April 6
"You mean it's a real plan at NASA to train oil drillers?"
Postmodern Jukebox ft. Sara Niemietz - I Don't Want To Miss A Thing - Aerosmith (1920s Brass Band Cover). (And Lounge Kittens, Jac Ross, Patrique Fortson (couldn't find a non-reaction video), Music Travel Love, Bubble Dia, a reggae remix, New Found Glory, a harp cover ... and Aerosmith.)
"You may do anything you please except eat it"
Alice B. Toklas reads her "Recipe for Hashish Fudge" (as provided to her by Brion Gysin). [more inside]
University of California withdraws employment advert
The university of California made to withdraw a job advertisement for an assistant adjunct Professor in Science that offered no salary. Throws a light on university sweat shops. Boston Globe [more inside]
Once you meet someone, you never really forget them.
The final two shows of the Spirited Away stage production will be livestreamed through Hulu, July 3rd and 4th.
This announcement was preceded by some photos of the stage production - the puppetry looks amazing, I can't wait to see it in motion.
Official Disney trailer for English dub of Spirited Away, the movie (YT). [more inside]
Ilan Manouach
Ilan Manouach is a comics artist whose works include conceptual pieces appropriating from other comics , AI-generated New Yorker comics (in collaboration with Yannis Siglidis) and a tactile language. [more inside]
Bernadette Peters At The Adelalde Cabaret Festival 2009
Bernadette Peters At The Adelalde Cabaret Festival was recorded in 2009 and is exactly what it says on the tin. [1h32m, proshot]
Tanis: 'First dinosaur fossil linked to asteroid strike'
Scientists have presented a stunningly preserved leg of a dinosaur. The limb, complete with skin, is just one of a series of remarkable finds emerging from the Tanis fossil site in the US State of North Dakota. But it's not just their exquisite condition that's turning heads - it's what these ancient specimens purport to represent. The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth.
The Sentences That Create Us
How do you start writing when you’re incarcerated in prison? How do you establish a literary life without access to craft workshops, the internet, or even to the outside world? PEN America’s new writing handbook,
The Sentences That Create Us: Crafting a Writer’s Life in Prison, addresses those questions to serve as “a road map for incarcerated people and their allies to have a thriving writing life behind bars.” In addition to providing guidance on developing a personal and professional writing life while incarcerated, The Sentences That Create Us provides introductions to the foundations of writing, strategies for addressing trauma in writing, as well as writing exercises developed by prison educators.
Ukraine: Perhaps the end of the beginning
It is time for another Ukraine thread. The battle of Kyiv has ended with a victory for Ukraine. The retreating Russian army left behind evidence of war crimes and genocide, and their trenches dug into the radioactive soils near Chornobyl. Russia has shifted its focus to conquering the remainder of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The West continues to announce more sanctions and send more weapons while China, India and others remain undecided on how to respond. [more inside]
Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Orb
"Worldcoin promised to jump-start the global crypto revolution with an audacious plan: to give out digital money to all 7.9 billion people on Earth. […] [Worldcoin CEO Alex] Blania strongly pushed back on the suggestion that Worldcoin’s purpose was to harvest the world’s eyeballs in return for a cryptocurrency that may turn out to be worthless. That notion “is just very wrong. I don’t even know where to start, like this is just very wrong.” [...] “We didn’t want to build hardware devices — we didn’t want to build a biometric device, even. It’s just the only solution we found.”" [more inside]
They may or may not be in the kitchen. They claim their own identities.
“Auntie is a word that comes with baggage, and young Black people calling Black women over 40 years old “Auntie” in the public arena are not carrying that baggage.” Imani Perry on the complicated revival of a controversial term: I Just Might Be Your Auntie (sl Atlantic). [more inside]
Emotive forces shape the gestalt of the brand identity
'Breathtaking' is one word for purported Arnell Pepsi doc (Breathtaking Strategy by Arnell Group, PDF). "When I did the Pepsi logo, I told Pepsi that I wanted to go to Asia, to China and Japan, for a month and tuck myself away and just design it and study it and create it," Mr. Arnell said earlier to Ad Age. "There was a lot of research, a lot of consumer data points ... and dialogue that I had with the folks at Pepsi, consumers and retailers. We knew what we were doing." The Crazy Genius of Peter Arnell "Two former business associates, who requested anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with Arnell, say Arnell carried a handgun in an ankle holster. (Arnell acknowledges only having a gun permit and says stories of him carrying it at work are "inaccurate.")" Bonus 2000s references that dated horribly! "Arnell has been compared to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, meaning you could fill a book with horror stories about his cruel behavior—screaming at people, even hitting them. "He has this remarkable capacity to be both the most intoxicating character—lovable, brilliant, seductively intellectual—and then turn on a dime and be staggeringly cruel." [more inside]
The admins turn away so they can have deniability
The vast majority of large-scale social platforms have an explicit policy of ignoring the harms or destructive actions that someone commits on any platform other than their own. When people have deliberately targeted others for abuse, spread harmful propaganda, or even bilked people out of money or opportunities, it's very common for a company to say, "That happened on another platform, and we only judge users by what happens on our own platform." That's a mistake, and it's one that is frequently exploited by some of the worst actors on the Internet.
Mining for 100-year-old denim
“When a miner got a new pair of work pants, he’d cut up the old ones and use them for lagging around pipes, so there were a lot of antique jeans buried out here.” “They can be very attractive to denim collectors. People that are really into that piece of clothing will pay upwards of $100,000 for these jeans.”
"to restore a more traditional set of aesthetics and outcomes"
After more limited trial runs in the 2021-2022 season, in March "Major League Baseball ... announced a variety of experimental playing rules that have been approved by the Competition Committee and the Playing Rules Committee for use during the 2022 Minor League season." "Consistent with the preferences of fans, these rules are designed to improve the pace of play, create more action on the field, and reduce player injuries." Minor league teams will test out a pitch timer ("to create a crisp pace of play"), larger bases, and constraints on defensive positioning ("a minimum of four players on the infield, with at least two infielders completely on either side of second base"). If the rules work well in the minor leagues this year, then MLB might alter its major league rules in the future.
The learning of the alphabet. . . required the most patience.
Beautiful Jim Key made a splash at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, but he was already famous. He was celebreated by President McKinley. He predicted Alice Roosevelt's marriage when they met. It is reported that he could perform arithmatic, make change, sort mail, read bible passages, and express political opinions. Notably, he was a horse. Jim was made an honorary member of the American SPCA, presumably because of his trainer, Dr. W. M. Key's advocacy for kindness toward animals. Some sources estimate his pledge of Jim Key Band of Mercy was signed by two million children. Sadly, the details of the Beautiful Jim Key Two-Step dance seem to be lost to time, but many other artifacts remain. [Includes some quite racist statements and slurs, all written in the early 1900s.] [more inside]
April 5
Good to see you again, Captain!
In Space with Markiplier: Part 1 is a choose your own adventure youtube thing by Markiplier. previously [more inside]
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
For many of us, Metafilter is our online 'third place.' Off-line, however, how easy are they to find? Do Yourself a Favor and Go Find a ‘Third Place’ is fundamentally describing the bar in Cheers or Central Perks — the cafe — in Friends. A pleasant place to hang out that's not home and not work — where folks know your name, or maybe could learn your name. Reminiscent of a college hang-out, they are not anyplace you're supposed to be: Instead, they're simply a place where one afternoon, or on the odd night, you choose to be. Sitting, sipping, shooting the sh*t with the bartender or the cafe keeper, chatting with your neighbor at the next table, cracking wise to the person beside you on a stool. [more inside]
Board Game Documentaries
Found a couple of interesting documentaries about board game design: Going Cardboard: A Board Game Documentary [1h15m] and The Game Designers [1h33m] both cover very similar territory but through very individual lenses Both great watching, and worthwhile if you're interested or aspiring!
show local (but serious) climate impacts
A new visual language for climate change. All too often, the climate change imagery the world sees is ineffective at driving change – it may be aesthetically pleasing and illustrative but not salient or emotionally impactful. Instead of a polar bear on an ice floe, let's use climate visuals that are more compelling and diverse. For example, images of floods are emotionally powerful... but they can also be overwhelming. Make sure to include solutions or immediate tangible action.
Librarian / Happy Easter / X
In November 2020, Cambridge University Library announced that two of Charles Darwin's notebooks, including his famous 'Tree of Life' sketch, were missing, believed stolen. (Previously on MetaFilter.) Now there's an update, and it's good news: the notebooks have returned, in a bright pink gift bag left outside the librarian's office with the printed message: Librarian / Happy Easter / X.
M.I.T. scans the brain of hyperpolyglot Vaughn Smith
A “watershed” moment for the arts?
In Ireland, a new Basic Income for the Arts pilot scheme will see 2,000 artists and creative arts workers receive €325 a week for three years starting in 2022, no strings attached. The only obligation on the artist is to keep a weekly journal for research purposes. Read the government press release here, news coverage here and here, and information for applicants (including eligibility criteria) here. [more inside]
Big Time Context Shift Shock Going On Here
A new trailer, for a film distributed by A24 no less, featuring Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. (Marcel previously)
For anyone who wants to bunk off ...
for anyone who wants to do some flipping perusing, for anyone who wants to taste the apple, for anyone who wants to bite the electric tiger's tail and ride it until the end of the mother flipping line — HERE IS YOUR FLIPPING FREE THREAD.
April 4
Pepsi Born in the Carolinas
The Pepsi – UNC Connection. Unfortunately for UNC, they lost the NCAA championship tonight in an incredible Kansas comeback wi. That doesn't mean they can't enjoy the great taste of UNC alum and Pepsi founder Caleb Bradham's delicious carbonated beverage. “Born in the Carolinas” is one of the official trademarks of Pepsi-Cola in its regional marketing strategy. Unlike the cocaine fiends at Coca-Cola, Bradham set out to developing a caffeine free beverage which he believed aided digestion and had no harmful effects. Wanting to have a different soft drink–one without the narcotics so frequently used in others during the time—the druggist experimented with various combinations of juices, spices, and syrups.
We were slackers once, and young.
The BBC reports on a new epidemic facing workplaces: "coasting". “Because their engagement needs are not being fully met, they put their time, but not energy or passion, into their work.” [SLBBCP] [more inside]
Feels Like I'm Dreaming
Facebook paid GOP firm to malign TikTok
Facebook is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country, Targeted Victory, to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok. [12ft.io; WaPo] [more inside]
Union Tingle!
Chuck Tingle has released a new pro-union book, UNIONIZED IN THE BUTT AND NOW EVERYONE IS SAFER, HAPPIER, AND BETTER PAID. The book is free and only an available on Patreon. In lieu of payment, Tingle encourages readers to donate to the Amazon Labor Union Solidarity Fund.
The CEO of 3M said increasing price hikes would serve as a “tailwind”
End corporate profiteering. Economic justice advocates at the Groundwork Collaborative have compiled corporate bragging about profits and how they are rewarding investors on the backs of consumers. Chevron: Our record free cash flow enabled us to address all our financial priorities in 2021: a higher dividend for the 34th consecutive year; significant debt paydown, and another year of share buybacks, our 14th out of the past 18 years.”
"a perfect reader and a potential friend"
"I’ll be remembering her for the rest of my life. I never met her." Author Celia Lake grieves a reader and critic who deeply understood her work, writing of "this tremendous gap in my life now that feels impossible to find words for".
big whoop
The Purple Kid
Minneapolis news station WCCO was doing a news piece on a teachers' strike in the city last month, and restored some footage from the archives from when they covered another strike back in 1970. But when Production Manager Matt Liddy watched the footage later, he found something else - an interview with an 11-year-old Prince. [more inside]
April 3
10:29
Pepsi meets Nixon
A Marxist threat to cola sales? Pepsi demands a US coup. The October 1970 plot against Chile's President-elect Salvador Allende, using CIA 'sub-machine guns and ammo', was the direct result of a plea for action a month earlier by Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo, in two telephone calls to the company's former lawyer, President Richard Nixon ... Mr. Kendall cultivated a close personal and professional relationship with Richard M. Nixon, who early on represented Pepsi as a lawyer and in 1965 played the piano at Mr. Kendall’s second wedding, at the Pierre hotel in Manhattan, and at Mr. Kendall’s request, Nixon steered Khrushchev to the Pepsi display during the infamous "Kitchen Debate."
“The ultimate twenty-first-century dictator”
Viktor Orbán wins fourth consecutive term as Hungary’s prime minister - Viktor Orban, Hungary's authoritarian leader, calls Zelensky an 'opponent' after winning reelection - Viktor Orban Is Set for a Fourth Term as Hungary's Prime Minister. That Could Be a Boost for Putin - Hungary's isolation, economic woes will make Orban's fourth term his toughest yet - In Hungary, Viktor Orban Remakes an Election to His Liking
-The Hungarian Journalist Trying To Break Viktor Orban's Grip On Media, And Voters - Why Conservatives Around the World Have Embraced Hungary’s Viktor Orbán [more inside]
Rockets, photos, the sun, a space station, and a very distant star
Late March 2022 in humanity's exploration of space. The past couple of weeks saw a lot of activity in the solar system, especially with launches and images. [more inside]
Um, This.
Mission In Snowdriftland
Nintendo once had a flash game designed as a sort of advent calendar, each day advertising a new game in a very strong winter line-up. It had an expiration date and disappeared, but one YouTuber had fallen in love with it. Mission In Snowdriftland: Nintendo's Forgotten Flash Game [38m] outlines a 14 year passion quest full of twists and turns and a fortunate ending, from late 2020, right before Flash's demise. [more inside]
Chumbawamba - Live at 924 Gilman, Berkeley, CA,1990
The Chumbawamba between-years. Anarcho-pop-punk-cabaret’s finest at their peak, recorded live at the infamous DIY venue, 924 Gilman Street, in Berkeley, California. Filmed and generously shared by 3.Cameras.and.a.Microphone
Your doomsday is our Tuesday
A split in the prepper community as women examine what prepping means for them. As the overhanging threat of nuclear annihilation returns to the zeitgeist, interest in survival preparation, or "prepping" is surging with it. But a "schism" has opened in Reddit's r/preppers forum as women note that the predominant traditional view of prepping is strongly gendered and specifically male. [more inside]
Something there is that doesn't love a wall
Photographer Roman Robroek takes gorgeous photographs of Italy's abandoned churches in the process of being reclaimed by nature, tracing both the decline of Christianity and of rural villages. (via Colossal)
Brouillard by Brouillard on Brouillard
When a man lies he murders some part of the world
Timothy Snyder posted a poem this morning about the horrors being revealed in Ukraine, in the wake of Russia's retreat from the outskirts of Kyiv. It recalls 'To Live is to Die's, spoken words, Metallica's tribute to Cliff Burton, their bassist who passed away September 27, 1986, in a bus crash in Sweden, touring to support 'Master Of Puppets'. Those words are mis-attributed to Burton, the first line most likely came from hymn writer and poet Paul Gerhardt (1703-1791), and was spoken by Merlin in the film Excalibur.
Together you can create something more.
For April Fool's Day 2017, Reddit launched an intriguing experiment: Place. Given a blank digital canvas, any user could add a single colored pixel at 5-minute intervals. Thanks to cooperation between myriad subreddit communities, Place quickly blossomed into a complex sprawl of jokes, memes, and digital art -- a Million Dollar Homepage for the modern era [final image; timelapse]. Five years later, Place has returned -- with the added twist of a canvas that sometimes doubles in size, with another expansion expected soon. Watch the timelapse so far, or if you have a Reddit account, leave a pixel yourself. [more inside]
Hallway medicine and back-logged surgeries
April 2
The Architectural History of Pepsi-Cola
In the 1960s, Pepsi rebranded with a new slogan, a new look, and a cutting edge modernist building. When the Pepsi Headquarters was built in 1960, the 13-story building at the corner of Park Avenue and 59th Street exemplified the International Style in America. Moreover, it pushed the limits of what was technically possible; its nine-feet-high by thirteen-feet-long glass panes were the largest that could be created and only a half-inch thick. (Part 1) Employee morale rose but architecture critics were repulsed upon the opening of the company’s new campus in Purchase, New York. (Part 2)
The new e-Sport?
The Spiffing Brit ran a gigantic marble run (in Marble World, digital not physical) with 400 marbles and did play-by-play, and it is gripping. If you enjoy such things and have 32 minutes to watch round things rolling down ramps, then this is for you! Bonus: the unpaid intern shows his construction process! [13m]
'Twas the night before census
Delayed a year because of Covid, Ireland will be enumerating the people tonight with a Census form [PDF]. It usually happens every 5 years and is substantively the same each go-round - so that comparisons can be more easily made. For the first time, households are being offered the option to send a message to the future; all of which will be sealed for 100 years. These Time Capsules are anything that can be written / drawn in a rectangle 17cm x 12.5cm. [more inside]