrds and was released on their debut album, "Mr Tambourine Man" (1965). A poppy version that borrows heavily from The Byrds was recorded by Robyn Hitchcock and The Egyptians (1984); and Cher tried her hand in 1965, with good results. [more inside]
Historic low for Liberals as the CAQ wins majority in Quebec
With the sovereignty question largely off the table in this election, the Quebec Liberal Party was ousted as the ruling party in Quebec, with historically low numbers, while the Coalition Avenir Québec formed their first government, a majority. Along the way, Québec Solidaire gained 7 more seats, bringing them to the cusp of official party status (10 seats and 12 are required) while the Parti Québécois dropped from 28 seats to 9, losing official party status and their leader, Jean-François Lisée, lost his seat and resigned from his leadership position. [more inside]
The stream is coming from inside the Netflix House
What up, haints, it’s October times. Let’s get Halloweird with it. Here are some movies of the horror and horror-adjacent genres that you might watch by yourself or with a party of friends or with a 20 foot tall whistling ghost who grinds the bones of womanizers into dust inside his sack. - Yes, it's The Haunting of Netflix House VI: Netflix Lives, the annual roundup of the spookiest streaming spookmares for the spookiest month. This post is of course a sequel to previous archival spookings.
In The Language Is Life, In The Language is Death
Degrowth/Green Deal
"Since the chimera of sustainable development is an alibi for permanent growth, degrowth is meant to grab hold of the dominant discourse of growth, envelop it and its apologists, and in fact take on fundamentalism where one must: at the roots. The idea of degrowth, this book included, is meant as invitation to debate. Degrowth is not meant to replace communism, anarchism, or democratic socialism as horizons for human hope, and it is certainly not a recipe for disregarding class struggle." Degrowth Considered "Clearly then, even under a degrowth scenario, the overwhelming factor pushing emissions down will not be a contraction of overall gdp but massive growth in energy efficiency and clean renewable-energy investments—which, for accounting purposes, will contribute towards increasing gdp—along with similarly dramatic cuts in fossil-fuel production and consumption, which will register as reducing gdp. Moreover, the immediate effect of any global gdp contraction would be huge job losses and declining living standards for working people and the poor." Degrowth Vs. A New Green Deal - All Of A Sudden Putting 'Green" Next To a Policy Idea Makes it More Popular - The New Green Deal Report
Booksellers, this one weird trick could increase your bottom line by 25%
Nicola Griffith points out in a helpful post (with downloadable guide!) why making bookstores and book events accessible to disabled readers both online and in RL makes profitable sense. She also updates her Fries Test (named after activist Kenny Fries) count. Given that 1 in 4 people already in the US have some kind of disability, there should be roughly 1.25 million books out there on the Fries Test list yet so far only 55 have made it past the extremely low requirements -- which do not include the disabled character even having a name. Me Before You by JoJo Moyes sadly did not make the cut.
Inside Tokyo's audiophile venues
Inside Tokyo's audiophile venues. Small bars, good sound systems. (Not really audiophile as that term is normally used.)