April 23
the sioux chef
Chef Sean Sherman on creating an indigenous kitchen in the modern world.,
committed to revitalizing Native American Cuisine and in the process we are re-identifying North American Cuisine and reclaiming an important culinary culture long buried and often inaccessible. [more inside]
It’s Coming Through A Crack In The Wall
“Rather than shy away from being called a socialist, a word conservatives have long wielded as a slur, candidates like Mr. Bynum are embracing the label. He is among dozens of D.S.A. members running in this fall’s midterms for offices across the country at nearly every level. In Hawaii, Kaniela Ing, a state representative, is running for Congress. Gayle McLaughlin, a former mayor of Richmond, Calif., is running to be the state’s lieutenant governor. In Tennessee, Dennis Prater, an adjunct professor at East Tennessee State University, is running to be a county commissioner.“ Yes, I’m running as a Socialist, why candidates are embracing the label (NYT) Congress is wealthy, the people are not - How to get more working-class candidates like Kerri Harris to run for office (The New Republic). One out of every five Americans has taken part in a rally, speech, or protest in the last two years. (The Nib)
“Day after day, the women could hear the chain saws getting closer.”
61-year-old Theresa “Red” Terry has been camped in a tree for more than three weeks. [WP]. She is protesting of the clearing of trees on her property for the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Police are preventing friends and family from bringing her food or water.
GORDON'S ALIVE!!!
Richard Herring 'interviews' Brian Blessed (slyt, nsfw swearing, discussions of the sexual antics of gorillas and bellowing)
Fit doesn't have to be synonymous with thin.
What is the opposite of water?
Cygnus. Poetry by Cameron Barnett. Bivocal, dialogical, interruptive — what’s the technical term for this poem’s gracefully woven structure? It forces you to read between the lines. Maybe everything after the first line is an answer to “the opposite of water.” Or maybe the indented sentence is a sort of swan song floating through the questions. “Cygnus” is Latin for “swan” and the name of a constellation. Any way you read it, the poem’s interrogative uncertainty shimmers like the mirrors of that dazzling final image. Selected by Terrance Hayes
April 22
The Truth about Tanks on the Western Front
To give you a general sense, in April of 1945 the Germans have about 90 tanks on all of the Western Front. All tanks, everything, Panthers, Panzer IV, Tigers. They had a handful of Tigers. They had about 400 other armored vehicles, assault guns, Stug III and things like that. So they had just short of 500 armored vehicles on the entire Western Front, from the North Sea all the way down to Bavaria and Southern Germany. At that point in time the United States had 11,000 tank and tank destroyers, to give you some sense of the disparity in forces. - - Popular historian Stephen Zaloga gives an interview discussing armored warfare in Western Europe during the Second World War for Tank and AFV News. [more inside]
Where Countries Are Tinderboxes and Facebook Is a Match
"We came ... to try to understand the forces of social disruption that have followed Facebook’s rapid expansion in the developing world" NYT's Amanda Taub and Max Fisher reports on how Facebook as a platform has galvanised sectarian violence. Some might not agree with the assessment, like Jesse Walker, but for scholars in the field like Zeynep Tufekci, this makes a coherent argument.
Meanwhile on Twitter: The 'botmageddon' in Southeast Asia || A researcher at the Digital Forensic Research (DFR) Lab of the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank said over 17,000 bots tweeted content related to the Malaysian election over the last week.
Armenians on the verge of a regime overthrow
The President of Armenia, Serzh Sargsyan, changed the constitution so that Armenia went from a semi-presidential state to a parliamentary one. Then he made himself Prime Minister immediately after his last presidential term. Armenian citizens, led by Internet-savvy opposition leaders under a coalition called Yelk (Way Out), dominated by the Civil Contract Party, now number possibly more than 150,000 people (~5% of the population) in the streets and more engaging in acts of disobedience from their homes. [more inside]
So Here's Your Future
The Thermals have officially disbanded. Every album put out by The Thermals was a haven for punks and partiers, parents and kids, and outcasts of all stripes. Their albums were stuffed to the edges with intellectual rumination, melodies packed around bass lines, and a newfound sense of a life lived. (analogue.io) After 15 years on the scene, Portland, Oregon indie rockers The Thermals are packing it in. (consequence of sound)
The Portland trio called it quits this week, but for many, they leave behind a fiery legacy that can’t be put out. (flood magazine) [more inside]
“We have obviously failed.”
After watching the Larry Kramer documentary In Love And Anger, writer Eric Thurm found the most memorable moment to be an angry speech by author David Feinberg about the movement as a failure. (The speech starts at 11:09 of this old AIDS Community TV Video.) He has written a meditation on the man and his rage for The Outline. [more inside]
Just Like Pigses At Black Masses
Black Sabbath's War Pigs;
Faith No More Pigs;
Cake (No) War Pigs;
DJBassedOut's Disposable Dubstep War-Piggery (via Metallica);
OhLordsYeah Of The Rhymes' Black Riders. (Spoilers: Legolas will kick their asses) [more inside]
The Unbeatable Magician and the Indomitable Prodigy
Japanese novelist Yoshiki Tanaka's sprawling 10-volume space opera, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, was published from 1982 through 1987. Additionally, 5 volumes of side stories were published from 1984 to 1989. While the novels only recently became available in English, the series became well-known outside of Japan through an anime adaptation that began in 1988 and did not conclude until 2000. The series has also been adapted to computer games, manga, and the stage. Most recently, a new anime adaptation, Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Die Neue These, started airing in April, 2018. [more inside]
Like Choose Your Own Adventure, but with miniatures
In BoardGameGeek's 18 years of existence, cataloging and judging board games from all over the world, only seven games have occupied the #1 overall position. The newest is Cephalofair Games' Gloomhaven, a super-ambitious legacy game that plays like Dungeons and Dragons using cards instead of dice. It weighs more than 20 pounds, costs around $200, and comes with more than 100 branching adventures for the players to hack and slash their way through. Reaching BGG's #1 position is particularly amazing for a game that isn't actually on the market yet (not counting the the two Kickstarter campaigns). FiveThirtyEight's senior board games correspondent Oliver Roeder takes a look at why it may be hard for any game to break Gloomhaven's hold on the top spot.
“He is the patron saint of annoyance.”
Actually, Adam Sandler Is a Genius [Vice] “A low-brow comedy ingénue who skyrocketed to blockbuster success with a string of formulaic family comedies, Sandler’s brand eventually turned self-cannibalistic, tedious, and infuriating—yet, remained profitable. In the shadow of the Happy Madison factory, however, is a Wonka-like figure whose abilities are misunderstood. To me, Sandler remains one of the most enigmatic performers of his generation: a man that can star in Punch Drunk Love and Mr. Deeds in the same year. It’s easy to hate the cynical dreck he’s put out, and his hacky performances therein.” [more inside]
Letting Mother Nature reclaim prime farmland
Jamón Ibérico Southern Style
An organic farm in Georgia received Spanish hogs a few years ago and they should be ready to release next year. Will it really be as good as the fabulous Spanish ham? We'll see.
Content warning: hog butchery
Holiday with spies: come for the windsurfin, stay for the refugee rescue
More Americans work in museums than work in coal
You already know who. It’s white people in general and white men in particular, and especially white Protestant men, some of whom are apparently dismayed to find out that there is going to be, as your mom might have put it, sharing. The history of this country has been written as their story, and the news sometimes still tells it this way—one of the battles of our time is about who the story is about, who matters and who decides.Rebecca Solnit talks about the myth of the real America and whose stories are treated with respect and whose are not.
Too many men
Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India. The consequences of having too many men, now coming of age, are far-reaching: Beyond an epidemic of loneliness, the imbalance distorts labor markets, drives up savings rates in China and drives down consumption, artificially inflates certain property values, and parallels increases in violent crime, trafficking or prostitution in a growing number of locations. [more inside]
Photo sharing site passed around
Flickr is now owned by Ludicorp Yahoo! Altaba Oath SmugMug, "acquired" in a deal for undisclosed terms. About the purchase, SmugMug's CEO states, "It sounds silly for the CEO to not to totally know what he’s going to do, but..." The Learn More page announcing the change of hands does not explain anything but it does feature photos of a food fight and clowns.
Without you it's not as much fun to pick up the pieces
In 1997, Trent Reznor put together a fever-dream of a soundtrack album for David Lynch's film Lost Highway. Over 20 years later, it still has the same power it had when first released. [If you can listen to this album as a single work rather than broken up, I recommend that.] Side A: I'm Deranged (Edit) (D. Bowie), Videodrones: Questions (T. Reznor), The Perfect Drug [video] (Nine Inch Nails), Red Bats With Teeth (A. Badalementi), Haunting & Heartbreaking (A. B.), Eye (The Smashing Pumpkins) [more inside]
“So we did some exhaustive Googling, as all research is done now...”
China on Film is a two-part documentary (1, 2) from Singapore's ChannelNewsAsia and Make Productions which uses surviving fragments of film to illustrate parts of the history and culture of China from the 1890s up to the end of the 1940s. Experts and scholars provide context and scenes are contrasted with contemporary views of the same locations. (content warning: sequences covering war and other conflicts depict injuries and death) [more inside]
April 21
The Pope's Long Con
Preacher Danny Ray Johnson rode the Trump train to the Kentucky House of Representatives by posting racist anti-Obama memes on Facebook and posing as a 9-11 (and L.A. Riots) first responder. Investigative podcast The Pope's Long Con, from the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and Louisville Public Media, methodically dismantles Johnson's long series of lies and abuses. A heroic journalistic effort and engaging listen that examines how a serial scammer was able to rise to power. [more inside]
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort. Also treats. Mmmm, treats.
German photographer Christian Vieler is noted for his photos of dogs trying to catch treats. If still photos aren't good enough, this Buzzfeed YouTube playlist leads off with dogs mostly missing thrown treats. (It also includes a slow-motion video of dogs eating peanut butter. You're welcome.)
“I wanted to keep flipping and performing but not competing.”
7 Songs By Electric Light Orchestra That Contain The Word “Blue”
On becoming the M’Lady Meme
Maybe you've seen it. In the years since it was filched from Jerry's profile and uploaded to Reddit, the picture has become a meme of uncommon endurance and ubiquity. It remains the first Google Image search result for both "m'lady" and "tips fedora”...
Jerry Messing, former child actor for “Even Stevens” and “Freaks and Geeks” discusses his history in show business and in private life, and how he feels about his image being co-opted by the internet entire.
"My Bright-Lights Misadventure with a Magician of Manhattan"
"She walked into my life in Gucci sandals and Céline glasses, and showed me a glamorous, frictionless world of hotel living and Le Coucou dinners and infrared saunas and Moroccan vacations. And then she made my $62,000 disappear." [Vanity Fair]
The door
After rampant internet speculation may have affected the enjoyment of people watching the first season of HBO's Westworld the production team has released Westworld Season 2: A Primer so people do want explanation can have it, and people who don't can avoid it.
Can I drink this?
To Hug, or Not to Hug: That is the Question
Everybody seems to be hugging everybody these days: is this okay? Her specific point in this article is the hugging of strangers, especially those met on a blind date.
#RedforEd
The Third Major Red-State Teachers Strike of 2018 Will Start Next Week (NYMag) As education struggles continue to spread across the US — from Arizona to Colorado to North Carolina — there is an urgent need to learn from the experiences of both Oklahoma and West Virginia. Jacobin’s Eric Blanc sat down with organizer and scholar Jane McAlevey to discuss some of the major strategic lessons of these recent strikes - A Strategy To Win
"I mean, somebody’s gotta stick up for Pluto."
A Conversation With Country Legend John Prine, Your Favorite Songwriter’s Favorite Songwriter. "Egg & Daughter Nite, Lincoln Nebraska, 1967 (Crazy Bone)" is one of the new songs on "The Tree of Forgiveness," his first album of original material since 2005. There's also a short mini-documentary, John Prine: The Road to "The Tree of Forgiveness." [more inside]
A walk in the light green
Frankie was Frank Hunt. He had been badly wounded in the same incident that killed Hines, and in January 1983, Schumann went to visit Hunt at his home in Bega. “I knocked on the door, and I don’t think he was very impressed,” Schumann said. “I was this long haired, bearded, left-wing firebrand … but because I was a friend of Mick Storen’s, he let me in the house, and I played him the song, and he was knocked sideways tooIn an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, John Schumann tells the story behind his classic Vietnam War song.
April 20
He waka eke noa.
He aha te mea nui o te ao.
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata.
Where are we going? Somewhere we belong.
I found [suddenly departed] Avicii's debut album True [this is the link that shows singers and musicians and such] delightfully revelatory and I don't think his influence worldwide on EDM can be overstated. His willingness to find the intersection between X and Y has fed dance music since 2013, and will long into the future. [Ed. Note: Plus, it's one hell of a fucking affirming group of songs, and there's nothing wrong with having someone sing to you about how the world can be right when all this bullshit is going on. Give it a listen through, and it's okay to discard it after that.] Side A: Wake Me Up [video], You Make Me [video], Hey Brother [video], Addicted To You [video], Dear Boy [more inside]
Accelerated evolution of super-cockroaches is "unlikely to happen"
The world’s largest cockroach farm is breeding 6 billion adult cockroaches a year and using artificial intelligence to manage a colony larger than the world’s human population – all for medicinal use. It is part of the production process for a “healing potion” consumed by millions of patients in China, according to the government.
What makes #9B51E0 purple?
Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs "Why do we perceive background-color: #9B51E0 as this particular purple?
This is one of those questions where I thought I’d known the answer for a long time, but as I inspected my understanding, I realized there were pretty significant gaps.
Through an exploration of electromagnetic radiation, optical biology, colorimetry, and display hardware, I hope to start filling in some of these gaps." [more inside]
The psychedelic renaissance or enclosing mind expansion?
Will psychedelics go corporate like cannabis? - "As billionaires start to invest in psychedelics, some longtime researchers in the field worry they’ll just become another commodity." (via)
“From colorblindness to subtitles, the medium still has a way to go...”
How Games Can Better Accommodate Disabled Players [Waypoint] “Text size is so important, not just for people with less than 20/20 vision, but also anyone who doesn't have a huge TV, or isn't able to sit close to it. It's a classic example of something that is really tough to go back to and fix, but if you consider it early enough in development, it's free, it's just another design decision. Catering for colorblindness is a bit more complex, as it's a design job based on how a particular game mechanic works. But it's generally about just making sure you don't rely on color alone to communicate or differentiate. And if there's no alternative to color reliance, let people choose the colors that work best for them. Subtitles are used by so many people for so many reasons, from hearing loss to playing on public transport, from unpredictable audio mixes to hard-to-understand alien and robotic accents, to playing in a noisy room to when the baby is asleep, so you need the TV on mute.” [more inside]
McInnes, Molyneux, and 4chan
Investigating pathways to the alt-right is SPLC's exploration of the question, "what brings someone into the alt-right ecosystem?"
CONSUME
Drunk Education, previously Drunk TED Talks presents a lecture by MeFi's own John Leavitt: The Only Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism [via mefi projects]
SSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Finally, a long-term dad storage solution
I can't tell where the journey will end
RIP Tim Bergling, Swedish DJ and producer better known as Avicii. Levels. Wake Me Up. True Stories - trailer.
The Weedian Abides
On this auspicious date in 2018, Matt Pike and Al Cisneros have reunited alongside Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder to birth a new Sleep LP, The Sciences (album stream). The record was teased less than 24 hours in advance, unless you count a cryptic Morse code message issued last year. [more inside]
Art and Sexism
"While feminist art critics have for decades pointed out the shortcomings of the 'male gaze,' the post-#MeToo reckoning with the art world’s systemic sexism, its finger-on-the-scale preference for male genius, has given that critique a newly powerful force. And the question of the moment has become: Is it still an artistically justifiable pursuit for a man to paint a naked woman?" Images at the link show painted or sculpted nudity and may be nsfw. [more inside]
Minimum Wage Should Be A Living Wage
“Raising the minimum wage does exactly what it should—it raises wages for the lowest-earning Americans, and it continues to benefit them for years after the increase takes effect. Additionally, it looks like raising the wages for the lowest-paid workers could create a cascading effect that generates raises for employees higher up the earning ladder.” a deep data study by the U.S Census Bureau just announced the long-lasting efficacy of raising the minimum wage - so why isn’t it being reported? (Medium - Civic Skunk) Link to report PDF.
Floating Bog Menaces Crow Wing County
“They said there was this huge chunk of land floating towards them... And they were sitting there having coffee and it just kept coming. It destroyed their dock and boat lifts and they wanted to know what to do about it.” Randy Tesdahl of the American Legion (“I come right out and admit, I am not an engineer”) considers a plan involving tractors, logs, and some really long chains. Atlas Obscura now solicits your solutions for dealing with the sphagnum monstrosity.