February 2019 Archives
February 28
Self-transcendence and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
The Missing Apex of Maslow’s Hierarchy: Maslow never got around to publishing the final tier of his pyramid: self-transcendence. American psychologist Abraham Maslow's (1908 – 1970) theory of the Hierarchy of Needs, a model of human motivation represented as a pyramid with self-actualization at the top, is fairly well known. Less well known is that in his later years, Maslow added another level which supplanted self-actualization at the apex: self-transcendence. "Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating, as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos." [more inside]
I knocked that guy over a fence with Hayseed’s mighty haunches.
Matpakke - Most Boring Lunch in the world - Ever?
It's not a sandwich, it's a matpakke! "It's not supposed to taste anything, it should be a disappointment when you open and eat it, and you are not supposed to look forward to your lunch." [more inside]
"Wow, I’m really close to the sidewalk and people can hear me peeing"
For the residents of Portland, Ore., taking a whiz in a public toilet is not just a matter of necessity. It’s an act of civic pride. That’s because the city is home to the Portland Loo, a unique, patented outdoor bathroom that inspires such worship in its fanbase you’d think that Steve Jobs himself had designed it. This adoration comes despite the fact that the 24-hour loo was built to be as inhospitable as possible. This toilet does not want to be loved, but in Portland, it is No. 1 (and, presumably, sometimes No. 2 as well).
All The Other Kids With The Pumped Up Kicks, You'd Better Run...
Thirteen year-old soccer prodigy Olivia Moultrie has declined her full scholarship to UNC (which she received at age 11), just turned pro, and signed a multiyear endorsement deal with Nike. [more inside]
You have come to show you go on
Brandie Course writes: The story of Joseph Laroche is one that has, until relatively recently, been largely forgotten in Titanic memory and discourse. The lingering question concerns why this is the case. You would think that seeing a black man walking the decks of the ship with a white woman and their offspring would make a lasting impression on Titanic’s passengers, particularly the first- and second-class passengers, but little mention is made of Laroche or his family. [more inside]
The Grandmother Hypothesis
Killer whales, Japanese aphids and Homo sapiens — they're among the few organisms whose females live on long past the age of reproduction. Since the name of the evolutionary game is survival and reproduction, the phenomenon begs explanation — why live longer than you can reproduce? In the 1960s, researchers came up with the "grandmother hypothesis" to explain the human side of things. The hypothesis is that the help of grandmothers enables mothers to have more children. So women who had the genetic makeup for longer living would ultimately have more grandchildren carrying their longevity genes. (Sorry, grandfathers, you're not included in this picture.) [more inside]
The Inevitable Outcome of the Behavior of Large Numbers of People
Complexity science explains why efforts to reject the mainstream merely result in a new conformity. The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
These Farmers Weren't Farmers
Not actually a B-movie title
Semi-Identical Twins Born from One Egg Fertilized by Two Sperm
Because an ultrasound taken early in the pregnancy showed both fetuses shared the same placenta, doctors assumed the fetuses were identical twins. But when an ultrasound eight weeks later revealed that one child was male and the other female, something considered impossible for identical twins, the Gabbett team knew something extraordinary had happened. [more inside]
Hitching a Ride to Europe
Dear White People
"Recognize and admit your power and privilege and the fact you are benefiting from racist systems." Originally a Facebook post intended for an audience of transient workers in the far north communities of Nunavut (Canada) and specifically addressing Inuit issues and concerns, this piece republished on the CBC's website has broad applicability through many intersectional spaces where people of privilege blithely wander unaware of the damage their presence and actions cause.
confronting him with the realities of her body
We've talked about early modern menstruation tech previously, but what did Classical women use? Some people say Roman women would make tampons out of cotton and bits of sticks, but that's not true; they actually probably used cloth pads, which the mathematician Hypatia once famously threw at an unwelcome suitor. There's even some evidence that these cloths might have been held in place via leather briefs.
Which came first, the asteroid or the Indian volcanoes?
Recent studies of the Deccan Traps (Wikipedia), a very large igneous province (Wiki) located on the Deccan Plateau of west-central India make it seem increasingly likely that an asteroid or comet impact 66 million years ago reignited massive volcanic eruptions in India, half a world away from the impact site in the Caribbean Sea (Science Daily). "The eruptive tempo of Deccan volcanism in relation to the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary" (UC Berkeley) and "U-Pb constraints on pulsed eruption of the Deccan Traps across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction" (Princeton; both published in Science, both abstracts only). [more inside]
Ross Lowell shuffles off this mortal coil.
There's an old saying favored by combat engineers, motorcyclists and technicians everywhere: If it doesn't move and it should, WD-40 it. If it moves and it shouldn't, gaffer-tape it. This week, Ross Lowell, Oscar-winning filmmaker and inventor of gaffer tape, met his demise. (Death of WD-40 inventor John Barry previously, h/t to SharQ for post format)
The History of the Fabulous $&#*ing Grawlix
Phil Edwards explains the early history of the grawlix, or the substitution of random characters for swear words in comic strips. SLYT, 4:28; via kottke.org
Shock And Rule
“From one vantage, these sentiments sound like a fussy obsession with sound money and real value. But critical scholars have also linked consumer price inflation and asset bubbles. According to Greta Krippner, “The result [of the Volcker regime] was to transfer inflation from the nonfinancial to the financial economy—where it was not visible (or conceptualized) as such.” A growing money supply (understood to include not just dollars but new credit instruments, which banks as well as governments can create) still causes prices to rise. But instead of causing a general inflation of all prices (including the price of labor), the new spiral affects only assets (from bonds to houses to Picassos), enriching the rentier class but also creating instability (as, for example, when the notional value of derivatives swells to several times the value of world GDP.) If this is the case, the troubles of the 1970s simply mutated, like so many other maladies of capitalism, into new forms.” Other People’s Blood. (N+1)
February 27
Yes, And all around the world.
They lost the Best New Artist Grammy that year to Milli Vanilli
February 28, 1989: 30 years ago, an early vanguard of what would become an astonishing wave of musical energy would make its major label debut: Indigo Girls' eponymous album Indigo Girls. Helping to usher in a giant cohort of female artists who would yield a lot of influence in the 90s, this album [YT playlist] is one of the defining moments in popular music overall. Listen again like it's the first time! Side A: Closer To Fine [video, Letterman Appearance On Promo Tour 5m46s] (background), Secure Yourself, Kid Fears (background), Prince Of Darkness, Blood And Fire (background) [more inside]
“What should we do with all this poop?”
Mount Everest is a ‘fecal time bomb.’ Here’s one man’s idea for handling 14 tons of poop. [Washington Post] “In the roughly two months that it takes to climb Mount Everest, the average alpinist will have produced nearly 60 pounds of excrement. This season, porters who work on Mount Everest carried down 14 tons of human waste from base camp and other locations. It's dropped into earthen pits on Gorak Shep, a frozen lake bed near a village 17,000-feet above sea level, as The Washington Post's Peter Holley wrote in 2015. If not handled properly, the frozen fecal matter will spend years littering one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. As Grayson Schaffer, an editor for Outside magazine wrote in a 2012 Washington Post opinion piece: “The peak has become a fecal time bomb, and the mess is gradually sliding back toward base camp.”” [more inside]
"Yes, I've scuba dived in the ocean. […] But I prefer it here."
Julio César Cu Cámara is a diver who specializes in sewage water diving. He helps maintain Mexico City's highly-complex sewage system, reducing risk in a city with a history of flooding problems. (part of the New York Times' "A Moment In Mexico" collection of short documentaries)
So here’s the happy ending, as far as it goes.
What do you call the examination of poop?
As “feces” in Latin actually means dregs, and “poop” is used everywhere, science was missing a term for “excrement examined experimentally”. Here's (link CW) one suggestion. Therefore, In Fimo has been proposed as a scientific term (manuscript) - for example, what researchers studying Cahokia (elsewhere) are doing, or people studying poop frequency. Other scientists, who have been closely examining your poop, may have found nearly 2,000 uncultured candidate bacterial species happily living in it. Speaking of happily, in medieval times you could poop with friends (modern seats can be more high-tech, and we have toilet brushes). Appropriate leisure reading material while sitting? Perhaps the “poop fiction” genre, such as the much-banned “Walter the Farting Dog”.
Rembrandt in the Blood
The controversial potential discovery of two previously-unknown Rembrandts by the direct descendant of one of his portrait subjects, Jan Six XI, who literally grew up surrounded by Golden Age Dutch art. [more inside]
Fox Ordered to Pay $179 Million to ‘Bones’ Profit Participants
An arbitrator has ordered Fox to pay $179 million to profit participants in the long-running drama series “Bones,” finding that top executives lowballed revenue from the show and gave false testimony.
The case is the latest in a long line of self-dealing lawsuits in which profit participants assert that the network did not pay market rates to license the show because it was produced by a corporate sibling, 20th Century Fox Television. [more inside]
DeepSqueak
Meet DeepSqueak, an algorithm built to decode ultrasonic rat squeaks. Researchers at the University of Washington recently unveiled a remarkable software tool known as DeepSqueak. The program can automatically identify, process, and sort rat and mouse squeaks. It might seem whimsical, but knowing what rodents are squeaking about could be extremely valuable to animal researchers.
If we get angry, we’re hysterical, irrational, or just being crazy.
A Yukaghir girl writes a love letter
The Gyllenhaal Experiment
Mpendulo: The Answer
A new short science fiction story from Nosipho Dumisa in Slate Each month, Future Tense Fiction—a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives—publishes a story on a theme. The theme for January–March 2019: Identity. [more inside]
Grieving over celebrities.
Before Leaving This Place. Olivia Giovetti relates her feelings after the passing of baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky and examines why celebrity deaths can hit us so hard. (VAN Magazine link; it's paywalled but you're allowed 2 free articles a month.)
Itty-bitty cold-hardy Cretaceous marsupial lived above the Arctic Circle
Though most people associate marsupials (Wikipedia) with kangaroos and koalas in Australasia, marsupials probably evolved in North America, expanded into South America and the Pacific rim of Asia (Natural History Collection of the University of Edinburgh). During this period of migration the North American marsupials became extinct, followed by extinctions in Europe during the Miocene epoch of the Tertiary period. Recently, fossils of a tiny Cretaceous marsupial were discovered above the Arctic Circle (Sci-News.com), the farthest north marsupial fossils have been discovered. "Northernmost record of the Metatheria: a new Late Cretaceous pediomyid from the North Slope of Alaska" (Journal of Systematic Palaeontology; abstract only) [more inside]
"The water's not clear, it's flooded."
Zure ezpainen itsasoan ("In the ocean of your lips") is a torch song by Spanish-Basque pop singer Izaro Andrés Zelaieta, who goes by the stage name Izaro. (SLYT)
Winterspeck
Sadly, the grave goods did not include a horned helmet
The occupant of a high-status, 10th-century gravesite in Birka, Sweden, has been confirmed to be that of a female Viking warrior. "This article addresses research showing that the individual buried at Birka in an ‘archetypal’ high-status warrior grave—always assumed to be male since its excavation in 1878—is, in fact, biologically female," says the article in the latest issue of Antiquity (open access). [more inside]
“The opportunity was here and we took it.”
Video game publisher THQ Nordic has found itself in a marketing quagmire of epic proportions after announcing and holding an Ask Me Anything session on the infamous 8chan forum, known for their support of bigotry, white supremacy, and illegal activity. The backlash to the announcement was swift, with games critic Noah Gervais pointing out how utterly damaging the decision was. [more inside]
If corporations are people, then . . .
Lake Erie just won the same legal rights as people On Tuesday, in a special election, voters in Toledo, Ohio, passed a law allowing citizens to sue on behalf of the lake when its "right(s) to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve" are violated.
PDF link of the language of the bill proper (scroll down, second half.)
Toledo Blade story on the election results.
"[. . .]this was the first rights-based legislation aimed at protecting a whole US ecosystem: the lake, its tributaries, and the many species that live off it.
The law isn’t without precedent, though. It’s part of the nascent rights of nature movement, which has notched several victories in the past dozen years. Rivers and forests have already won legal rights in countries like Ecuador, Colombia, India, and New Zealand."
Emerging sign languages could reveal how all language evolved.
The binary does not spark joy
How Marie Kondo Helped Me Sort Out My Gender by Sandy Allen. More than an essay about emptying your closet out onto the floor.
February 26
“trust me. there’s enough content.”
Case Closed! But still open, until I solve it!
The second trailer for Detective Pikachu is here. Dan Casey at Nerdist has made the inevitable list of all 40+ pokemans in the trailer.
Smash Remastered.
God Of War's Art Director Has Been Drawing Up Realistic Smash Bros. Ultimate Characters [Instagram][@rafagrassetti] “Raf Grassetti, Art Director at Sony Santa Monica (the studio behind God of War), has been showing off his passion for Smash Ultimate's giant roster of characters by creating his very own art pieces. Under the name 'Smash Remastered', this collection shows the Nintendo favourites in a new, ultra-realistic light and - as you might expect from one of the artistic talents behind one of last year's most beautiful games - they're pretty incredible.” [via: Nintendo Life]
“We may see similar pressures today but fewer options to move.”
A new study shows climate change may have contributed to the decline of Cahokia (previously), a famed prehistoric city near present-day St. Louis. And it involves ancient human poop.
On a cold Christmas Eve you promised a fatberg was waiting for me...
Behold, A Magnificent Baby Fatberg Being Pulled From The NYC Sewers. New York's fatberg removal costs have doubled over the past decade, prompting a public-awareness campaign to fight the menace. [more inside]
The viola da gamba returns
How a Movie Helped Fuel a Viola da Gamba Revival. "The 1991 film Tous les Matins du Monde ('All the World's Mornings') influenced a renaissance of the viola da gamba. The viol virtuoso Jordi Savall is touring his music for the film[,] which gave the Baroque instrument its big-screen moment." Based on the book of the same name, the film is a dramatization of the apprenticeship of royal court musician and viol player Marin Marais to the reclusive 17th century viol master Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe. [more inside]
"You have to tie it with a ribbon"
Some Interesting Predictions and a Possible Death Sentence
Tales of the Premonitions Bureau. Sam Knight tells the story of a British psychiatrist's attempt to scientifically explore precognition.
(SLNewYorker)
estrangement isn’t a problem; it’s a response to an unsolvable dilemma
The cultural narrative around estrangement is that it's a problem to be solved. ...And so there are websites and books and articles meant to help families reconcile, with advice on everything from how to phrase an apology to how to take legal action. For some families, that helps. But for the rest of us, that pressure to get back together makes everything worse. For us, estrangement isn’t a problem; it’s a solution to a problem, a response to an otherwise unsolvable dilemma. It’s a last resort when you’ve tried everything else over and over, when you no longer trust the relationship. An article by Harriet Brown in The Washington Post. [more inside]
The apple of my eye
Japanese chef Takehiro Kishimoto carves fruits and vegetables. Here is an apple structure. A little bit of a background about him.
Emma Thompson quits movie over Lasseter's hiring
Her Dad Died a Decade Ago. She's 3.
Is preserving a Jewish bloodline worth creating a child who will never know her father? Over the past two decades, posthumous reproduction has occurred throughout the world in modest but growing numbers. In this version of assisted reproduction, men donate their genetic material in life, or have it extracted after death, so that they may continue their genetic lineage. Experts predict that the number of these procedures is likely to increase as reproductive technology gains prevalence and as “alternative families,” composed of combinations beyond the traditional heterosexual, two-parent setup gradually gain acceptance. Israel, an exceptionally pro-natalist country with the highest usage of IVF per capita, is a thriving laboratory for this novel way of family-making.
Generational fermentation & reclaimed barrel-making
Yasuo Yamamoto's quest to preserve traditional soy-sauce barrel making (BBC) With every new kioke that Yamamoto makes, he writes his name and the names of his three young children on an inside panel of the cedar wood before sealing it shut. They, in turn, leave their handprints on the underside of each barrel. Yamamoto’s daughter has started running into the family storehouse to ask if she can taste her father’s shoyu. His oldest son, who Yamamoto hopes will one day take over the family craft, now eagerly leads him into his great-grandfather’s bamboo grove to search for shoots
Gettin' Bi
Here it is: my joyous summer celebration of bisexual, pansexual, and fluid characters on tv! I hope you enjoy.Vid creator thingswithwings adds context on selecting characters, canons, and depictions of bisexuality in television and movies for the video on their own blog. Previously on fanvids: [1], [2], [3].
Queens
Elle interview legends: Debbie Allen. Judith Light. Christine Baranski. Michelle Yeoh. Rita Moreno. Jessica Walter.
Cause of death: insurance company wanted to save $2K
Goodbye, Clouds
A new simulation finds that global warming could cause stratocumulus clouds to disappear in as little as a century, which would add 8°C (14°F) of extra warming to the planet. [more inside]
Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs.
Until recently, most health authorities prescribed activity lasting for at least 10 continuous minutes, although there was no credible scientific evidence behind this. This recommendation was recently refuted by the 2018 US Physical Activity Guidelines Advisory Report. The new guidelines state any movement matters for health, no matter how long it lasts. The benefits of high-intensity incidental physical activity (Emmanuel Stamatakis, co-author of Short and sporadic bouts in the 2018 US physical activity guidelines: is high-intensity incidental physical activity the new HIIT?, British Journal of Sports Medicine; via Quartz). You can experience the benefits of "high-intensity interval training" (BJSM) without needing to focus on exercising.
Saying it as it is
(Twitter thread, NSFW) @bentev28: My 4 year old has recently taken up cursing. Yesterday he referred to bedtime as a "fucking crisis." - @RabidGrizz: We went camping and my almost-3-year old said “GODDAMN IT. We have to sleep in this goddamn tent” when it started raining. - @ashley_lynn628: My almost 3 year old said “mom I can’t open this fucking play doh” - @rabbilaufer: Rabbi’s kid, 3.5yo, when asked about the birthday party he attended, responded: They had that f%^&ing parachute. - @momlevinex: Yeah, i can relate. When my daughter was two, she told me “Gimme my fuckin’ nightgown!” Mother of the year over here...
The Blindspots of Mostly White, Mostly Male Restaurant Critics
Leenoodle is more than just Education
Funding, Vert and Mobile are just a few characteristic of Leenoodle. But we offer a lot more!
Octonoodle is like Uber but for Cars.
I love it somehow - Anayah Licko, Capor
Vinu: Using the blockchain in Fitness.
Get to know the heads behind Camimia - or even better: Become a Camimia!
Lupism: Streamline a process through tech
Respectful. Harmoniously. Patient.
These startups do not exist.
Octonoodle is like Uber but for Cars.
I love it somehow - Anayah Licko, Capor
Vinu: Using the blockchain in Fitness.
Get to know the heads behind Camimia - or even better: Become a Camimia!
Lupism: Streamline a process through tech
Respectful. Harmoniously. Patient.
These startups do not exist.
February 25
Captain America vs. The Tricky Dick
Steven Attewell describes how Captain America fights back against a smear campaign by CREEP CRAP and is ultimately able to bring down a scheming US president in the early '70s. [more inside]
Why I want to look like a trans woman
"My vagina is made of cock and balls, so the answers were always in my body. That's why I don't subscribe to the idea that trans people are "born in the wrong body". I’ve got a heart that beats, I’m strong, I have a good brain. If this is the "wrong body", I wouldn’t be able to talk, or write. I don’t want to disown this body. But being trans means I’m entitled to have a fluidity about the way my body looks, and the way people perceive it." -- Juno Roche
Full of Bangers
Queer Your Ears: Music from queer & trans artists you may have missed. Abeni Jones' compilation covers the second half of 2018. [more inside]
It’s just “resting cat face.”
Relevant XKCD
Osprey drops fish in shallow right field, charged with error
An aerial scuffle between an osprey and a bald eagle above John Sessions Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida during the 8th inning of a baseball game between the Jacksonville Dolphins and the Jacksonville State Gamecocks resulted in a fish being dropped into center right field near second base. The commentator continued to call the action even as gameplay was temporarily halted.
Consistent with the right of peoples to self-determination
The International Court of Justice has concluded "that the United Kingdom has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible." 48 years after the small Indian Ocean island group was forcefully depopulated in order to establish a joint UK-US military outpost, the UN high court has "found that the decolonization of Mauritius was not conducted in a manner consistent with the right of peoples to self-determination" (full text pdf) [more inside]
such a shame
Since then, Hollis’ whereabouts have become unknown. There haven’t been any reformations or hits of reunions. The music—from Talk Talk’s debut single, the absurdly confident romantic synth-stomp of 1982’s “Mirror Man” through to Mark Hollis—is still there, ripe and ready for revision. The work remains, even when the artist is no longer present. And the work, surely, should remain the important thing.A career retrospective of Mark Hollis, front man of eighties pop group Talk Talk, who twenty years ago retired from pop music, as reports come in he's passed away today.
The U.S. Draft is Unconstitutional
Drafting Only Men for the Military Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules
The Telegraph reports women should be included in draft
The History of Conscription in the United States
Judge's Order (PDF)
The Telegraph reports women should be included in draft
The History of Conscription in the United States
Judge's Order (PDF)
"Betty was the identifier, the nurturer, the editor"
Betty Ballantine, half of a groundbreaking husband-and-wife publishing team that helped invent the modern paperback and vastly expand the market for science fiction and other genres through such blockbusters as “The Hobbit” and “Fahrenheit 451,” died Feb. 12 at her home in Bearsville, N.Y. She was 99. [more inside]
Moonlight Benjamin: Priestess of Voodoo Blues Rock
Haitian singer and Vodou priestess Moonlight Benjamin combines majestic vocals and songcraft with ringing guitar rock on her breathtaking album, Siltane. Reviews: Black Grooves | Northern Sky | The Guardian [more inside]
Rent Freezes. Ban Big Landlords. Local Control.
“The overwhelming majority of units that Deutsche Wohnen owns today in Berlin used to be public housing, and were sold off by the state over the past few decades. As galloping rents make daily life increasingly difficult, many Berliners are starting to regret such a shift. Sure enough, Berlin Mayor Michael Müller promised last month to buy back 50,000 of Deutsche Wohnen’s units for the city, along lines not yet fully clarified. Renters’ associations want to extend this proposal to all landlords with more than 3,000 apartments in the city, a wish that led to their referendum plan.” Berlin Builds an Arsenal of Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution - The proposals might seem radical—from banning huge corporate landlords to freezing rents for five years—but polls show the public is ready for something dramatic.
“Communiteal” — Portmanteau generator
Presented at NeurIPS 2018, this is an algorithmic portmanteau generator.
Read the short 2 page article, “Entendrepreneur: Generating Humorous Portmanteaus using Word-Embeddings“. The source code is available as well.
Other acceptable? pun for blue + site: refermillion. What gems will you find? (via Hacker News)
Gimme the honky tonk blues
From an early 90s Australian documentary about Hungary, here's some women in typical Hungarian national costume singing Honky Tonk Women. (Via)
Welcome To The Trauma Floor
The Secret Lives Of Facebook Moderators In America Content warning: This story contains discussion of serious mental health issues and racism. [more inside]
"Well, that ruined everything."
A massive crash takes out 21 cars at once near the end of the 2019 Daytona 500 (no serious injuries).
A world without mosquitoes is in view
The idea has been bandied about for some while: What if every mosquito on earth went extinct tomorrow? (io9, 2014) A decade ago, this was a thought exercise between experts (Nature, 2010), but with rise of CRISPR gene editing (Wikipedia), scientists the ability to wipe out the carriers of malaria and the Zika virus (Smithsonian Magazine, 2016). Very recently, scientists have launched a major new phase in the testing of a controversial genetically modified organism: a mosquito designed to quickly spread a genetic mutation lethal to its own species (NPR, 2019). There isn't one species of mosquito, but about 3,500 worldwide (Wikipedia), and only 100 or so bite or bother humans, so there's no need to kill all the mosquitoes.
Western Costume
"His deceit, which is a fundamental component of the crimes
of conviction and relevant conduct, extended to tax preparers, bookkeepers, banks, the Treasury Department, the Department of Justice National Security Division, the FBI, the Special Counsel’s Office, the grand jury, his own legal counsel, Members of Congress, and members of the executive branch of the United States government. In sum, upon release from jail, Manafort presents a grave risk of recidivism." The Manafort sentencing memo recently filed by the special counsel's office adds another 25 pages (and 800+ pages of exhibits) to the slowly written Mueller report that’s sitting in plain sight. The Associated Press also reports on how court records reveal a Mueller report right in plain view. [more inside]
(Corporate) Purposelessness
The entire economy is Fyre Festival - "Unlike the bullshit jobs of the past (which focused on over-defining roles in a bid to compete on status rather than pay, or to justify the roles in terms of social importance and purpose), the relatively new phenomenon of mystic jobs is about something else. These jobs do have purpose: they disguise (according to the column's admittedly hugely generalised hypothesis) the lack of social value associated with the corporations and start-ups they're affiliated to, while justifying their expansionist empire-building agendas." [more inside]
Laurie Penny asks about emotional labor on twitter
Face Facts
February 24
About Face
"Bees follow me and I don't know why"
Gosa Taffese has a beehive in his front room and the insects follow him on his travels as well.
Dubbed the “father of bees” by locals in Ethiopia's Oromia region, he says it's a mystery why the insects are attracted to him.
It's an honor just to be nominated.
"Essentially, what I’ll be doing with this blog is watching every film that has ever been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture." Has made it to the 35th Oscars, so far.
Black Belt Eagle Scout
Black Belt Eagle Scout - Soft Stud, Black Belt Eagle Scout - Indians Never Die
Paul grew up in a small Indian reservation, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, surrounded by family focused on native drumming, singing, and arts. “Indigenous music is the foundation for all of my music,” Paul explains. From an early age, Paul was singing and dancing at powwows with one of her strongest memories at her family’s own powwow, called the All My Relations Powwow. Paul reminisces, “When I was younger, my only form of music was through the songs my ancestors taught the generations of my family. Singing in our language is a spiritual process and it carries on through me in how I create music today.” [more inside]
Paul grew up in a small Indian reservation, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, surrounded by family focused on native drumming, singing, and arts. “Indigenous music is the foundation for all of my music,” Paul explains. From an early age, Paul was singing and dancing at powwows with one of her strongest memories at her family’s own powwow, called the All My Relations Powwow. Paul reminisces, “When I was younger, my only form of music was through the songs my ancestors taught the generations of my family. Singing in our language is a spiritual process and it carries on through me in how I create music today.” [more inside]
"Let's nap"
Welcome to The Treeographer
Nick Rowan became interested in the history of trees during his time as a woodworker. He began to see the everyday trees we all pass without really thinking about in a different light. That's why he started The Treeographer. [more inside]
Don't worry, your giant phone probably won't get any more giant
...if only "because 'they’ve hit the limit of men’s hand size'." In an excerpt from her new book, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez argues that there's a big data gap around designing for women's bodies, leading to health apps that can't track periods, freezing summer office temperatures, giant smartphones, and voice recognition software that doesn't hear us. More alarmingly, police body armor, seatbelts, protective face masks, and medicines are also designed and tested for men, leaving women at greater risk of injury or death.
“Tom Nook saying foul things will never not be funny.”
Sierra Death Generator “There exist a lot of meme generators on the internet, but few are better organized or authentically made than the Death Generator. Created by programmer Foone Turing [@Foone], the open-source tool first began as a generator for death screens from Sierra games, starting with Police Quest 2 in 2017. Turing gets most of his screenshots by actually playing through the games, and he’s now up to dozens of classic titles and newer games alike, from SimCity 2000 to Animal Crossing: Wild World.” [via: The Verge]
Japanese moving company
As an American who has used moving companies many times, the contrast between the countries is amazing. Stereotypical, even.
When "Finders Keepers" became the law of the land
Who owns buried treasure? In 1904, two boys in Oregon found a can of gold coins in a trash heap. Swindled by two greedy landowners, they stewed in bitterness until they were old enough to bring suit.
Absolutely tiny unit
February 23
The death of Mufasa is such a sad scene... what could make it sadder?
Cocktail similarity
"When I started writing down the first basic ingredients, I started noticing that cocktails are very close to each other - if you ignore fruit rinds and ice and such, an Americano is a Negroni with soda water instead of gin. An Old Fashioned is a Manhattan with sugar instead of vermouth." A Negroni is a Amber Road but you replace maple syrup with campari, replace lemon juice with sweet vermouth, replace aperol with gin, and remove bourbon.
For some values of "sports"
Noble Ski Dogs
Winky the Bichon Frise traipses through the agility course
Perfect Cat Tackle
Perpetual Motion Sledding Dog
More from Deadspin's Sports Highlight of the Day.
Winky the Bichon Frise traipses through the agility course
Perfect Cat Tackle
Perpetual Motion Sledding Dog
More from Deadspin's Sports Highlight of the Day.
Therapy and mental healing with Daniel Mackler
Daniel Mackler is the former New York City psychotherapist who creates videos about schizophrenia, sexual abuse, difficult parents, family secrets, grief, intergenerational trauma, being yourself and mental healing. He tackles difficult topics with honesty and courage, often relating to his own experiences as an abused child and burnt-out psychotherapist. Mackler offers insights into the profession and the problems facing modern psychotherapy.
SAVE? ● YES ○ NO
Saved, But Not Forgotten: The evolution of saving in video games, from the password to the cloud, and nearly every obscure memory card format in-between. [Tedium] “Earlier this year, a Twitter user named Paul Hubans shared a screenshot from his 87-year-old grandmother’s long-running Animal Crossing session; after four years of daily play, she had logged 3,580 hours—nearly 150 days—of total playtime. Being able to save progress in a game and return to it later has enabled some amazingly deep experiences. It wasn’t always like this, so how did we get here? Let’s find out by taking a look back at the history of saved games.” [more inside]
The resistance is fabulous, thank you!
Get Ready with Me video at the Trump Border Wall YouTube celebrity make up guru and drag performer, LushiousMassacr films a GRwM video at the border as their own personal protest.
February 22
CLICK AND DRAG to look around and use WASD to move the camera
noclip.website
A browser-based 3D model viewer that lets you explore reverse-engineered video game maps.
A browser-based 3D model viewer that lets you explore reverse-engineered video game maps.
MetPublications
Peter Sjöstedt-H on Mind, Panpsychism, Philosophy and Psychedelics
The foundation of Western philosophy is probably rooted in psychedelics. "In the 1960s, intellectuals such as Aldous Huxley were fascinated by the effects of LSD, but today most professors are far too worried about respectability and tenure to investigate psychedelics themselves. Which is somewhat ironic, given that the field of Western philosophy has a huge debt to psychedelics, according to Peter Sjöstedt-H, a philosoph[er] who has written a book on the philosophical significance of drugs. In fact, one of Plato’s most-cited theories may have been a direct result of hallucinogenics." [more inside]
An attacker is never one of my students.
I start to think in terms of students and attackers. The training encourages this result. Everything about its vocabulary is designed to dehumanize our aim. The instructors’ military language—“soft targets” and “areas of operation” for schools, “threats” for shooters, “tactical equipment” for guns—rubs off. On the final day, a pep talk analogizes students with lambs. We are the sheepdogs, charged with protecting them from the wolves.
A busy week in space
All kinds of missions are under way. Humans and our machines are working hard.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo touched the edge of space for a second time and with an extra passenger. After circling and dropping landers on an asteroid, JAXA's Hayabusa2 landed upon its surface and shot a probe into it. NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe examined its own asteroid for "multiple, bright, point sources."
Far away from the inner solar system, NASA's New Horizons probe caught and shared even better images of Ultima Thule. [more inside]
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo touched the edge of space for a second time and with an extra passenger. After circling and dropping landers on an asteroid, JAXA's Hayabusa2 landed upon its surface and shot a probe into it. NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe examined its own asteroid for "multiple, bright, point sources."
Far away from the inner solar system, NASA's New Horizons probe caught and shared even better images of Ultima Thule. [more inside]
Lost pets, ham, and creepy messages
The University of Groningen's University Library City Centre has put all of the items left behind by patrons in 2018 on display. This prompted a Twitter user to query to the University of Winnipeg Library about lost and misplaced items, and the library shared a photo, via Twitter, of a "burrito" found in one of its books. Meanwhile, lost pets, ham, and creepy messages are just a few of the things Atlas Obscura readers have said are The Best Things Found Between the Pages of Old Books, and Things Found in Books is a self-explanatory Flickr group devoted to the topic.
The science of Hula-Hooping, as individual hoops or with a TON of hoops
Swiveling Science: Applying Physics to Hula-Hooping Have you ever wondered how Hula-Hoops work or what makes them able to spin around a person's waist or arm—seeming to defy gravity? The answer can be explained by physics, which can help you determine what makes an effective Hula-Hoop. In this activity you'll get to create your own Hula-Hoops and investigate how their weights affect how they spin. Which do you think will spin better, a heavy hoop or a lighter one? Get ready to do some hula-hooping to find out! Got it? Good. Now try it with 300 Hula-Hoops. It's almost impossible (Wired), but not quite, if you're as good as Marawa Ibrahim—aka Marawa the Amazing. [more inside]
She is gonna be something good in a few years, I tell you! Watch out ;)
Long Form Linsanity
Born to Run The Numbers (previously) presents another issue of their multi-year series on a mid-tier starting point guard who is frequently down but never out: Jeremy Lin. Part One (2015); Part Two (2016); Part Three (2017); Part Four (2018). More previously:
Jeremy Lin, Jeremy Lin, Jeremy Lin
Phone Apps quietly ship data to big companies, in this case, facebook
WSJ: "You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook." Many apps, whether iOS or Android (though maybe not KaiOS?), build in libraries from other companies. For small development teams, app analytics tools provide a quick and free way to see how people use your app. Showing advertisements makes a little money. And hey, everybody does it. What could go wrong? The Wall Street Journal identified a couple problem areas: heart rates, periods, househunting
Voltaire never had to deal with online comment sections.
"The Culture War Thread aimed to be a place where people with all sorts of different views could come together to talk to and learn from one another. I think this mostly succeeded. [...] you may have already guessed things went south. What happened? The short version is: a bunch of people harassed and threatened me for my role in hosting it, I had a nervous breakdown, and I asked the moderators to get rid of it." Slate Star Codex's Scott Alexander on the birth and death of a megathread, and how even an actively-managed discussion can go terribly, destructively awry. [more inside]
“I need to sleep, I can't get no sleep”
Insomnia, by Faithless (alternative link, original and long), was first released in 1995, became a minor hit, then was re-released, sold a lot more, and is still performed (2009) and remixed. Insomnia can also be successfully played on a toy octopus. Lyrics and previously on spoons. Faithless consist of Maxi Jazz, Sister Bliss and Rollo Armstrong. Other Faithless songs include Salva Mea, We Come 1, God is a DJ, and One Step Too Far (featuring Dido, sister of Rollo).
18 individual threads and 145 steps
In 2015 and 2016 the TV show Archer put together insanely complex scavenger hunts for fans. Walkthroughs (2015, 2016) and behind the scenes (2015, 2016).
FANNY
Big Data and Big Oil
“Last year, Google quietly started an oil, gas, and energy division. It hired Darryl Willis, a 25-year veteran of BP, to head up what the Wall Street Journal described as “part of a new group Google has created to court the oil and gas industry.” As the VP of Google Cloud Oil, Gas, and Energy, Willis spent the year pitching energy companies on partnerships and lucrative deals. “If it has to do with heating, lighting or mobility for human beings on this planet, we’re interested in it,” Mr. Willis told the Journal. “Our plan is to be the partner of choice for the energy industry.” How Google, Amazon, Microsoft, And Big Tech Are Automating The Climate Crisis. (Gizmodo)
It is O.K., finally, to freak out. Even reasonable
David Wallace-Wells (previously) wants you to know that fear might be the only thing that saves humanity. As yesteryear's worst-case ceiling of two degrees becomes today's best-case scenario where we face 150 million excess deaths from air pollution alone in this century, his latest piece in the New York Times argues that the time for caution is long gone. [more inside]
Making history visible
The Black History Trail Across Massachusetts: People often think of Boston as either “where fugitive slaves came and were ‘rescued’ by the abolitionists, or as the place where people were throwing bricks at black children” during busing protests in the 1970s. The goal of the African American Trail Project is to “complicate the narrative,” to fill in gaps, show African-American people in all their dimensions and place present-day struggles for racial justice in a continuum.
Economics for Inclusive Prosperity
Economics After Neoliberalism - "Contemporary economics is finally breaking free from its market fetishism, offering plenty of tools we can use to make society more inclusive." [more inside]
53 days of Chaos
On January 1st 2019 Brazil´s democratically elected fascist assumed power.
Jair Bolsonaro’s First 53 Days As President Of Brazil Have Been A Resounding, Scandalous Failure.
So much has happened over the last 7 1/2 weeks that it’s impossible to take stock of it all. But by looking through the wreckage, perhaps you can get a sense of Brazil’s political life as of late.
Jair Bolsonaro’s First 53 Days As President Of Brazil Have Been A Resounding, Scandalous Failure.
So much has happened over the last 7 1/2 weeks that it’s impossible to take stock of it all. But by looking through the wreckage, perhaps you can get a sense of Brazil’s political life as of late.
te reo Māori rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody
Incredible live version of Bohemian Rhapsody in te reo Māori by choir and the music video, (by the same group) which is good fun. [more inside]
"Did you know she never once criticized my appearance?"
My favorite strip was "Peanuts," which, if I’d been paying attention, contained some lessons for me about the world that lay ahead. "Peanuts" was just one broken heart after another.–What "Peanuts" Taught Me About Queer Identity by Jennifer Finney Boylan.
High risk: anti-vaxxers in the delivery ward.
“Tell me more,” I say, because I sense that the mother is holding something back.
She looks down into the baby’s face as she replies, so softly I almost don’t catch it. “I don’t believe it is right to pierce his holy body with a needle,” she says.
At that, my heart softens, because this is the kind of objection I feel for. It is not based on risks that science has proven are imaginary, or on false notions of “toxins”, or fear of chemicals that occur naturally in foods and the soil and are added to medicines. This mother’s child is holy, and his body is perfect and we ought to leave it be. [more inside]
food=love
Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner is a supercut of food scenes in animated movies by The Royal Ocean Film Society, a.k.a. Andy M. Saladino.
February 21
SO COOL, they're hot!
Thought y'all might enjoy some cookstove theory from the Aprovecho Research Center. (pdfs)
"The bubble sort would be the wrong way to go"
“COME, LINK…. LET US AWAKEN…TOGETHER!!”
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s [re:]Awakening [YouTube][Switch Trailer] [Original Gameboy Gameplay] “Nintendo is bringing the 1993 Game Boy classic adventure The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening to Nintendo Switch later this year. The re-release is more than just a Virtual Console-style release, it’s a complete 3D “reimagining” of the classic Zelda adventure. As Link, players will once again return to the island of Koholint for new adventures. While the new Link’s Awakening will retain the top-down — and occasionally side-scrolling — view of the Game Boy original, the Switch remake will use 3D models and employ a stylish, toy-like aesthetic.” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
"goat-palated people" is the best thing I've heard all day
Sam Sanders, host of NPR's It's Been A Minute, addressed his Twitter followers
Tell me your Weirdest eating/drinking habit you had as a kid!
I’ll go first: When I was like 8 years old, I used to carry a little bottle of apple cider vinegar around wherever I went, taking a swig every now and then like a lush w/his flask.
As a child, my brother would eat sticks of butter out of the fridge, under cover of night. We were strange.
Scientists solve mystery of ‘art acne’ on Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings
O’Keeffe’s “Pedernal, 1941”—a sweeping vista of pinks, greens, and yellows creeping up the canvas to the mountain’s darkened summit—is experiencing a peculiar kind of decay. The artist noticed it herself, remarking on granulations, discoloration, and small spots where the paint disappeared altogether in letters to conservator Caroline Keck in 1947. Known as surface protrusions, or “art acne”, this pimpling afflicts oil paintings from every time and place. But the reasons for O’Keeffe’s deformations, which only grew worse over the decades, remained a mystery. [PopSci] [more inside]
"My left shoe won't even reboot."
"It was a gift for me when I realized: I’m done."
At the beginning I never thought of becoming a candidate myself.
Immigrant, math Ph.D., farmer, and judge Dalip Singh Saund wasn't just the first Asian American elected to the US Congress. He was also a cofounder of the India Association of America and an activist whose work helped lead to the 1946 passage of the Luce-Celler act, which allowed immigrants from India and from the Philippines to be naturalized as US citizens. Ten years later, he won Burbank, California's seat in the House. "In the winter of 1957 I was able finally to keep the promise I had made in the campaign that if elected to Congress I would go to India and the Far East and present myself as a living example of American democracy in practice." [more inside]
This like a post on a private Instagram account called "brown eyed Earl"
True Facts: The Lemur. A fascinating and informative new short documentary on lemurs by natural historian Ze Frank.
San Francisco Diggers
Scary times in Portland's queer and leftist scene
On February 14th, local Portland, OR newspaper the Willamette Week reported that Lieutenant Jeff Niiya of the Portland Police Department had a friendly rapport with Joey Gibson, the leader of extremist right wing group and Proud Boys allies "Patriot Prayer", who are based out of Vancouver, WA, but are a constant presence in Portland due to the group's constant rallies, which have become a hive of violence between Patriot Prayer/Proud Boys and antifascist counter-protesters. [more inside]
Megachile pluto is Rotu ofu, (once and still) Queen of the bees
In the 1850s, Alfred Russel Wallace (Wikipedia), a tall, skinny, reserved young explorer, went traipsing through tropical forests in the Malay Archipelago (Wiki), collecting specimens to be sold back in England. One of them was a specimen a local brought to him, “a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle,” (The Malay Archipelago, 1890 edition via Archive.org), and it was the largest bee known in the world. Megachile pluto (Wiki) was presumed extinct into the early 1980s, when it was re-discovered (abstract), only to disappear from sight again. Clay Bolt, Natural History and Conservation Photographer, wrote about rediscovering Wallace’s Giant Bee for Global Wildlife.org, and he shared a video of a specimen in action with Wired. [more inside]
Peter Tork has died at 77
The Washington Post has an obituary. He was my first celebrity crush and The Monkees was the first album I bought with my babysitting money. I am sadder than I should be about this.
Not to be confused with Dipsy's Hat, which contains untold powers.
Ong's Hat: The Early Internet Conspiracy Game That Got Too Real "On a sunny morning in early 2000, Joseph Matheny woke up to find conspiracy theorists camped out on his lawn again. He was making coffee when he noticed a face peering in a ground-floor window of the small, three-story building he rented in Santa Cruz. Past the peeper, there were three other men in their early 20s loitering awkwardly. Matheny sighed and stepped outside. He already knew what they wanted. They wanted to know the truth about Ong’s Hat. They wanted the secret to interdimensional travel." (Ong's Hat previously.)
asking the important questions
Matt Levine, Money Stuff, Bloomberg: Should index funds be illegal?
I have been writing about it since 2015, and I’ve enjoyed phrasing the question maximally as “should index funds be illegal?” That is a little bit of a joke, but not really, because if you take this stuff seriously enough then it does seem like large diversified shareholders—index funds but also other mutual funds—would pose a problem under the antitrust laws, and you’d have to do something about them. One thing I should say about this theory is that, as far as I can tell, almost no one who works in the capital markets or corporate America takes it seriously.[more inside]
"He's a wolf."
“She never looks back”: Inside Elizabeth Holmes's Chilling Final Months at Theranos - At the end, Theranos was overrun by a dog defecating in the boardroom, nearly a dozen law firms on retainer, and a C.E.O. grinning through her teeth about an implausible turnaround. (prev, prev, prev, prev)
Road Trip For The Heart
One must imagine Sisyphus clicking.
There is the potential for elements (and children) being stressed
Illegal Lego builds . A brief, informative, wryly funny explanation of what you are and aren't allowed to do with Lego and Technic sets (if you're creating official builds for market).
MetaClean: “How often should you...”
The Guardian: "Experts on 10 modern domestic dilemmas" give their - varied - opinions on bath towels (ongoing MetaTalk), sheets, wearing shoes indoors, jean washing, toilet brushes (“...a fetid liquid bacteria soup...”), cleaning cloths, dusting, vacuuming, deep-cleaning bathrooms, and showering. The World Wide Web is full of opinions, hygiene shaming, disguised cleaning product ads and more opinions on toilet brushes, the frequency of vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, toilet cleaning, (CW) cleaning after intimacy (“Toss the sex towel in the hamper”, “Dick in the sink”) showering frequency, and various cleaning in general. There is also science around cleaning agents and sprays, cotton towel bacteria, decontaminating kitchen cloths, hand hygiene, and toilet flushing.
February 20
Bringing back the Web of 1990
To celebrate the Web's 30th birthday, a reimplementation of WorldWideWeb, the first web browser. [more inside]
ActivisionBlizzard $ATVI Dividend increasing 9% Headcount reducing 8%
Activision Blizzard Reports Record Revenue as They Fuck Over 800 Employees [Waypoint] “Activision Blizzard, a company of more than 9,000 employees who’ve built some of the world’s most popular games, is a few things. They are a company who bragged about having a “record year,” on an earnings call this afternoon, a quarter where only raking in $2.4 billion in revenue was considered a disappointment. They are a company who granted a $15 million signing bonus and a $900,000 salary to a high-ranking executive who joined last month. And they are a company who just laid off around 800 employees, or 8% (!!!) of its total workers. 800 people will be without jobs at the end of the day. 800 people head into an uncertain future, wondering how long their severance and health insurance will get them before the next job. That list of 800 will not include Bobby Kotick. He will, of course, sleep well tonight.” [more inside]
Animals croon with Auto-Tune
Elton is a Bengal cat. His owner autotuned his "love me now" voice, and then did a Yass version. Maggie is a Saluki cross who has also been autotuned: a capella | a tempo. And here's a cat fight. To clear your palate, here's the late Mishka the Husky (previously) singing better than Bieber. [more inside]
It's pseudos all the way down
How to Escape Pseudo-Events in America: The Lessons of Covington. "In an era defined by virality, is there any way to stop a non-story from becoming a real one? What the Covington saga reveals about our media landscape." [more inside]
"Hey, I just wanted to let you know someone is pretending to be you …"
Last year, I found out someone was using my photos to catfish women. He stole dozens of my online photos – including selfies, family photos, baby photos, photos with my ex – and, pretending to be me, he would then approach women and spew a torrent of abuse at them. It took me months to track him down, and now I’m about to call him. I’m nervous, so much so that I have been putting it off for weeks. I sit down and dial. My palms are sweaty. He picks up.–How to catch a catfisher by Max Benwell. [CW: Abusive language]
R.I.P The Billfold: "There is no one right way to Do Money"
Today is the last day of The Billfold. Spun-off from The Hairpin in 2012, The Billfold took as its mandate “Everything About Money You Were Too Polite to Ask," and quickly became a unique refuge in the online personal finance blogosphere: a place for truly honest talk about the harrowing, messy, fallible, and hilarious intersection of money and life. [more inside]
Spider, spider, reflecting bright, in the Cretaceous, in the night
High School amateur fossil hunter, Kye-Soo Nam, discovered "a diverse new spider (Araneae) fauna from the Jinju Formation, Cretaceous (Albian) of Korea" (abstract only of article in Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, via Taylor & Francis Online). In addition to indicating that this extinct family of spiders that were "clearly very common in the Cretaceous," according to Paul Selden, Professor of Geology at the University of Kansas, this find is notable for being discovered in shale, which preserved reflective eyes that enabled their nighttime hunting in two of the fossils from the extinct spider family Lagonomegopidae (University of Kansas). [more inside]
What Is A Socialist?
"I’m beginning here, with a basic example of an unjustified inequality, because I think it’s important to see what I might call “the socialistic instinct” starts. Jack London, of Call of the Wild fame, was a socialist, and he explains in his essay “How I Became A Socialist” that it was not because he had read Karl Marx and accepted the dialectical materialist conception of history. It was because he went out into the world, and he realized that not everyone was like himself, and that the things he told himself about why some people deserved more than others simply broke down once he actually got to know people."
Nathan J. Robinson's speech about Socialism to students at America's oldest, most expensive High School.
Hornbostel–Sachs 412.132
This Cat Does Not Exist
Something something AI to generate (terrifying) images of cats.
Street kitten meets pitbull by way of Pixar
Kitbull is a beautifully animated Pixar short about an encounter between a spunky street kitten and a kindly pitbull. Content warning for offscreen animal cruelty and military grade Pixar heartstring tugging.
I am not a Jew and I was at one time a “revisionist”
In 1980, Robert Faurisson, the late father figure of Holocaust revisionism, sent fellow denier Jean-Claude Pressac, a Nazism-obsessed pharmacist, to the archives of the Auschwitz Museum. Faurisson wanted him to find proof of his theories, but Pressac, immersed in the archives of the SS Construction management Office, found instead irrefutable proof of the use of the gas chambers as a tool of mass murder. Breaking with Faurisson, Pressac kept on investigating and eventually published in 1989 Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (also), an extensive, meticulously researched monography. In the postface, Pressac chronicles the tormented path that led him from being a "travelling companion" of revisionism to being an authoritative Holocaust historian. He later worked on Russian archives until his death in 2003. [more inside]
Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building
For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon, tourists, employees, and children on tours passed by three paint buckets stored in the National Park's museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation. Although federal officials learned last year that the 5-gallon containers were brimming with uranium ore, then removed the radioactive specimens, the park's safety director alleges nothing was done to warn park workers or the public that they might have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
"following my path" would be a better translation
Parno Graszt - Járom az utam / ... In My World (2014) will cheer you up in the morning [SLYT] [more inside]
Karl Lagerfeld, 1935-2019
Karl Lagerfeld, fashion designer who oversaw the transformation of Chanel into an intercontinental superbrand, has died aged 85. [more inside]
February 19
Jasmin Paris wins the Spine Ultra Marathon in 83h 12m
Jasmin Paris smashed the old record by more than 12 hours . The Spine is a 268 mile long race from Kent to Scotland. She only slept for 3 hours and at each checkpoint she pumped milk for her daughter. [more inside]
An Epitaph For A Place That Lives
peach.cool is an iPhone-only microblogging service that was founded in 2016. (Hackernoon, The Verge, The New York Times)
It is small and probably won’t ever be big.
At The Verge, Bijan Stevens has a short note about the community’s stress when the service went down for a few days.
It is small and probably won’t ever be big.
At The Verge, Bijan Stevens has a short note about the community’s stress when the service went down for a few days.
◇ф(3ψ2)=666
The Devil's Calculator: A Math Game “In the The Devil's Calculator, all normal arithmetic operators (addition, multipication, etc...) are replaced by a strange diamond symbol, "◇". This represents an evil mathematical operation, a function that does something unknown to its input, and it becomes more difficult and obscure each level. You objective is, through interpolation, to uncover the "◇" function and then work backwards to use it in calculating 666. Once the number 666 has been calculated using the ◇ key, the level is won.” [YouTube][Trailer] [via: Rock Papers Shotgun]
TWA. Up, up, and away.
“Vintage tunes drift through the hotel in a curated soundtrack featuring Frank Sinatra, The Beatles, The 5th Dimension, Dusty Springfield, Rosemary Clooney, and Dean Marin. Airline beverage carts with snacks and carbonated sips are speckled throughout the grounds, while a champagne fridge filled with Moet & Chandon, TAB, and miniature bottles sits at the ready in the lobby for a boozy fix. “An abandoned airport terminal at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport has been reborn as the TWA Hotel.
The Search For The Saddest Punt In The World
National treasure and sports trivia troubadour Jon Bois is back with a new Chart Party, in which he examines nearly two decades of punts to determine which punt is the saddest of all. (SLYT) [more inside]
They're spiny and they're ancient, the sauropod family
Two for Tuesday: the Sauropoda family got a bit bigger, weirder and older in the last few years, with two discoveries in Argentina. Most recently, Bajadasaurus pronuspinax gave Amargasaurus cazaui (Wikipedia) a spiked- or frilled-neck cousin, but unlike the Amargasaurus, Bajadasaurus's spines point forward, for use as defense, to attract a mate, or regulate temperature (Phys.org; "A new long-spined dinosaur from Patagonia sheds light on sauropod defense system" - Science Reports, full article on Nature.com). Last year, a fossil of 'first giant' dinosaur discovered in Argentina (BBC). [more inside]
Chicainery
In 2007, Michael Caine released an album called Cained—"a compilation of Chill music from [his] vast collection." [more inside]
"Science writer & communicator"
"Hello my name is Paul, I have a PhD in physics and thanks to a random brain freeze forgot the word for photon so had to call it a “shiny crumb” in front of my colleagues 😐" Other people chimed in with their own mis-, er mal-, um…wrong-word things. (SLTwitter)
We had a dog, a mocap studio, and some spare time.
I've heard of video game companies trying to use non-union performers, but this is ridiculous. Remedy Entertainment (the Finnish video game studio best known for the Max Payne and Alan Wake series) went viral when they posted a picture on twitter of their latest motion-capture performer: a black Staffordshire Bull Terrier named Uuno. Come for the cute dog pictures and videos, stay for the insights into the ways modern game studios use live motion capture in animating characters.
"Bol Hu" by Pakistani band Soch, featuring Hadiya Hashmi
"Bol Hu" by Pakistani band Soch, featuring Hadiya Hashmi. (She comes at the 3:30 mark.) BBC's brief coverage of eight year old Hadiya.
Wicked parthenogenetic scorpions
You literally cannot mess this up
How we Lost our Ability to Mend [clothes] from Die, Workwear!, "A semi-daily blog about classic men's tailoring and semi-casual attire."
“The split between countryside and city...”
“I’ll take the example of the Rond-point des vaches, since it’s here in Rouen. The folks occupying it have spontaneously formed themselves into two teams or shifts. A daytime team arrives around 6 a.m. and stay all day. They don’t block traffic per se, but they only allow a slow trickle through at a time, like three or four cars a minute. This filtering effect ends up being fairly disruptive. At the same time, people eat, talk, and spend time together. Probably 40 percent of this shift is retired folks. They have this kind of time to spend and decide to throw themselves into the struggle. Normally, these are people who don’t talk to one another, who live their separate existences. Through the roundabouts, these people have discovered that they share the same miseries, have the same trouble paying bills, and share a similar hatred of elected officials.” The Counter-Insurrection Is Failing - As the largest uprising in France since 1968 continues to gain momentum, participants in Paris and Rouen speak to Adrian Wohlleben about the unfolding dynamic. (Commune)
Best read after breathing in some helium
Steampunk fans and climate hawks alike want to know: what about airships? After investigating the subject for a time, I've come to a tentative conclusion that airships could indeed play an important role in a zero-carbon transportation infrastructure — but probably not in the form of romantic luxury travel. Big and weird cargo shipping might just be where the airship does best. The return of the airship (slTheWeek)
In Case of Emergency, Print Money
In 1914, as Germany entered into World War I, the Imperial government suspended the gold standard. As a result, the values of paper and hard currencies diverged, hoarding started, and towns, employers, and banks started to print their own emergency notes [Colin Dickey, Topic]. This notgeld or emergency money, continued into their Weimar Era, and varied, from plain to ornate, from single-color to colorful, from few pfennigs to fifty million marks or more, and reflected [flicker album, previously] the people and the times: the towns and their history, commentary on politics and hunger, and meta-commentary on the notgeld themselves.
Some of the images of the notes are anti-semitic. [more inside]
The story of banta in a Codd neck bottle
Banta is the colloquial term for a peculiar kind of lemon soda sold in the city—packed in distinctive, green-tinged, Codd-neck bottles locked in place by a marble, and embellished with ice of dubious origin and generous quantities of black salt. [Follow the fascinating story behind the scenes by Mefi's Own beijingbrown]
Etsy stealing money from shop owners
Etsy has taken hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars out of sellers' bank accounts on Friday. They were supposed to put the money back today, the Tuesday after that Friday, but so far they've been making deposits and then withdrawing them. The link I posted seems to have the most current information.
If you're going to infringe someone's copyright, choose more wisely
Courtney Milan -- aka Heidi Bond, former professor of Intellectual Property Law and first accuser of Alex Kozinski -- has uncovered another "author" plagiarizing from one of her books. I use "author" loosely, because Christiane Serruya's defence is that the Fiverr ghostwriter she hired to actually write her books did the copying.
February 18
I wrote it because I got fired from my fucking spy-themed restaurant job
Sir Babygirl - Haunted House, Sir Babygirl - Everyone is a Bad Friend
Sir Babygirl, born Kelsie Hogue, has an evil plan. It starts with memes: Her Instagram [insta] is a mood board of early 2000s nostalgia and bisexuality – a grinning Yzma from The Emperor’s New Groove joking about period blood, Reese Witherspoon from Legally Blonde reading a textbook labeled “Flirting W/ Girls: 101.” “I was like, I’m going to get a following that way, and then it will cross over to my music,” she says. “I’m very calculated.” MTV[more inside]
Preferential Treatment
Dennis the Election Koala gives Ken the Voting Dingo an important lesson in civics!
Patrick Alexander explains Australia's electoral system for the House of Representatives, instant-runoff voting, in cartoon form.
Winner Winner Tetris Dinner!
Tetris 99 [YouTube][Game Trailer] “The goal is simple: 99 people are playing Tetris simultaneously, and the last surviving player wins. It’s ridiculous and hectic, and it’s also kind of amazing. At its core, the game is still Tetris as you know it. Tetrominoes of various shapes fall from the top, and it’s your job to line them up and clear away complete lines. The blocks are even the same color as usual, and the familiar Tetris theme hums along in the background. The difference, though, is that your ultimate goal isn’t a high score. It’s to be the last surviving player. As columns overflow and players get knocked out, the number of participants steadily dwindles.” [via: The Verge] [more inside]
Dance Your PhD
Dance Your PhD winners are in for 2019. Overall winner: Superconductivity, The Musical. Biology winner, and audience favourite: The (un)conscious brain. Chemistry winner: Percolation Theory - Conducting Plastics. Social Science winner: Movements as a Door for Learning Physics Concepts - Integrating Embodied Pedagogy in Teaching.
You can't show tampons at the Palace of Versailles
An interview (~13min video, in English, alt link) with Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos recounts her 2012 exhibit as the first female artist to be invited to present her work at the annual contemporary art exhibition of the Palace of Versailles. Also discussed is her current installation Simone at Le Bon Marché in Paris and other works.
The Modern Trap of Turning Hobbies Into Hustles
“You don’t have to [start an Etsy shop],” I assured her. “You can do something you love, just because you love it.” And suddenly the sentence that both of us needed to hear came out of my mouth: “You don’t have to monetize your joy.”
Shopping in Pyongyang
Too weird a specimen to belong to any canon
"At one time or another, Willeford played half the deck of familiar American archetypes but was too exquisitely weird to ever fully cash in on any of them." Jacob Siegel on the writer Charles Willeford. [more inside]
The state of the roads, throughout the US and Canada
If you're traveling around the US and you'd like to know if there's construction, or a crash, congestion or bad weather, each state Department of Transportation (DOT) has the map for you! You can call 5-1-1 for transportation and traffic information in many states (Wikipedia), and all state DOTs maintain online traveler information maps, if you want to find individual maps. But what if you want to travel between states? Highway Conditions (dot com) provides links to Canadian provinces and territories, and the United States plus D.C. and Puerto Rico, but there's a bit of link-chasing, and only some state maps link to their neighbors, but not all, so here's a list of all 50 states, from Alabama to Wyoming, Maine to California, sea to shining sea. [more inside]
Hey Porter
Cecil Foster, author of They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada, in an essay entitled "Hey Porter": "...the porters were simply known as “George” or “George’s Boy”—a double-barrel blast of deprecation since the possessive George’s smacked of slave-era ownership and boy to the paternalism of a white society where Black men were perceived as childlike and incapable of becoming responsible men. [Stanley] Grizzle and his colleagues resented, indeed bristled at such demeaning labels." [more inside]
Honey, I autotuned the cat
This tweet is one of the strangest things I've heard in some time. I have no idea how he tuned his cat, or why.
I wanna write a song...oh baby is that so wrong?
All The President's Meals
A History of State Dinners Foreign Policy examines the history of American food, American Presidents, and the image the U.S. wants to project to the world. And yes, Truman served Winston Churchill Fritos. [more inside]
No Heat. No Power. No Accountability.
“ACCOUNTS FROM INCARCERATED people, their family members, and lawyers sketch a picture of widespread protests at the Sunset Park detention facility. People across multiple housing units undertook coordinated acts of nonviolent disobedience and at least three hunger strikes. Retaliation by Metropolitan Detention Center staff ranged from pepper spray and solitary confinement to shutting off toilets across entire units. All told, men on at least four housing units inside the jail say they took part in some sort of collective protest of their conditions. In each instance, they say their actions were met with official retaliation.” Locked inside a freezing federal jail they united to protest thier conditions - only to face reprisals An account of the Brooklyn MDC protests.
I was as curious about them as they were about lesbian sex
There’s a new party on the scene, specifically catering to the straight-but-curious woman: Skirt Club, an international circuit of underground parties for “girls who play with girls.” Skirt Club promoters hired me, a queer woman and professional Dominatrix, to attend and bring my submissive, Chloe, who is also my girlfriend. I may be accustomed to doing straight-for-pay sex work, but I have a chip on my shoulder when it comes to entertaining women with boyfriends. So, despite the lesbian sex show I was hired to put on for a bunch of straight (or perhaps closeted) women, I was determined to have a good time for myself.
What CTA Workers Know
Chicago Magazine interviewed a dozen CTA workers anonymously about their jobs. Here are their responses on everything from acting as a de facto shelters to suicides to the weirdest things they've seen people take on the train. Related: What Teachers Know.
The Secret History of Women in Coding
Happy Anniversary, Huck Finn!
The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer's Comrade) By Mark Twain Complete [Gutenberg Project link, with illustrations] is a story that one more often encounters in movies or musicals. The text [Adobe.com .pdf link without illustrations] is most often read in middle grade school, and seldom after that. Perhaps it's time to revisit the novel [Genius user-annotated text] as Twain wrote it, as an adult for adults. [more inside]
“We’re just going to wing it really; there’s not much more we can do.”
As captain May eats jam, ignores charts and monsters, and steers the 'good ship Brexit' downriver, a few Labour MPs might jump ship, possibly copied by a few Conservatives. Airbus, via Politico: “...we will have to look at future investments” and the Bank of America and German companies also paddle away (not on FlyBMI), as does Ratcliffe but not the wannabe captain. But people coming aboard may include expats with complex healthcare needs needing the NHS. A national humbling? Back on the high and ferry-free seas, Gavin's latest has displeased China and Gibralter is tense. Choppy waters, no investigation, only storm forecasts for Northern Ireland, and for Porsche-desiring MeFites. Irish Times: “...we can also glimpse an image of ourselves no longer ruling the waves.” (title) [more inside]
February 17
Remember - Good Satire Punches Up Like The Bubbles in Beer
In a time of a worrisome craft beer market, a worse niche beer publication market and the recent accusations of sexual assault against the CEO of Ohio's Actual Brewing, Bill Metzger, the longtime owner and publisher of the Buffalo based Brewing News chain of monthly brewing newspapers wrote an article on Scottish Cask Ale for the Great Lake's Brewing News (not to be confused with Great Lakes Brewing and their flagship Edmund Fitzgerald Porter ). After "promotion" from Worst Beer Blog (dedicated to calling out asinine and crappy behavior in the brewing world), the article was not well received to say the least even by the Scottish (with many advertisers/breweries pulling ads and at least one employee resigning in protest) . With cries of satire being rejected after an "apology" (and some questionable history being dug up), papers in the chain are going independent and Metzger is divesting himself of the remaining properties. (And the annual IPA Competition is cancelled because of breweries pulling entries) Is this another step for a maturing industry to move away from it's troubling past, even for a field that's been said to be 99% asshole free? (and don't look now - unionization, too!)
February 18th is Fart Out Loud Day!
Written by two sisters, Samantha (age 11) and Ali (age 9) from Colorado, “Fart Out Loud Day” is a funkalicious body-positivity anthem that gives everyone permission to let it out. (Farts previously) [more inside]
All The Things You Are
The Tatum Group Masterpieces, Volume Eight is an album by Art Tatum and Ben Webster, with Red Callender on double bass and Bill Douglass on drums. The 1956 session was originally released in 1958 on a Verve Records album produced by Norman Granz. He reissued the material as one of a series of eight Group Masterpieces featuring Tatum in collaboration with other artists, also issuing it as part of a boxed set, The Complete Pablo Group Masterpieces.
Kevlar and Crises Training: The perils of Modern Teaching
Many teachers are leaving the field within the first five years now, due to escalating violence in the classroom, and the exhaustion and burnout associated with this, according to a recent Canadian article. It's hard to pinpoint what factors are contributing to the more aggressive norms, but social factors are certainly a stress for many right now, including most adults responsible for modelling and teaching emotional regulation to the younger members of our population. Knowing that it is in the proper education of our children that society's true values are expressed, how might the public school system effectively address this growing social concern?
Fries Fries Fries
No matter what John Oliver says.
✨ It's full of stars ✨
After the Cultural Revolution
Beijing Silvermine is an archive of half a million negatives salvaged over the last seven years from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing. 📷[instagram] [more inside]
“Serious About Snacks”
Q: What is Taquitos.net?
A: Taquitos.net is the most comprehensive snack food site on the Interweb, featuring independent reviews of more than 8000 snacks from more than 1500 companies. (Ed. note: 97 brands! 195 types! 74 countries!) We’ve also write about other non-snack foods that pique our interest. [more inside]
A: Taquitos.net is the most comprehensive snack food site on the Interweb, featuring independent reviews of more than 8000 snacks from more than 1500 companies. (Ed. note: 97 brands! 195 types! 74 countries!) We’ve also write about other non-snack foods that pique our interest. [more inside]
Watching the watchmen: a best-practices guide
An Honest Living
Steven Salaita (previously), who can no longer find work in academia due to his past comments on Israel, is now a school bus driver. In a long essay on his website, he reflects on the transition.
130 environmental activists have been murdered in the past decade
France24 Reporters Plus—“A life of exile: How drought is forcing Hondurans to flee to US” (~25min video, in English, alt link) While members of a diaspora community in Durham, North Carolina send their support, Honduran people of the indigenous Lenca deal with drought and fight against environmental destruction and exploitation on the Petacón River. [more inside]
Show me what democracy looks like
Since Feb 6, 2019, massive protests have paralyzed Haiti.
At issue: corruption. Specifically the PetroCaribe scandal. Under this program, begun by Chavez under former president René Préval, Haiti has received approximately $4.6 billion dollars of aid from Venezuela, but with very little to show for it. A January report from the Superior Court of Auditors suggested that nearly $2 billion of the funds had been diverted. [more inside]
At issue: corruption. Specifically the PetroCaribe scandal. Under this program, begun by Chavez under former president René Préval, Haiti has received approximately $4.6 billion dollars of aid from Venezuela, but with very little to show for it. A January report from the Superior Court of Auditors suggested that nearly $2 billion of the funds had been diverted. [more inside]
My Life at 47 Is Back to What It Was Like at 27
Deferred Scandal Agreement
Between 2001 and 2011, Canadian engineering giant SNC Lavalin spent a lot of money on bribes in Libya, which resulted in criminal charges in Canada. As the charges slowly made their way through the courts, SNC Lavalin lobbied hard to have Canada introduce the same sort of deferred prosecution agreements which allow companies avoid prosecution in the U.K. and U.S. The lobbying effort succeeded in changing the law, but SNC Lavalin hadn't counted on Jody Wilson-Raybould. [more inside]
How to tune a bell
An interview with Benjamin Kipling, former Bell Tuner at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry (where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were made) about how church bells are tuned.
Somebody alert Blinovich!
An amusing SLYT trifle from 2001. Tom Baker (impressionist Jon Culshaw) interviews Tom Baker (actor Tom Baker).
February 16
2 guys catching a flight
A door in the sky: 2 wingsuit flyers BASE jump into a plane in mid-air
"crowded congregations could be unpleasant to unbearably irritating"
There are moths that drink tears from sleeping birds' eyes. There are butterflies that feed on turtle tears. And then there are the wild bees that drink from human eyes. [CW: literally closeup photos of bees drinking from a person's eyes.] [more inside]
Ken Nordine (1920 - 2019)
"The Voice of God," Ken Nordine, passed away today at age 98 Ken Nordine was one of the greatest voice artists of all time. You may not know his name, but assuredly you know his voice. [more inside]
What killed off the Megalodon, supernova radiation or the Great Whites?
2.6 million years ago, a nearby supernova impacted earth around the time of a significant die-off of large ocean animals at dawn of Pleistocene, in a newly documented marine megafaunal extinction (press release) tied to the presence of Iron-60 (Wikipedia). The research is reported in Astrobiology: Muon Radiation Dose and Marine Megafaunal Extinction at the end-Pliocene Supernova. A notable example of extinct marine megafauna is the currently popular Megalodon, but another recent study disputes the supernovae explanation for Meg's extinction, instead linking it to the rise of the Great White Shark (NatGeo): The Early Pliocene extinction of the mega-toothed shark Otodus megalodon: a view from the eastern North Pacific (PeerJ).
All Breakfast, All The Time
Mr. Breakfast is committed to: 1) assisting breakfast lovers find the best possible breakfast, and 2) making breakfast lovers out of those who are not.
The site features an interactive database of recipes.
A section called “The Breakfast Times” offers interesting articles, product reviews and the latest news concerning breakfast.
The Cereal Project at MrBreakfast.com is an online encyclopedia of every breakfast cereal ever made in the U.S. with over 1,400 different cereals profiled.
For assistance navigating around the site, please try the search box at the top of each page or consult our site index.
Enjoy your stay. Enjoy your breakfast.
About Mr. Breakfast - The Man | Happening Now! Star Wars Breakfast Recipes [more inside]
The site features an interactive database of recipes.
A section called “The Breakfast Times” offers interesting articles, product reviews and the latest news concerning breakfast.
The Cereal Project at MrBreakfast.com is an online encyclopedia of every breakfast cereal ever made in the U.S. with over 1,400 different cereals profiled.
For assistance navigating around the site, please try the search box at the top of each page or consult our site index.
Enjoy your stay. Enjoy your breakfast.
About Mr. Breakfast - The Man | Happening Now! Star Wars Breakfast Recipes [more inside]
When modern builders meet old houses
Peter Ward is a surveyor who specialises in very old houses, watch him explain the problems that arise when modern builders try to 'fix' the external timber frame of a Grade 2 listed old house. At the other extreme discover a time capsule house from the 1600's that's barely been touched for centuries.
Soothing Saturday Sharing
Reddit's /r/aww forum is excellent mind bleach in these days of modern time: Hello ! | Late night study partner | Nothing funny just my old doggo | Little boy gets to be in a puppy pile | Snuggle time
The Genome of the Rose
The rose genome has recently been completely sequenced, which should lead to much faster and easier development of traits such as fragrance, colour, and healthiness - maybe even thornless varieties.
Drowning in Debt
I'm not gonna lie... I'm outta ideas.
Do you prefer your video game reviews in comic form? Maybe with a side of (non-manic) playthrough videos? Why not check out GamePadInk? [more inside]
Institutional racism at NYU
"I found it easier to lead the discussion without black presence in the room, since I do feel somewhat uncomfortable with the (perceived) threat that it poses." While traveling abroad, a black graduate student at New York University says he was told by a classmate that a class discussion was easier to facilitate without a “black presence” in the room.
February 15
Rise of the mid-rise
Why America’s New Apartment Buildings All Look the Same TLDR: Because they're made of wood, which is cheap... but read on for more on the confluence of changing building codes, institutional investors, and a nationwide housing shortage... [more inside]
Angelic Art
🍞
How to make bread. Happy Friday Everyone!
The Chattering Order of St. Beryl
The Chattering Order of St. Beryl of Lower Tadfield, UK, are united by their love of the Lord of Darkness and most recently a capella.
Pinky And The Brain Theme - Postmodern Jukebox
Postmodern Jukebox covers the Pinky And The Brain Theme, featuring Emily Goglia, Rob Paulsen, and Maurice LaMarche.
Metal (melted?) clarinets
Maybe it’s okay for your definition of sex to be subjective
I’ve been writing about sex online for the better part of a decade now, and my understanding of what “sex” is has only become broader and murkier as time has progressed (not to mention, as acts like sexting and phone sex have become a bigger and bigger part of my life). I’m not sure I know what sex is. I’m not sure I ever knew.
"Something about that look, those ears, that tail. But, mostly the look"
BBC: Tudder features data profiles of animals from 42,000 UK farms in an effort to help farmers find the perfect breeding partner for their cattle. Farmers can view pictures of bulls or cows and swipe right to show interest. ABC: "I'd have to talk to Brownie and a few of the girls and see what they're really wanting," Mr Jenkins said. Guardian: ‘How do they swipe right with their hooves?’ Metro: Launching just in time for the most romantic day of the year, the pioneering matchmaking app is thought to be the first of its kind for livestock. (App)
"The bones sealed up the marrow like a Tupperware container"
A taste for fat, not meat, may have made us human: A new paper argues that our early ancestors acquired a taste for fat by eating marrow scavenged from the skeletal remains of large animals that had been killed and eaten by other predators. The argument challenges the widely held view among anthropologists that eating meat was the critical factor in setting the stage for the evolution of humans. While focusing on fat over meat may seem like a subtle distinction, the difference is significant. The nutrients of meat and fat are different, as are the technologies required to access them. The authors review evidence that a craving for marrow could have fueled not just a growing brain size, but the quest to go beyond smashing bones with rocks to make more sophisticated tools and to hunt large animals.
More than J-Pop: Ongaku 70-90, Kankyō Ongaku compilations
Four (plus Four) for Friday: the trio of decade and genre-focused "Ongaku" (音楽, music) compilations from the dubious French label, Hiruko Records: Ongaku 70 (YouTube playlist; Discogs), subtitled "Vintage Psychedelia in Japan" / Ongaku 80 (YT album; Discogs), subtitled "Alternative Waves from Japan" / Ongaku 90 (Discogs with some YouTube clips embedded), subtitled "Underground Music from Japan," (Discogs lists styles as New Wave, electro, experimental, and ambient) // If you want more experimental, ambient music from this period, Light in the Attic recently released Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990, and a YouTuber made a playlist of some of the clips that are already online. [more inside]
Enheduanna
Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world’s first known author. "The world’s first known author is widely considered to be Enheduanna, a woman who lived in the 23rd century BCE in ancient Mesopotamia (approximately 2285 – 2250 BCE). Enheduanna is a remarkable figure: an ancient 'triple threat', she was a princess and a priestess as well as a writer and poet." [Via] [more inside]
All Care For All People
“...Jayapal’s bill joins a crowded mess of at least eight other healthcare policies being bandied about among Democrats. I couldn’t fault anyone for getting confused when candidates talk about “Medicare for All,” or “Medicare Extra for All,” or “Medicare for America,” or the “public option.” The relatively simple problems of health finance have been made very complicated by people who make money off of healthcare. So what are all of the issues being discussed and what do they mean? What’s really “Medicare for All” and what’s not? How do existing bills stack up? And why does this matter?” The Only Guide To ‘Medicare For All’ You’ll Ever Need by Tim Faust (Splinter)
What Are the Best Policies to Solve Climate Change?
The Energy Policy Solutions Simulator " lets users test different policy options and see the results instantly" for carbon dioxide emissions reduction in Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Poland and the United States
"A Novel": A MetaFilter Post
Vox's Eliza Brooke asks the question "Why do so many book covers still use the phrase 'A Novel' for works of fiction?" and finds some answers, linking to a 2008 Ask MeFi thread in the process, and points out that often "A Novel" is added to the cover of book-length works of fiction when they cross over from the UK to North America.
"We just beat the richest man in the world."
After months of public outcry and demands for transparency, Amazon has cancelled its plans to build a corporate campus in Queens. Activists and community groups who swore they would crush the deal are elated; real estate brokers, not so much.
“s/he shook my rack/bookshelf”
What does ‘I love you’ mean? It depends on where you say it and what language you speak. Translators, scholars, and dating coaches from various countries discuss expressions of love. -- Alice Robb for the Washington Post.
The King of the Ferret Leggers
What kind of person sticks a ferret down his pants for more than five consecutive hours? "Ay lad," said the 72-year-old champion, "no jockstraps allowed. No underpants—nothin' whatever. And it's no good with tight trousers, mind ye. Little bah-stards have to be able to move around inside there from ankle to ankle."
A time of debt
Two years after global economy crashed in 2008, austerity politics swung into action. Using Greece as its example, a transatlantic alliance of right-wing fearmongers, conservative political entrepreneurs and centrist fiscal hawks abandoned stimulus and instead turned the screw. Adam Tooze reconstructs the spread of the austerity epidemic and recalls how decision-makers in Europe ploughed their course even after the US had begun to pour money back into the system (Eurozine). (This is an extract from Tooze’s book "Crashed", London: Allen Lane 2018.)
Kelly Slater’s Shock Wave
[New Yorker]The best surfer in history made a machine that creates perfect conditions on demand. Will his invention democratize surfing or despoil it? Surfing on Kelly Slater’s machine-made wave [Video]
Previously.
February 14
Squirrel and cat. Living together. Mass hysteria.
Cat and squirrel play-fight Sorry, those looking for a despair, outrage or poop fix, there's none of that in this post. TW: Do not search the web for this topic, most end very badly.
When You Bring the Songs Back, You Are Going to Bring the People Back
Jeremy Dutcher is a First Nations classically trained tenor, musician, and composer whose debut album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa [Youtube playlist], sung entirely in the "severely endangered" language of Wolastoqey, won the 2018 Polaris Prize, which is awarded annually to the best full-length Canadian music album. You can watch him perform a stunning medley of his album at the Polaris Gala, and accept the prize. Dutcher is a Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) member of the Tobique First Nation, and his album is based on traditional Wolastoqiyik songs, often sampling century-old wax cylinder recordings of his ancestors' singing, to devastatingly beautiful effect. [more inside]
Better Language Models and Their Implications
We’ve trained a large-scale unsupervised language model which generates coherent paragraphs of text, achieves state-of-the-art performance on many language modeling benchmarks, and performs rudimentary reading comprehension, machine translation, question answering, and summarization — all without task-specific training. [more inside]
There is a reason why dog owners have coined the term "poopsicle."
The weird things dogs do when they poop serve a purpose. Afterwards, be sure to monitor the color of their poop to keep abreast of their health. And don't be too upset when they eat poop. It's probably an ancient pack-survival behavior. They'll even venture outside the species and eat cat poop—it smells like cat food to them.
Rider-Ache
The League of Not Extraordinary and Not So Gentle Men
In 2009, a secret Facebook group called the Ligue du LOL (The League of LOL), led by young French male journalists, started harassing fellow journalists, writers, bloggers and activists - predominantly targeting women and minorities (also NYT), disrupting the lives and ruining the careers of their victims through barrages of sexist, racist and homophobic insults, pornographic montages, prank calls, and Twitter-coordinated attacks, online and IRL. The existence of the group was revealed last week, resulting in a flood of heartbreaking testimonies (megathread on r/feminisme (in French)), and in an intense bout of soul-searching in the progressive French media: not only the victims had been ignored before last week, but most of the Ligue members are now prominent journalists in major left-wing publications. [more inside]
Take Me To Church except he’s practicing it alone in an empty cathedral
This Person Does Not Exist
This Person Does Not Exist is a single-serving website that does only one thing: algorithmically generate fake human faces. Refresh for more. [more inside]
Victorian vinegar Valentines: Why send me such detested stuff?
If you're sick of the simpering sweetness of this supposed saint's day (Catholic.com), you might enjoy some Victorian vinegar Valentines, as recounted by Atlas Obscura, with more from Collector's Weekly (previously). If you want to copy some salty prose or rather precise, personal poetry, The Satirical Valentine Writer (circa 18xx, via Archive.org) could be your new friend, itself a response to the earlier Valentine Writers, such as Richardson's New London Fashionable Gentlemen's Valentine Writer or, the Lover's Own Book (1828, Archive.org) and the new and improved Sentimental Valentine Writer, containing a selection of the best and newest Valentine Poetry (1850, Archive.org). [more inside]
Probably quite ticklish
The home-wrecking usurper Aaron Burrd
Bald eagle named Justice missing from nest in D.C.: Things appeared to be going fine at the nest, with a hint of spring and new life in the air. Liberty and Justice mated Saturday, experts said, and fertilized an egg. But in that afternoon, a new, younger male eagle showed up at the nest. [more inside]
Swahili for "friend"
Kenyan film director Wanuri Kahiu wanted a hopeful African love story she could adapt into a film. She found what she was looking for in Jambula Tree, a Caine Prize-winning short story by Ugdandan author Monica Arac de Nyeko about the love and courtship of two young women. Kahiu's film is named Rafiki--Swahili for "friend"--which, as Kahiu frequently states in interviews, "is how queer Kenyans need to introduce their partners in a society where it is not yet safe to name their love directly." The film premiered at Cannes in 2018 (trailer here), but the Kenyan Film and Classification Board banned it back home. After suing the government, Kahiu won a 7-day suspension of the ban to allow Rafiki to qualify for the Academy Awards; the theaters were packed, breaking box office records, but the Kenyan Oscars selection committee declined to submit Rafiki for consideration. Africa Is A Country has more on the film, which plays against the backdrop of Kenya's expected February 22nd Constitutional Court ruling on colonial-era laws that criminalize homosexuality.
And a marginal contribution of prostatic secretions
“Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact.“
“The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood, lest it will rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the indiscriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine, — and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex-awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage.” - Anarchist agitator Emma Goldman, “Marriage and Love.” 1914
About 500 miles away and mainly to the south
In the coming decades, the climates of North American cities will shift to those of locations that are hundreds of miles away or, in some cases, to climates "with no modern equivalent in North America”. An interactive map shows what the climates of 540 urban areas in the US and Canada will feel like 60 years from now. [more inside]
Cortex's beautiful stained glass piece
In A Post-Parkland America, Teens Talk About Gun Culture
NPR spent nearly a year talking to high school students about their attitudes about guns. Here is their reporting in a 20 minute video -- Senior Spring: How Teens Feel About Guns In America.
The dream of the 90s is alive in Nairobi
Did you ever wonder where the rollerblades you had in the 90s are now? If you donated them to a charity shop, there's a good chance that they ended up in a container of secondhand clothing exported to Africa (a trade known by the Swahili word mitumba, meaning “bundles”), made their way to a skate shop in central Nairobi, and right now are in the possession of a stylishly attired young Kenyan, racing deftly down a busy street in Kenya's inline skating craze.
Blippi blip
unbelievably me
She lay every morning under an avalanche of details, blissed: pictures of breakfasts in Patagonia, a girl applying foundation with a hardboiled egg, a shiba inu in Japan leaping from paw to paw to greet its owner, white women’s pictures of their bruises – the world pressing closer and closer, the spider web of human connection so thick it was almost a shimmering and solid silk. Patricia Lockwood writes about being online.
yacht influencer is now a thing
THE LONELY LIFE OF A YACHT INFLUENCER: Alex Jimenez (aka TheYachtGuy) might look like he’s comfortably residing in the lap of luxury on Instagram, but the truth is, he’s kinda lost at sea.
But does reading MetaFilter help you poop?
Does reading on the toilet help you poop? references a 2011 Guardian article (previously). If you don't have a serious need to go, and you haven't overdone it on the cherries, then maybe. Science says that 52.7% of Israeli adults indulged, to no effect either way. Other issues abound e.g. is it offensive to read the bible while on the toilet? Does also being naked help? Or phoning your cable company? Or wearing a hat while reading? What potty-prose is most suitable? Moby Dick? Otherwise, perhaps some oats? Serious point: read if you want, but always look back.
February 13
"a Darwinian botanical Battle Royale"
Never Gonna Give You Up
Award-winning photographer Lisa Saad accused of stealing images
There might be a word for it now
But there’s no word for “dinosaur” in Zulu. Nor are there words for “Jurassic,” “fossilization,” or “evolution.” [more inside]
Hold down the tab key. Select "Piss," "Poop," or "Vomit,".
The hardest part of video game Scum was learning how to pee/poop. [Polygon] “Tossing turds around is nothing new in the survival genre. Ark: Survival Evolved launched with poo for you and your dinosaur mounts to boot, but their flavor of feces didn’t really serve much of a purpose. In Scum, however, everything matters. By simulating human frailty, they’re trying to bring competition and fairness back to one of gaming’s most competitive multiplayer genres. And they’re doing it with an absurd amount of complexity. [...] The developers say that they’ve created the most realistic simulation of the human metabolic system ever made, the end result of which is a fairly regular requirement that my avatar urinate and empty his bowels. But why?” [YouTube][Gameplay Footage][NSFW] [more inside]
I See Monsters
Ryan Adams dangled success. Women say they paid a price. Multiple women, including ex-wife Mandy Moore, and one whose interactions with Adams began at age 14, "described a pattern of manipulative behavior in which Adams dangled career opportunities while simultaneously pursuing female artists for sex."
Adams responds.
The home-made roller coasters of Will Pemble and Paul Gregg
For Will Pemble, it all started when his son asked "wouldn't it be awesome if we had our own roller coaster." Five seconds later, he thought "Yes, yes it would," and that's the origin story of CoasterDad, the guy who built a roller coaster in his back yard (Wired Video, YouTube alt. link), and his front yard, and another friend's back yard, and for the Maker Fair in San Francisco. He has more videos on his YouTube account, specifically in the the CoasterDad Project playlist. If that's all a bit too loosey-goosey for you Coaster 101 talks to Paul Gregg about building and testing safe back yard roller coasters, as he discusses on his website Backyard Roller Coasters dot org, which has his two books about DIY coaster-making.
58% Interest + 25% Confusion +8 Awe + 8% Realization
Here's an interactive map of the 2,032 sounds humans use to communicate without words. Based on new research [PDF] that found brief vocal bursts can convey at least 24 distinct kinds of emotion. Previous studies had estimated the number at around 13.
Rest well, rover. Your mission is complete.
"To the robot who turned 90 days into 15 years of exploration:
You were, and are, the Opportunity of a lifetime.
Rest well, rover. Your mission is complete. (2004-2019)"
Sarah Kaplan, WaPo: Opportunity, NASA’s record-setting Mars rover, is declared dead after 15 years. Opportunity’s mission was planned to last just 90 days, but it worked for 5,000 Martian “sols” and traversed more than 28 treacherous miles — two records for NASA. (Previously, and more at NASA's Mars page.)
Sarah Kaplan, WaPo: Opportunity, NASA’s record-setting Mars rover, is declared dead after 15 years. Opportunity’s mission was planned to last just 90 days, but it worked for 5,000 Martian “sols” and traversed more than 28 treacherous miles — two records for NASA. (Previously, and more at NASA's Mars page.)
Multis e gentibus vires
I'm @jack's complete lack of #karajack 🔥 LIKE & RT PLS 🙏
How hard is it to have a conversation on Twitter? So hard even the CEO can’t do it. Here's a transcript of the interview.
A family member is never a number
LOOK FOR ME, PLEASE: How indigenous women work to help each other when authorities turn a blind eye. [more inside]
Is There an Optimal Diet for Humans?
[NYT] Nutrition experts have long debated whether there is an optimal diet that humans evolved to eat. But a study published this month adds a twist. It found that there is likely no single natural diet that is best for human health. The research, published in the journal Obesity Reviews, looked at the diets, habits and physical activity levels of hundreds of modern hunter-gatherer groups and small-scale societies, whose lifestyles are similar to those of ancient populations. They found that they all exhibit generally excellent metabolic health while consuming a wide range of diets.
The progressive to-do list is missing a very important idea
Day Care for All - "Free public college, health care for all, a living wage: These are all important causes that will improve life for millions. But there's another proposal that belongs on the progressive to-do list: universal affordable high-quality child care. In fact, I would put it ahead of free public college: It would help more people and do more to change society for the better." (via) [more inside]
February 12
This Doesn't Have To Be The Limit Of Your Imagination. Dream Bigger.
As 'LeftTube' becomes a thing (Previously) you might've heard of Olly Thorn/Philosophy Tube (Previously heard in the Contrapoints Video "Incels", previously) He has his own channel where he discusses Witchcraft, Marxism, and the history of being anti-feudal and anti-capitalist. (27:25) Systems Of Vulnerability is Why The Left Will Win (12:30) How to Fix the Housing Crisis as a Superhero Battle (20:36) When will Security Go Back To Normal and national systems of control (26:12) What Was Liberalism? (9:47) 2 3 4. Steve Bannon and Neofascism: An Explanation (44:57), drawing heavily on Max Frisch's play the Arsonists/The Firebugs.
Thirsty for Science
I raced a T. Rex so you don't have to. Dustin Growick loves dinosaurs, museums and running around shirtless. In this YouTube cinematic feat, he runs a theoretical race against a T. Rex, amongst other important Science.
It Does Not Follow
"Non Sequitur" artist Wiley Miller included an "Easter Egg" in the Sunday, February 10th comic strip. Many of the 700+ newspapers that carry the syndicated strip were not pleased.
That's UNtertainment
The mission of National Poo Museum on the Isle of Wight is "to lift the lid on the secret world of poo - to examine our relationship with it and to change forever the way we think about this amazing substance." Northern Italy's Shit Museum uses cow poop to generate electricity and heat. Yokohama's Unko Museum, however, is about adorable poo. [more inside]
Austerity cheese and a death in the Dales
"Real Wensleydale cheese died in the early 1940s." How? Why? Garius explains in this Twitter thread (unrolled on Thread reader). Let's talk about Wensleydale. [more inside]
It's been ________ since I __________.
Time Since Launch is a web site that allows you to commemorate THIS moment in time, when this moment in time marks a significant moment in your life. Use it when you've gotten married, given birth, quit smoking, stopped eating sugar, made a conscious effort to push hate from your heart, or decided from this very second to fill every moment of your life with purpose. It'll provide you with a unique URL to visit in the future to see how many days | hours | minutes | seconds have passed since your moment. Want something more permanent and decorative to mark the occasion? The creators sell a single-use physical version to hang on your wall as a constant reminder.
"Things are acting very strangely at high latitude."
Magnetic north was formally redesignated ahead of schedule. Here's what that means. The foundation of many navigation systems, the World Magnetic Model finally got a much-needed update with the end of the U.S. government shutdown. (National Geographic). The geomagnetic poles "wander," which isn't news (National Centers for Environmental Information), but recently it was recognized that Earth’s northern magnetic pole is moving quickly away from the Canadian Arctic toward Siberia, which has forced NCEI’s scientists to update the World Magnetic Model (WMM) mid-cycle (NCEI). If you want to see how declination has changed historically, NCEI has a neat online map (may not render properly in all browsers).
“... I think we can outrun it,”
“Shooting down the slopes as Donkey Kong and recovering from a slight setback, Skilloz_ prepared to claim a new world record for the Star Cup circuit at 200cc speed. As he got closer to the finish line, he started to realize that this could be a world record run. At the same time, he noticed [something incoming]...” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
So may I introduce to you/ The act you've known for all these years
So, you're a struggling musician, and you get into an accident after a mysterious power outage; when you wake up, you play "Yesterday" on your guitar, and... no one recognizes it, because no one has ever heard of the Beatles. What do you do? (Hint: rhetorical question.) [more inside]
Rethinking Animals
Maybe a fish's on-deck thrashing is really a "a silent scream, born of the fish’s belief that it has entered a permanent state of extreme suffering."
The jokes just write themselves
Reddit users are the least valuable of any social network: With 330 million monthly active users and revenue of about $100 million the company is generating an estimated $0.30 per user, much lower than Twitter ($9.48), Facebook ($7.37), Pinterest ($2.80) and Snap ($2.09).
someone once told me the real action was in the footnotes
Illuminating Women’s Hidden Contribution to Historical Theoretical Population Genetics [preprint bioRxiv], Samantha Kristin Dung, Andrea López, Ezequiel Lopez Barragan, Rochelle-Jan Reyes, Ricky Thu, Edgar Castellanos, Francisca Catalan, Emilia Huerta-Sánchez and Rori V. Rohlfs, GENETICS February 1, 2019 vol. 211 no. 2 363-366; https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.118.301277
While productivity in academia is measured through authorship, not all scientific contributors have been recognized as authors. We consider nonauthor “acknowledged programmers” (APs), who developed, ran, and sometimes analyzed the results of computer programs. We identified APs in Theoretical Population Biology articles published between 1970 and 1990, finding that APs were disproportionately women (P = 4.0 × 10−10). We note recurrent APs who contributed to several highly-cited manuscripts. The occurrence of APs decreased over time, corresponding to the masculinization of computer programming and the shift of programming responsibilities to individuals credited as authors. We conclude that, while previously overlooked, historically, women have made substantial contributions to computational biology.The Women Who Contributed to Science but Were Buried in Footnotes [more inside]
The Local-Carb Diet
Dedicated Pacific Northwest plant lovers nurture an indigenous food with ancient roots. [more inside]
Oh-thello!
What's Inside your [Desktop] computer Graphics Card? SLYT - 6min 28sec
Animated explanation of your desktop graphics cards components and what each part is designed to do. Use a computer? Game on a PC? Ever wonder how those graphics get so pretty? Let's go inside your high-end graphics card with this animation. [more inside]
Te tiriti o Waitangi: the comic book
Te Tiriti o Waitangi: the comic book The illustrated story of the Treaty of Waitangi, courtesy of the New Zealand School Journal. [more inside]
February 11
all the wrong answers are interesting
“Eskimos Have Fifty Words for Snow” is an amazing phrase, because every word in it is wrong. Aaron Bady on what he thought would be "a few days’ research and a quick little explainer essay" and turned into half a year of research and an unexpected appreciation. "What’s fascinating to me about actually reading Whorf’s work—after working my way debunkers who gesture at his ignorance as disqualifying—is how simple the point he was trying to make actually was: that ignorance is, itself, a pathway towards new knowledge."
What's the bandwidth of a seal with a USB drive?
Although it's been known for years that poop can be mined for the metals used in technology, researchers in New Zealand were surprised to discover a functional USB drive in leopard seal poop.
All good things to those who wait
Anthony Hopkins listening to his own composition “The Plaza,” performed by The City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra.
The Heavy Metal version.
As reported before, Hopkins has been composing classical music for over 50 years
The Heavy Metal version.
As reported before, Hopkins has been composing classical music for over 50 years
Of Course The Sports Channel Would Be "The Slapshot"
On Twitter, one inventive Canadian amused and mortified his girlfriend whenever they passed a gas station - by using the gas price as a launching point to create an ad hoc promo for a fictional radio station. (SLTwitter)
It says here... "Process for filling grave is reversal of excavation."
John Haynes, saviour of amateur car mechanics everywhere, has passed away. Before an endless sea of YouTube car repair videos made it possible to watch someone else change a suspension bushing or bleed their brakes, stabbing at the screen with greasy fingers to pause the clip while you followed it step-by-step in your own driveway, John Hayne's manuals democratized the process of car repair, from the bland to the exotic. From my first car onwards they've saved me grief, brought joy to my grandfather, mirth to my friends, and helped keep countless cars running.
Nobody expected that from an English Bulldog
Dog agility courses are typically associated with speed and agility. English Bulldogs are not typically associated with speed and agility. Nobody told Rudy.
Then there is Macaroni the pokey puppy.
Also, Dachshunds! Mo is fast. Megan? Not so much.
Almost 8 hours of footage there if you want more.
Perverted her path of life arrogantly to the way of carnal lust
Joan had “impudently cast aside the propriety of religion and the modesty of her sex”, and “out of a malicious mind simulating a bodily illness, she pretended to be dead, not dreading for the health of her soul, and with the help of numerous of her accomplices, evildoers, with malice aforethought, crafted a dummy in the likeness of her body in order to mislead the devoted faithful and she had no shame in procuring its burial in a sacred space amongst the religious of that place”.
It's a godawful small affair
Mars One Ventures is liquidating - the future of the organization is uncertain. Is the Mars One Foundation shutting down? After years of skepticism, criticism, and outright accusations of being a suicide mission, Mars One may be folding. [more inside]
Cold? Try some "Spice on Snow."
The Freight Hoppers: "Fort Smith Breakdown." Alex Kehler and Jeremiah McLane: "Le Pruneau" on accordion and nyckleharpa. Dana and Susan Robinson: "The Flying Farmer." Mike Merenda and Ruthy Unger: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning." Ida Mae Specker, Rachel Eddy and Brian Slattery: "Boil Them Cabbage Down" and "Big-Eyed Rabbit."
Finnish Basic Income experiment: positive psychological effects
Finland's two-year experiment with Basic Income have concluded, and the preliminary results are out (Kela.fi x2). The take-aways are generally mixed to pessimistic, many similar to this Fortune article title: Finland's Basic Income Experiment Kind of Works, but Not in Employment Terms. In short, while the €560 (~$630) per person per month, given to 2,000 people, wasn't enough to boost employment, those BI recipients were happier and less stressed, a result that was apparent after only four months (Business Insider). While Finland chose to end the experiment here, as the Government rejects request to expand scheme and plans stricter benefits rules (Guardian), others are trying their own Basic Income experiments (Huffington Post). [more inside]
*SPOILER WARNING*
Game of Thrones showrunners reveal ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ is dead [Entertainment Weekly] “There have been so many tragic deaths on Game of Thrones [YouTube][Season 8 Trailer]. Yet the fate of one beloved character has remained uncertain, until now.” [more inside]
Listening and learning, but standing strong
Rep. Ilhan Omar Apologizes "Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. My intention is never to offend my constituents or Jewish Americans as a whole. We have to always be willing to step back and think through criticism, just as I expect people to hear me when others attack me for my identity. This is why I unequivocally apologize. At the same time, I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry. It's gone on too long and we must be willing to address it." [more inside]
Librarians on Horseback
Evocative photos of dedicated librarians delivering books to rural families. The Pack Horse Library Initiative, part of the Works Progress Administration suite of programs, was intended to improve literacy and thus readiness for employment. Precursor to Bookmobiles? The heroes we need...
"The networks, all of them, dance to the NFL's tune."
Bob Costas speaks out on CTE, NBC, and how he got pulled off the Super Bowl LII broadcast. [more inside]
Saudi App Lets Men Track Their Female Charges
Apple and Google have been accused of helping to "enforce gender apartheid" in Saudi Arabia, by offering a sinister app which allows men to track women and stop them leaving the country. Both Google Play and iTunes host Absher, a government web service which allows men to specify when and how women can cross Saudi borders, and to get close to real-time SMS updates when they travel. [more inside]
"I have a dream that one day Dodge will commodify me to sell trucks"
How capitalism reduced diversity to a brand: A law professor explains how corporations commodify people of color. [more inside]
“It doesn’t happen like the movies. That’s not how patients die.”
What People Actually Say Before They Die: “Famous last words” are the cornerstone of a romantic vision of death—one that falsely promises a final burst of lucidity and meaning before a person passes. [more inside]
Try harder, Megan
Choose your own corporate adventure . You will not be eaten by a grue.
All the Bad Things About Uber and Lyft In One Simple List
Streetsblog publishes a compilation of why the current explosion of unlicensed taxis is bad. One nice, easy read summarizing a bunch of things (with links, facts, and figures): vast increase in car driving; increase in new car ownership; >100% "deadheading" (cruising without passengers); cannibalizing transit; political effects; traffic fatalities; data opacity; financial unsustainability.
Dogs of New York
The Rights of Manoomin
Why the White Earth Band of Ojibwe Legally Recognized Wild Rice’s Rights: Under the Rights of Nature, the plant—as well as the freshwater resources it needs to survive—now have an inalienable right to exist. [more inside]
"Governance is not supposed to be for sale": Sidewalk's Mercenary Utopia
As the Canadian Civil Liberties Association declares Sidewalk Labs' activities in Toronto a mercenary end-run around local democracy, Molly Sauter examines the utopian smart-city project through the illustrations that have accompanied its public-facing documents, finding links to historical colonialist projects and the fraught history of interference with local democracy in Toronto. [more inside]
Not quite a "sharing" economy
Through the policy, workers were guaranteed a base amount of $10 per delivery; Instacart would apply tips to the overall payment, according to Business Insider. For example, if a customer tipped $4, Instacart would only pay an additional $6 to the driver. If the tip was $6, the company would pay even less — just around $4 for that delivery. Some observers characterized this as a deceptive business practice equivalent to tip theft, but because of the relatively unregulated nature of the gig economy, delivery workers had little legal recourse.After having been called out for using customer tips as a means to pay out less than otherwise would be required to delivery contractors, Instacart has reversed their policy and will stop counting tips towards contractor base pay. DoorDash and Amazon Flex, however, have no intent on changing their similar policies.
Gustav Klimt and Neuroscience
“The purpose of a scientific approach to art is not to take the mystery out of the art. It’s to give you new insight into why you think it’s so wonderful and mysterious.” Klimt, Kokoschka, Schiele appeals to something other than just our interest in art. It’s our interest in our own feelings and memories of experiences they ignite.
The Heroes of the Thai Cave Rescue
Into the dark: The inside story of an improbable team of divers, a near-impossible plan and the rescue of 12 boys from a Thai cave. [Previously, previouslier]
Massive insect decline could have 'catastrophic' environmental impact
More than 40% of insect species could become extinct in the next few decades, according to the "Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers" report, published in the journal Biological Conservation.
February 10
"A fascinating look at a future that came to be..."
Why you should watch Paranoia Agent (some mild spoilers within - major spoilers with a warning half-way through): "There's a quote from Satoshi Kon that I really like, in which he states, 'A world that a person perceives is filtered by their own fantasy and paranoia,' and you can see this same quote reflected in every character of Paranoia Agent. Rather than the show telling us how we should perceive each of its characters, the series is instead more focused on how they perceive themselves, and the reality around them, and all of the delusion and fantasy that comes with that." From the late director Satoshi Kon (previously), 2003’s Paranoia Agent (spoiler-free MyAnimeList description and reviews) is a limited anime series that starts with a seemingly simple crime: a string of physical assaults all perpetrated by the same mysterious figure, known as Lil' Slugger / Shonen Bat. Content warning: discussions of assault, sexual violence, and racism. [more inside]
Their Secret Love
Redditor Elphaba16 has several pets, including a male cat named Kelvin Jones and a female dog named Joule. She set up a camera to see what goes on in the home when the humans are at work, and found out that Kelvin and Joule have a special relationship. More on their Instagram.
I never went to grad school
Stoicism
Against mourning: It takes a lifetime of preparation to grieve as the Stoics did – without weeping and wailing, but with a heart full of love. Brian D. Earp on Stoicism in practice: "Stoics can ‘afford’ to grieve as little as possible – that is, as little as Nature will allow – because they have spent their lives training in philosophy. And that means: ridding themselves of false beliefs, learning how to face the inevitable, and carefully matching their desires with the will of Zeus. So, when the worst things happen, when a child, friend or spouse is struck down in an unplanned hour, the Stoics’ muted response will reflect their hard-won preparation, not a lack of prior love or affection..." [more inside]
Liisa Hietanen's still life and portrait sculptures in yarn
Knitting is a popular pastime in Finland. Even Finnish Olympians were noted for knitting before and after their competitions at the 2018 Winter Olympics! (Mother Nature News) But Finnish artist Liisa Hietanen takes it to a whole new level (MNN) with her knitted and crocheted sculptures of real-life people and scenes (artist's website). Hietanen painstakingly crochets, knits and sometimes embroiders every single piece of her sculpture — from the clothes and accessories down to the objects a sculpture is holding. [more inside]
🥖-
@sheepfilms asks If baguettes could move, how would they move? Give your reasoning pls [Twitter]. 1 - worm 2 - gallop 3 - robot rotate 4 - caterpillar. A lot of people think the baguette should stay rigid. So I've done some new animations to choose from (plus the snake one just because).
Reclaiming the Cone of Shame
Photographer Transforms Canines' Cones From Shame To Glam "Photographer Winnie Au wanted to capture the range of emotions dogs feel while wearing these conical contraptions. In Cone of Shame — a nod to another of the device's popular nicknames — Au's stylized portraits show dogs of all breeds looking everything from grand to dazed." [more inside]
Hundreds rally against vaccines in Washington State
In the midst of a measles outbreak in the Pacific Northwest, Washington state lawmakers have proposed a bill that would "remove parents' ability to claim a personal or philosophical exemption to opt their school-age children out of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine." The Pacific Northwest has some of the highest numbers of unvaccinated children in the country, and they let their voices be heard on Friday at the state Capitol in Olympia, WA when they packed a public hearing on the bill. At least 51 cases of measles have been confirmed in Clark County, WA, with another two suspected, bringing the current total up to 53, and that's not counting cases in King County, WA and Multnomah County, OR. [more inside]
Half of the books in this bookstore are not for sale
Where Books Meet Black Mecca "If they’re well worn, that’s all the better.
I think it tells a story,” she said. “Someone actually went through it and read every word and received something from it and you’re next. It’s like they are almost doing you a favor.” [more inside]
Fish looks in mirror, sees something on its face
"A fish, the cleaner wrasse Labroides dimidiatus, shows behaviour that may reasonably be interpreted as passing through all phases of the mark test." The mark test, or mirror test, is a classic measure of whether an animal has self-awareness. The fish joins a short list of animals including great apes, a single Asiatic elephant, dolphins, orcas and the Eurasian magpie. The study has received mixed reviews, and the journal published a more cautious interpretation alongside the main article.
They just ate Howard Schultz
You would think Minnesota native Daniel Silvermint would be accustomed to these conditions, but there's something distinctly different about a blizzard in Seattle. (SLTwitter)
The Brown Baby Plan
Mabel Grammer adopted twelve mixed children and found homes for 500 more after they were orphaned in post-war Germany. They were called “brown babies,” or “mischlingskinder,” a derogatory German term for mixed-race children. And sometimes they were just referred to as "mutts." They were born during the occupation years in Germany after World War II, the offspring of German women and African-American soldiers. Their fathers were usually transferred elsewhere and their mothers risked social repercussions by keeping them, so the babies were placed in orphanages. [more inside]
February 9
thank u, next
Everyone was joking about Konmari-ing their Twitter, but Julius Tarng went ahead and made a tool to do just that.
70 Jahre Currywurst
Currywurst [translation] was invented by Herta Heuwer 70 years ago, and there's a plaque in her honor in Berlin. The Staatliche Münze Berlin has been minting coins since 1750, but it took 269 years to release a coin in honor of currywurst. It is spectacular.
Collage Barrage
Robin Isely is a surreal and digital artist from San Francisco. [NSFW] Robin’s art moves between surrealism, beauty and the grotesque, exploring the intersections of the human figures and animal nature. Compositions that seem to be inspired by all eras, a journey that could start in mythology and Roman goddesses following the Victorian Gothic, the romanticism of the twenties, and the unfiltered sensuality [NSFW] of the incandescent sixties. Tumblr [also NSFW]
A 4 Day Week
The case for a 4-day workweek - "The campaign for the 4-day work week has been a talking point for many British progressive politicians in the Labour Party... Last September, Frances O'Grady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), made headlines for positioning the 4-day work week as a priority issue for the Labour Party. She emphasized its urgency at the organization's 150th annual gathering, arguing that evolving technology should be cutting the number of hours spent at work." [more inside]
Thread count
A "19th-century prayer book woven entirely from silk on a Jacquard loom" is currently on display in Baltimore. The pages are black, grey and white images woven in silk lampas, using some unknown but high number of punch cards to drive the loom. [more inside]
The world is glitching
Portals: Autumn is beautiful and strange time of year
I was like "What the hell is this? It sounds like Wii Sports."
“Doing genuine musical comedy where the joke is, it’s just an earnest song.” In 2017, comedian and musician Gabriel Gundacker released the Unofficial Wii Sports Soundtrack, featuring imagined tunes for croquet, volleyball, curling, snorkeling, windsurfing, and jogging. He offers a sampling in a YouTube compliation video. In an interview with Kotaku, Gundacker discusses the history of the project and the relationship between earnestness and irony in comedy.
all there is, seen and unseen
Musée des Plans-Reliefs
Say you're the Sun King of France, and say you want to invade things (but I repeat myself). What you need, sire, is a collection of elaborate scale models, some as large as an apartment, of cities you might want to invade or defend, to better plan your strategy. Might I interest you in the maquettes at the Musée des Plans-Reliefs? [more inside]
A hero in every pack!
U r a froshmin at 🅐 🅡 🅣 🅢 🅠 🅞 🅞 🅛.
ART SQOOL [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Art Sqool is a game from Julian Glander, a 3D artist who has done illustration work for Wired, The New Yorker and Adult Swim. In it, you play a first-year student at an art school called Art Sqool, named Froshmin. You get assignments from your professor, a self-described neural network that judges you based on your technique. Between assignments, you explore your school’s campus to find new swatches and brushes.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
Song classics saturday?
February 8
I see trees of green
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Let's lead this world a merry dance
Pet Shop Boys are still here, and they have an Agenda [YT playlist, ~13m]. That is, a four-song EP released with little warning and a whole lot of political... um... agenda. Give stupidity a chance, On social media, What are you going to do about the rich?, The forgotten child [more inside]
"You Are My Sunshine," three ways (so far)
Fretboard Journal: "What if we asked all the great musicians passing through our office to give us their take on the exact same tune?" The tune they picked is "You Are My Sunshine," and the first three takes they've released are by Bryan Sutton, Noam Pikelny, and Bill Frisell, with more to come each week.
newly-public-domain hobo-related news
From the Tucson Daily Star, February 18, 1923:
GIRL HOBO CROSSING CONTINENT THREE TIMES ENDS HER TRAIL IN THE OLD PUEBLO 19 YEAR OLD WIFE LEAVES HUSBAND TO MAKE HER OWN WAY BY BUMMING AROUND. Mrs. Virginia W. Stopher, Adopted Daughter of Wealthy Parents, Forsakes Mate Rather Than Work For Him. Three times across the continent in seven months! Riding the “blinds” during heavy rains! Reading poetry by the firelight of the “jungle”! Traveling on the same train as dozens of hobos, bums, criminals, and escaped convicts! These, all these and more, are the experiences of Mrs. Virginia W. Stopher, girl hobo, who spent part of the past week in Tucson. Yes, a girl hobo, for she is but 19 years old.
Seth might have a drinking problem
Seth Meyers takes drinking seriously. "We have a prop department that could put apple juice in a Jameson glass. We did not do that." Which leads to Seth getting goofy. Seth gets drunk on St. Patrick's Day. Then Seth and Josh Meyers celebrated a day off by going day-drinking in Brooklyn, and dad joins them to get brunch drunk. Later, Seth and his mom went day drinking. Then we get to drunken singing and shouting, when Seth and Kelly Clarkson go day drinking, and drunk taste-testing, when Seth and Ina Garten go day drinking.
Does the basement have ample closet space for bondage equipment?
Selling a large suburban house with a sex room in the basement. Realtor is facing some hostility. The listing. I'm surprised-- the price seems kind of low considering the size and luxuriousness.
Give a shit about workers’ rights
Shit Solidarity: Magnetic Memes on Workers' Wages in Shitter Stalls MeFi’s duffell makes magnets bearing the ancient poem of worker solidarity (boss makes a dollar; I make a dime; that's why I shit on company time). These magnets include a URL, shitsolidarity.com, which offers a brief spiel about income inequality and corporations' attempts to curtail workers' rights to pinch a loaf (drop anchor, lay cable, squeeze out a senator) on the job. [via mefi projects]
An apple a day
Freezing rain will turn anything it touches into a glaze of pure ice. In this case, unpicked old apples. The Great Cold Snap of 2019 has given us terms we didn't know we needed: Frost quakes. Snow squalls. Steam fog. Now we can add another one to the list: ghost apples. Surely there's a joke here about poison apples and glass houses...
402 Payment Required
Shouldn't We All Have Seamless Micropayments By Now? - "The web's founders fully expected some form of digital payment to be integral to its functioning. But nearly three decades later, we're still waiting." (previously) [more inside]
Anchor Steam trying to Unionize
One of the World's Most Iconic Craft Breweries Is Unionizing Workers at San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company have announced a drive to gain union recognition on Thursday, according to members of the organizing committee. If successful, the maker of the iconic Anchor Steam beer will be one of the first craft breweries in the country to become a union shop, and the most significant.
“Your black widow isn’t allowed to get a job, so marrying money is key.”
Watch Me Try To Kill Ten Husbands In The Sims 4 [YouTube] “The Black Widow Challenge was created by the simmer Simalot, and the rules are simple. You make a Sim with the Snob, Materialistic, and Romantic traits, find them a would-be husband, marry that guy, and then kill them. Then you do it again, and again, until you’ve killed ten husbands. There are a few other rules and a complex scoring system, but that’s the gist.” [via: Kotaku]
You can survive in the city and you can survive in the bush.
First Course: In 1992, Wet’suwet’en chef and hereditary wing chief Andrew George, Jr. was on the first team of Indigenous chefs to compete at the Culinary Olympics.
He has been working to get Indigenous cuisines into restaurants ever since. [more inside]
“...very much representative of the undercover donor class.”
“Ricketts doesn’t appear to believe American laws should inconvenience him, or that his actions should be of interest to anyone but himself. In emails to friends and associates he has centered his needs as a businessman, denigrating the “welfare society,” regulation, and taxation. When the IRS comes knocking, he serves them warm bison and mediates an agreeable deal; when his employees vote to unionize, he shutters the business the next week; when one of his smaller personal enterprises hires too many employees, he shuffles them around to avoid federal discrimination laws. Even the prospect of establishing a “family bank” for the personal use of his dynasty was scrapped when Ricketts discovered the entity might be subject to oversight from the SEC.” How To Get Filthy Rich In America Without Anyone Knowing Your Name (Splinter) part of the series The Billionare’s Inbox, presenting the ambitious but secretive Ricketts family in their own emails.
"Today, we embark on a crusade to stamp out runaway decency in the West"
"So I've been seeing a lot of the 'Blazing Saddles could never be made today because of the PC police' Discourse today.
Okay, fine. Let’s go ahead and dignify this with a ~ * ~ thread ~ * ~
Could BLAZING SADDLES or something similar be made today? NO. Here's why." [Twitter thread via @thelindsayellis]
Okay, fine. Let’s go ahead and dignify this with a ~ * ~ thread ~ * ~
Could BLAZING SADDLES or something similar be made today? NO. Here's why." [Twitter thread via @thelindsayellis]
Cinema's Original Angry Young Man
round, fast, spiky, ugly, fat, pleased
In The Beginning Was The Word - David Robson: "A special class of vivid, textural words defy linguistic theory: could ‘ideophones’ unlock the secrets of humans’ first utterances?" [more inside]
Hand to hand, toe to toe, the trikitixa's boss in our dance
Huntza is a triki-pop band from the province of Gipuzkoa (Guipúzcoa) in Spanish Basque Country. This music has it's roots in Basque folk music traditionally performed by a pair of singers accompanying themselves on the diatonic button accordion (trikitixa) and tambourine (pandero). Triki-pop ensembles add guitar, bass and drums to the traditional duo, and often other instruments. (The band's name means "Ivy", thus the logo.) Videos below the fold, and bit more about where this music comes from. [more inside]
This one goes up to 1
Like chiptunes but find the SID chip and NES sound chip too ornate and maximal? Shiru, a Russian video game composer and programmer, has composed an album using only the IBM PC speaker, arguably the most primitive possible computer sound output device. Technical details, including links to the code used to create the music, are here. [more inside]
Should social workers be engaged in these practices?
"Over the past 15 years, we have gathered examples of “ideas” and “activities” associated with social workers as examples of possible deviations from the mission of social work." The authors of this study gathered evidence of social workers who promoted practices that "would not receive universal acclaim and, in some instances, might appear highly questionable." [more inside]
a sophisticated gag
Beer before wine not fine, scientists find after vomit-filled tests (The Guardian). The reported study: Grape or grain but never the twain? A randomized controlled multiarm matched-triplet crossover trial of beer and wine (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition).
February 7
Life Without The Tech Giants
Gizmodo Reporter Kashmir Hill cut 'The Big Five' out of her life for a week at a time, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Week six - blocking all five. Her tech expert
Dhruv Mehrotra finishes with guide to cutting them out of your life.
"A PC-building game could have easily turned out to be tedious"
"PC Building Simulator, which is now available on Steam after a period of early access, gives you the experience of being a one-person PC-building workshop." ... It even has an original soundtrack, including a rap song about building the ultimate PC. [more inside]
Consciousness spotted in brain patterns
Play This Game, Plan Your Dinner
Food52 has created Mad Libs-like, printable recipe templates for a variety of meal basics which lets you build a recipe with ingredients of your choice.
Nice Bookstore You Have Here. Be A Shame if Something Happened To It.
Moreover, American Media is undeterred from continuing its reporting on a story that is unambiguously in the public interest — a position Mr. Bezos clearly appreciates as reflected in Boies Schiller January 9 letter to American Media stating that your client “does not intend to discourage reporting about him” and “supports journalistic efforts.”
That said, if your client agrees to cease and desist such defamatory behavior, we are willing to engage in constructive conversations regarding the texts and photos which we have in our possession. Dylan Howard stands ready to discuss the matter at your convenience. America Media Inc (owner of the National Inquirer) attempts to extort Jeff Bezos. Bezos responds by making the threat public
God has a dream to free nations from the godless left and their culture
How a Demon-Slaying Pentecostal Billionaire is Ushering in a Post-Catholic Brazil.
Edir Macedo, the Patriach has a nephew, Bishop Marcelo Crivela who is the rather useless homophobic, killjoy Mayor of Rio de Janeiro.
A Reddit thread about The (very real) menace of an evangelical theocracy in Brazil.
Edir Macedo, the Patriach has a nephew, Bishop Marcelo Crivela who is the rather useless homophobic, killjoy Mayor of Rio de Janeiro.
A Reddit thread about The (very real) menace of an evangelical theocracy in Brazil.
"How did I survive? What do I do now? How do I live?"
The Battle Over Teaching Chicago’s Schools About Police Torture and Reparations: A little-known city law has educators figuring out how to talk to eighth and tenth grade students about the history of Chicago police abuse. [more inside]
The Five Families of Feces
The New York City porta-potty business is as dirty as you’d think. But one man keeps coming up smelling like roses. (David Gauvey Herbert, New York Magazine) [more inside]
Population plunge: what if the past is not prologue, and the models lie?
The UN's World Population Prospects has a ton of data, including a number of forecasts for world population*, with the median coming in around 11 billion in 2100. Back in 2013, Gapminder (previously) presented an optimistic look at that figure, titled Don’t Panic – The Facts About Population, which presents in a simple, graphical way how we've reached (or will reach) "peak child" (Our World in Data) yet population keeps growing, if more slowly. But what if those projections are wrong, and in roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline (Megna Molteni for Wired) according to a global look at population trends by journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrell Bricker, and presented in their book Empty Planet (Goodreads; Amazon). [more inside]
Flying squirrels secretly glow pink
Flying squirrels were already exceptional, as far as rodents go. Gifted with a flap of skin between their limbs, they can glide long distances between the trees where they live. But new research [abstract] suggests some of the critters hide a bizarre secret—their fur glows a brilliant, bubble-gum pink under ultraviolet light. The discovery happened entirely by accident when the paper's coauthor was doing an exploratory forest survey with an ultraviolet flashlight and happened to flash it at a nearby flying squirrel.
Pixar vs Bro's
A new short subject film about workplace issues, Fast Company reviews/discusses, and a behind the scenes.
It's quite a yarn.
Frank Robinson, 1935-2019
Frank Robinson ,"a trailblazing figure who was Major League Baseball's first African-American manager and one of its greatest players during a career that spanned 21 seasons, died Thursday after a prolonged illness." Robinson, a Hall-of-Fame player, manager, and President of the American League, was the first player to win Most Valuable Player Awards in both leagues, spent two years as a player-manager with the Cleveland Indians, and went on to manage the San Francisco Giants, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals, as well as serve as honorary President of the American League. He is 10th All-Time in Home Runs and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility with 89.2% of the vote.
India man to sue parents for giving birth to him
A 27-year-old Indian man plans to sue his parents for giving birth to him without his consent. Taking "I wish I had never been born" and turning it into action. "I must admire my son's temerity to want to take his parents to court knowing both of us are lawyers. And if Raphael could come up with a rational explanation as to how we could have sought his consent to be born, I will accept my fault," she said. Mr Samuel's belief is rooted in what's called anti-natalism - a philosophy that argues that life is so full of misery that people should stop procreating immediately.
You otter be back with your mom, pup!
Otter pup reunited with mom after humans use recording of lost baby otter to bring them back together.
Freediver, Guillaume Néry's new film
One Breath Around the World . "Turn out the light, put your headphones and freedive with me around the world..." (12 mins, Youtube)
the application seems to have been an afterthought
Along with jet packs and hover boards, a machine to translate from any language to any other is so appealing as a fantasy that people are willing to overlook clunky prototypes as long as they can retain the belief that the future promised by science fiction has, at last, arrived. One particularly clunky subspecies of the universal language translator has a rather dismal history: the sign-language glove, which purports to translate sign language in real time to text or speech as the wearer gestures. For people in the Deaf community, and linguists, the sign-language glove is rooted in the preoccupations of the hearing world, not the needs of Deaf signers.
The Liberal Argument For a Green New Deal
“Candidates and opinion-makers can do this by describing a Green New Deal as a remedy for personal and local issues that people experience every day: air and water pollution and high energy costs in low-income and minority communities. Mass transit inadequacies, congestion, and sprawl in urban and suburban communities. Stagnating economic growth and shrinking union jobs set against dwindling wildlife and agricultural yields in rural communities. The loss of culture and community by encroaching sea levels in coastal towns and aggressive expansion of fossil fuel industries on public and Indigenous lands.” What’s Your Green New Deal? “The fact that the implications are “radical” has led many people to overlook a simple fact: Climate change may be “human-made,” but it is not made by all humans equally, and if some are responsible for knowingly doing damage to others, they must be held legally liable.“ If Property Rights Were Real Climate Destroying Companies Would Be Sued Out Of Existence (Current Affairs)
The Seed Stewards
Farmer Kristyn Leach is empowering people of color to preserve their own agricultural history. [more inside]
Around the World in Eighty Years
Start with a small spaceship having a mass of 1500 kg from earth with a low start delta velocity of maximal 2.5 km/s, visit all nine planets of the solar system using only about 550 kg propellant in at most 80 years. Sounds crazy? Watch a short animation of such a "Jules Verne Tour," or if you like details, read all about how it was computed.
British Cookery, by George Orwell
Generalising further, one may say that the characteristic British diet is a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet, drawing much of its virtue from the excellence of the local materials, and with its main emphasis on sugar and animal fats. It is the diet of a wet northern country where butter is plentiful and vegetable oils are scarce, where hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day, and where all the spices and some of the stronger-tasting herbs are exotic products. Garlic, for instance, is unknown in British cookery proper: on the other hand mint, which is completely neglected in some European countries, figures largely. In general, British people prefer sweet things to spicy things, and they combine sugar with meat in a way that is seldom seen elsewhere. [more inside]
Becoming
A 6-minute timelapse of the development of the alpine newt Ichthyosaura alpestris from single-cell zygote to hatched larva, by Dutch photographer/filmmaker Jan van IJken (SLVimeo).
Trimming the FAT framework
A Mulching Proposal: Analysing and Improving an Algorithmic System for Turning the Elderly into High-Nutrient Slurry [more inside]
The Gay History of America’s Classic Children’s Books (NYT)
But it remains the case that the authors of many of the most successful and influential works of children’s literature in the middle years of the last century — works that were formative for baby boomers, Gen-Xers, millennials and beyond — were gay. [more inside]
“Ribbed with bacon”
(Increasingly NSFW) As Valentine's Day nears, upmarket Marks and Spencer lead the way with appropriately marketed food delights (more) while offering a vegan option. Alternatives exist: Aldi will do you steak and chips for seven quid, over which you can propose with a £1 engagement ring (20,000 sold to date), or perhaps doughnuts or a Big Mac or a bouquet, but not Sweethearts. And also in the USA, fine dining seatings will begin at 4 p.m. on the 14th of February, while back in England in t'north, thar be romantic pudding. Non-food alternatives, such as roses for a good cause, or playing Fortnite, are available. Five pounds to spend? Ask a cashier for 'Justin'.
How to implement wealth taxes
The opportunity cost of firm payouts - "It is reported ad nauseam, when people point out that the US did very well under the high top marginal tax rates that prevailed from World War II through the 1980s, that those high rates were rarely paid. People bring this up as though it was some kind of policy failure. No, it was then and would be again quite the point of the policy. The purpose of very high tax rates at very high incomes is not to generate revenue. It is to make costly the practice of making payments to people who are already very rich relative to other things the payers could do with their money, and so reduce the opportunity cost of doing other things." [more inside]
February 6
Johatsu
It all started in a bar in Paris, back in 2008, when a friend told Lena Mauger a story. It was about a Japanese couple who had disappeared. They hadn’t died. They weren’t kidnapped. They just deliberately vanished in the middle of the night without explanation. [more inside]
Even cooler than Super Blood Wolf Moon
The ALE-1 commercial microsatellite (previously)—designed to create on-demand artificial meteor showers (story begins at about 30:30 in the video), essentially setting off fireworks from above the atmosphere—arced towards its destiny in the heavens with the late January launch of the Epsilon-4 solid-fuel rocket by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) from the historic Uchinoura Space Center at the southern tip of the archipelago. The company's CEO and founder, Lena Okajima (
岡島 礼奈
) says she expects, if initial testing is successful next spring, to officially debut the fully operational satellite's capabilities at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Four colors of meteor are available.
The Would-Be Comeback Kid
"What MoviePass was doing was a gift from the heavens, as far as users were concerned. But in the eyes of business analysts, it was downright offensive. 'They were selling other people’s services at a discount, while paying full price for those services themselves. It was like a bank giving you a dollar for every 25 cents you deposit,' says Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who seems mildly upset that I even had the temerity to make him talk about MoviePass." On the movie theatre subscription service's disastrous 2018, and how the company is attempting to rebound.
With all due respect . .
What do you mean? A lot of people in general, and almost all of those on the autism spectrum, have trouble with social interactions where people don't say what they mean. Here is a useful guide . . .
Princess Bride? No.
Rom-comoisseur Dana Schwartz walks us through the criteria of the rom-com, first and foremost of which is "the film’s primary comedic tension derives from a central romantic relationship."
Er war ein Rockidol
Today we are pleased to have the exclusive premiere of Front Line Assembly's re-work of the storied "Rock Me Amadeus" originally by Falco. [more inside]
-=- still a place where ~ is $HOME -=-
This page is anonymous.
These days it's getting hard to have a truly anonymous web page, but at the SDF Public Access UNIX System, you too can have shell access to a wide array of services like INTERNETWORKED EMAIL, GAMES and USENET
Helenite is not rare. Anyone with a heat source can create it.
After the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state [Rare Historical Photos], timber company employees noticed that the intense heat from the acetylene torches they were using to clear dust and debris was melting the nearby volcanic ash and rock and turning it a greenish color. Jewelry companies also noticed, and crafted an exciting story about discovered gems [Stauer promotional video, YT], even though there are trillions of cubic tons of this volcanic ash and mud available, and a five gallon bucket full of ash will make many thousands of carats of this so-called gem [snarky comments from GeologyIn.com] [more inside]
Toilet paper and other things I lacked in prison
In New York prisons, we got five rolls of single-ply per month. Which I'm sure is adequate if you're a dude. If you're a woman, it's only enough to remind you that you to feel like an eff-up. You learned to lock up your toilet paper in your locker and never bring the whole thing to the bathroom — lest you get toilet paper-jacked en route. (It is prison after all — some of your friends may have a history of jacking people.) You can't just nicely ask for more — they say they're not supposed to give it to you. So you beg, you plead. Once, I heard a woman offer sexual favors. For toilet paper.
An essay by Keri Blakinger.
In which Microsoft stands in a cesspool and declares it fit for swimming
People around the world report increased civility online, new Microsoft research shows. The survey [Powerpoint] questioned teens and adults in 22 countries about their exposure to online risks across four categories: reputational, behavioral, sexual and personal/intrusive. There were tiny improvements worldwide in perceived online civility, with US showed the biggest positive change. [more inside]
Death and valor on a warship doomed by its own Navy
A little after 1:30 a.m. on June 17, 2017, Alexander Vaughan tumbled from his bunk onto the floor of his sleeping quarters on board the Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald. The shock of cold, salty water snapped him awake. He struggled to his feet and felt a torrent rushing past his thighs. [a ProPublica investigation]
"More like C’monwealth of Virginia"
when dogweight fades away
“A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair” is the best description of the dog Murphy I ever came across
(Content: impending dog death [old age-related illness].) [more inside]
“You got the power!”
The Cybertronic Spree: a cosplaying Transformers band. Here they are playing Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" [YouTube], the "Pokemon Theme" [YouTube], the "Ghostbusters Theme" [YouTube], and of course "The Touch" [YouTube] from the 1986 The Transformers: The Movie Soundtrack.
“He wouldn’t turn the meter on.”
The Winnipeg Women Ridesharing to Keep Each Other Safe: Non-profit, donation-run Ikwe Safe Rides is an alternative to taxis powered by Indigenous women. [more inside]
It’s time for Hubert Cumberdale to become a real boy
Looking into Glass Brother. David Firth returns to his unsettling Salad Fingers animated series (Wikipedia, IMDB, Know Your Meme) (previously). (likely NSFW) [more inside]
A Dinosaur Dragon
On Godzilla and the Nature and Conditions of Cultural Success; or, Shedding the Skin - "Necessarily, the vast majority of this success and popularity has been distant in time, space, social structure and cultural context from 1950s Japan. How can these two observations --- the specificity of origins and the generality of success --- be reconciled?"
February 5
I’m no 20-year-old SoundCloud rapper
“The part of Bruce the Duck is played by a [synthesized] oboe.”
Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf and Saint-Saëns’s The Carnival of The Animals,
narrated by “Weird Al” Yankovic and performed by Wendy Carlos.
Lyrics to The Carnival of The Animals courtesy of Google
narrated by “Weird Al” Yankovic and performed by Wendy Carlos.
Lyrics to The Carnival of The Animals courtesy of Google
Surveyors Wanted
Frida Kahlo Was a Painter, a Brand Builder, a Survivor. And So Much More
I will not greyish forms; greyish forms are the mind-killer.
From the Public Domain Review: Victorian Occultism and the Art of Synesthesia, a look at the intersection of early 20th century occult theory, theosophical tomfoolery, and aesthetic abstraction in Besant and Leadbetter's Thought-Forms.
"When I say something that you might think is a gaffe, it’s on purpose"
Tonight at 9 pm, Donald Trump will make his second State of the Union address, in which he is expected to expatiate on the themes of "choosing greatness", infrastructure investment (maybe), bipartisanship (hopefully), and not declaring a national emergency (yet). Having made little progress on last year's SOTU promises (NYT), this year's could be even less believable (Politico). Here's how to watch it (Politico) or, if you prefer, drink to it (Newsweek). [more inside]
You might hear the sun and rest
"Welcome to AIstrology. With the help of research scientist Janelle Shane, we built a bot to generate monthly horoscopes, trained on about 3,500 extant readings as well as current monthly horoscopes. Each horoscope below is therefore a prediction based on a wealth of predictions for each sign; a distillation of what the stars have in store for you this month." [more inside]
Another man done gone. Izzy Young.
Izzy Young passed away today in Stockholm. Almost 91 years young -- Talking folklore center. Only last week at our MeFi meet-up in Stockholm Old Town, we were talking about the legendary Izzy. Now he has gone and my FB feeds are overflowing. Swedish national newspaper Svenska Dagbladet writes. Only one previous posting.
In Stockholm he was a legend, an institution even. The story of how he arranged Bob Dylans first performance in New York has been recycled regularly for years. His Folklore Center here has been putting concerts, on and off, for decades. [more inside]
She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge...
She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge... Jacob Rees-Mogg has a message for the Common People
"You know he’s evil, but the camera sure doesn’t."
“If you actually watch the movie, the last thing we’re doing is glorifying him,” Berlinger claimed in an interview with Bustle. “He gets his due at the end, but we’re portraying the experience of how one becomes a victim to that kind of psychopathic seduction.”The Ted Bundy movie starring Zac Efron sure does love Ted Bundy [Alissa Wilkinson, Vox]
It’s a nice thought, but that’s not what the film does. Liz’s experience isn’t the same as ours out in the audience — we know who this guy is from the start — and so we’re just watching a duped woman get more duped […] At most, we learn that it really, really sucks when your handsome and attentive fiancé turns out to be the century’s most famous and heinous serial killer.
Are you tone deaf?
Test your tone-deafness with The Music Lab at Harvard University's department of psychology. [more inside]
above it all
"Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the 'pencil towers' of New York's super-rich" a combination of skyrocketing land valuations, concentrations of finance capital [and money laundering], and transferable development rights, aka air rights [especially in Midtown]. [more inside]
New tools against (old) data breaches
On January 17, 2019, 'Collection #1' revealed 773 million email addresses and passwords (PC World), followed by Collections #2-5, plus two more, which together dwarfed Collection #1 (Computer World). Though daunting in scale, it seems these collections are made up of individual breaches from thousands of different sources (Troy Hunt, security researcher), and may not contain newly compromised accounts (Recorded Future, US security firm). Hunt runs the free service, Have I Been Pwned (previously), where you can check email addresses or passwords against published breaches like these, or get notified if your email address is included in newly published breaches. Google partnered with HIBP in Password Checkup, a new Chrome extension (Wired), similar to Firefox Monitor, another HIBP coordination (Sophos Naked Security).
“But once you hear ‘swastika made of dicks’ it's kind of over."
Slack, the office messaging app company, unveiled a new logo. Five minutes later, Twitter got at it. [more inside]
Just swingin' on by...
Dissecting The Rhetorical Strategies Of The Alt-Right
Youtube channel Innuendo Studios (previously) has been running a semi-regular series of videos in which a certain rhetorical strategy employed by the alt-right is dissected and contexualized in order to better understand how they work. The latest, The Card Says "Moops", is an analysis of how chan culture has informed a rhetorical strategy of using whatever argument works, and the subsequent genesis of "Schrodinger's Douchebag". [more inside]
Friend of mine down in Quincy just named his pit bull “Ozawa.”
If Bostonians Loved Other Local Institutions The Way They Loved Their Local Sports Franchises. (Sl McSweeney's)
Simple (?) linear browser puzzler
Linjat is a puzzle game playable in your browser by Juho Snellman. Try to form lines of the correct length that do not cross, and cover each dot.
Don't you wanna be free?
Spiritland Legends: David Bowie - Hosted by Black Wax Solution : a great four hour mix of David Bowie to stream and improve your day.
(Black Wax Solution is also a radio show hosted by DJ Eops, who regularly spins in East London, and specializes in vinyl for Funk, Soul, Disco, House, and has a special place in his heart for Bowie.)
“Lord Ruthven and Varney were able to be healed by moonlight”
List of vampire traits in folklore and fiction is a Wikipedia page which exhaustively enumerates the appearance, weaknesses, supernatural powers, reproduction, feeding and setting characteristics of various fictional vampires, taking in everything from folklore and Bram Stoker, through video games like Touhou and Sims, to Twilight and Buffy. [via]
When eating McDonald’s fries, do not dilly-dally
First, speed is key here.
Second, if you have the ability to wait for a fresh batch, do.
Third, preserve heat at all costs.
You have this many minutes to consume McDonald's French fries before they're inedible.
February 4
Web Design... Monday?
Can't Unsee - Web/Frontend Design Challenge The premise is simple: Pick which image is the right one. Don't pick the flawed one.
But the difficulty ramps up nicely. Great way to practice discerning mocks from outcome. By Alex Frantic
FamilyTreeDNA is providing their database to the FBI
Family Tree DNA, one of the largest private genetic testing companies whose home-testing kits enable people to trace their ancestry and locate relatives, is working with the FBI and allowing agents to search its vast genealogy database in an effort to solve violent crime cases, BuzzFeed News reports. Under the previously undisclosed cooperation with Family Tree, the FBI has gained access to more than a million DNA profiles from the company, most of which were uploaded before the company’s customers had any knowledge of its relationship with the FBI.
UNIX is dead
The Tragedy of systemd A thoughtful analysis of the current state of play from Benno Rice, a longstanding FreeBSD developer, at linux.conf.au 2019 (Christchurch, New Zealand). [more inside]
Why are millennials burned out?
“If Millennials are different, it’s not because we’re more or less evolved than our parents or grandparents, it’s because they’ve changed the world in ways that have produced people like us. What made millennials the way they are? Why are they so burned out? Why are they having fewer kids? Why are they getting married later? Why are they obsessed with efficiency and technology?
And his answer, in so many words, is the economy. Millennials, author Malcolm Harris argues, are bearing the brunt of the economic damage wrought by late-20th-century capitalism. All these insecurities — and the material conditions that produced them — have thrown millennials into a state of perpetual panic. If “generations are characterized by crises,” as Harris argues, then ours is the crisis of extreme capitalism.
Robot Learns How to Play Jenga
Using machine-learning and sensory hardware, Alberto Rodriguez, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and members of MIT's MCube lab have developed a robot that is learning how to play the game Jenga. The technology could be used in robots for manufacturing assembly lines.
Sort By Controversial
You guys, who haven’t heard a really bad Scissor statement yet and don’t know what it’s like – it’s easy for you to say “don’t let it manipulate you” or “we need a hard and fast policy of not letting ourselves fight over Scissor statements”. But how do you know you’re not in the wrong? How do you know there’s not an issue out there where, if you knew it, you would agree it would be better to just nuke the world and let us start over again from the sewer mutants, rather than let the sort of people who would support it continue to pollute the world with their presence?
Scott Alexander (previously) with a fictional(-ish) tale of weaponized online strife.
Scott Alexander (previously) with a fictional(-ish) tale of weaponized online strife.
Edible extremophiles
“These extremophiles learned to be extremely efficient in using their resources,” he said. “They are very relevant at a point in time when humanity already uses tremendous amounts of resources to support the highly inefficient animal-protein model.”
The Importance of Keeping Things That Spark Rage
I have a drawer overflowing with socks. Most serve a utilitarian purpose. A few genuinely do delight me (Marie Kondo would be proud). And tucked in the back are the wool socks I’ve kept for 23 years.
It’s Time to Rethink Who’s Best Suited for Space Travel
The assumption has long been that this [Astronaut] training is a necessity—traveling to space is a mentally and physically grueling endeavor. We need the strongest, smartest, most adaptable among us to go. But strength comes in many forms, as do smarts. And if you want to find people who are the very best at adapting to worlds not suited for them, you’ll have the best luck looking at people with disabilities, who navigate such a world every single day. Which has led disability advocates to raise the question: What actually is the right stuff? [more inside]
“where the worlds of gaming, music, and celebrity combined”
10m players attended Fortnite's Marshmello concert [Eurogamer] “More than 10 million people played Fortnite on Saturday night to attend its brilliant in-game Marshmello concert, with millions more watching streams online. The DJ set had been teased throughout the week via posters in-game, and the gradual building of a stage in Pleasant Park. As 7pm neared, Fortnite threw players into a match centring on the area - and then removed all weapons. Right on schedule, Marshmello turned up and played a 10-minute set, the performance punctuated by live audio from the DJ himself and interactive sections where players found themselves in low gravity, or able to hover and soar around the neon-lit stage.” [YouTube][Full Concert] [more inside]
a mildly antisocial state would be easy to replicate
The Talented Mr. Mallory
A fabulist's path through the world of publishing. Dan Mallory, who writes under the name A. J. Finn, went to No. 1 with his début thriller, “The Woman in the Window.” His life contains even stranger twists. (SL New Yorker)
A review of the book in the same magazine by Joyce Carol Oates.
1950: The Bomb in the Heart of the Century
"I’m pleased to announce my latest music project, which is actually an old project: Mixcloud GO! 1950: The Bomb in the Heart of the Century. It’s a 2013 Spotify playlist of mine featuring 170 pieces of international audio culture from the year 1950 with no artist repeated, recreated on Mixcloud for your streaming delectation." [more inside]
When truth is not the truth, what dimension are you even in?
"CBS is off the air" [YT trailer] -- a fake-out teaser for Twilight Zone reboot interrupted the Super Bowl [Ars Technica], with the new series' presenter, Jordan Peele, debuting in his role. [more inside]
higher housing costs for city residents, loss of tax revenue
“The debates about whether and how to regulate IBSFs (Internet based service firms) often involve theories about their economic costs and benefits. This report aims to inform the debate by testing those theories. Specifically, it assesses the potential economic costs and benefits of the expansion of one of the most well-known of the IBSFs: the rental business Airbnb.” The Economic Policy Insitutue provides an in-depth study of the economic costs and benefits of Airbnb and how cities should respond to it and other IBSFs.
it is neither a factory nor a bagel
"It’s strange that we think of hoardings as construction detritus and the buildings that emerge behind them as architecture. Something I’ve tried to suggest through DA is that hoardings are architecture. They’ve become as much a permanent part of cities as office blocks and Starbucks even if their location constantly changes." Death Sentence: The Words That Bulldoze Our Cities
voxel populi
Paintings of 2D video game sprites as volumetric 3D objects in perspective, by Chad Ferber:
Joust
Missile Command, 2
Space Invaders, 2, 3, 4
Joust
Missile Command, 2
Space Invaders, 2, 3, 4
the last wild food
"How did the last fish you ate die? If you don’t already know, then I’ve got some bad news: the most likely answer is that it asphyxiated. Slowly. "
And since we know that fish feel pain, and we should take suffering seriously, the Japanese fish-killing technique[demonstration] of ike jime, to reduce pain, preserve freshness and increase flavor, is catching on on the United States [more inside]
A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points
Three weeks ago, ace math visualizer 3Blue1Brown posted an extremely weird and surprising method of deriving the value of pi. Why does this work? Well, it has to do with a velocity phase diagram. Wait, it's a semicircular fan of mirror universes. [more inside]
his music always made you think; it never made you smile
(Gimme Some of That) Ol' Atonal Music (SLYT) - a country singer celebrates the work of his father, a modernist composer. By Merle Hazard (previously on mefi)
Justice by the Numbers
Over 10 million arrests are made each year in the United States, amounting to an astounding one every three seconds. Are all these arrests necessary? What are they for, and have they changed over time? Who are the people being arrested? And where? Are arrests “equitably” distributed, or a function of where police are deployed? To answer those questions, Vera Institute of Justice recently launched Arrest Trends, a groundbreaking data tool that helps answer fundamental questions about American policing. [more inside]
Kotaku writer plays every availible Angry Birds Game..
.. so you don't have to. First released in 2009 for iOS, the original Angry Birds mobile game now has 22 official incarnations, most of which are licensed spin-offs.
"Did you realize they’ve made 22 Angry Birds games? We all learned something today."- Zack Zwiezen: Kotaku.com [more inside]
“For many, ‘counterintuitivity’ is the new intuition.”
“I became a total Republican playing this game,” one SimCity fan told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. “All I wanted was for my city to grow, grow, grow.” Despite all this attention, few writers looked closely at the work which sparked Wright’s interest in urban simulation in the first place. Largely forgotten now, Jay Forrester’s Urban Dynamics put forth the controversial claim that the overwhelming majority of American urban policy was not only misguided but that these policies aggravated the very problems that they were intended to solve.–Model Metropolis by Kevin T. Baker. [via Anne Helen Peterson]
“Do I need it? Can I afford it?” “Will I use it? Is it worth it?”
February 3
They brought each other carefully selected pebbles
New York Times article "Male Penguins, And Baby Makes Three". "One couple, though, was extraordinary. Not because they were the colony’s only gay penguins, though they were, but because Sphen and Magic looked like they would make great, diligent, careful egg-warming parents. They made the biggest nest, and they sat on it constantly."
Shapely AI
Japanese developer rarapima has a couple of nifty demos. The first transforms the line you draw into a 3-D wireframe. The second is more interesting, and shows how scarily accurate AI has become: draw something and the page’s AI will try to correct it for you based on what it predicts you drew. If it’s wrong, shake the screen. [Maybe NSFW]
Women on the pill don't need a period, say U.K. guidelines.
There's No Medical Reason to Get Your Period While on the Pill - "If you take the pill but don't want to get your period, you can safely forgo that pesky week of placebos, according to new guidelines in the U.K. ... no need to fear: Just as with other hormonal birth control methods that lighten or skip periods, the report specifies that 'there is no build-up of menstrual blood' when you take the pill without breaks." [more inside]
Let the children be bored.
Boredom is something to experience rather than hastily swipe away. Only a few short decades ago, during the lost age of underparenting, grown-ups thought a certain amount of boredom was appropriate. And children came to appreciate their empty agendas. (NYT Book Review Editor Pamela Paul on the importance of boredom).
PG&E to file for bankruptcy
The California Energy Utility That May Have Sparked the Deadly Camp Fire Has Filed for Bankruptcy Pacific Gas and Electric, the country's largest utility company is filing for chapter 11. PG&E faces billions of dollars in liability from wildfires exacerbated by rising temperatures and drought. The Problems with PG&E in the state have only grown since The 2010 San Bruno Pipeline Explosion, and now to avoid liability for multiple fires in the state that were caused by the utility, they're filing for bankruptcy. [more inside]
A Colossal Mural Chronicles 375 Million Years of Bird Evolution
Artist Jane Kim painted a 2,500 square-foot “Wall of Birds” mural at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in Ithaca, New York. Now a new book from Harper Design, called The Wall of Birds, chronicles its creation. Kim describes the breadth of the project in the publication:
Nothing quite like this had ever been done: a mural depicting all 243 modern families of living birds, five modern families that had gone extinct by human hand within the last thirty thousand years, twenty-one prehistoric ancestors, and a ten-foot caiman to remind people of the mind-bending reality that the crocodile family is more closely related to birds than it is to other reptiles.
“What happened to you Birdman?”
Where did all the skateboard games go? [Destructoid] “Sure, when it comes to skateboard games we've had the dumpster fire that was Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 and smaller titles such as OlliOlli and OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood. But compared to previous hardware generations, the lack of skateboard and extreme sports games in general is evident. So today I'm going to attempt to answer that question, in what I believe is a number of problems that began occurring over time, but inevitably killed off skateboard video games within the mainstream. Knowing and looking back at the history behind the sub-genre itself can provide great context and the answers we seek, as this didn't exactly happen overnight.” [more inside]
I guess that's two reasons to not drink juice
"Fruit juice’s health halo has slipped in recent years, mainly because it packs a lot of sugar and calories. But there’s another, lesser-known health risk with these juices: They may also contain potentially harmful levels of arsenic, cadmium, and lead, according to new tests from Consumer Reports."
Currently there's over half a terabyte of music
"Napster is the greatest thing to happen to mp3's since . . . well since anything I guess. Someone told me about it a couple weeks ago, so I downloaded their beta, ran it for a few days and I have to say that I'm very impressed. It's the newest killer internet app and an amazing tool for music lovers. If the recording industry knew about this, they'd probably shut it down."
Now stop and turn around and look
Before he died in 2005, Philadelphia city planner Edmund Bacon donated hundreds of photos to the Fisher Fine Arts Library. The photos arrived without identification, so now the library is making the collection available to the public via Flickr hoping that crowdsourcing will provide the answers. [link]
In ye good ole dayes of yore circa 2011
When was the last time you thought of the internet as a weird and wonderful place?
Single link engadget: How sex censorship killed the internet we love.
February 2
She plays a mean banjo but she's actually really nice
"Mean Mary" James is a dazzling multi-instrumentalist, singer, and songwriter based in Nashville, TN. Mean Mary writes and performs ballads like Iron Horse with fast banjo and haunting vocals. Sea Red, Sea Blue is a bittersweet song with a beautiful video featuring Mean Mary on underwater violin. She has a lighter side too, dancing in sugar to Sweet, a sweet and catchy little love song. There's plenty more to delight you on her website - enjoy!
The Heretic
After his book Love Wins, former megachurch pastor Rob Bell [tumblr] "went from “being the coolest Christian in America” to “the biggest heretic in America”," along with a sympathetic New Yoker profile. Now a new documentary about him has been released called The Heretic "Explores Increasingly Disaffiliated Expressions of Faith" [more inside]
Fractal Octopodes
These creatures are rare, but every so often an octopus with extra tentacles is discovered. These octopi [sic] typically have the usual eight tentacles branching off their trunk. But then the tentacles branch out themselves, and continue to branch out, until you have something like the last specimen: an 84-limbed beast. You end up with a fractal octopus. Delightfully weird octopoda pictures from 2008.
Security through the greatest obscurity of all
“Despite repeated and diligent searches, I have not been able to find [the passwords] written down anywhere.”
These were the words of Jennifer Robertson, the widow of Gerry Cotten, the sole CEO of QuadrigaCX, a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange. Cotten had moved currency worth an estimated US$137 million into a "cold wallet", an encrypted wallet which was not part of the online exchange. Unfortunately, while on a trip to India in December, Cotten passed away.
Yesterday, Quadriga filed for creditor protection, admitting those funds are likely not recoverable. [more inside]
Poo Flip
First watch the ‼️ NSFW ‼️ video (Twitter | Threadreader), then read the story behind it (ALSO NSFW).
Golden Gate Bridge sunsets
Meet My Friends the Friends
It starts out as a rough-around-the-edges TV recap podcast covering that NBC classic from the 1990's, Friends. But since it's hosted by Tom Scharpling (previously on MetaFilter), it turns out to be something altogether more worth listening to. [more inside]
The Future Is Female!
A History of Cyborg Sex, 2018–73 - "Sex with robots was much safer than sex with actual men—and better than anything women had previously experienced." [more inside]
Capable of enduring adversity, severity, or hardship.
Endurant [SLYT], the latest music video from Bloodywood, the hardest-working metal band in New Delhi.
And if you like that, you might like this, too: Ari Ari. (Previously on Metafilter here and here.)
And if you like that, you might like this, too: Ari Ari. (Previously on Metafilter here and here.)
Who were the Pinkertons?
The modern day descendants of the Pinkerton Agency are suing Rockstar games for how the Pinkertons are depicted in RDR2 [more inside]
Red Pill Blues
Why Maroon 5's Super Bowl Halftime Show is Already a Mess (Vulture) Bonus links: What do We Want from Maroon 5? (Billboard) 25 Years of Super Bowl Halftime Shows, Ranked (538) Super Bowl Halftime Shows Ranked, From Worst to Best (Rolling Stone) Every Super Bowl Halftime since 1993, Ranked (Vulture) How Big Bad Voodoo Daddy Became the last Niche Act to Play the Super Bowl Halftime Show (The Ringer)
They've figured out how to print a 3D object all at once
Teach the Children, Save the Nation
"They tried to ban, censor and erase Indian culture from rock and roll history but Native American influence is wrapped into modern music’s DNA. RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked the World (1:25:29) is an electric look at Native American influence in popular music, going deep into the Indigenous foundations of rock." [more inside]
Marty's Matchbox Makeovers
Marty restores various vintage Matchbox vehicles in a series of gently-paced and informative maker-style videos. [more inside]
Tiny yet fierce.
They fight. They hiss. They growl. They stare. They snarl. They bite. Please do not underestimate kittens.
The umbilicus that captivated a nation
The image of a giant "snow bear" appeared on Montreal's Lachine Canal this week, apparently made by its artist tracing a bear-shaped path through the snow. But the bear was 12 feet across--so how, wondered the nation of navel-gazers, did the snow bear get its belly button? CBC News spoke to the snow bearer herself, Valérie Duhamel, who revealed her secret: five snowballs, thrown with precision aim.
February 1
I'm gonna have some fun!
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Fifty-one Wolves Howling! Fifty Wolves Howling! Thirty Wolves Howling! Twenty Five Wolves Howling! Twenty-Wolves Howling! You Howl High, I'll High Low! Wolf Duet! Wolf Trio! Wolves Howlin' in the Rain! Howling in the Snow!
MACHINES WILL LEARN THE HUMANS A COLOR AND ANIMALS
Why not go gradually insane this weekend watching the computer generated "educational" videos of Raibow Animals, La La, Bi Bi TV, Toy Monster, Funny TV show, TOY Kids TV, totite tetito, Bobi Star TV, ABC Kids TV, and undoubtedly others.
They should not be confused with TocToc Toys or Rainbow Art, god forbid, which are composed of actual footage of people doing random color-related things, with no computer rendering. [more inside]
Just how many ways can you prepare goat?
It would be hard to be a vegetarian... "Matthieu Paley, in the mountains of Afghanistan where no crops grow, the journey to get flour takes days, and goat eyes are on the menu."
14th World Champion Vladimir Kramnik retires from classical chess
Vladimir Kramnik: Closing time for the Master of opening ideas - Vladimir Kramnik’s decision to retire has ended a glorious chapter in the world of professional chess. The last of the products from the once-feared Soviet “school of chess” to leave an indelible mark on the sport, the 14th World champion announced the decision that left the chess world sad, to put it mildly. A disarming smile, a touch of genius, and ruthless precision over the board, Kramnik possessed it all. [more inside]
The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World
In 1896, Marshall “Major” Taylor finished the Six Day Bicycle Race in Madison Square Garden, having completed a record 1,732 miles on the 0.1-mile track. Survival was no small feat. Half the field dropped out because of crashes, exhaustion, or hallucinations. The New York Times correspondent described Taylor as the “wonder” of the event, in part because of his age and inexperience. He was only 18, and it was his first professional race. He was also the lone African American in the otherwise all-white field. [more inside]
A-all-the-way-to-the-E: 19 hours of Autechre, circa 2015
Whatcha doing this weekend? Nothing much planned? OK, good, because Autechre recently dropped a set of 19 live recordings to stream and buy from Bleep, from their 2015 North American tour, running over 19 hours total. Bonus 1: early evening set from Rob Hall in Los Angeles (Mixcloud), before the Autechre set. "Gentle friendly tunes to greet the gentle friendly folk of LA." Bonus 2: Here's almost 3 minutes Live at Sónar on YouTube (the lights come on at about 45 seconds in). Bonus 3: 20 minutes of Live at Sweatbox 2, Bojangles, Drake Street, Rochdale, 4th June 1991, back when people thought it was a good idea to bring the whistle posse to Autechre shows.
Code Brown
Military tech and spycraft sometimes create disgusting but highly-useful devices. Cases in point: the Turd Transmitter, used to track enemy troop movements in Vietnam; and the CIA's Rectal Tool Kit, an item designed to help agents work their way out of a jam.
On Being a Continual Student of Your Own Style: Wardrobe Planning Advice
Perplexed by picking suitable clothing? Need help with paring down your wardrobe? Thinking about learning to sew it yourself? Come be inspired by this longread post from The Knitting Needle and the Damage Done: The Orange Swan Guide to Wardrobe Planning.
Image compression icon, 47 years on
Finding Lena, the Patron Saint of JPEGs (Wired) - Linda Kinstler "Jeff Seideman, a former chapter president of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, recalls that Lena’s presence at the conference caused a stir among his colleagues. “As silly as it sounds, they were surprised she was a real person,” he told me. “After some of them had spent 25 years looking at her picture, she just became this test image.” Since then, as the internet has grown to encompass billions of users and trillions of photos, no one has bothered to ask her what she makes of her image and its controversial afterlife." [more inside]
100% filled with mirth!' Comedians pay tribute to Jeremy Hardy
London’s Rich History of Transit Textiles
SL CityLab Designing a practical and attractive seat covering for public transit has never been the easiest of briefs. When designer Enid Marx was commissioned in 1937 to create textiles for use on London’s Tube and Buses, she was told it had to look fresh “at all times, even after the bricklayers had sat on it.” It also had to look bright and attractive, but avoid what the network called “dazzle”—the potentially nauseating effect a garish, busy design might have on passengers eyes when in motion. The brief—and Marx’s and others responses to it—helped to create a visual identity for London’s public transit through textile design, one that still continues today. [more inside]
This Woman's Work: A Live Symphonic Tribute to Kate Bush
Last March, the Gothenburg Symphony celebrated musical visionary Kate Bush with an inspired live retrospective [Vimeo] spanning her 40-year catalog, from The Kick Inside (1978) to Aerial (2005). Bandleader Martin Schaub arranged the program for orchestra, 12-member vocal ensemble, and folk and rock ensemble—the foundation for a power duo on lead vocals: singer-songwriters Jennie Abrahamson [YT, Spotify], who performed with Peter Gabriel on his ‘Back to Front’ tour, and Malin Dahlström of indietronica trio Nicki and the Dove [YT, Spotify].
Inside: annotated setlist, personnel notes, and SLYT samples. [more inside]
Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds ...?
"The polar vortex (previously) is dangerous, record-breaking, can’t-look-away weather. Yet this cold snap’s arrival was preceded by a marvel so spectacular that we hardly noticed it: It was correctly predicted. As early as a month ago, forecasters knew that colder-than-average weather would likely strike North America this month; a week ago, computer models spit out some of the same figures that appeared on thermometers today." Robinson Meyer in The Atlantic on how Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate, and why that's an astonishing achievement.
Langston Hughes Reads Langston Hughes
For the 117th anniversary of his birth, listen to Langston Hughes Reads Langston Hughes to hear the poet read his work and explain it in context.
BassoonTracker - opensource javascript music tracker
In a stunning display of programming virtuosity, Steffest of stef.de has released BassoonTracker to the world. Based on the old Amiga ProTracker, it supports both MOD and FastTracker ][ XM files, which it can load from the massive collection Mod Archive. Find the source on Github.
The Best Man Can Get
“Under a perfect economical system of production and distribution, and a system combining the greatest elements of progress, there can be only one city on a continent, and possibly only one in the world.” Before perfecting his invention of the safety razor and founding what became a major American industrial and sales enterprise, King Camp Gillette (1855-1932) authored several books and pamphlets calling for radical changes in the country's economic and social system. The first of these polemical tracts, The Human Drift, called for the establishment of an ideal society to be created by The United Company "Organized for the purpose of Producing, Manufacturing, and Distributing the Necessities of Life." Except for agricultural and other rural pursuits, all activities and all the population would be concentrated in one gigantic urban complex that Gillette called "Metropolis."
Aunt Green, Aunt Brown and Aunt Lavender
Elsa Beskow var konstnär och illustratör men främst bilderboksförfattare.
Elsa Beskow på Nordiska Akvarellmuseet [more inside]
A remembrance
The genius of Jeff Hanneman, by ex-Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo
The New Voices Of Native American Literature
Wide Range Of Writers Work To Celebrate Evolving Literary Canon Without Limiting It: "It’s about time we start to hear all the other voices that have always been here." [more inside]
Junk Science or the Real Thing? ‘Inference’ Publishes Both.
Homes they don't leave
More than half a million Japanese people are hermits "But in Japan half a million people live as modern-day hermits. They are known as hikikomori – recluses who withdraw from all social contact and often don’t leave their houses for years at a time. A government survey found roughly 541,000 (1.57% of the population) but many experts believe the total is much higher as it can take years before they seek help.
The condition was initially thought to be unique to Japan, but in recent years cases have appeared across the world. In neighbouring South Korea, a 2005 analysis estimated there were 33,000 socially withdrawn adolescents (0.3% of the population) and in Hong Kong a 2014 survey pegged the figure at 1.9%. It’s not just in Asia, cases are appearing in the US, Spain, Italy, France and elsewhere."
If you're in the US and want to be a hermit, here are, according to Estately, the best places to seek your hermitage.
"... and then see if I give a stinking shit"
10 Commandments. Saffiyah Khan is the young woman who faced down English Defence League supporters when they surrounded a Muslim woman in Birmingham a couple of years ago. Photos of her smiling defiance and Specials T-shirt went viral. The band sent her tickets to an upcoming show and offered her the chance to contribute to their new album. The resulting track is out now, and it's great - a heavy dub with Saffiyah chanting over the top. The song is her reply to Prince Buster's notoriously misogynistic 10 Commandments of Man. [more inside]