March 2015 Archives
March 31
If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.
Incumbent President of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan today conceded defeat in last weekend's election, and called President-Elect Muhammadu Buhari to congratulate him. The election has generally appeared to be the fairest in Nigeria's history and mostly free of the bloodshed of Jonathan's 2011 defeat of Buhari; this transition will mark Nigeria's first transfer of power to an opposition party after an election. Buhari's presidency will be his second administration as leader of Nigeria after acting as the head of a military junta from 1983 to 1985. [more inside]
A Brief History of the ATM
"Never before had electronic equipment been so exposed to the elements. [T]hey could easily jam or run out of product. They could erroneously dispense several bank notes instead of just one—all without the owner's knowledge. They were activated by plastic or paper tokens that would only activate for the operating bank and, in some cases, only that particular bank location. Some banks would keep the token in the machine and return it to the customer (by post) once the account had been debited. As a result, early ATMs were standalone, clunky, unfriendly, and inflexible."
It's April 1st in Japan
A Handmaid's Tale
On Monday, a judge in the State of Indiana sentenced a young woman to twenty years in prison for the crime of having an unauthorized miscarriage. [more inside]
kakkoii
Margret: Chronicle of an Affair – May 1969 to December 1970
The briefcase was found three decades after the affair took place. The contents of the suitcase: an extraordinary collection of found materials that chronicled the adulterous relationship between a businessman and his secretary in the late 1960s and 70s.
Prank. Not Even Once.
Tidal
Yesterday, Jay-Z's streaming music service Tidal was launched. The press event featured over a dozen celebrity musicians as signing "owners" of the service (each reportedly received 3% equity in exchange for exclusive content), and, by some accounts, was a bit awkward and content-free. At $19.99, the subscription plan is double the cost of competing services like Spotify, and no "freemium" plan is offered. The justification is two-fold: 1. Artists should be compensated fairly for streaming; and 2. The service's high-fidelity, lossless streaming is far superior to the current standard (320 kbps AAC, as Spotify and Rdio currently provide.) You can take an online blind test between 320 kbps AAC and Tidal's lossless streaming, to see if you have the "equipment and ears" for lossless music. Is there really a noticeable difference, or is this snake oil? Will the artist-forward approach change the conversation and ingrained habits of streaming music listeners? Is Tidal a sort of streaming for the 1% rather than for struggling independent musicians? Is it a walled garden for artists at the expense of fans? Or is this all simply a great vertical move for Jay-Z's Roc Nation label? So many questions.
Facebook is tracking us all, even non facebook users
Facebook tracks the web browsing of everyone who visits a page on its site even if the user does not have an account or has explicitly opted out of tracking in the EU, extensive research commissioned by the Belgian data protection agency has revealed.
"My friend here Mr. Burke is going to trounce you all with a vengeance."
"these women paved the way for a more just and compassionate world"
10 Badass Sikh Women in History
Oftentimes, women’s contributions are overlooked because, for the most part, it is men who write history. In India, women of the Sikh faith have fought, ruled, taught and served for centuries. They have managed organizations, guided communities and led revolts. These accomplishments are admirable in their own right, and they are even more impressive when viewed in the context of the intense patriarchy and cultural misogyny against which these women were working.
“Is this for a class?”
It's the Leaning Tower of Cheese-A
We've had many leaps and bounds in 3D printing technology over the last few years, but this video finally answers the question which will surely bring us to a new frontier of the industry: what happens when you put spray cheese in it? [more inside]
Thirty crore speakers, seven lakh words
A group of volunteers has broken the record for most words added to Google Translate in a day. [more inside]
"Entertainment is a business, no matter what it means to us"
"The Boys, in many ways, is about how to kill the unkillable – and unsurprisingly, an analogue for Superman is at the center of the story. But Superman, I can see them killing. Kryptonite, magic, red sun radiation, just being bigger and tougher, or just realizing that he is one man who can be in one place at one time, and can be managed. There are enough stories about Superman getting killed that we know it’s possible. But Superman’s owners? Not the culture that he’s part of, but the Warner Brothers Corporation that claims him as IP? That dodges through legal maneuvers and drags out court cases, that intimidates and strongarms, all in the name of securing the brand of Superman even as they could care less what Superman stands for as a character?"
A lengthy meditation on The Boys, the ultraviolent, ultratransgressive and problematic-but-still-fascinating superhero comics epic as written by Garth Ennis.
African Game Development
Aurion looks to be a standard and mechanically unremarkable retro action RPG with heavy Japanese design influences. But its design and feel are unmistakably fresh, offering a bold color palette and interesting unit designs. Its fiction is rooted in stories of exploitation and division, and in a desire for harmony.This review of Cameroon's Kiro’o Games latest release is just one of the increasingly visible ways Africa's game developers are beginning to gain traction in their domestic and international markets. Last fall, Lagos hosted the inaugural West African Gaming Expo, bringing together startups, gamers, developers and investors for the first time. Games range from mobile only, extremely local - smash the mosquito or drive your matatu like a maniac - to educational - to full fledged RPG like Kiro'o's Aurion. Women are as much a part of this nascent industry, breaking barriers and encouraging others to join. Watch this space.
The Legend of Korra Saved My Sanity
"... one of the most startling things about this show is that fact that women in Legend of Korra are not required to be likeable." [more inside]
“They may be beneficial.”
Headgear Rule for Girls’ Lacrosse Ignites Outcry [New York Times]
Worried about the risk of serious head injuries in a sport where the players wield reinforced sticks and rifle shots with a hard, unyielding ball, Florida last month became the first state to require high school girls’ lacrosse teams to wear protective headgear.
Game of Thrones Catch-up Machine
With the new season of Game of Thrones less than two weeks away, you may benefit from the Game of Thrones Catch-up Machine, courtesy of lovereading.co.uk.
DO NOT ABUSE OR ENJOY THE BILL BELICHICK OFFSEASON SIMULATOR.
BILL BELICHICK OFFSEASON SIMULATOR. "This must be emphasized from the outset: The Bill Belichick Offseason Simulator is a tool, and not a toy. It does not exist to amuse you. It is meant to train prospective football coaches in the art and science of managing the travails of the offseason. Any fun you may have, or amusement you may find, while piloting this simulator is purely accidental, and should be reported as a software bug." (From Jon Bois, in case it's not immediately apparent.)
"We don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents."
In the 80's and 90's, Robert Norman "Bob" Ross gave us The Joy of Painting. In each minimalist, 30-minute show, he would create an imaginary landscape using a wet-on-wet (or alla prima) oil painting technique while gently teaching viewers his methods. His signature, soothing comments described the "happy little clouds," "almighty mountains" and "happy little trees" that he was creating with his brush. Of the 31 seasons and 403 episodes that aired on PBS, the Internet Archive currently has the first 19 seasons (247 episodes) available for stream and download. [more inside]
Women and social networks at work
Women often have decreased access to professional networks and mentors for a variety of reasons--men are more likely to mentor and sponsor other men, informal social networking often centers around gendered activity, women may simply not have the time to do after-work socializing. This is unfortunate, since networks and mentoring are incredibly valuable for female professionals and entrepreneurs. The obvious solution has been to encourage early-career women to network more and "better" and highly-placed women to mentor and support younger women, but this has had mixed results. It turns out that highly-ranking women do disproportionately mentor and support lower-ranking women--but only if they aren't "tokens" at their level of their own workplace but instead part of multiple women at that level. [more inside]
Hey hey hey I'm a cat hey hey hey hey hi hello hey I'm a cat pet me hey.
"Are you in the eighth grade?"
This week in The Dissolve’s Forum section, Noel Murray and Alan Sepinwall discuss Midnight Run and what makes the 1988 film an enduring favorite. This is not the first time Sepinwall has written about his favorite movie.
Midnight Run, previously, by our very own AlonzoMosleyFBI
Midnight Run, previously, by our very own AlonzoMosleyFBI
"The explanation is the music."
Electronic musician Charles Cohen is interviewed for this year's Festival Présences Électronique in Paris, which follows with a roughly ten-minute clip of him performing (previously and more previously)
March 30
Where cameras cannot go
After sketching combat in WWII, Howard Brodie drew the Watergate trial, Klaus Barbie, and Jack Ruby. Bill Robles drew Charles Manson and his followers, Roman Polanski, and the Unabomber. Richard Tomlinson drew "Son of Sam" and John Gotti. Elizabeth Williams illustrated the Central Park Jogger Case, Martha Stewart, the Times Square bomber. Aggie Kenny sketched Oliver North, Angela Davis, and the Gainesville Eight trial. They are all featured on The Illustrated Courtroom blog*, and Kenny and Williams were interviewed about their craft. Their book, The Illustrated Courtroom: 50 Years of Court Art, came out last year from CUNY Journalism Press. [more inside]
Unless you are a table.
Comedian Mitch Hedberg died 10 years ago today. He was known for his distinctive style of delivery and short, often absurd jokes. [more inside]
The Road from Westphalia
Jessica T. Matthews reviews Henry Kissinger's "World Order" and Bret Stephen's "America In Retreat":
Almost from the beginning of its history, America has struggled to find a balance in its foreign policy between narrowly promoting its own security and idealistically serving the interests of others; between, as we’ve tended to see it in shorthand, Teddy Roosevelt’s big stick and the ideals of Woodrow Wilson. Just as consistently, the US has gone through periods of embracing a leading international role for itself and times when Americans have done all they could to turn their backs on the rest of the world. Two new books now join this never-ending debate.[more inside]
Choctaw Generosity
Just sixteen years years after the Trail of Tears, the Choctaw Nation collected $710* and sent it to Ireland to help during the potato famine. In 1992, a group of Irish people retraced the Trail of Tears to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the gift. [more inside]
An unappetising look at food choice, flavour and control in US prisons
Kevin Pang, 'What Prisoners Eat': It is within my civic right as a dedicated grocery shopper and keeper of leftovers, imprinted in the Charter of Man, that I am free to eat however much I want, of what I want, when I want.
In prison, that right is stripped away. Craving pizza on a Saturday night? Feel like washing it down with cold beer? It’s not happening. Your right is reduced to eating portion-fixed food dictated by a warden on a set schedule. If you’re hungry after dinner, you’ll go to bed hungry.
Who the heck knows what lurks that deep in the ocean?
Great White Shark Disappears, Hunt for Super Predator Begins Data from a Great White tag plus signs of bleaching (presumably from stomach acid) suggest that the nine foot long Great White to which the tag was attached may have been eaten by a "Super Predator." An obsessive search for information followed the recovery of the tag. [more inside]
Friday Night Meatballs
The Power of Real-Life Friendships
Late in 2013, Sarah Grey, 34, was going stir-crazy as a work-from-home writer and mom in Philadelphia. “We were just collapsing onto the couch at the end of every day to watch TV,” she recalls. “We never saw friends and barely even talked to our neighbors.” So Grey took to Facebook with a post that has since gone viral: “Starting next Friday, we’re cooking up a pot of spaghetti and meatballs every Friday night and sitting down at the dining room table as a family—along with anyone else who’d like to join us. Friends, neighbors, relatives, clients, Facebook friends who’d like to hang out in real life, travelers passing through: you are welcome at our table,” she wrote.[more inside]
Lost in the Holacracy
In 2013, Zappos founder Tony Hsieh announced plans to reorganize the company as a holacracy, or a management structure that replaces job titles and hierarchical relationships with self-organizing units. The move has generated resistance from Zappos employees; so much so that, in a long memo, Hsieh says he is going to "rip the bandaid" and give employees until April 30 to either get on board with holacracy or take a severance package. Meanwhile, Hsieh and his close associates are having difficulty saying what the principles of holacracy even are. Commentary on the memo from Andrew Hill and Kim Nash.
When you have gatekeepers the stories are obviously much more controlled
For much of the 80s, a bona fide movie star
"In the hands of another actor, she could have just been one more detail in Scott’s design scheme, a clothes horse in a coil of cigarette smoke. But Young makes Rachael breathe. It’s a tricky role: she must seem slickly artificial, while hinting all the time at warm humanity. As Harrison Ford’s jaded ex-cop Deckard falls for her, the whole film hinges on us understanding why. That she pulls it off owes a lot to her raw presence – but presence is the lifeblood of movies."
Musical Inventiveness and Electronic Sophistication
Children's music composer Ruth White is better known for her early work with the Moog synthesizer - including an album based off the poetry of Baudelaire. [more inside]
Some Squee For Your Monday
British Girls' Comics
Girls' Comics of Yesterday From the 1950s to the turn of the 21st century, generations of British girls enjoyed weekly comics full of text and picture stories, about an astonishing range of topics: ballerinas, aliens, ghosts, Victorian serving-girls, magic mirrors, wicked stepparents, boarding schools, horse riding, sci-fi dystopias, boys, plucky heroines solving mysteries, and really anything you could imagine ... although to be honest, there were a lot of ballerinas. [more inside]
For days, the only thing on state TV was a continuous loop of Swan Lake.
"The response has been absolutely incredible"
One of the core tenets of UX is that you've got to design like "the user is drunk." Any feature of your site has to be able to be used by someone who could be drunk - because, invariably, the user will mess it up otherwise. Wonderful idea. The thing is, it is hard to test. I and a lot of beer will test this for you.
Review of Mathbreakers. Review of Gizmodo.
Related Gizmodo article
Review of Mathbreakers. Review of Gizmodo.
Related Gizmodo article
IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ENOUGH
The Heroic and Visionary Women of Passover , a short essay by Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C. [more inside]
Unicorn Thieves
Trans 100 2015
The Trans 100 (pdf) is not an award ceremony. It is not a list of the “Best” or the “Most Important” trans people. It is not a popularity contest and there are many individuals absent from the list who are doing excellent work. More are no longer with us.
To quote The Trans 100 Co-Founder Jen Richards, The Trans 100 “is an intentionally curated list of out trans people who are working on trans issues in the United States and having a positive impact.” [more inside]
crunchy, crispy, meaty sailboats of spicy chemical flavor
[E]ven though the restaurant's cartoonish decor bordered on offensive, it was still a temple to a people and a cuisine that America couldn't ignore. Taco Bells were everywhere. In every strip mall. Off every highway exit. Even the racists, the immigrant-haters, the people who'd laugh at my elementary-school stand-up comedy routine would run for the border.John DeVore writes about finding the "unexpected, self-affirming solace" of home... at Taco Bell. [more inside]
You can laugh or sneer at Taco Bell. Shake your head at its high fat and salt content. Go ahead and lecture on what true Mexican food is. My mom would probably just roll her eyes at you, and take a broken yellow shard of crispy taco shell and use it to scoop up the pintos, cheese, and salsa.
It's a Hard Life
In which we enter the subconscious of Freddie Mercury and find ourselves in the midst of an amazing costume party. (SLV)
Responsive web design + accordions / cats = the Catcordian
The Catcordion is a web-based accordion constructed from famous Internet cats. It will destroy your productivity.
Criticism vs. Attack?
Last week, two critiques of Kevin Carey's new book, The End of College, coincidentally appeared on the same day in Inside Higher Ed: one by Joshua Kim and the other by Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab. [more inside]
The King is dead(ish), long live the King!
Trevor Noah, a South African comedian who has appeared on TDS three times, has been chosen to replace Jon Stewart as host of The Daily Show.
Many bananas died to give us this protection
Adweek points to Groupon as the current reigning monarch of social media. Someone/s at Groupon have been killing it with jokes on Facebook, responding to questions about a deal they offered for the Banana Bunker, a product that is apparently a real thing. Previously.
Nebula with gas streams – cat fur, garlic powder, salt, flour, cumin...
Artist Creates Artificial Space Images Using Food Supplies
Brooklyn-based artist, Navid Baraty’s latest project “WANDER Space Probe” creates a fictional universe constructed from food and home supplies. Partially edible, Baraty’s photographs are made by arranging household items on a scanner. With the help of a pinch of sugar, cinnamon, flour, and a glass of coffee, Baraty produces stunning images of an alternate galaxy.
Will Scunthorpe be safe this time?
Mangling an author's text is a clear violation of the author's Moral rights, an element of copyright which is very weak in the United States and very strong elsewhere (primarily in civil law jurisdictions). (The moral right is the right of an author to be identified as the creator of a work, and for the work represented as their creation to be unaltered by other hands, so that the relationship between creator and created work is clear.)Charlie Stross and Cory Doctorow argue about the legality if not morality/desirability of the Clean Reader app, that strips swearwords from ebooks.
[...]
The doctrine of Moral Rights varies from territory to territory, but it's a heck of a stretch to extend it to this activity. It's one thing for a publisher or retailer to send out copies of your books in which words are changed around without your permission. It's another thing altogether for the reader themself to decide to read their legally acquired books in such a way as to change the text.
More clichés than you can shake a stick at. (stick not included)
"Confessions of an Idiom" a 2½ minute animated film depicting a confrontation between the elephant in the room and the skeleton in the closet. Many turns of phrase and one plot twist.
March 29
Spin theory
Twirl an upside-down soda glass and toss it down a tabletop (somewhat like the hero in the video game Tapper), and the glass will pull off in a direction opposite of the spin. Spin a granite curling stone and throw it down the ice, however, and it will travel in the same direction as the spin. Video blog SmarterEveryDay looks at physics theories that try to figure out why this counterintuitive result happens.
Nils Frahm declares March 29th Piano Day with a free album
At the end of 2014 I had an immediate urge to release a solo piano album which I recorded some time ago, and I was looking for a specific occasion to do so. I wanted it to be a nice surprise for everyone, so I thought of a meaningful release date to begin with.Join with Nils Frahm in celebrating Piano Day by enjoying his album Solo for free (sample: "Wall"), or enjoy other celebrations of the piano in his Piano Day 2015 playlist.
Seconds later it came to my mind: I was about to create my own holiday in order to come up with a reason for this release. Moreover, if I could be proud of something, then of being responsible for an annual celebration of the piano. And here comes the best bit, Piano Day will happen on the 88th day of the year, which most of the time is the 29th of March. Piano Day is intended to be the most joyful of all holidays.
“Every person is a half-opened door leading to a room for everyone.”
Dough wrapped around a filling
Dumpling Week has come to Serious Eats! Learn about dumplings around the world, which frozen potstickers are best, where chicken and dumpling soup came from, and how to make your own pierogi, xiao long bao, and gyoza. It's a dumpling party!
^[U__*]^
Why should authors not embrace the networked world?
"It’s hard not to hear cultural ruin, melodramatic as that may be, in every interrupting chirp and chime of a phone receiving a text or a call or blasting a video through its speakers on a packed subway train. The citizen in me, greedy for chances at quiet reflection and, frankly, to be left in peace from unwelcome noises, shudders and laments.
But the artist in me, the writer, asks a more probing question, if not necessarily more optimistic: what might I do with all this?" Novelist Steve Himmer explores how to write about our increasingly interconnected world in "Reader, I Muted Him: The Narrative Possibilities of Networked Life."
Bad news for anyone born with a silver spoon in their mouth
Needs more dickbags, Anne
Anne Bronte: the last, but not least, of the Bronte sisters Thirty years before Nora Helmer famously slammed the door in her husband's face, Helen Huntingdon did the same. And, as an added bonus, Helen - by earning her own living as a painter - became an outlaw as well as a rebel. [more inside]
If you can't see it, you can't be it
With WrestleMania 31 mere hours away, let's talk about representation in pro wrestling. And really, lessons that apply for any form of entertainment.
If you don’t use positive representation to speak to new fans who look different, who act different, who have new ideas, you’ll never have new fans at all.If You Can't See It, You Can't Be It: The Importance of Representation in Modern Day Wrestling [more inside]
Every great story seems to begin with a snake.
Rattlesnakes inspire search-and-rescue robot design Rattlesnakes have provided the inspiration for the movements of a robot designed for entering dangerous environments. [more inside]
Frankie and Johnny were lovers. My how that couple could love!
Paul Slade tackles the story behind the American blues/folk song Frankie and Johnny, tracing the lyrics back to an 1899 St. Louis murder, and exploring the history of the song, its subjects, and its variations. [more inside]
I was stumped. So of course, I asked Facebook.
What Women Want in Women Characters
Women Characters Redesigned by Women SFF Artists
As I said, I’m going to be discussing this at length in my next post. For now, I’m going to give you a flood of examples of women characters in fantasy art — many infamous for being depictions unwelcoming to women — that have been redesigned by the professional artists in the Women in Fantasy Illustration group. Each woman’s point of view is different, and the redesigns reveal what is most important to that woman, whether it’s realistic body armor, or it’s making sure the woman has a narrative and agency of her own. There is no one right way to depict a woman character, and it is not as simple as "cover her up more" because, as you'll see, some of these redesigns are sexier than the original. And I have found through my own work that you CAN absolutely have a single depiction of a character that is sexy and empowering to all genders. As I said, more on that next post.[more inside]
Everything you need to know about Quebec’s latest student strike
What’s a student strike? Can the education minister cancel the semester? How many students are in the streets? Though it may have appeared spontaneous, the student strike of 2012 took a year and a half of preparation. Since last fall, Quebec students, along with other elements of civil society such as unions and NGOs, have been mobilizing against Liberal premier Philippe Couillard’s austerity policies, typified by deep cuts to public services. That mobilization led to this week’s strike. [more inside]
Lest you think Buzzfeed invented something new...
A Historic List of Historical Lists. Particularly amusing (or distressing, depending on how you feel about the marital travails of long dead, anonymous people) is list #12, 100 types of marriage, which Slate wrote about.
Stanley Pickle
Stanley Pickle is a short stopmotion/liveaction film directed by the illustrator and photographer Vicky Mather
Giant Monster of Pancake Goodness
You're an Asshole for Reading This
A short documentary video introduction to The Suckhole, the "super-secret facility" of The Sucklord and headquarters for Suckadelic Enterprises. Sucklord is the alter-ego of Morgan Phillips, a lifelong Star Wars fan and unrepentant toy geek who lived with his mother until he was 36. In recent years he has flipped the script by becoming a creator of "bootleg" action figures (and more) that fall into that broad, largely undefined category of Pop Art. Think: mash-up toys or reimagined figures. In 2011 a MUST READ Village Voice article called him "the designer-toy world's biggest jerkbag". A 2012 interview on the "Unofficial Suckadelic Fanclub" Galactic Jerkbags. Going back further, a 2008 formatmag.com interview . Hear also, Morgan Phillips' Stars Wars themed music mashups . Not to be missed are the Sucklord's Flickr pages and Suckadelic YouTube channel
White Women, Black Hairstyles
Bart and his flying dead zoo
Previously. Bart Jansen, the Dutch artist who charmed and disgusted the art world with his flying taxidermied cat Orville, has not been resting on his laurels since. After creating Orville, he went looking for bigger challenges... and found them. [more inside]
Saturday Night Live's "Refreshing Drop of Acid"
One of the original Saturday Night Live's Not Ready for Prime-Time Players (can you name them all? Take the quiz here), Jane Curtin created characters such as Enid Loopner (mother to Gilda Radner's Lisa Loopner) and Pyrmaat the Conehead. She became Weekend Update's first female anchor after the departure of Chevy Chase in 1976, anchoring solo for Season 2 (making her the only woman to have anchored Weekend Update solo, to date). Although coming in a questionably low 47 on Rolling Stone's ranking of all 141 cast members, she is recognized for "bringing depth and gravity to sketches that might otherwise float away into trainwreck territory." Curtin has been vocal about the misogyny of the early SNL days, and the era itself - particularly the challenges of getting women-written sketches on the air.
China vs GitHub
China's network infrastructure has been attacking open source hosting site GitHub for three days and counting. A primary source of the DDoS traffic was discovered by Insight Labs; Javascript injected into pages at Baidu. Baidu, one of the largest Chinese web properties, denies being involved. Chinese government officials have recently expressed a desire for new ways to censor the Internet. Experts speculate that the Javascript was injected by the Chinese network infrastructure, perhaps in retaliation for GitHub hosting the firewall circumvention projects GreatFire and cn-nytimes. GitHub has said little about the nature of the attack; its status pages document the ongoing, largely successful efforts to defend their business.
Cancer Quackery? There's An App for That!
Belle Gibson and the Pernicious Cult of 'Wellness.' Jenny McCartney writes in The Spectator about the unraveling business empire and reputation of Australian celebrity "wellness" blogger and "cancer survivor" Belle Gibson. [more inside]
Arendelle is the warmest place to hide
"A deleted scene from the Disney classic Frozen as directed by John Carpenter." (SLYT; colorful walls and language).
ein abend eine stadt zwei künstler
Durch die Nacht mit Sibel Kekilli & George R.R. Martin/ Au coeur de la nuit: George R. R. Martin et Sibel Kekilli: an ARTE documentary taking George R. R. Martin & Sibel "Shae" Kekilli through Martin's hometown of Santa Fe, with your choice of German or French subtitles. (As you know Bob, ARTE is a German/French art orientated cable channel; "Durch die Nacht" is one of its regular documentary series.(previously))
March 28
"the actor who played Merrick would not wear makeup"
In 1980 David Bowie starred as John [Joseph] Merrick in the play The Elephant Man. Tim Rice interviews Bowie for Friday Night Saturday Morning [more inside]
"For example, we could transmit the contents of the Internet."
Seth Shostak, director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute, suggests in a NYT Op-Ed that we should "offer the aliens Big Data."
Such a large corpus — with its text, pictures, videos and sounds — would allow clever extraterrestrials to decipher much about our society, and even formulate questions that could be answered with the material in hand.Previously, Stephen Hawking has disagreed.
At FedEx, we considered that problem for about three seconds
The FedEx Problem: In which the author uses Euclidean geometry to determine, based on the US Population, the idea location for FedEx's giant hub in Memphis (spoiler: It's about 315 miles off).
Then, the guy who wrote the original scheduling software for FedEx shows up at Hacker News with the real story, and some war stories about the founding of FedEx: [more inside]
Aussies v. Black Caps
In a few short hours the final of the Cricket World Cup will be held at the 'G. With some games of the World Cup reaching a billion viewers globally, it has now come down to a dream final between co-hosts Australia, who have won the cup four times, and first time finalists New Zealand. [more inside]
This town is crooked!
Lavenham was a wool boomtown during the 15th and 16th centuries. It grew so fast that many of the houses were hastily built with green timber that proceeded to twist and warp.
The creek the city loved to hate
Charlotte, NC is unusual in not being located on the coast of an ocean, lake, or major river. Instead, it has Little Sugar Creek: The creek the city loved to hate
“It’s Over!”
Amanda Knox Acquitted of 2007 Murder by Italy’s Highest Court [New York Times]
"ROME — Italy’s highest court overturned the murder convictions of Amanda Knox and her Italian former boyfriend on Friday, throwing out all charges and ending a long-running courtroom drama over the killing of a British student in 2007. The ruling in favor of Ms. Knox, a 27-year-old former exchange student from Seattle, and her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, 31, was a shock in Italy, where the convictions had been expected to be upheld in the stabbing death of the British student, Meredith Kercher.Previously. Previously. Previously. Previously.
Ingredients: The mumbled chantings of a certified tea shaman…
Steven Smith, teamaker, passed away last Monday. He was a co-founder of Stash teas, founder of Tazo tea, and most recently, founder of the eponymous Steven Smith lines of teas. [more inside]
Lonely is the Night, Detroit 1983
This is simply a 1983 concert video of Billy Squier performing the single greatest cocaine fueled butt rock song ever made in all of its glory. [more inside]
Time for Joy Division! Time for Joy Division! Time for Joy Division!
Teletubbies Joy Division Edit. Chris G. Brown has made a video mashup that may ruin, or redeem, your memories of the Teletubbies. The pairing was suggested in comments after Mark Holland tweeted this image, with the comment, "The Teletubbies are fucking terrifying in black and white."
More background at Vanyaland.
Connecting the Dots
With all the upheaval in the skies and on the ground, here is one person's opinion on why the U.S. is fighting beside Iran in Iraq and against it in Yemen. Putin tells Iran that an
immediate ceasefire is needed in Yemen. All the while...negotiators from six world powers (the P5+1) are attempting to strike a deal with Iran to restrict its nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions relief. As Iran nuclear talks 'enter endgame' in Switzerland...China and Russia say they will show up tomorrow. Keeping things cloaked in intrigue: the US accuses Israel of spying on nuclear talks with Iran and Putin says Western spies plot against Russia before polls, blurs the picture further.
"There is something maddeningly attractive about the untranslatable"
Variations on the Right to Remain Silent is an essay by poet and classicist Anne Carson about translation, cliché, divine language and the way some words violently resist being explained. She touches on Homer, Sappho, Joan of Arc, Friedrich Hölderlin, and the painter Francis Bacon.
Tired of the same old dystopias?
Randomized Dystopia suggests a right that your fictional tyranny could deny its citizens!
I was talking with a friend about trends in dystopian fiction, and we talked a little about the underappreciated rights that don't get as much airtime. So I created Randomized Dystopia. You can hit Reload on the main page to get a right from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or use the Custom Terribleness page for the option of a specifically sexist or ageist dystopia.[more inside]
"Can I look at it?" "No, no - you've seen enough of that one..."
Les Paul's 1954 Custom: The One & Only Original by Michael Molenda, Guitar Player. More on Les Paul, and his partnership with Mary Ford, at Gibson.com. YouTube: How High The Moon (1951). [more inside]
Five Biases Pushing Women out of STEM
By now, we’ve all heard about the low numbers of American women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). My own new research, co-authored with Kathrine W. Phillips and Erika V. Hall, indicates that bias, not pipeline issues or personal choices, pushes women out of science – and that bias plays out differently depending on a woman’s race or ethnicity.
At first, many of the role players just ignored me.
This Charming House Includes a Warm Radioactive Glow in Every Room!
With interest rates at an all time low (and likely to increase later this year), the spring home selling season should see plenty of new real estate listings. Many of those listings will feature terrible real estate photos (which has been covered before). It's amazing how good photography can make the difference in selling a house in 8 days versus 8 months. But with the rise of photo apps comes the worst thing to happen to property listing photos: bad HDR real estate photography.
Amelia is an intrepid name
The biting cold of a March morning did little to dissuade fans of Amelia Edwards, founder of the Egypt Exploration Society, from turning out in force to watch the unveiling of her blue plaque at 19 Wharton Street in London this week. Edwards joins a small list of women writers including Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Shelley and Agatha Christie, chosen to be celebrated by the scheme as its first female Egyptologist.As one dives deeper into Amelia Edwards' contributions to Egyptology, one begins to wonder*, was it she who was the real Amelia Peabody, so well known to us through the words of Elizabeth Peters? [more inside]
Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins
"The plaintiff, Ellen Pao, had accused the firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, of discriminating against her in the course of her employment and eventual dismissal.
The decision handed Kleiner a sweeping victory in a case that had mesmerized Silicon Valley with its salacious details while simultaneously amplifying concerns about the lack of diversity in the technology industry." Pao is now the CEO Reddit - Relevant Reddit thread.
Our protagonists, our characters, can be anyone.
Elsinore is an adventure game set in the world of Shakespeare's Hamlet - which places it, historically, in 16th century Denmark. Since we began work on the project a year or so ago, I've shown the playtest build to family, friends, and strangers alike. After they're done playing, intermingled with their feedback on gameplay, they often point to Ophelia and ask: Why is she black?For Gamasutra, Katie Chironis, team lead and writer of Elsinore talks about why they made the protagonist black, the possibilities of black people living in Denmark in the 16th century and why history and "history" in games is so often whitewashed.
March 27
DDWIWDD (sent from a friend ;)
Dan Deacon "When I Was Done Dying" for Off The Air on Adult Swim - "Tapping nine unique and talented animators (whose work had all appeared previously on the show) to create a beautiful and seamless journey through the afterlife..." [previously!]
pay for review
Editor quits journal over pay-for-expedited peer-review offer "With a tweet yesterday, an editor of Scientific Reports, one of Nature Publishing Group’s open-access journals, has resigned in a very public protest of NPG’s recent decision to allow authors to pay money to expedite peer review of their submitted papers. "
Good evening, and welcome to SBS World News Australia. I'm...
Lee Lin Chin is an Australian television presenter best known for anchoring SBS World News for over a decade. She is also utterly hilarious, most recently attracting attention for her own take on a 'mean tweets' video. [more inside]
Leftist Concepts: Trust (x) vs. Agency (y)
Je ne suis pas liberal: Entering the quagmire of online leftism "Classifying leftist ideology in a framework of agency and trust, I find a buried contradiction at the heart of anti-oppressive activism, one in which practitioners pathologically self-position themselves in a space of chronic moral jeopardy."
Pics or it didn't happen
Bitcoin Brawl
The Race to Replace Bitcoin
An epic battle between two bitcoin 2.0 contenders grips the crypto world
An epic battle between two bitcoin 2.0 contenders grips the crypto world
Sparkly Vampires!
I want to give you a brief window into my life in this little corner of journalistic endeavor. Ready? Here goes. Today, the Verge newsroom got into a heated debate about whether or not vampires can poop. I'm not kidding.This is the greatest Yahoo! Answer on whether vampires can poop
Try not to get stuck!
Deep Cave in Edwards, Texas, has a regular entrance, and a ...rather more claustrophobic one.
Can't Keep From Crying
John Renbourn, the highly influential English guitar player, and one of the co-founders of Pentangle, has died. There's a nice appreciation from The Guardian here. Farewell, Mr. Renbourn.
H₂WHOA!
Toshio Shibata’s Mesmerizing Photographs of Water [New York Times]
The Japanese photographer Toshio Shibata is fascinated by water — in particular, the way it interacts with man-made structures. For the later half of his almost-40-year career in photography, he has explored this relationship in novel ways, hiding horizon lines and taking the perspective of the water itself with his camera, visually evoking its rushing sound.
Anyone have a Pop-up blocker? For houses?
Washington DC is going through a real estate boom. Except there isn’t a lot of real estate to build on. The unique combination of population density, rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods and lax zoning and code regulations means developers eager to cash in on the District’s real estate boom have been taking hundred year old rowhouses bought for a song, throwing on a third floor “pop-up” and converting them into condo units. More often than not, the designs of the pop-ups look nothing like the rest of the neighborhood, prompting neighbor ire about the character of the neighborhood architecture being changed. [more inside]
On Swedish dads, paternity leave and adorable, tow-headed kids
This sweet set of photographs by photographer Johan Bävman depicts Swedish men caring for their children during paternity leave. Many of these men indicate that they are still considered rather unusual despite Sweden's notably progressive stance on paternity leave. The UK is changing, too: from this coming month, paternity leave will be more generous for men thanks to the efforts of the Lib Dems.
Why not a whole fryer?
We initially started with 12 or 13 ingredients in the Bloody Mary. But one day, about two and a half years ago, I stuck a cheeseburger on a toothpick on a Bloody Mary and wrote on a Facebook post: “Am I going too far?” The next thing I knew, I had 100 comments. Everyone loved it. It seemed to me to be so ridiculous, but I got home and I sat down at the table and said to my wife, “Wow, I think we’re on to something.”--I Started Milwaukee’s Epic Bloody Mary Garnish Wars
Making More Time For Work
The Shut-In Economy The dream of on-demand, delivery everything is splitting tech-centered cities into two new classes: shut-ins and servants.
It started with Dinosaurs
I Raised Henry . A brief photo essay.
Outlook favorable
Obamacare turned 5 years old this week and the overall negative popular opinion on the legislation is starting to be replaced by positive experiences. GOP Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA) found this out to her chagrin when she posted an image on her official Facebook page, slamming the Affordable Care Act and asking constituents to share their Obamacare nightmare stories. The response probably wasn't what she expected.
In Sweden, you don’t do anything until you do it right.
...he co-wrote four songs on the Backstreet Boys’ self-titled 1996 debut album, one of which, “Quit Playing Games With My Heart,” went to #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. And with that, his career took off. You probably know most of what comes next. For instance, you probably know that, to date, Martin has co-written 19 songs that went to #1 on the Hot 100, and another 36 that charted in the top 10 but didn't manage to hit #1. You probably know that many of those songs were recorded by Katy Perry (who has recorded 10 top-10 songs with Martin), Taylor Swift (six top-10 songs with Martin), Britney Spears (also six), P!nk (five), and the Backstreet Boys (five). You might also know that Martin’s 19 chart-toppers put him at third place on the all-time list behind Paul McCartney (32) and John Lennon (26).
Stereogum's Michael Nelson on superproducer/songwriter Max Martin, complete with a list of 30 Essential Max Martin Songs.
“It’s always the husband. Just watch Dateline,”
Who the Hell Is Stromae?
"All over SXSW, kiosks were plastered with posters that posed a provocative question: "Who the hell is Stromae?" It's a question you wouldn't ask in many places outside North America. " NPR's SXSW showcase at Stubb's BBQ attempted to answer the question for an American audience who aren't necessarily too familiar with the superstar Belgian musician/rapper/fashion designer. [more inside]
Tacos in Los Angeles
Tacos 101: Part I: History and Etiquette. Part II: Condiments, Meat, and Tortillas. Part III: The LA Taco Scene. A Beginner’s Guide to Offal Tacos. The Rise of the Compton Taco. Tacopedia: A Complete Guide to the Taco Styles of LA.
When two fonts love each other very much...
Move over Brangelina. And Bennifer. And Kimye, TomKat*, and Desilu. And sporks. And ligers. EVERYONE MOVE OVER! We're making room for the world's first genetically engineered superfont.Comic Papyrus is finally here. [more inside]
Making cats look silly, for a good cause
Saving birds' lives at the risk of making cats die of embarrassment
Domestic cats and tweety birds the world over have had a long-standing and rather one-sided feud: cats kill as many as 3.7 billion birds, mostly songbirds, every year in the US alone. One Vermont-based company, Birdsbesafe, is seeking to protect our feathery friends while imposing a little whimsical shame on our murdery, furry friends. How? With terrible, early-90s-esque scrunchies.
What is up with bra sizing, anyway?
In recent years, many women will have noticed new articles insisting that most of us wear bras that don't fit and that women should measure themselves in a new way. But the sizes that are easily and cheaply available to women are nowhere near the sizes that these experts insist women should be wearing. How did this state of affairs come to be? It turns out the answer lies in the history of bra manufacture. [more inside]
When the invaders came, they went underground. No, not metaphorically.
Massive Underground City Found in Cappadocia Region of Turkey When the invaders came, Cappadocians knew where to hide: underground, in one of the 250 subterranean safe havens they had carved from pliable volcanic ash rock called tuff. [more inside]
Obama gets to know Omar
Rated SC for self control
Time for a Sesame Street parody: Star S'Mores (Star Wars), with Cookie Monster and Grover as guest stars. [more inside]
Billy Zane is Alive and Well - Also it's Z-A-N-E
Actor Billy Zane responds to a... somewhat confusing outpouring of grief from his fans - particularly the tween girl segment of his fandom, which is apparently far greater than he realized - who seem to believe something bad has happened to him. Billy would like to reassure his... very devoted fans he is alive and well, while wishing they'd pay a little more attention to how he spells his name.... [more inside]
"Hobsbawm was a marked man, and he knew it"
The two sides in the Cold War, finding each other irresistible, ended up in a contrapuntal relationship where, as George Urban put it, ‘they marched in negative step, but in step all the same.’ They had their spies, we had ours. They had their files, we had ours. True, we didn’t have gulags. But what kind of democracy is it that congratulates itself on not having gulags? Never mind the dragnet surveillance, the burglaries, the smearing of reputations, the bugging of public telephone boxes, cafés, hotels, banks, trade unions, private homes, all this legitimised by the thesis that everyone is a potential subversive until proven otherwise – the problem is that the defenders of the realm took on the symptoms of the disease they were meant to cure.– In the essay Stuck on the Flypaper historian and journalist Frances Stonor Saunders goes through the recently released MI5 file on Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm [previously] to explain how the British secret service surveilled and interfered with the lives of British citizens during World War II and the early part of the Cold War.
Forget poison ivy
The Gympie Gympie is an Australian plant with spindly stems and heart-shaped light green leaves. Brushing your hand against it can make you throw up from the pain. Using it as toilet paper has made people shoot themselves. (SLio9)
The TSA checklist
A 92-point checklist, obtained and published by The Intercept, reveals what kind of passenger behavior can merit a red flag for TSA agents responsible for pulling out possible terrorists and criminals out of airport security lines. [more inside]
Towards a 21st century orchestral canon
In December, grad student and occasional NYT music writer Will Robin asked on Twitter, "What are the best large-scale orchestral works of this century?" He Storified the responses, with links for listening, and then on Tuesday, streamed the result: Symphomania, a 24-hour marathon of sixty 21st-century orchestral works by sixty different composers, on Q2 Music at WQXR in New York. Starting tonight at midnight, WQXR is repeating the stream. [more inside]
The Foundling Wheel's return.
The recent Christian documentary "The Drop Box" (trailer) tells the story of a South Korean pastor who, after finding an abandoned baby on this doorstep, decides to create a drop box in his own home for people to leave their unwanted infants. The use of Baby Hatches (or Foundling Wheels) goes back centuries in Europe and parts of Asia, and there has been a recent reemergence of them. China's own baby hatch program was started a year ago and has been very successful. Various European countries have similar programs that have been going on for more than a decade. On the other side of the ocean, Canada successfully implemented their own Angel's Cradle program five years ago, and there has even been a recent effort to create Baby Boxes in the United States.
The Last LA Freeway
Although competing theories about urban planning were part of the long battle, it was about more than just the best way to move people through a sprawling megalopolis. The freeway became a focal point for resistance to paternalistic urban renewal, but then, ultimately, an example of socially responsible civil engineering. When the rubber finally hit the road on the 105, Judge Pregerson’s ruling ensured that central planners could no longer impose public-works projects on communities without residents having their say.
Going flat
"You’ll be standing in front of a classroom, and you’ll want to look pretty." Mary-Anne Mohanraj writes about a conversation with her breast surgeon, who was shocked when Mohanraj suggested she might not want breast reconstruction after surgery. [more inside]
March 26
Hearts a mess
A recent study suggests younger women who have heart attacks may hesitate to get help because they’re afraid of being labeled hypochondriacs. But the bigger problem is just how justified that fear really is.
- Is medicine's gender bias killing young women? [Pacific Standard] [more inside]
I'm really good at... sneezing on your mouth
Cooking in the 21st Century
Shigir Idol
The oldest wooden statue in the world was found in a Russian bog in 1890. The Shigir Idol is believed to be about 9500 years old. It is 2.8 meters high; an additional 1.93 meters of statue were lost during the turmoil of the 20th century.
Yemen on Brink of Civil War
Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi has fled the country as Saudi Arabia initiates a bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels. A ground invasion by Egypt and other members of Saudi Arabia's 10-country coalition is apparently to follow the bombing. The United States has withdrawn its special operations forces from Yemeni territory with a potential civil war looming. [more inside]
A Clean Version of Hell
Inside America's Toughest Federal Prison For years, conditions inside the United States’ only federal supermax facility were largely a mystery. But a landmark lawsuit is finally revealing the harsh world within. (SLNYT)
The biggest challenge for a woman working in construction? Bathrooms.
Twenty Questions for Women in Construction was a series of blog posts about female construction workers in NYC which ran on Huffington Post in 2013. Kicking off the series was the article A Day in the Life of a Woman in Construction by Ana Taveras. Many of the respondents to the Twenty Questions series are graduates of Nontraditional Employment for Women. [more inside]
If you learn by doing, this is for you.
Code4startup is an online resource that lets you clone and hack copies of real services you already use on the web to make something new and cool You have an idea and want to quickly build your own web app for startup?
Code4startup throws you into the deep end of the pool of established services, TaskRabbit, Udemy, AirBnb, Fiverr... explains how they are constructed with various technologies and then lets you bang on the code of these to make something new and cool for yourself.
Angular JS, Bootstrap, Wufoo, ChromeDeveloperTools, Rails... and more to come.
'casts for your 'pod
One man's "cogito" is another's "white mask"
"In short, it seems that when a white male thinks about the meaning of things, any things, it is philosophy..." (SLTheGuardian)
Spoon us today our daily spoon
Stian Korntved Ruud is nearing the end of a yearlong project in which he designs and crafts a unique wooden spoon every day. He's using hand tools exclusively. You can follow the results and see a little of the process on instagram. Via core77.
Anti-LGBT Bill Leads SalesForce to Reduce Investments in Indiana
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, along with six other Indiana tech CEOs, co-signed a letter opposing the a bill which would allow business to refuse to serve LGBT customers.
When asked about his participation in the effort, Benioff said in an email to IBJ: "We will be forced to dramatically reduce our investment in Indiana based on our employees' and customers' outrage over the Indiana religious freedom bill." [more inside]
Should losing on purpose in sports be considered morally corrupt?
The NHL instituted a draft lottery system after the Ottawa Senators flopped to select Alexandre Daigle first overall in 1993. The gambit backfired. Daigle is considered among hockey’s biggest draft busts. Former Washington Capitals coach Ron Wilson admitted this month – without providing all the details – his general manager, George McPhee, ordered him to lose down the 1998-99 homestretch to improve draft position. The NBA changed its postseason seeding rules when the 2005-06 Los Angeles Clippers seemingly tanked games to dodge Cuban’s Mavericks in the first round. The 2006 Swedish hockey team lost a game to avoid playing Canada or Russia in the Olympic quarterfinals. Four women’s badminton doubles teams were ejected from the 2012 Olympics for throwing round-robin matches to manipulate their seedings. Last month, two Tennessee high school girls’ basketball teams were banned from their postseason. They tried to lose to each other and avoid playing the defending state champ in the regional tournament. They committed blatant fouls and even shot into the wrong basket. The Ethics of Tanking
"Are you a nice goat?"
Gender Diversity in All Its Colorful Glory
Drew Riley explores the visibility "explosion" for trans and gender-nonconforming people in gritty, vibrant portraits that capture the eye.
Transgender and gender-nonconforming figures rarely pop from the page quite like they do in artist Drew Riley's new collection Gender Portraits. Painted with splashes of bright color, full of dynamic movement or charged silence, and set against whimsical or brooding backdrops, Riley's portraits are nothing short of arresting. They pull the viewer in for a closer look — which is exactly the response Riley was aiming for, she tells The Advocate.[more inside]
Scenes From the Death of a College
"Alumnae like to describe Sweet Briar College as a magical place ... That sense of magic evaporated in early March, after the board of directors decided that Sweet Briar’s failure to increase its revenue in recent decades had driven it to the brink of financial collapse. The board had voted unanimously on February 28 to close the 700-student college at the end of the current academic year."
The Rise and Fall of the Borscht Belt
As the term borscht implies, the people who worked and stayed in the hotels and bungalow colonies were almost all Jews. The “fall” in the title of Davis’s film refers to the tourist industry collapsing after Jews became wealthier and more assimilated. After moving from the garment industry cutting rooms to accounting firms, they could now afford vacations in Puerto Rico and no longer felt the need to be in a hotel that served kosher food.The Rise and Fall of the Borscht Belt, a 1986 documentary by Peter Davis on the famous Jewish-American holiday resorts of the Catskills, has been put online by Louis Proyect.
CBC podcast connects with indelible 70s child star Mason Reese
Whatever happened to that quirky-looking "borgasmord" moppet? After stumbling across this Youtube video of 70s child star Mason Reese crying on the Mike Douglas show, Canadian broadcaster Jonathan Goldstein follows the trail all the way to Reese's modest Manhattan apartment.
♫•*¨*•.¸¸♪
Chilly Gonzales - Advantage Points [YouTube] Chilly Gonzales, Grammy-winning Canadian pianist and entertainer, returns with his much anticipated follow-up to Solo Piano II: "Chambers". Enjoy "Advantage Points" music video from Chambers, Directed by Jonathan Barré.
Everything that happened was for both of us a prehistory of our future
In 1910 and 1911, Anna Akhmatova and Amadeo Modigliani were in love. She was a then-unknown Russian poet who would return to Russia and struggle within the Soviet system before being widely acknowledged as one of Russia's great poets; he was a mercurial artist who would be dead within 10 years, but whose art would capture the imagination of future generations. [more inside]
Mexico Mass Graves
Hundreds of mass graves have been discovered across Mexico, but the government isn’t keeping tabs. How many clandestinely buried bodies are rotting under the country’s surface? (SLBF)
The Cook's Thesaurus
Got a recipe with an ingredient you can't find? Never fear, the Cook's Thesaurus is here. The Cook's Thesaurus contains information on thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools, including recommended substitutions and commentary on flavors, and is especially useful for people learning to improvise in the kitchen. Entries range from callaloo to huauzontle to Velveeta. There's even sometimes a bit of colorful commentary, as in the entry for chipped beef.
264 keys and an infinite amount of NOLA soul
Stevenson J. Palfi’s 1982 documentary Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together (58:19) is a remarkable look at three generations of New Orleans keyboard masters, Isidore “Tuts” Washington, Henry “Professor Longhair” Byrd, and Allen Toussaint.
Germanwings / 4U 9525 A320
The New York Times is reporting this morning that crash of the Germanwings plane on Tuesday in the French Alps that killed 150 people "most likely happened" because the co-pilot crashed the jet deliberately, [more inside]
The glorious Russian troll army
It's a modern building, four floors. There's a LiveJournal department, a news department, a department where they create all sorts of images and demotivators (Editor's Note: Demotivators are satirical graphics that tend to undermine their subject matter), a department where they make videos.
Lesbians can't be misogynist, can they?
"My agency was taken away from me, and it was just as terrifying when done by fellow queers as it was when it was men." [more inside]
March 25
Need a therapist? Eat a cookie and talk to cookie monster.
But in Vietnam there was not only one My Lai—there were many.
"The Scene of the Crime: A reporter’s journey to My Lai and the secrets of the past" by Seymour M. Hersh
Seth’s quest to get broadband from someone, anyone
What happens when broadband companies lie and claim they service areas they don't? If you're reliant on your home internet connection to work, you may end up having to move out of a house you just bought.
Game of Thornes
A popular exhibit at the Art Intitute of Chicago is the Thorne Rooms, tiny historically accurate scale models of living spaces from all over the world. [more inside]
The 2016 campaign’s most interesting long shot
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ben Carson?
What If Sarah Palin Were a Brain Surgeon?
Taking Ben Carson Seriously
What If Sarah Palin Were a Brain Surgeon?
Taking Ben Carson Seriously
13 Long Minutes
In 13-minute harrowing and graphic long take/oner, Quebec police drama 19-2 takes the viewer inside a school shooting. [more inside]
“We always say, Someday we’ll meet on Thursday Island,”
“White Australians don’t want to talk about it, and it’s so recent, so raw, that it’s a sensitive topic. And then there are those who don’t even know the Torres Strait Islands exist. So he’s not only educating people around the world, he’s educating Australians. Patty’s a bridge builder. And as an NBA star, he’s got the cool factor. Crazy as it sounds, there aren’t many people who are proud to be indigenous. And Patty, he’s putting it on the world stage."
Story of Patty Mills: Spur, Aussie, Bala
Does What it Says on the Tin
This sounds like the setup to Indiana Jones V
WWII-era German coins and parts of a broken plate suggest that a ruin in the Argentinian jungle may have been built as a shelter for Nazi leaders in case of a defeat. (Or maybe it's just archaeologists fooling themselves.)
"I am deeply superficial."
John Prine has not yet released new lyrics
Larry Tribe has a new client. (SLNYMag)
Free bananas in Berkeley
"Thousands of Berkeley voters got stuck in an email storm last week after a technical glitch became a viral meme that prompted around 70 residents to hold a potluck picnic Sunday." [more inside]
This is Swing Street!
A TV pilot which failed to attract sponsors, After Hours carries all the poignance of a noble lost cause. Despite a certain self-consciousness in presentation, which clearly aims at winning over a recalcitrant audience, some of the best jazz ever recorded on film is available here. After an opening montage devoted to Manhattan jazz clubs accompanied by the narrator’s patter (“This is my beat — the jazz beat”), one is introduced to the ‘cigarette girl’ and ‘doorman’ at the “After Hours Club,” complete with fictional glosses (the girl is an “aspiring actress”). But as soon as Coleman Hawkins enters, joins the rhythm section on the bandstand and launches into a gorgeous version of “Lover Man,” the film properly gets down to business.Jonathan Rosenbaum on After Hours (1961), featuring Johnny Guarnieri, Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, Cozy Cole, and Carol Stevens. [more inside]
"Respect the elves - or else"
Huddled together amid the jagged rocks of the Gálgahraun lava field, a group of nervous onlookers wait with bated breath. Suddenly, there's a loud crack and a tumble of stones as a 50-tonne boulder is wrenched from the ground, then slowly raised into the air and eased down nearby, so delicately you'd think it was a priceless sculpture. "I just hope they’re happy in their new home," says Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir. "The elves really don't like being uprooted like this."Huldufólk, or "hidden people," are beings from Icelandic folklore reported to dwell in rocks. People are very reluctant to disturb their homes. (Previously.)
"GooooooOOOOOO INTERNET!"
tampon or fungus?
The Hip-Hop Messiah: An Archetype
Can you wiggle? Can you chomp?
"Grandmother Fish is a book like no other I have seen"
We start with a delightfully drawn Grandmother Fish, who lived a long, long, long, long, long time ago and could wiggle and swim fast and had jaws to chomp with. At once, this is made personally relevant: "Can you wiggle? … Can you chomp?" We proceed by way of Grandmother Reptile, Grandmother Mammal and Grandmother Ape, to Grandmother Human, who lived a long time ago, could walk on two feet and talk and tell stories[more inside]
Another Nail In The NCAA's Coffin
After years of fighting over keeping the records sealed, the NCAA has finally released to the public their internal documents on the Reggie Bush investigation, as part of the defamation lawsuit filed against the NCAA by former USC RB coach Todd McNair. The NCAA had argued that allowing the records to be unsealed would hinder future investigations, but such arguments were dismissed by the California courts, leading to the release. [more inside]
"He thought Nashville was the roughest"
On the Road Again: Mapping All the Cities in Willie Nelson's Songs
Over the course of his career—a five-decade ramblin' run that spans recordings as far back as 1962 and as recent as last year—Willie has written endlessly about his affection for (and occasional vexation with) cities across the land. These are all of those places. Well, a whole hell of a lot of them, anyway.
"First of all, things need to be very, very rainbow"
An Idaho State Senator, Paul Shepherd, has called on the state to impeach federal judges who struck down the state's anti-SSM law. One mistake, though. He forgot to renew the domain for his re-election campaign, and now a gay nerd has taken it over.
Hot Town, Summer in the City
What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan? [via realfuture]
Communicate affordably with imprisoned loved ones
Pigeon.ly has joined Y-Combinator's 2015 Winter class. While in prison, founder Frederick Hutson was amazed by the cost and difficulty of communicating with those outside. When he was released in 2011, he founded Pigeon.ly (originally Picturegram) to help people send pictures (and, later, make phone calls) to inmates. Additional coverage: The New York Times (2013), Forbes (2014), Planet Money.
Taco to the face
Orchids underground: a beautiful parasite
In 1928, a farmer digging in his garden found a flower blooming underground. Three years ago, scientists discovered that it's so well adapted to living underground that it has lost almost all of its chloroplast genes. While this species is unusual for an orchid in the extent of its parasitism, it turns out that all orchids are actually parasites--stealing nitrogen from tiny fungi in the soil without trading any carbon back as plants usually do. See photos of the underground orchid here.
Burmese slaves in the global fish trade
"If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us," said Hlaing Min, 30, a runaway slave from Benjina. "There must be a mountain of bones under the sea. ... The bones of the people could be an island, it's that many."
Are slaves catching the fish you buy? A year-long AP investigation into the use of slaves to catch fish that end up in supply chains going to Kroger, Wal-Mart and Sysco, the U.S.' biggest food distributor.
Are slaves catching the fish you buy? A year-long AP investigation into the use of slaves to catch fish that end up in supply chains going to Kroger, Wal-Mart and Sysco, the U.S.' biggest food distributor.
I would prefer not to.
Clerks. “vain, mean, selfish, greedy, sensual and sly, talkative and cowardly”
Reactions to 'The L Word' Ten Years On
The Emotional Stages Of Rewatching The L Word Ten Years Later
1. No. No. No. No. No no no. No. NO.Listling Without Commentary: 22 Excerpts From Brutal Amazon Customer Reviews Of “The L Word”
2. YES.
16. I couldn’t bear having it in my room so I broke it and threw it in a huge garbage next to our house. Hope this review stops you from buying it, don’t repeat the mistake that I’ve done.Also, the comments on the articles (both contain spoilers).
17. Turns out lesbians aren’t that interesting.
March 24
The Gravekeeper’s Paradox
The Gravekeeper’s Paradox The impermanency of stone is visible everywhere at Mount Auburn. One headstone Gallagher and I stop at has been sandwiched between two wooden braces a few feet away from its rectangular base. Both pieces were struck by a snowplow during the winter, and a few chips in the base form a scar that shines bright white against the old greenish-grey rock. Gallagher’s assistant, Steve Brown, is trying to glue the monument back together. “The whole stone used to be white like that. That’s an algae growing on it,” Gallagher says, pointing to the damage.
Senses of Cinema on two Jean-Pierre Melville classics
Senses of Cinema on two Jean-Pierre Melville classics: Temenuga Trifonova on Le Samouraï and Brian L. Frye on Bob le flambeur
No malice is intended.
submitted 2 months late, one letter grade off.
Celebrating 50 magic tapes with The Magician
The Magician was initially a mysterious mixer who released Magic Tapes, mixes of disco, house and pop without tracklists, challenging listeners to compile tracklists themselves, and they did. But he stepped out from behind the curtain, remixing Lykke Li's "I Follow Rivers" and later his debut single, "I Don't Know What To Do" feat. Jeppe. In 2013, he signed with Parlophone, but has continued making his Magic Tapes. Last month, he celebrated his 50th mix with Mixmag TV and Arches. [more inside]
Quies Custodiet Ipsos Custards?
Via a freedom of information act request, Ars Technica acquired 4.6 million license plate scans from the Oakland Police Department. The scans cover 1.1 million unique license plates, and only 0.2% of them were associated with any criminal activity. [more inside]
This moonbase condo had a much better view in the brochure!
Always dreamed of living in a moon base, with a view of Earth and the stars out your bedroom window? Well, you may end up living in underground lava tube instead. The moon's lower gravity means that lava tubes wider than a kilometer could remain structurally stable there.
“I tend to think it happened. In fact, I’m damn sure it happened.”
What Lies Beneath
In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania. Is it buried in the ground, poisoning locals—or did Israel steal it to build the bomb?
In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania. Is it buried in the ground, poisoning locals—or did Israel steal it to build the bomb?
Chuckles
But you do not have to shoot to be morally responsible.
"This week I may be jailed for writing a book on human rights abuses." by Rafael Marques de Morais [more inside]
This is an environment of welcoming and you should just get the hell out
Adapted and developed by Greg Daniels for NBC, the American version of The Office debuted on March 24, 2005, and viewers and critics were intrigued from the start. More than 11 million people tuned in to watch the remake of the British series’ pilot, and it was met with negative reviews from critics who were disappointed that it seemed like a cheap carbon copy. The following week, though, Daniels’ series proved that it could and ultimately would shine on its own, as the episode “Diversity Day” introduced us to the real Michael Scott, and how this horribly awkward goon of a Dunder Mifflin boss would affect the lives of his poor office drones.
The end of NFL blackouts
Last fall, the FCC voted unanimously to eliminate its own sports blackout rule. At this week's NFL annual meeting, the league approved a suspension of the rule. The blackout rule, which came into effect if a game was not sold out 72 hours prior to kickoff, was enacted in the '70s in order to prevent cable companies from airing events broadcast on local stations. [more inside]
We sure as shellac knew what the polar bear was doing on the island
Javier Grillo-Marxuach [prev: 1 2 3], a writer on the first two seasons of Lost [prev: 1 2 3 4], attempts to answer the question “Did we know what we were doing, or were we just making it up as we went along?” Much like the TV series itself, the answer turns out to be much more complicated than it seems. [A 17,000-word memoir].
DOMAIN OF PRIME FROG
"This blog is dedicated to discussing games where you play as a frog, but it might also talk about games which just have heavy frog presence in them. The borders are unclear and the road ahead is hazy. Come with me on the journey to be a frog."
♥FROG WORLD♥
♥FROG WORLD♥
My First Life as a Nurse
I am in my first month of nursing school. It is the early 70s and this is a three-year program, hospital-based, all practical training. It is my first day in my first ward...A remembrance, by English professor and disability studies scholar, Janet Lyon.
Star Wars space battles the way they should have been, 1980s style
This really amazing 7-minute Star Wars animated short, in the style of 1980s anime like Macross, shows a space battle where the Empire are the good guys taking on a squadron of dasterdly rebels. Enjoy missile trails, awesome sudden close-ups, totally radical explosions, split screens of attractive TIE fighter pilots, and a vaguely annoying anime-inspired soundtrack. This PDF shows how it was all made and introduces you to the characters, along with some neat concept sketches.
Is genetic reductionism shaping our identity?
"What would it mean to live in a society where people seek only the significant same." Reductionist discourses tend to infiltrate both genetic and big data enterprises. Could these discourses imperceptibly close rather than open the prospect for us to decide what we want to become—what we want our futures to be? Could such discourses also “hide rather than reveal the deepest sources of social ills,” which shape the evolution of our genes and identities?
They can't take away the X-Files, Scully. They tried.
In more "the 90s really are back" news, Fox has just officially announced it has placed a order for a new, six-episode limited series of The X-Files. Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny will be reprising their roles.
Life as a Modern Shepherd
James Rebanks has written a memoir , The Shepherd's Life, about running his family farm in England's Lake District, "[T]hat teacher’s idea of the Lake District was created by an urbanised and increasingly industrialised society, over the past 200 years. It was a dream of a place for a wider society that was full of people disconnected from the land. That dream was never for us, the people who work this land. We were already here doing what we do. I wanted to tell her that she had it all wrong – she didn’t really know this place or its people at all. These thoughts took years to become clear, but in a rough childish form I think they were there from the start. But in that assembly in 1987 I was dumb and 13, so I just made a farting noise on my hand, and everyone laughed. [more inside]
"...clinical-sounding terms like adipose, overweight, and obese."
How Obesity Became a Disease [The Atlantic] And, as a consequence, how weight loss became an industry.
Huggability seems to be a plus
What the "perfect" man looks like, according to men and women
So, according to almost every movie ever, we’re supposed to be most attracted to beefy men with glistening muscles, smoky (and kinda dangerous) eyes that make us feel like they suspect our very darkest, deepest secrets, and thighs that look like they’ve been subjected to Olympic training. Examples of these “idealized” men include (but are totally not limited to, obvs) Brad Pitt, Chris Hemsworth, Will Smith, and Jason Mamoa. In the end, it turns out the ideal dude isn’t Brad, Chris, Will, OR Jason. It’s the “Boy Next Door.”[more inside]
Life as a 16 Seed in the NCAA Tourney
The homeless blogger who became a millionaire overnight
"I simply can’t afford to fuck this up, and if I’m drinking, I certainly would. Either I would waste all the money or kill myself". Mike Wille was the homeless loner who enraptured legions with his funny and touching stories on The Ground Score blog. After his mother’s death, he inherited $1.8m and a house near New Orleans.
Internet Underground
Online For Issue 1
December 1995
Features:
"Arbiters Of Cool"
The Siskels and Eberts of the bandwidth. Who are these guys, and are they cool?
"The Bug Heard Round the World":
Netscape hackers discover security breaches in the world's most popular browser.
[more inside]an adorible ESL class project
The Heart of the Matter
Patients should be allowed to access data generated by implanted devices. After losing his health insurance, Hugo Campos has written an article detailing his frustrations with self-care: "I can’t access the data generated by my implanted defibrillator. That’s absurd."
I Might Have Some Sensitive Files
The government says Matt DeHart is an online child predator. He says that’s a ruse created because he discovered shocking CIA secrets and claims he was tortured by federal agents. The only thing that’s clear is that he’s in deep trouble.
Stop, Drop the Beat, and Roll
For their senior project, George Mason University students Seth Robertson and Viet Tran decided to ignore all of their professors and classmates who told them their idea was terrible. They proceeded to invent a fire extinguisher that uses sound waves instead of chemicals to put out fires. The project was partially inspired by the fact that traditional fire extinguishers do not work in space. [more inside]
But where were the "fallen women"?
The researchers focused their attention on allegations of wrongdoing at the prison, looking at previously discredited testimonies of prisoners who claimed to have been physically abused and at the activities of a prison doctor who had some very Victorian ideas about women and sex. They began to unravel a long-standing mystery: Why didn’t the prison incarcerate any prostitutes in its early years? They presented their findings at academic conferences and published papers in journals. And they did all of it without access to the Internet.They had to do it without access to the internet, as the researchers investigating the hidden history of the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, America's oldest women only prison are themselves prisoners at the same prison and what they found shines a new light on its origins.
The Man who gave us “Mesmerize”
Franz Anton Mesmer (1735-1815) was a Viennese doctor who incorporated hypnosis (which he called “Animal Magnetism”, meaning that planets had a “tidal” influence on the human body) into his medical practice. His peers considered him a charlatan, but he grabbed the attention of the rich, royal, and famous. And then he volunteered to cure the blind composer and pianist Maria Theresia von Paradis. [more inside]
The Mystery of Lê From Hop Sing Laundromat
Behind an unmarked door in Chinatown sits what may be America’s greatest cocktail bar, Hop Sing Laundromat. But the truth about the man who created it? That’s where things get trickier. By Jason Sheehan for Philadelphia Magazine.
Glühbirne, glowing pear
Radu Zaciu photographs fruits and vegetables in a different light—one emanating from their core. [more inside]
“Hedgehogs, Russian thing, don’t ask": Yozhik v tumane (1975)
Yozhik v tumane - Soyuzmultfilm Yuri Norstein (YT, 1975) (Hedgehog in the Fog, Wikipedia) is ten delightful minutes of one of the most beloved animated movies in the world. That hedgehog, that owl: just look at them. Just a small good thing for your day. Discovered via Thomas Pynchon's "Bleeding Edge," source of the post title.
Diary of a Surgery
Angelina Jolie Pitt writes about her decision to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes at the age of 39 -- 10 years younger than her mother was when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This comes two years after her decision to have a double mastectomy.
March 23
Dealing with the digital afterlife of a hacker
Dealing with the digital afterlife of a hacker It’s been three months since Michael died, and Beth has only been able to access and understand a sliver of what he left behind in the digital world. Kalat, who has been working closely with Beth to access Michael’s data, says this ought to be a wake up call to everyone who spends a significant amount of their life online—not just hackers.
Pones and Bones: A Trip to Anti-Narnia.
Peter Watts (previously) tours the FX house responsible for Hannibal's bodies. Meanwhile Neil Marshall and Vincenzo Natali are to direct episodes of the show.
Might As Well Open Your Eyes
Why I Run Netrunner (fantastic Previous post) is a great card game with a small problem--the initial difficulty curve is basically a cliff, with seemingly a thousand different things for newcomers to keep in mind. So developer Martin Brochu, aka Nagnazul, has created a neat little flavorific text-based tutorial for you all. Now you have no more excuse. Enjoy! (Some NSFW language.)
What to do with a cart and no horse?
Hitch the cart to a dog, of course. Dogs (and sometimes goats) were used to pull small carts in much of Europe, usually by people who could not afford to keep horses. The heyday of these small dog-drawn carts was in the 19th century, when dog carts were commonly used in places like England, the Netherlands, and Belgium to deliver milk and sometimes other groceries. In fact, the Belgian Army even experimented with dog-drawn carts toting machine guns during WWI. Previously. [more inside]
"Nothing is forbidden anymore." —Enrique Iglesias, "Bailamos"
Yuzen
Process of Yuzen - the creation of a kimono.
The deal of the century
"There is no cure for our addiction to medical hype"
Every day, news sources report on medical studies that describe promising new treatments. Most of them don't pan out in the end. Julia Belluz reports on "why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study." Her article includes a figure showing which foods are reported to cause cancer and which ones are reported to prevent it. (Spoiler: they're the same foods.)
fuzzy
Dorf poetry, music and dance
Dwarf Fortress will now include poetry, music and dance in procedurally generated forms. Making individual poems is beyond the capabilities of Dwarf Fortress (for now) but that hasn't stopped fans from making their own poems based on the publicly posted examples of poetic forms. Besides poetry, music and dance forms will also be generated and spread throughout the game as non-player characters teach each other. Dwarf Fortress developer Tarn Adams has been posting about these new additions to the game on his changelog (starting at 01/24/2015) and answering questions about it in his two latest monthly Future of the Fortress forum posts. On Rock Paper Shotgun Adam and Graham Smith delve into this topic to explore why it matters.
Welcome to the future; enjoy your waterblob!
"When we drink bottled water we throw away plastic, [and] 80% of the bottles are not recycled..... Ooho! uses the culinary technique of sphereification, the water is encapsulated in a double gelatinous membrane. The technique consist into apply sodium alginate (E-401) from the brown algae and calcium chloride (E-509) in a concrete proportions in order to generate a gelification on the exterior of the liquid. The final package is simple, cheap (2ct/unit), resistant, hygienic, biodegradable and even eatable."
I try to be good hard-worker-man, but refrigemater so messy, so so messy
Todd VanDerWerff on why NewsRadio was the best sitcom of the 1990s.
TedCruz.com
Ted Cruz dot com: A domain name cautionary tale "On March 23rd, Texas Republican senator and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz announced that he was going to run for president. If you [go] running to his website, tedcruz.com, to see what he had to say you [will be] shocked to see the message, "SUPPORT PRESIDENT OBAMA. IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW!"" [more inside]
Dead Moon
"She often condescends to drive by in her little phaeton and ponies."
A handy single-page explanation of horse-drawn carriage varieties, with pithy descriptions and occasional photographs of the barouche, the brougham, the cabriolet, the calash, the char-a-banc, the char-de-cote, the curricle, the dog-cart, the gig, the governess cart, the jaunting car, the landau, the Ralli car, the sociable, the sulky, the waggonette, and others. [more inside]
Half is Not Enough
Ariana Miyamoto is the first biracial winner of Miss Universe Japan in the nation's history. Born to a Japanese mother and an African-American father and raised in Nagasaki, she is considered "hafu" within her native Japan. [more inside]
Our Pluto
"On July 14, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly past Pluto, offering the first close-up look at that small, distant world and its largest moon, Charon. These denizens of the outer solar system will be transformed from poorly seen, hazy bodies to tangible worlds with distinct features." Who gets to name those features? You do. Via Bad Astronomy.
Mr. Farage and the Cabaret of Diversity.
Anti-Ukip protesters in fancy dress forced Nigel Farage to flee his local pub where he was dining with his family on Sunday afternoon. 'The Ukip leader called the demonstrators “scum”, claiming they had caused his children distress. The group, however, said they were holding a “cabaret of diversity” in support of those Ukip was seeking to marginalise.' Journalist Stuart Jeffries signs up for the 'Farage fracas.' Suzanne Moore has something to say about Ukip's progress as we near the UK general election. Al Murray's Pub Landlord joins in the fun (from last January.) Farage and the breastfeeding conundrum (from last December.) All links from The Guardian.
"Uncertainty itself can lead to a lot of distress for humans"
So says Dan Grupe in this article about Emily 'Dear Prudence' Yoffe, anxiety and the stress of not knowing.
From Middle Class Anxiety To Factory Fueling Station
"Parlors, “dining chambers,” and other spaces amenable to dining began appearing in architecture plans. Each nation seemed to have its own idea as to what constituted a proper dining room. The great Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti wrote that it “should be entered off the bosom of the house,” advising further that, “[a]s use demands, there should be [a dining room] for summer, one for winter, and one for middling seasons.” Some two centuries later Englishman William Sanderson would recommend that a “Dyning-Roome” be hung with pictures of kings and queens." The Austerity Kitchen presents A Short History Of The Dining Room Part 1 / Part 2.
Our Complicity With Excess
"[In] the face of a culture that would deny them, it becomes necessary for an artist of color in the west to defiantly announce to the world: I am a fact." In April 2014, at the first ever Yale Asian Alumni Reunion, Vijay Iyer delivered a powerful speech "on two intertwined issues: the role of Asian Americans as upwardly mobile minorities and the role of the artist as a potential transgressor within elite institutions."
Hello cat, you need a coat and some sunblock.
Photographer Alicia Rius has a series of photos of Sphynxes. Have you ever wondered where a cat's bellybutton is? Whether a shaved cat's paw looks a lot like a frog's foot? Wonder no more.
Bonus Sphynx kittens in her instagram.
Programmed by N A S I R
It was common practice in the 8/16 bit era for Japanese programmers to use pseudonyms or abbreviations in the game's credits, so you might not have given too much thought to the name NASIR popping up in the credits for Rad Racer, Final Fantasy II or Secret of Mana. In fact, NASIR was just the first name of programmer Nasir Gebelli, an Iranian-American who first made his name programming ambitious games like Horizon V in the Apple II era. [more inside]
"Spirit of my silence I can hear you / But I’m afraid to be near you"
Sufjan Stevens's new album Carrie and Lowell can be streamed in its entirety at NPR and The Guardian. Four (very) early reviews. Previously
I almost entirely removed the words "no" and "don't" from my vocabulary.
It Rains Fishes and Dancing Shrimp
Thai Curries — Kaeng (or Gkaeng or Gaeng). Award-winning cookbook author, cooking teacher, and tour guide Kasma Loha-Unchit discusses Thai curries. More detail on making curry: making curry paste from scratch, tips on equipment and technique, tips on prepping herbs and spices, the importance of the mortar and pestle. [more inside]
"Just now. We're at now now."" Go back to then.""When?""Now."
We landed at Baltimore, sat on the tarmac for a little bit, said ‘I do.'
Buzzfeed profiles Jim Obergefell, the widower whose case will be heard, among others, at the Supreme Court in next month. [more inside]
STREETWISE, a riveting 1984 doc that follows runaway kids in Seattle
Streetwise is an oscar nominated 1984 vérité doc that follows teenage vagrants and prostitutes in downtown Seattle. [more inside]
Writing a Mandelbrot program for the IBM 1401 was an interesting project
Rarely is the question asked: can you generate a Mandelbrot fractal on a fifty year old IBM 1401 mainframe?
"Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!"
We got it all on UHF: An oral history of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s cult classic. By Sean O'Neal (SLAVClub)
Dulce et Decorum est
Development without democracy? Lee Kuan Yew's lifetime legacy to the world is the living breathing heart of Asian Tigerdom. Singapore's first (and some say only) Prime Minister led this tiny island city state from third world fishing village in one of Britannia's key ports on a major global shipping line to one of the world's richest nations and recognized as "developed". Few CEOs can claim a better track record.
Lee Kuan Yew breathed his last on 23rd March 2015, just months before Singapore was to celebrate 50 years as an independent nation in August. Mentor to the likes of Deng Xiao Peng of China and godfather to numerous others, he leaves a complicated future for the country he created out of very little.
This kind of upends the traditional high school narrative
Mathematican John Urschel has coauthored (along with colleagues at Penn State and Tufts) a paper on computing the Fiedler vector of graph Laplacians that has recently been accepted by the Journal of Computational Mathematics. He will also be playing on the Baltimore Ravens offensive line next September. [more inside]
IT IS CALLED A METAFILTER
What is this thing called? – a Tumblr site of odd devices with reader-submitted explanations.
Plugging a 1986 Mac Plus into the modern Web
Kernelmag's Jeff Keacher documents connecting his old Macintosh Plus to the World Wibe Web, courtesy of a Raspberry Pi and a bunch of software to remove all those pesky <div>s and such. [more inside]
Death, Redesigned
March 22
In A League Of Their Own
In honour of Women's History Month*, Vibe has been doing brief interviews with "a woman who has made her living by doing exactly what she wants." [more inside]
The Seinfeld Situation
A very Indian reply about ... nothing, after Jerry Seinfeld cancelled a show in Mumbai because of parking issues.
Fear of a Muslim Planet
The micro-genre of “Islamophobic futurism” in fiction unites Western liberals and conservatives. [more inside]
Oh, Lord, won't you buy me..?
"Sheer Political Retribution"
David Dow is an attorney and law professor in Texas who has represented over 100 death row clients. He has been suspended by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for missing an appeals filing deadline...or did he? [more inside]
We study words so they can become tools instead of unwitting weapons.
Conscious Style Guide is a simple and accessible community resource for anyone curious or serious about conscious language. [more inside]
An American's part in the farewell to an English King
Richard III of England was interred today at Leicester Cathedral (official site for the burial). A New York woman was responsible for creating the traditional altar linens used in today's service. Richard III previously.
Gay and Mennonite
How do Mennonites handle gay people in their congregation? Depends on the church. This is the story of the Allegheny Mennonite Conference, as they debated what to do about Hyattsville Mennonite Church--let them back into the conference, remove them from it, or dissolve the conference altogether. Hyattsville had been previously disciplined for accepting gay and lesbian members, which they have been doing for decades. [more inside]
Follow the Geeks Chapter 3
Gina Trapani described that weekend as a slow boil. There wasn't a tangible concept yet. But there was something there—a problem she needed to solve.
It was early 2009, and an idea had been nagging her for more than a year. She left Lifehacker in large part because she was ready to stop writing about all the apps other people were making and start creating some of her own. Just weeks after she stepped down as the editor, she had a phone conversation with her former boss, Gawker chief Nick Denton.
"There's a Twitter app I want to build," she had told him.
They're emulating our beer culture now, and it's kind of awkward. 🍺
How the West Coast-Style IPA Conquered the World - by Erin Mosbaugh, First We Feast:
"While many notable beers emerged from this scene—Ballast Point Sculpin, Alesmith IPA—few had the influence of Green Flash's flagship West Coast IPA. By trademarking the term in 2011 and emblazoning it across bottles in giant letters, the brewery effectively codified the regionality of the style and made it instantly recognizable to drinkers across the country (and beyond). Eagle Rock Brewery's Jeremy Raub explains, 'Green Flash West Coast IPA was a really over-the-top double IPA, which was the brewery's way to say, 'This is how we do it on the West Coast.' It was just over 8% ABV, resinous, and hoppy. It had more malt body, and it was 'dank,' as people like to call it."[more inside]
On your mark, get set.... GO!
"Following 9 months of computation and 4 petabyte of disk IO on a Dell PowerEdge R820 server, generously provided by Piet Hut, and administered by Lee Colbert, at the IAS School of Natural Sciences in Princeton, we determined..." (the number of legal moves on an 18x18 Go board). [more inside]
Inherent vice, memory, and glass bead disease
Twenty One Dresses for the early Twentieth Century. The New Yorker looks at a recently discovered cache of dresses from Callot Soeurs, a woman-owned French Haute Couture house.
Try, try again? Study says no
Neuroscientists find that trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language.
In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists led by Amy Finn, a postdoc at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, has found evidence for another factor that contributes to adults’ language difficulties: When learning certain elements of language, adults’ more highly developed cognitive skills actually get in the way. The researchers discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language’s morphology — the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes.[more inside]
We had no choice but to disappoint him.
As doctors, we are taught to do no harm. It may be time to redefine what we really mean by harm. Two surgeons from the University of Wisconsin’s transplant program explore whether we should allow terminal patients to donate their organs.
Second-Class Languages
I told them all at the very first meeting it was illegal
An estimated billion pounds worth of HSBC fraud in Britain. According to whistleblower Nicholas Wilson, HSBC has been involved in a fraudulent scheme to illegally overcharge British shoppers in arrears for debt on store cards at leading British high-street retailers.
The credit agreements did not allow consumers to be charged debt collection fees. The chain of lenders involved in HSBC's debt recovery includes retailers up and down the UK, but most often those in the poorest areas. Wilson estimates that as many as 600,000 people have been defrauded, mostly those on a low-income.
This fraud has (allegedly) been systematically covered-up by regulators, police, law firms, the government and much of the UK media. The full list of media organisations that have investigated, then spiked, Wilson’s story, despite its unprecedented importance and public interest value, includes BBC Panorama, BBC Newsnight, BBC Moneybox, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Private Eye, and The Sunday Times.
The credit agreements did not allow consumers to be charged debt collection fees. The chain of lenders involved in HSBC's debt recovery includes retailers up and down the UK, but most often those in the poorest areas. Wilson estimates that as many as 600,000 people have been defrauded, mostly those on a low-income.
This fraud has (allegedly) been systematically covered-up by regulators, police, law firms, the government and much of the UK media. The full list of media organisations that have investigated, then spiked, Wilson’s story, despite its unprecedented importance and public interest value, includes BBC Panorama, BBC Newsnight, BBC Moneybox, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Private Eye, and The Sunday Times.
Faux Shows
Stock footage company Dissolve presents Faux Shows, a fake fall line-up guaranteed to get green-lit. (SLVimeo) Created entirely with Dissolve stock footage.
The Future is here
Profile of a tunnel-builder
Maclean's magazine has an extended profile of Elton McDonald, Toronto tunnel builder, a sweet kid in a rough neighbourhood who "'was getting away from regular things, away from life,' he says. 'Nothing in particular. Just life itself.'".
It was his fifth try at building underground, and it would take toil, determination and the better part of two years to get it done. It took pursuing a kid’s dream into adulthood. And in the end, even Elton’s father, a farmer in Black River, Jamaica, whom Elton has not seen in many years, had heard of that tunnel. "He didn’t know it was me," Elton says. "He’s proud. He thinks it’s cool."
"It makes me want to punch someone in the face."
Typographica reviews its favorite typefaces of 2014.
The Sigh Guy
New documentary Tab Hunter Confidential is the story of the squeaky-clean 1950s teen idol whose career was nearly wrecked by gay rumours broken by the notorious Confidential magazine. Rumours that happened to be true. [more inside]
The Food Porn Superstars of South Korea
In Korea, people can tune in on their laptops and cell phones any time, any day and watch people eat—and talk about eating. These "online eaters" are neither chefs nor restaurateurs, but the stars of the South Korean digital food phenomenon: Mukbang.[SLYT] [more inside]
March 21
Never mind the bollocks...
I Envy Those Who Have Not Read P. G. Wodehouse And Are About To
Lev Grossman has this to say about P. G. Wodehouse: "As it turns out, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse — what else would the P.G. stand for? — was an English writer born in 1881. He was a comic writer in an age of serious aesthetes: he was of the generation of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and the toweringly serious works of his famous coevals have gone a long way towards obscuring Wodehouse’s enormous gifts as a stylist. His subject was the foibles of the pre-war English aristocracy, which sounds limiting, but it was his subject the same way marble was Michelangelo’s subject. He could do anything with it. (He also co-wrote the book for Anything Goes. True fact.)" [more inside]
I'm only happy when it...
Rainworks are positive messages and art that only appear when it rains. Peregrine Church watched a video showing off the properties of superhydrophobic coatings and got an idea uniquely suited to his environment: famously rainy Seattle.* Using a spray-on coating, he did a stencil at a bus stop. It's invisible in dry weather, but as rain hits it and the wet concrete darkens, the writing and art becomes clear. Since then, more have been added: tentacles, hopscotch grids, environmental messages, lily pads, and more. [more inside]
"Why is empathizing across groups so much more difficult?"
The Brain’s Empathy Gap: [New York Times]
Can mapping neural pathways help us make friends with our enemies?
The improbable story of one of America’s first same-sex marriages
"In their youthful days, they took each other as companions for life, and... this union, no less sacred to them than the tie of marriage, has subsisted, in uninterrupted harmony, for forty years, during which they have shared each other’s occupations and pleasures and works of charity while in health, and watched over each other tenderly in sickness."
Era Diferente
Los Tigres del Norte have been recognized by GLAAD for the song Era Diferente from their latest album, the first Norteño song about gay love. [more inside]
"Stuff happens," "Freedom's untidy."
Islamic State Pursues Apocalyptic Logic.
All of this didn't begin in February 2015 or in 2013, when Islamic State first appeared on the radar of Western media.
It began on March 20, 2003, when the American-led "Coalition of the Willing" invaded Iraq.
All of this didn't begin in February 2015 or in 2013, when Islamic State first appeared on the radar of Western media.
It began on March 20, 2003, when the American-led "Coalition of the Willing" invaded Iraq.
Go Home.
"We decided that our first record of the '90s ought to be different."
Twenty-five years ago this week, Depeche Mode released their classic and best-selling album Violator. When the band scheduled a singing at a Wherehouse record store near the Beverley Center in Los Angeles on the day of the album's US release, thousands of fans showed up, many having waited days. It went about as well as you might imagine. These 18 minutes of local news footage interspersed with non-broadcast interviews of fans in line (Part 1, Part 2) of the "near-riot" caused by thousands of DM fans is the best way to transport yourself back to 1990s America until a time machine is invented. Bonus: lots of local news anchors mispronouncing the band's name and city councilman outrage about who should be responsible for the price tag. [more inside]
Just in time for the baseball season...
Baseball behind barbed wire The year was 1944. A playoff series between two all-star baseball teams generated ample excitement. Gila River fought Heart Mountain in thirteen games to win the series. The players described it as exhilarating. But the players taking part in this all-American pastime did so in dire circumstances. Gila River and Heart Mountain were both Japanese incarceration camps (previously known as internment camps), and these athletes were among the tens of thousands of Japanese Americans imprisoned there.
When a gun store doesn't sell guns
"Last week, sandwiched between a row of shops and apartments, you may have noticed that a store hawking firearms miraculously opened for two days on Manhattan’s Lower East Side."
The sales pitch was not what folks expected. Customer reaction was interesting...
Whatever could Charlie Brown & Charlie Hebdo have to do with each other?
"The relationship between Charlie Brown and Charlie Mensuel was nevertheless an odd one. The first cover of Charlie Mensuel may have featured Snoopy snoozing on his doghouse, but by the second issue one could already sense the bawdy direction in which the magazine would be heading. Drawn by Al Capp, it features an orange seal, grinning. Look at it again, and you'll see that it doubles as a smiling phallus. The next two covers featured cartoons by Schulz—Linus with his security blanket, Charlie Brown with a valentine. But by the sixth cover, it was back to bawd: Wolinski, maker of many dirty pictures, drew the face of a smiling man with a tiny, scantily clad lady riding on his nose." (SLAtlantic)
"At the age of 22, I fell in love with my boss..."
"...and at the age of 24, I learned the devastating consequences." Monica Lewinsky takes a look at our “culture of humiliation” from the TED stage. (previously 1, 2, 3)
Good evening, Europe ... and Australia!
With all of the national selections now made, let's take a look at how the Eurovision Song Contest's 60th anniversary is shaping up. Terribad songs ahead; enter at your own risk. [more inside]
Graeber on Gawker, on extractive democracy
"This is a profound transformation, and one we barely talk about. " Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber sees the FBI Ferguson report as a window into how American democracy is changing. [more inside]
Together, they fight crime!
Tanja Brandt is a German photographer who has dedicated her career to photographing animals and wildlife. In one of her most recent projects, Brandt shot photographs of a highly unlikely pair of friends: Ingo, the Belgian shepherd, and Poldi (Napoleon), the one-year-old owlet.
(Big) CAT scan
HTML5 drum machines
"I think society is in trouble when culture is ignored"
Have you ever fantasized about what you would do if you won the lottery? In June, Roy Cockrum of Knoxville, TN won the Powerball jackpot, taking home $115 million after taxes. Cockrum, whose varied career has included stints as an actor, stage manager, and Episcopal monk, has announced that he plans to use his new wealth to support ambitious productions by American non-profit theaters. [more inside]
March 20
A Different Kind of Love Song
Fannish vidding, as a creative practice, goes back more than 30 years, to the early days of Star Trek fandom, when people made slide shows set to music. Things are more complicated now. [Lim, Us] [more inside]
Games by Shmorky
The Tub Adventure. The Stupid Room. The Gaming Guyz Game (watch their complete animated hijinx here). The Tube Adventure. The Tilted Cart. All by Shmorky (Tumblr, Twitter). [more inside]
It's a Dance-Off!
In 2014, the Montreal Swing Riot hosted a dance-off: Lindy Hop dancers vs street dancers. Teams introduced themselves with a display of their own styles, then traded off dancing in their own style for a few sets. The fun part, though, was the next challenge: each team had to dance to the other's music on the fly. The results are well worth watching.
Design is hack.
Archillect, billed as The Ocular Engine, is a recent project from enigmatic designer Murat Pak. [more inside]
Spared no expense.
Three words: Lego. Jurassic. Park.
You Still Can't Stop Rock & Roll
A.J. Pero drummer for Twisted Sister during their early eighties peak, the drummer behind "You Can't Stop Rock & Roll", "I Wanna Rock" and of course "We're Not Gonna Take It" (which features some nice drum work) has passed on. Staten Island born Pero, who broke in to rock with the hard rock band Cities was touring with his new band Adrenaline Mob when he was found unresponsive on a tour bus in Poughkeepsie, New York. he was rushed to the local hospital and pronounced dead of an apparent heart attack. RIP, SMF.
A million bosomy pieces
And so, while romance is often treated as a static genre, I prefer to think of it as a sprawling, decades-long intergenerational discussion (sometimes polite, sometimes a bare-knuckle brawl) among women about what constitutes love, how one finds a partner that's worth putting up with the occasional tantrums and dirty socks. Scenes that disturb the modern reader nevertheless paved the way for the more sex-positive genre we enjoy today.Lots of articles are discovering feminism in romance novels, a genre historically neglected as being for women and having such restrictive plot rules that it could never be more than paint-by-numbers.
Homo History
A remarkably balanced, for 1964, Life Magazine feature article on homosexuality in America. “A secret world grows open and bolder. Society is forced to look at it—and try to understand it.”
Joyous
"What could be nicer? I draw funny pictures and people send me money."
Roy Doty, awesome illustrator, particularly known for drawing the popular, 50-year-running Wordless Workshop instructional comic strip for Popular Science, Family Handyman and syndication, the puzzle page for Make, and also the covers and illustrations for popular Judy Blume books Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Superfudge and Otherwise Known As Shelia The Great, among many other things, has died at 92. This episode of the Danny Dee Show (YouTube 27m) shows off his drawing and narration skills. Here's some illustrations from his website. Here's a sample panel of Wordless Workshop. [more inside]
And I will think no more
If we're all quite aware of what it has become, then where did it come from? From Jack White’s guitar of course, and from his fingers and his brain. But what about the sequence of notes? Could they have been hanging around in the universe since the cosmic microwave background splurged into existence, just waiting to be aligned by a malleable composer? Speaking to the BBC last year, Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine said: "It's less a riff that feels like someone wrote it than it was unearthed. It's something that's always been there, and it's something that speaks to the reptilian brain of rock listeners." – Stupid & Sophisticated: The Rise & Rise Of The Seven Nation Army Riff
What makes an expat an expat?
It’s like sexual release that’s allowed
Hysteria and Teenage Girls - How Justin Bieber, The Beatles, Morrissey, Franz Liszt, the Salem Witch Trials and the invention of the vibrator might all be related.
How chef Peter Chang stopped running and started empire-building
The Washington Post investigates how chef Peter Chang stopped running and started empire-building:
The pursuit of Chang soon became an all-consuming story among exotic-food hunters: a tale of obsession, devotion and love for one chef’s authentic Chinese fare. The chase narrative transformed a Hubei province farm boy with minimal English language skills into an American cult figure, an image that, years later, still clings to the chef despite his restaurant chain that keeps expanding year after year.[more inside]
"Your Online Violence Toward Girls and Women Is What Can Kiss My Ass"
Once upon a time, Ashley Judd made the mistake of tweeting while watching a sports game. You already can guess what horrible things are happening to her after I said that. But she's fighting back. [more inside]
The Hunter of Doves
Are-you-in-trouble?—Do-you-need-advice?—Write-to-Miss-Lonelyhearts-and-she-will-help-youTogether Always, in Darkness and in Light
Reaching this conclusion was not easy for the governor.
This afternoon, the Puerto Rican Secretary of Justice announced that Puerto Rico will no longer defend the lawsuit against the ban on same-sex marriage, which is pending at the First Circuit Court of Appeals. [more inside]
Sadly No Use of Muppets Anywhere
Start your weekend right with this supercut of dance-scenes from 80+ different movies, from youtuber MsTabularasa and set to Walk the Moon's "Shut Up and Dance."
aspiring to a world in which personality is unchained from gender
Boys Don't Cry
If you take any personality trait—aggressiveness, say—and draw a bell curve for the distribution of this trait in girls and boys, you will find there are many girls who are more aggressive than a number of boys. But when adults buy into traditional masculine or feminine ideologies, they rear their children to conform to those norms. They try to force girls who are aggressive into not being aggressive, or boys who are nurturing into not being nurturing.Brian Gresko interviews psychologist Dr. Ronald Levant on the evolution of maleness and the sociocultural forces that have long stifled men and fathers. [more inside]
("bona fide" and "coincide" is particularly impressive)
"Cruel To Be Kind" Official video | Behind the Scenes: Nick Lowe's "Cruel To Be Kind" video | Top of the Pops - 1979 | Countdown - 1979 | Interview with David Letterman | Take 40 Australia - acoustic version | Dig Music, Untidy desk - acoustic version
Song review by Stuart Mason at All Music Guide... [more inside]
Song review by Stuart Mason at All Music Guide... [more inside]
"I was not a very nice person and I had no business trying a death case"
And yet, despite this grave injustice, the state does not accept any responsibility for the damage suffered by one of its citizens. The bureaucratic response appears to be that nobody did anything intentionally wrong, thus the state has no responsibility. This is nonsensical. Explain that position to Mr. Ford and his family. Facts are stubborn things, they do not go away. The Louisiana prosecutor who helped send Glenn Ford to prison for 30 years, for a murder he did not commit, apologizes at length and slams the state for refusing to pay compensation after Ford was finally freed in 2014. [Note: autoplaying video] [more inside]
Wine for Normal People
Wine for Normal People is a podcast and blog where wine lover and expert Elizabeth Schneider discusses geeks out about all things wine. Fun highlights include wine scoring systems and why we should revolt against them, the difference between cheap plonk and well made wine, wine reviews and BS, and offensive ways wines are marketed to women, all peppered with industry insider knowledge from her years working for a big, hulking winery.
Likely to give pizza purists apoplexy
31 Exciting Pizza Flavors You Have To Try. Native New Yorkers should probably not click through and may wish to revisit this thread instead.
Oh FUI
Fictional user interfaces in film, TV and games.
Kit FUI
UI BAKA
SciFi Interfaces
VisualPunker: UI
FakeUI
Screens on screen [more inside]
"She rolls her eyes."
Raising Teenagers: The Mother of All Problems by Rachel Cusk [New York Times]
Children are characters in the family story we tell — until, one day, they start telling it themselves.
A Brief History of Souvenir Restaurant Matches
"People are always astounded that we still have Michael's matches at the front desks," says restaurant owner Michael McCarty, who offers the once-ubiquitous restaurant keepsake at both his restaurant locations: Michael's Santa Monica and Michael's New York. Although matchbooks are no longer a go-to restaurant souvenir, Michael's offers a classic 1½" x 2 ¼" sized matchbox — emblazoned with the bi-coastal restaurant's signature Art Deco-inspired pale pink script against a dark green background. McCarty posits, however, that his guests' surprise is disingenuous. Truth is, he says, "everybody loves a great box of matches." [more inside]
It’s just a space
Tomorrow night, the Temple will burn.
Partially funded through a kickstarter campaign, scuplptor David Best has built an intricate, 75-foot wooden temple in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland, where the events of Bloody Sunday took place. The project has a lofty goal of creating a ritual which is "a celebration and ... a healing and understanding". Visitors are encouraged to leave messages and mementos in the structure. Can't visit in person? You can also visit (and leave messages in) a virtual model of the temple in Minecraft.
Partially funded through a kickstarter campaign, scuplptor David Best has built an intricate, 75-foot wooden temple in the city of Derry, Northern Ireland, where the events of Bloody Sunday took place. The project has a lofty goal of creating a ritual which is "a celebration and ... a healing and understanding". Visitors are encouraged to leave messages and mementos in the structure. Can't visit in person? You can also visit (and leave messages in) a virtual model of the temple in Minecraft.
'otherwise “she would have found her way back to us.”'
Too Many Crooks
Amid a historically crowded pool of candidates exploring bids in the 2016 presidential elections, one might say that there are..... Too Many Cooks.
It is a good day to Die Walküre.
The Pacific Opera Project has mounted a production of a the Star Trek/Mozart mashup that this galaxy so desperately needs. Klingon Opera purists will likely be disappointed, though. It's been a while since Terrans have turned their ears and their eyes to the stars for operatic inspiration, so this work fills a yawning void in the canon.
The Magic of the Groove
Browser toys
Oskar Stålberg makes, among other things, nifty little toys to play with in your browser:
Create a block of flats as your desire dictates!
- Raise an archipelago from the sea floor by the force of pure will!
- Where once there was nothing, bring forth a whole town!
Via RPS; all links require Unity
Two owls, both alike in dignity, in fair Holland where we lay our scene
Following the capture of the notorious Horror Owl of Purmerand, another notable Dutch owl is capturing the public imagination. [more inside]
A New Skyscraper on the City Sim Skyline
Two years after the disastrous release of the much-hyped SimCity 2013 and just weeks after its legendary development studio Maxis was shut down by parent company Electronic Arts a new contender has arisen to stake its claim to the city sim crown. Cities: Skylines was released last week and has already garnered record-breaking sales and almost universally positive reviews. [more inside]
March 19
How Google Skewed Search Results
The Wall Street Journal reports on how Google favored its own shopping, travel services over rivals, and the U.S. antitrust probe of Google:
The 160-page critique, which was supposed to remain private but was inadvertently disclosed in an open-records request, concluded that Google’s “conduct has resulted—and will result—in real harm to consumers and to innovation in the online search and advertising markets.”Is Google an unelected superpower? A truly sinister social networking platform could manipulate public opinion even more effectively. (Previously)
I'm not saying it's aliens ... but
"What is amazing, is that you can see the feature while the rim is still in front of the line of sight". Unreleased images of "feature number 5" aka the bight spots on Ceres suggest it might be an ice plume. Also we're naming everything after agriculture deities and festivals.
First and final frames
This video plays the opening and closing shots of 55 films side-by-side. Some of the opening shots are strikingly similar to the final shots, while others are vastly different--both serving a purpose in communicating various themes. Some show progress, some show decline, and some are simply impactful images used to begin and end a film. [Obvious spoilers for the final shots of the 55 movies listed in the video's description]
unmute for full effect
bell hooks talks to John Perry Barlow
bell hooks [iconoclastic feminist, leading African-American intellectual, progressive Buddhist, self-proclaimed homebody] and John Perry Barlow [cyber philosopher, retired cattle rancher, world traveler, Grateful Dead lyricist, self-proclaimed Republican, EFF founder] have a conversation in the September 1995 issue of Shambhala Sun.
Malcolm Fraser, 1931-2015
"It was produced in a hurry."
Your Goo Goo Googly Eyes
Last week, a trio of Google researchers published a paper on a new artificial intelligence system dubbed FaceNet that it claims represents the most-accurate approach yet to recognizing human faces. FaceNet achieved nearly 100-percent accuracy on a popular facial-recognition dataset called Labeled Faces in the Wild.
The paper.[pdf]
(title song reference)
"Restaurants look, taste, sound, and smell more and more the same."
A tourist in Buenos Aires ponders how to have an immersive experience in an age when the city's restaurant culture is adopting international standards. The answer: listen to what old people recommend.
It’s been a longstanding fear of travelers (or travelers like myself, at least) that global conglomerates like McDonald’s or TGI Friday’s might use the bludgeon of the Big Mac or the bluster of Flair to wipe out everything unique, provincial and good. But what struck me on this trip, not having seen BA for a decade and thus being more sensitive to what had changed, was how a different kind of sameness was permeating Porteño restaurant and bar culture—much more indie and elevated, but just as insidious.[more inside]
Ironically, it's the only state with its own Broadway musical.
Speaking on behalf of HB 1371, "The Oklahoma Religious Freedom Act", State Senator Joseph Silk told the NYT: "[Gay people] don’t have a right to be served in every single store.... People need to have the ability to refuse service if its violates their religious convictions." State Representative Emily Virgin proposed an amendment with a powerful message to business owners who would turn away gay couples: Own your bigotry. Publicly. [more inside]
Once upon a time, there was a building full of books...
The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things
A heroin-addicted teen prostitute from West Virginia, 15-year-old JT LeRoy was hailed as the next great American literary star in the late 1990s. Mentored by acclaimed writers and nurtured by a protective throng of celebrities, JT's story was as inspirational as his untaught genius was astonishing. But JT wasn't real; he was an invention of Laura Albert, a woman in her 30's who wrote the books, carried on phone conversations in JT's voice and hired her boyfriend's half-sister to appear in public as JT. After filming JT in the peak of his fame, documentarian Marjorie Sturm continued unraveling the story after Albert's hoax was revealed in 2005. Her film, The Cult of JT LeRoy, is now playing in theaters but Albert, who calls JT's persona performance art, has threatened to sue. [more inside]
Meeting Bro Orange.
How Matt Stopera became a minor Chinese celebrity. A romance for the spring festival. Single link buzzfeed, but worth it.
Yo ho, Yo ho, A Podcast's Life For Me
Get your pies for the great pie fight!
How did pie become the perfect comedic projectile? It started with Mr Flip (1909), which may well be the first pie-to-the-face in movie history (although the first thrown pie was in A Noise from the Deep in 1913). Director Mack Sennett loved the gag so much, he began using it in most of his films, and turned it into one of the most famous slapstick moves in history. [more inside]
Next up: More clones? Woodhouse's location? Still more Rush references?
Season 6 of Archer has been sprinkled with clues, and an imgur user has been following the trail — the highlights of which so far have been a Flickr account and Algersoft.net (Login: Krieger Password: guest).
That's why it's tail is so poofy, it's full of secrets.
Doggie DNA test. You gotta do it!
Gifs explaining immigration law
For real. House Judiciary Committee press release in gif form.
Swift, silent, and with razor-sharp claws
Rogue owl caught after year-long reign of terror in Dutch town
Dubbed the “terror owl” by residents of Purmerend, north of Amsterdam, the aggressive European eagle owl is suspected of more than 50 attacks on humans, swooping silently from above and leaving many of its victims bloody and bruised. “The animal was trapped by a falconer today,” the Purmerend city council said on Friday evening. “It’s in good health and is currently being kept in a temporary facility awaiting a transfer once a proper permanent home has been found,” it added.[more inside]
BASP+NHSTP=0
Academic journal bans p-value significance test An editorial published in the academic journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has declared that the null hypothesis significance testing procedure (NHSTP) is 'invalid', and have banned it from future papers submitted to the journal. [more inside]
Bisland v. Bly: A Race Around the World
In 1889, Elizabeth Bisland’s boss sent her on a trip around the world. Her goal: to beat Phileas Fogg’s record of going Around the World in 80 Days. She was not thrilled at the prospect, and even less happy to learn she would be chasing Nellie Bly, who had left that morning on the same journey. But sure enough, she was on a train that evening. [more inside]
What, no Van Morrison?
The Faded Glory Invitational: 16 Icons Battle to Determine the Greatest ‘Down’ Period in Pop Music History What once (and possibly future) great artist had the greatest "down" period? '90s Springsteen, '80's Dylan, Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, and many others battle it out for "supremacy".
The Cold Rim of the World
Pyramiden was abandoned in 1998. The town’s population, then somewhere around 300 people, was given four months to leave, and they left behind everything non-essential. Walking through those buildings, it felt as if some vague poisonous gas had swept through and killed everyone in a matter of minutes. There were signs of life everywhere—trays still on tables, rolls of film in the projection booth, musical instruments strewn about—alongside the inescapable fact of decay and abandonment. In the gymnasiums lay sports equipment that would never again be used, books that would never again be read. The world’s northernmost swimming pool is now empty; the world’s northernmost grand piano now badly out of tune. The triumphant gaze of Soviet monuments now look out over nothing but emptiness. The rise and fall of Pyramiden, a Russian mining town located in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
“For me, to live in Pakistan is to know extremes of hope and despair.”
Globalization is a brutal phenomenon. It brings us mass displacement, wars, terrorism, unchecked financial capitalism, inequality, xenophobia, climate change. But if globalization is capable of holding out any fundamental promise to us, any temptation to go along with its havoc, then surely that promise ought to be this: we will be more free to invent ourselves. In that country, this city, in Lahore, in New York, in London, that factory, this office, in those clothes, that occupation, in wherever it is we long for, we will be liberated to be what we choose to be.- Discontent and Its Civilizations (excerpt), by Mohsin Hamid (previously); reviewed [more inside]
Frodo may have lived, but fantasy was effectively dead
The Sword of Shannara, the debut novel from American novelist Terry Brooks’, was released in 1977 into an SF literary ecosystem that looks very different than it does today: there was no Harry Potter, no Game of Thrones, and Peter Jackson was only just discovering Tolkien’s work as a pubescent teen. Readers were still riding Science Fiction’s new wave, and Fantasy looked like little more than a fading fad in the barren landscape left behind by Frodo’s departure to the Undying Lands.Aidan Moher thinks Terry Brooks saved epic fantasy.
March 18
Shedding Light on Myopia
Nature reviews the rise of short-sightedness and the connection to outdoor light exposure.
You have 20 minutes before the sun blows up
Outer Wilds begins around a fire, like so many of the best stories do. When you step towards the crackling flames, you're offered a surprisingly whimsical option: press X to roast a marshmallow. Why not? You transform the sugary orb into a ball of flame. When you step back, however, you see that the world is about to get far, far bigger than a campfire, or even a planet. You're sitting at the base of a rocketship, as a nearby engineer explains that you're the astronaut about to blast off into space.[more inside]
All you need are the launch codes, and after a leisurely detour through your home planet where you pick up a few essential piloting skills, you suit up, buckle in, and launch your craft triumphantly into space, ready to explore the wonders of the universe.
Then the sun explodes.
Battle of the Lit-est?
Canada Reads is an annual reality show-style contest organized by the CBC to promote works of Canadian literature. Five public figures, each championing a book begin the program and each day, one book is eliminated from the competition. Debate is often lively, sometimes controversial. [more inside]
Sea Lions are the new Polar Bears
California is having a sea lion crisis, (no, not THAT kind of sea lion, sharknado-face) with five times the usual number of sea lions "washing up onto shore" along the coast, most small pups and most starving. From San Diego, where Sea World cancelled its Sea Lion Shows to make personnel available for rescues and rehab, all the way up to Sonoma County, where 'six sick sea lions' all perished, while one was found on Skyline Blvd. in San Francisco (hitchhiking?) over 1000 feet from the coast. [more inside]
Git to da choppah! screamed Ahnold
Famous scenes from R-rated films, done in a children's book style by Josh Cooley, an artist at Pixar.
Schocking!
Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) has announced that he will resign from Congress. He has been recently been in the news for alleged ethics violations including a Downton Abbey office redecoration he didn't pay for, sketchy real estate deals, claiming 170,000 miles in reimbursement on a personal vehicle that he later sold with 80,000 miles on the odometer, and much much more! [more inside]
Rogue wounds
In the asylums, the garrison hospitals, the rogues’ hovels, and so on back through time, it is possible to see medicine moving toward this moment, when the malingerer ceases to be a monster and becomes a mirror to ourselves.
LAX? FAE? RIX?
Why do the three-letter codes for so many American airports end in "X"? How do you tell all the "Yxx" codes for Canadian airport codes apart? Where is SUX, again? Why are you flying into FCA? Airport Codes is a gorgeous, yet informative guide to the mysteries behind your favorite (or least favorite) airport code.
Lovers' Rock - Lewisham 1977
In 1977, John Goto made this series of photographic portraits of young British African-Caribbeans at Lewisham Youth Centre, South London, where he taught evening classes in photography. It was not until 2013, however, that circumstances allowed him to first exhibit and publish the work.
My lover's got humor / she's the giggle at a funeral
Twitter person @electrolemon has been making awful, amazing 30-second mashups of Hozier's "Take Me To Church".
How was Roman column formed?
This short, stop-motion film shows how Trajan's Column might have been constructed. The behind-the-scenes of the stop motion is also pretty neat. [more inside]
Connan Mockasin
"If you want to feel bad about your looks, spend some time in Seoul."
Gender novels
Lighten Up
I resented the existence of Meyer lemons & anyone who championed them.🍋
"Honestly? I've never had more fun cooking. Or eating. I didn't want to write this piece; it's almost humiliating to hear myself talk this way. But there it is. I'm in Berkeley. I'm lucky to be here. I may stay." Mark Bittman talks about California produce. [more inside]
The televised will not be a revolution
The changing — and unchanging — structure of TV. A discussion of the television industry, its pieces and parts; how the money flows and the dependencies bind; how it changed with the rise of cable and again with the advent of streaming; and how Apple's rumored web TV service won't save consumers or make Apple much money.
Self Help Books You Wish Existed
For a GNU dawn! For freedom!
The GNU Manifesto Turns Thirty: Maria Bustillos profiles Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement and author of the GNU Manifesto, which was published 30 years ago this month: The GNU Manifesto is characteristic of its author—deceptively simple, lucid, explicitly left-leaning, and entirely uncompromising… Stallman was one of the first to grasp that, if commercial entities were going to own the methods and technologies that controlled computers, then computer users would inevitably become beholden to those entities. This has come to pass, and in spades… “With software,” Stallman still frequently observes, “either the users control the program, or the program controls the users.”
"I feel like my own identity was born in those cotton fields."
Victorian mourning dress embodies black history
"Vancouver artist Karin Jones has made a powerful installation about black history at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.It’s a braided black Victorian mourning dress made from artificial hair extensions used by black women. Surrounding the dress on the floor are cotton bolls that contain the artist’s hair. I’ve only seen images the work online. Even so, I found myself really moved by the way it uses beauty to embody painful truths about slavery and the history of people of African descent in North America."
"The March Madness of Internet Garbage"
“Thou hast seen nothing yet.”
Remains in Madrid Are Believed to Be Those of Cervantes [New York Times]
Spanish investigators said they had reason to believe that bones found at the Convent of the Discalced Trinitarians were those of the “Don Quixote” author.
Party? SUPER PARTY!
The Podcast Is the Product for Keith and the Girl Now closing in on 2,500 episodes — by their estimation, more than any other podcast — the early adapters' "Web radio" talk show debuted in 2005, before the word "podcast" even existed. A decade in, they live-stream hour-plus episodes five days a week, average a million downloads a month, boast more than 36,000 forum members, and say they know of at least 141 KATG tattoos. [more inside]
World Elephant Polo Championships
Prior to our arrival in Nepal the following day, only one member of our squad had played elephant polo, in a brief exhibition. The rest of us had neither sat atop an elephant nor played horse polo nor spent much time atop a horse. We had "practiced" twice at a windswept parking lot along the beach in Queens, New York, in bitter cold, using mallets fashioned from PVC pipe and riding on top of SUVs in place of elephants. It was funny but not entirely helpful.
If you've played Larry, you know me
I'm Al Lowe and I created a series of games called Leisure Suit Larry for Sierra back in the '80s and '90s along with another 20 games and titles back in that period. I was with Sierra from 1982 until 1998 when it -- well, it was the poor victim of a hostile takeover by criminals. How about that for an opening?The creator of Leisure Suit Larry interviewed.
The irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous
Its faith-based 12-step program dominates treatment in the United States. But researchers have debunked central tenets of AA doctrine and found dozens of other treatments more effective.
Gabrielle Glaser explores alcohol-use disorder treatment of many types in a lengthy (quite lengthy) article for The Atlantic. [more inside]
Gabrielle Glaser explores alcohol-use disorder treatment of many types in a lengthy (quite lengthy) article for The Atlantic. [more inside]
“We’ll Pay Cash for Your Old Gold and Silver”
I came by my own dishonest trade honestly. By the time I was sixteen, I had been kicked out of high school three or four times—I never managed to graduate—and my mother, fed up, sent me down to Texas to live with my older brother, who had recently been released from prison. He was briefly Calgary’s most successful cocaine importer, before getting busted and sent off to Spy Hill, and he had found employment as a sales manager for a hugely successful jewelry store owned by a brilliant, wildly charismatic man named Ronnie Cooper.- Clancy Martin (previously) in Lapham's Quarterly
On Memory: New Writing from Japan
On Memory: New Writing from Japan : a collection of newly translated fiction and non-fiction by Japanese writers, appearing in Words Without Borders magazine.
March 17
Cranked
The Manual of Psychedelic Support
"The Manual of Psychedelic Support is a comprehensive guide to setting up and running compassionate care services for people having difficult drug experiences at music festivals and similar events." You can download it for free here.
Best Tractor Square Dance Ever Video
Funny money
Comic's Comic provides a graphic of the top 25 richest living comedians. Seinfeld: $800 million. (derived from Celebrity Networth's list of the top 50 of all time)
Journey to the center of the Earth.
How far would you have to travel to reach the Earth's core? And what would you see along the way? Discover what lies beneath...
"https://https..." is not from Department of Redundancy Department
Don't want some random hacker looking over your shoulder when you surf U.S. federal government websites? You may be in luck!
Today the White House announced a proposal — https://https.cio.gov/ — to make all public-facing U.S. government websites use HTTPS across the board within two years. Want to give your two cents on the idea? Forget writing a letter, make a pull request! [more inside]
Today the White House announced a proposal — https://https.cio.gov/ — to make all public-facing U.S. government websites use HTTPS across the board within two years. Want to give your two cents on the idea? Forget writing a letter, make a pull request! [more inside]
He has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo
"The stereotype is all about cheap beer, fast cars and fat girls. But there's a little bit of hoosier in all of us." — from a 2003 Riverfront Times article about the other "hoosiers," the ones from St. Louis.
Scarlet Mustard, in the satin basque, with the top hat fascinator
Found Object Burlesque Names. They're all around us.
V U L C A N
Thar she blows!
Hummingbird lost, hummingbird found
"An intense and prolonged dry season in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta combined with fires set by Kogi indigenous people for agricultural purposes has devastated its fragile high-elevation habitat (páramo), home to a suite of endemic plants and animals. Two conservationists Carlos Julio Rojas and Christian Vasquez who work at ProAves’ “El Dorado” nature reserve in the mountain range, carried out investigations to document the fires. On March 4th 2015, the photographed the spectacular Blue-bearded Helmetcrest – a hummingbird that was last seen in 1946 and feared quite possibly extinct. Unfortunately, the habitat of the three birds they saw is threatened by ongoing fires." [more inside]
Nooooooooo kindle style
No really, these are real "covers" on Amazon. Each cover for these self published books is fine tuned to attract a specific demographic.
100 Years of Beauty
In Cut.com's new video series, a model runs through iconic makeup and hairstyle looks of her country for each decade from 1910 to 2010. This is an ongoing series, but there are now four videos up: one each for Anglo-American and African-American women, one for Iranian women, and one for Korean women. [more inside]
Over or under?
Beauty Tips, for Girls, from Lego
Milk and cookies kept you awake, eh, Sebastian?
Blade Runner Model Shop: Images from slides taken during the construction of the miniatures for the film "Bladerunner". (via)
"P-hacking is widespread."
P-hacking, or inflation bias, is the selective inclusion of experimental results that suggest statistical significance, as well as the selective exclusion of results which argue against the hypothesis. Skewing work towards positive results helps investigators publish in high-profile journals, which in turn improves access to funding. In a recent PLOS publication, Michael Jennions and Megan Head use text-mining and meta-analyses to determine the extent to which this influences a broad array of published research, offering recommendations on how to reduce this practice.
"Art to me means life" - Wanda Gág
Wanda Gág (1893–1946), best known for her book Millions of Cats - one of the only picture books to ever win a Newbery Honor award and the book that pioneered the two-page spread - wrote and illustrated her stories, the stories of others, and her own diary with what she called a "full-flavored, conversational style, and with a sly peasant humor." [more inside]
Human sex pheromone myth engineered by (...wait for it...) a corporation
As Smithsonian.com notes, researchers have found hints that human pheromones exist: The smell of tears, for example, seems to tamp down men’s sexual arousal and testosterone levels. Despite decades of research, a true human sex pheromone has yet to be found. Perhaps you thought otherwise. You are not alone. Tristram Wyatt, an Oxford biologist, explains how one corporation successfully created a scientific myth . [more inside]
This does not make the use of blackhead strips any less fun
You know all those blackheads on your Biore nose strip? Turns out they mostly aren't blackheads; they're sebaceous filaments and they were supposed to be in your nose. They help channel the flow of oil in the pore, and cannot be permanently removed (the pore will refill within 30 days).
You've got to be joking!
DC Comics pull cover of Batgirl menaced by Joker after online protests
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Joker, DC Comics is releasing variant covers in June, depicting their popular villain. After threats of violence and harassment the artist, Rafael Albuquerque, agreed to pull the cover. Who was being threatened and harassed? Not the artist. Rather, the people objecting. Predictably the backlash #CHANGETHECOVER has generated backlash #SAVETHECOVER in a standoff reminiscent of Gamergate.
In celebration of the 75th anniversary of The Joker, DC Comics is releasing variant covers in June, depicting their popular villain. After threats of violence and harassment the artist, Rafael Albuquerque, agreed to pull the cover. Who was being threatened and harassed? Not the artist. Rather, the people objecting. Predictably the backlash #CHANGETHECOVER has generated backlash #SAVETHECOVER in a standoff reminiscent of Gamergate.
30 Species in pieces
30 species in pieces, "an interactive exhibition turned study into 30 of the world’s most interesting but unfortunately endangered species — their survivals laying literally, in pieces."
Bobcats live in houses too
Fort Griffin State Historic Site, just north of Albany, Texas, recently had one of its historic buildings claimed as a den by a mother bobcat and her two kittens. The site's trail cameras have been documenting their lives since: the first glimpse into the lives of roly-poly inhabitants of a well-protected stone building came in January. With uninvited visits by raccoons, skunks, coyotes, and male bobcats... [more inside]
Star Blazers
Star Blazers Got Me Through The Shittiest Year Of My Childhood. Charlie Jane Anders: "I was a happy child, but I didn't have such a happy childhood. Other kids didn't get my weird vibe, especially in elementary and middle school. And one year in particular, we moved to a new city and a new school, and things got ugly. Only one thing kept me from losing my shit: Star Blazers..." [Previously]
Dinosaurs: Terrible Lizards
Dinosaurs: Terrible Lizards (SYTL - via B3ta.com)
Who will win the race?
Starbucks announced a new campaign to start conversations about racial issues by inviting baristas to pen the words Race Together on the sides of their ubiquitous cups. Unsure how to talk to your baristas about race? Jezebel has you covered. Of course, some people are less than thrilled with the campaign.
Mars One or MLM?
"As Roche observed the process from an insider’s perspective, his concerns increased. Chief among them: that some leading contenders for the mission had bought their way into that position, and are being encouraged to “donate” any appearance fees back to Mars One — which seemed to him very strange for an outfit that needs billions of dollars to complete its objective." [more inside]
Until I pulled out my Parakeet
Sometimes you just want a quick story before bed. (SLYT, NSFW)
"I asked him a very old Jewish question: Do you have a bag packed?"
Just as the process that transforms shamrocks into McFlurries is murky..
It's St. Paddy's Day, Not 'St. Patty's Day' (Gawker). Also, everything you know about St. Patrick's Day is wrong (HuffPo).
How Pixar Fosters Creativity
A few years ago, I had lunch with the head of a major motion picture studio, who declared that his central problem was not finding good people—it was finding good ideas. Since then, when giving talks, I’ve asked audiences whether they agree with him. Almost always there’s a 50/50 split, which has astounded me because I couldn’t disagree more with the studio executive. Pixar President Ed Catmull on the culture that generates Pixar's artistic and commercial success.
"There's a cowman who knows how to use an airplane!"
"Prior to the explosive tragedy that turned the Hindenburg into a synonym for disaster, the famous zeppelin transported [antelope] across the Atlantic to German zoos." [more inside]
"...hollow out a heel of french bread and stick a whole onion into it"
Irish-American Dining. A history of and guide to food that is expressly Irish-American, by Mefi's own Max Sparber. Irish Egg Rolls! Early onion-based pub food! The hidden history of the Shamrock Shake! [via mefi projects]
♫Do you want to scrape a website?♫
Did you ever just want a bunch of web data as painlessly as possible but don't know a thing about command-line webscrapers (curl, wget) or parsing libraries (BeautifulSoup, JSoup, pandas)?
import.io will try to auto-magically hash any website you give it into structured data. (Here's MetaFilter.)
Need a bit more control over those results?
Kimono gives you a point-and-click environment for choosing page elements and pagination indicators. (Requires a Chrome add-on or browser bookmarklet.)
import.io will try to auto-magically hash any website you give it into structured data. (Here's MetaFilter.)
Need a bit more control over those results?
Kimono gives you a point-and-click environment for choosing page elements and pagination indicators. (Requires a Chrome add-on or browser bookmarklet.)
Yam cake for everybody!
A baby gorilla who had to be delivered through an emergency cesarean section and had some rocky early days has celebrated her first birthday at San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Includes video of gorillas eating yam cake.
Rethinking the solar system
With the discovery of life beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the abundance of water in our solar system and a huge salty ocean under Ganymede's ice, scientists are rethinking the possibilities of life on other worlds.
"I'm concerned that if you wait 'til you have symptoms, it's too late."
ESPN's Outside the Lines has reported that promising 24-year-old football player Chris Borland, who was drafted last year by the San Francisco 49ers as a linebacker, will retire as a "proactive" move to avoid the long-term effects of repetitive head trauma. [more inside]
The Mid Century Menu, as seen in cookbooks and brochures
Have you ever looked at a recipe in a mid-century cookbook and thought, “Ew. That is so nasty.” But you couldn’t stop looking at the recipe. Or thinking about it. As time went on, you kept going back to the book, thinking, “I wonder what it tastes like?”
Then the Mid-Century Menu is for you. And so is: Barbecue Bean Jello Mold. Spaghetti Subs. Candied Crackers. Oh, and Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! [more inside]
It's Ikea's World, We Just Live In It
Today research is at the heart of Ikea’s expansion. “The more far away we go from our culture, the more we need to understand, learn, and adapt,” says Mikael Ydholm, who heads research. Rather than focus on differences between cultures, it’s his job to figure out where they intersect.
White Line
Does Star Wars ask: whose worldview and style of life will triumph? Yes
John Powers (of Star Wars: A New Heap) writes The Future of Art: Rosalind Krauss is a Jedi - "If Krauss is Leia, Le Corbusier is a pretty great candidate for General Tarkin."
Star Wars Semiotics - "At HiLobrow we’re wary of structuralist heuristic devices. But we do enjoy tinkering with them — and we’ve noticed that the logical expansion of binary oppositions does help stimulate the imagination. However… does Powers’ square function properly?"
A Crisis in Criticism: Star Wars is not Literature, it is an Object. - "Glenn's post is good natured and whip smart - but he's dead wrong. While he is no doubt the superior semiotician ... and I can't hope to outsmart the guy, mine is the better diagram."
Star Wars Highbrow: Thesis Antithesis Synthesis - "In addition to describing the square above Glenn's original post also discussed his choices for the cardinal points at some length in terms of a "highbrow-lowbrow-middlebrow-nobrow-hilobrow schema." It is a scheme he has charted elsewhere, admitting that "aesthetic and lifestyle choices aren't entirely independent of social class."" [more inside]
The White Christian experiment is almost over
Earlier this month, a newly released report indicated that White Christians are no longer a majority in 19 states. Furthermore, according to the same report the United States is no longer a majority Protestant nation. [more inside]
March 16
That cat has serious issues
Louis, a 17-year-old ginger tom, accused of pouncing ‘like a wild lion in the jungle’ on to unsuspecting pet pooch’s head [more inside]
Life as a ghost
The Ghost Children of China Forty-five years ago, China inaugurated an era of population control, amid fears that too many people would bring catastrophe. In 1980, it officially announced a national one-child policy, forcibly limiting the size of families. But there have been, inevitably, second (and, rarely, third and fourth) children: children who go unrecognized by the government, have no official identity – who are left to live outside the institutions of regulated society. Little Jie is one of them. [more inside]
“Jesus. Call the police”.
Why I didn't call the police when I saw two black boys with guns next door. [The Guardian]
"My husband’s instinct was to call law enforcement, but that didn't seem like the solution. Especially after Tamir Rice."
"But TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY. It's the American dream..."
Today, Kendrick Lamar's latest album, To Pimp a Butterfly, was released a week ahead of the release date. Yesterday, the album was briefly made available on iTunes (allegedly, the label's error). But enough of that - let's get to the music. [more inside]
Remembering Harve Bennett, STAR TREK’s Cinematic Shepherd
You know what? I don't need this job after all.
No wonder our ancestors drove them to extinction!
"If you have enough heart and a weird enough face..."
Wrestling Isn't Wrestling: a short film following the last 20 years in WWE, with a mostly female cast and a preposterous number of celebrity cameos. Directed by Max Landis and starring Chloe Dykstra as Triple H (contains lots of profanity).
Shake, Bot
Politicians Shaking Hands with Robots, Ranked
How many Merkels have you spotted so far?
The correct answer is "a suspicious number of Merkels."
Why Is Angela Merkel Always Palling Around With Robots?
How many Merkels have you spotted so far?
The correct answer is "a suspicious number of Merkels."
Why Is Angela Merkel Always Palling Around With Robots?
When the Glimpse Is Worth More than the Glare
This princess is in her own castle
Hanako Games’ Long Live the Queen is a princess story all about facets and demanding respect. You play as Princess Elodie, who must replace her late mother as queen by the end of the year. It’s a princess power fantasy where you learn all about Elodie’s world so that she may navigate politics both at home and abroad and survive attempts on her life. It’s a brutal game, as you learn how to progress by failing and/or dying repeatedly. It’s maddening for perfectionists.Kim Nguyen plays Long Live the Queen and Princess Maker.
What's in a name: Yeti. Abominable Snowman. Himalayan Bear?
Yeti Debate Swirls: Study Reveals Origin of Mysterious Hairs The yeti, a legendary shaggy, bipedal beast from the Himalayas, made headlines last year when a geneticist said he had solved the mystery of its origins. But now, scientists have found the hair samples used in that study didn't come from a mysterious animal, but rather from the Himalayan brown bear. [more inside]
Winter Birdwatching in Jersey City
People on the phone never say "good-bye" at the end of a conversation.
Movie cliches that have been around for decades are still alive and well in 2015. Don't believe it? Check out the list and decide for yourself:
- When men drink whiskey, it is always in a shot glass, and they always drink it in one gulp. If they are wimps, they will gasp for air, then have a coughing fit. If they are macho, they will wince briefly, flashing clenched teeth.
- There are always carrot leaves and a loaf of french bread sticking out of every grocery bag
- Explosions in space make noise, etc. etc. etc.
Like Lehrer and MacNeil, but with moustaches and puppets
A hard-hitting panel show that isn't afraid to tackle the tough issues, with a balanced panel of right-wing, left-wing, libertarian and other guests, No, You Shut Up! "takes on the issues of the day until everyone gets too angry to discuss them any further." [more inside]
Robocops in Kinshasa
Five Congolese-made robots are now regulating traffic in Kinshasa. Other pictures. Traffic robots in action and interview of Thérèse Izay Kirongozi, robot creator, engineer and leader of Wotech (Women's Technology Association). [more inside]
being unable to achieve the impossible: keeping everybody happy
Creating just online social spaces - Aria Stewart, Geek Feminism
"The last two months have seen two Slack chats start to support marginalized groups in the technology field, LGBTQ* Technology and Women in Technology, and we’ve had a lot of discussions about how to run the spaces effectively, not just being a place for those who it says on the tin, but to support, encourage and not be terrible to people who are marginalized in other ways than the one the particular group is trying to represent. "This is a sort of how-to guide for creating a social Slack that is inclusive and just, and a lot of of this will apply to other styles and mediums for interaction."[more inside]
Mayhem is coming
Goatshank Redemption
"Jackie was a horrible actress, the literal worst, but her sick schtick did the trick." If Dinosaurs Were the Main Characters in "Jurassic Park" (SL Buzzfeed)
Traded to Chicago Cubs for a washing machine.
Not everyone was delighted when Will Ferrell played 10 positions for 10 different teams (all field positions and base coach) in five games in one day last week in the Cactus League--in order to raise awareness and money for Stand Up to Cancer and Cancer for College--but honestly, most people were. [more inside]
33 Musicians Discuss Their Favorite Radiohead Songs
Stereogum polled dozens of notable musicians about their favorite Radiohead songs, and this is how they responded.
Imagine Frankensteining kale and Brussels sprouts together
Lollipop Kale Is the Best New Vegetable You’ve Never Heard Of. Lollipop kale is a hybrid of kale and Brussels sprouts that was developed in Britain and is now becoming available in the US and Australia. Branded as "kalettes" in the US, the plant known in Britain as "flower sprouts" is also available as seeds for gardeners who want to give it a try. The first new vegetable in 16 years, it's being brought to the US by the same grower who introduced broccolini (the most recent new vegetable). Like broccolini and broccoflower, lollipop kale is the result of traditional plant breeding and selection. [more inside]
"The delicate tango between common archetype and copyright"
Lindsay Ellis on The Wicked Witch of the West and MGM's copyright "The Wicked Witch of the West is the ultimate archetype for the modern witch, so everyone wants their own version of her. Too bad MGM holds the copyright to the one everyone knows."
Deep in my heart, I do believe
The Algorithmic Self: On Being Made by the Numbers
"The first step toward protecting the self in an age of algorithmic manipulation is to recognize such manipulation as a problem." Frank Pasquale, writing for The Hedgehog Review, grapples with "The Algorithmic Self." [more inside]
It's not about the food—it's about your surroundings.
This Fast-Food-Loving, Organics-Hating Ivy League Prof Will Trick You Into Eating Better: Mother Jones on food psychologist Brian Wansink's work with restaurants, grocery stores, and schools on how to encourage better eating.
In the world of sign language, this man is Michael Jackson
Swedish sign language interpreter, Tommy Krångh, interpreted and danced his way through a song performed by singer Magnus Carlsson on Melodifestivalen.
“That’s a good thing about a hijab...You can hide a microphone in it."
"No Land's Song" is a documentary about Iranian singer and composer Sara Najafi's fight to host a concert of solo women singers in Tehran. Nothing like it had been attempted in Iran for 35 years: after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, women were banned from singing solo in public.
“After every meeting at the ministry, I said, ‘OK, it won’t happen.’" But then she’d have a meeting with her Iranian singers – some old enough to have performed before the revolution, others too young to remember a time when women were allowed to sing at all – and decide to fight on.It is being shown at the Human Rights Watch Film Festival. Excerpt - Vimeo link.
Disney's $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband
Sometimes the Best of the Web was first said elsewhere...
15 Relatively Brilliant Albert Einstein Quotes on His Birthday (March 14th)
“If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self.”
15 Awesome Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes for her 82nd Birthday (March 15th)
"I have quite a large supply [of 'Notorious RGB t-shirts]."
MentalFloss.com does handle 'listicles' well (when John Green isn't reading them out loud on a video)… [more inside]
“If I were to start taking care of my grooming, I would no longer be my own self.”
15 Awesome Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes for her 82nd Birthday (March 15th)
"I have quite a large supply [of 'Notorious RGB t-shirts]."
MentalFloss.com does handle 'listicles' well (when John Green isn't reading them out loud on a video)… [more inside]
"No one has ever given less of a fuck."
March 15
"In a sense, there is no such thing as healing."
Partying on Bikes in the Bay Area
You live in the Bay Area, it's a Friday evening and you have nothing to do...why not try Bike Party? It's like a less angry, more laid-back Critical Mass. There's one in San Francisco every First Friday of the month, another in the East Bay every Second Friday, an even bigger one in San Jose every Third Friday (which had a special guest rider last March), and a Peninsula ride every Fourth Friday. These rides change their route (and their theme) every month to keep it fresh. Not everyone is a fan, however, as evidenced by the comments on this local news article about the Sep. 2014 East Bay Bike Party.
It's a bit like handkerchief code for online clothing geeks
Today I washed my jeans. It’s the first time I’ve done so since I bought them in July, and yes, I’ve worn them every day. It’s fair to say that I have an unhealthy relationship with my trousers—but I’m not alone. There’s an online community dedicated to freeing the world from the tyranny of washed denim. It was these people who I turned to last year when I embarked on a hunt for the perfect pair of jeans and subsequently found myself being sucked into the world of raw denim fandom.
'Roly-Poly Goat Heads' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Why Do Severed Goat Heads Keep Turning Up in Brooklyn? (Some may find the pictures at this link disturbing.) [more inside]
Jetsons, 2017
The Disturbing Puzzle Game That Nobody Can Solve
"If they work together, and only then … they will find the answer and complete the whole riddle someday next year." Do Not Believe His Lies is an iOS puzzle game that was released 8 months ago. No one has solved it yet, despite crowd solving efforts.
Take me to church, TED
The Church of TED "I never imagined that the Baptists I knew in my youth would come to seem mellow, almost slackers by comparison. Of course they promoted Jesus as a once-and-done, plug-and-play solver of problems — another questionable approach."
Do You Want to Play Some Puzzles?
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection "I wrote this collection because I thought there should be more small desktop toys available: little games you can pop up in a window and play for two or three minutes while you take a break from whatever else you were doing. And I was also annoyed that every time I found a good game on (say) Unix, it wasn't available the next time I was sitting at a Windows machine, or vice versa; so I arranged that everything in my personal puzzle collection will happily run on both those platforms and more." In addition to the desktop implementations available at the website, the collection is also available on Android and iOS.
"In the end all writing is about adding to life, not diminishing it."
The Final Rhapsody of Charles Bowden by Scott Carrier [Mother Jones] [warning, descriptions of graphic violence] [more inside]
Our most personal device yet.
Apple Watch
Hands on - Are You a Snob or Idiot? - won’t change your life… unless you want it to - Not the right time - risks alienating female buyers - Who's afraid - The digital crown - a spike in Pebble Kickstarter backers
Previously:The End Of An Era
Hands on - Are You a Snob or Idiot? - won’t change your life… unless you want it to - Not the right time - risks alienating female buyers - Who's afraid - The digital crown - a spike in Pebble Kickstarter backers
Previously:The End Of An Era
If you can read this sentence, you can talk with a scientist.
Science once communicated in a polyglot of tongues, but now English rules alone. How did this happen – and at what cost?
The World's First Successful Penis Transplant
The world's first successful penis transplant has been performed in South Africa.
Bad Maps
Maps can illuminate our world; they can enlighten us and make us see things differently; they can show how demographics, history, or countless other factors interact with human and physical geography. But, sometimes, maps can be utter disasters, either because they're wrong or simply very dumb. Here are a collection of maps so hilariously bad that you may never trust the form again. [more inside]
To Take Something Recognizably Bad
The Revolution Will Probably Wear Mom Jeans (Eugenia Williamson, on normcore (previously), for The Baffler)
"Because girls are nerds, guys, and they want to buy your stuff"
For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. One day I noticed that my friend was playing a game as a boy character and asked why she wasn’t a girl. She said you couldn’t be a girl; a boy character was the only option.Madeleine Messer is a sixth grade student who went looking for why her mobile games rarely feature girls. [more inside]
A Dramatic Reading
Of Nicki Minaj's Anaconda. In Irish. (SLYT)
The Case Against Credentialism
The connection between education and occupation is now so firmly ingrained as to seem almost a fact of nature. To get a good job, you get a diploma: at once time a high school diploma stuffed, and then a B.A., but now you're better off with a J.D. or an M.B.A...Yet this familiar system, far from evolving “naturally” or “unconsciously,” is the product of distinct cultural changes in American history. The process that left it in our landscape is less like the slow raising of a mountain range or the growth of oxbows on the Mississippi, and more like the construction of a dam. Three changes, which took place in the past hundred years, produced the system that is now producing M.B.A.s. They were the conversion of jobs into “professions,” the scientific measurement of intelligence, and the use of government power to “channel” people toward certain occupations. James Fallows explains in a 1985 article in The Atlantic. (See also William James 80 years prior on The Ph.D. Octopus).
Bending in delightful and vulgar ways
A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince: The Endlessly Evolving Cinderella - Linda Holmes, NPR's Monkey See:
"The idea that animates the classic Cinderella is that the prince would not be free to consider Cinderella a desirable mate if he first saw her as she is, but he can meet her under false pretenses and fall in love with her. And, most importantly, once achieved, that love will be durable enough to survive her reversion to her real identity. Getting him to literally recognize her — getting him to look at a woman in rags and realize she's the woman he wants to marry — seems to function as sort of a stand-in for him proving that he can overlook her low status and choose her as a partner. Whether that's more a fantasy of romantic love or a fantasy of economic security, power and rescue from a lifetime of washing floors may depend on who's telling it and who's hearing it and when."[more inside]
It's a Fanmade World
Vulture examines past and present trends in the world of fanfiction and searches for the answer to a mystery that has plagued fandom for years: Who is responsible for the best worst fanfiction of them all, "My Immortal"? [more inside]
Firefighters need more than boxer shorts for surf rescues
Wetsuit donation to SFFD honors man who dreamed of firefighting
The San Francisco firefighters who pull struggling swimmers from the Pacific Ocean were feeling quite toasty Thursday in their brand-new fire-engine-red wetsuits. "This is great," said firefighter Harry Higgins. "I can move my arms. And it’s really well insulated. I don’t have to wear any undies." Like other members of the water rescue unit, Higgins has been obliged to provide his own wetsuit, a cumbersome model designed for surfing and not swimming. On Thursday, the department received 40 hand-sewn, flexible swimmer’s wetsuits — a gift from the family of an aspiring firefighter who wanted to wear one and never did.[more inside]
Elia W. Peattie: Collecting the work of a 19th Century Author
The Nonpareil of Council Bluffs has a new editor who says uncomplimentary and fairly humorous things about the 'new woman' — which show him to be an 'old man.’Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862-1935) was an incredibly prolific journalist, novelist, playwright, poet, and short story writer during a time of great American change. Dr. Susanne George Bloomfield of the University of Nebraska (supported by the The Plains Humanities Alliance) has gathered a wide sampling of her work in this digital archive, adding context and historical reference to the original works. [more inside]
Hypnotic
Your pals Angela, Perry and Mario
Because Rickie Lee Jones is wonderful. Here's one good start to a Sunday: Rickie Lee and her good band live in Paris in 1983.
"This isn't funny anymore."
Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere.
“I have enough trouble keeping track of the whereabouts of one world leader,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “I would refer you to the Russians for questions on theirs. I’m sure they’ll be very responsive.”This is, in large part, a crisis of the Kremlin’s making. (Previously)
March 14
An Inconvenient Billionaire
How hedge-fund mogul Tom Steyer is using his checkbook to punish climate-change deniers, persuade Obama to halt the Keystone XL pipeline, and try to save the planet. [more inside]
Gene Gene the Dancing Machine has died
Eugene S. Patton, Sr., best known as "Gene Gene the Dancing Machine" on The Gong Show, has died at the age of 82. He had suffered from diabetes. [more inside]
Waltzing around
Might have to look closely
Tragedy at sea
September 8, 1934, the SS Morro Castle suffered a catastrophic fire, killing 135 people. Was a crewmember responsible?
Obscure, Mysterious, Delicious
The Bloods: Mutations, Chemistry and Flavor (PDF) Food writer and fruit detective David Karp covered blood oranges for Fruit Gardener, the magazine of the California Rare Fruit Growers .
“The dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North—ours all,”
The Long Twentieth Century by Drew Gilpin Faust [The New Yorker]
The American Civil War anticipated transformations often attributed to the years between 1914 and 1918.This essay is adapted from the Rede Lecture, which was delivered, earlier this year, at Cambridge University.
Too Hard to Keep
Photos that are too hard to keep "The following is a selection from the Too Hard to Keep submissions Jason Lazarus has received in the past year—responses to a request for photographs deemed too difficult to hold on to by their owners." A photo gallery from Vice. NSFW, some images disturbing. [more inside]
"YOU'RE NOT GOING TO WORK TODAY, THE CAMP IS BEING EVACUATED."
They are taking the Techniker...to Isengard
An electric door at the University of Mainz in Germany breaks down, setting off an exuberant meme-off. Because "One does not simply inform...the Techniker" . [more inside]
Jane Goodall's shadow
"In July 1960, Jane Goodall boarded a boat, and after a few hours motoring over the warm, deep waters of Lake Tanganyika, she stepped onto the pebbly beach at Gombe. Last summer, almost exactly 54 years later, Jane Goodall was standing on the same beach. The vast lake was still warm, the beach beneath her clear plastic sandals still pebbly. But nearly everything else in sight was different."
Mother Nature is most ruggedly, thornily savage.
Yo La Tengo and the WFMU All-Request Marathon 2015
The classics are still kicking, but Yo La Tengo promises to murderize them yet again. For the next not quite 3 hours, Yo La Tengo will be playing their annual marathon / pledgeathon for freefrom station WFMU. Listen! Previously. PLAYING RIGHT NOW: LOVE TRAIN.
How a Rumor Sent a Teen to Prison for Murder
"Show me another black man with a missing a penis and maybe we'll have something to talk about," Deputy DA Owens told the court. // Writing for The Intercept, Jordan Smith details the story of a woman, Kirstin Lobato, who was convicted for the brutal murder of a homeless man in Las Vegas. According to those who are working for Lobato's release, it is a "perfect storm of wrongful conviction. Everything that possibly could have been done incorrectly was done incorrectly." [NSFW: graphic descriptions]
Is the enthusiasm of the Internet FOR SCIENCE hurting real scientists?
That's the argument made by Ben Thomas earlier this week. Thomas charges that overenthusiastic viral sharing of half-baked scientific projects can make it more difficult for more well-planned projects to achieve success, particularly when high-profile crowdfunded projects go on to flop badly. Worse, the public backlash when real, messier science fails to live up to the flashy, unrealistic claims that media and social media hype blows up can have repercussions even for scientists who are funded by traditional grants. Signe Cane has a useful criticism of Thomas' piece with advice for non-specialists on how to try to separate cool things in real scientific work from cool things that are mostly hype and exaggerations. On the flip side of crowdfunding, Jacquelyn Gill shares her experience of using crowdfunding to fund her scientific research, ultimately concluding that it was a hell of a lot of work for relatively minimal payout. And Terry McGlynn, another ecologist, expresses some reservations about the effects of crowdfunding and other publicly marketed initiatives on science more broadly.
I got cosines / on a cloudy day
The goofy, lofi math music of Al G. Bra and friends: Pi Girl — Say That Funky Number, Math Guy — Mathonna's Mathematical Girl. Plus: a trailer for math thriller Live and Let Pi, featuring the title track by Paul DesCartney.
First there was Google Fight...
Now there is Google Feud. Alas, mugging for the camera by Steve Harvey not included.
agree to pretend that the balls just aren’t there
How 'Mad Men' Came To Be
"Don Draper lived on hard drives for half a decade before anybody paid him any notice. In 1999, Matthew Weiner, then an unfulfilled writer on CBS' Ted Danson sitcom Becker, spent his every off-hour doing research on the 1960s: what people wore, how they decorated their offices, what they ate and drank -" The story of how Mad Men went from a risky pitch to an unknown network to one of the most popular and celebrated dramas of the decade. (Hollywood Reporter) Bonus: Ten Mad Men Characters we need to see again. (Vulture)
There Is No ‘Proper English’
There Is No ‘Proper English’. From Oliver Kamm of The Times:
It’s a perpetual lament: The purity of the English language is under assault. These days we are told that our ever-texting teenagers can’t express themselves in grammatical sentences. The media delight in publicizing ostensibly incorrect usage. A few weeks ago, pundits and columnists lauded a Wikipedia editor in San Jose, Calif., who had rooted out and changed no fewer than 47,000 instances where contributors to the online encyclopedia had written “comprised of” rather than “composed of.” Does anyone doubt that our mother tongue is in deep decline?
Well, for one, I do. It is well past time to consign grammar pedantry to the history books.[more inside]
Chinchorro mummies and climate change
The Chinchorro mummies are found in northern Chile and southern Peru; the oldest of them date to thousands of years before the first Egyptian mummies. Some of them mummified naturally, but most were intentionally mummified. The hot, arid conditions of the Atacama desert aided in this process. However, these mummies are now the latest victims of climate change, as increased humidity encourages bacterial growth that is transforming them into black ooze.
Go it alone: solo hiking, backpacking and snow shoeing safely
A 500-mile solo hike cured my loneliness
It seemed reasonable to assume that trekking alone for 500 miles, in areas with no cell phone reception and few other hikers, might leave me lonelier than ever.Willow Belden writes on hiking alone in the always-connected digital age, reflecting on her time on the Colorado Trail. If hiking alone sounds like something you'd enjoy, you should probably start out a bit smaller and work up, and there are plenty of tips and guides for solo hiking and general hiking/outdoor safety (examples from Hiking Dude, Solo Friendly, Boundary Waters Canoe Area on solo backpacking, Snow Shoe Magazine on snow shoeing alone, a broad guide to hiking safety from Hiking Cape Townand a general guide to trekking in winter), but watch out for people touting adventure through irresponsible practices. Tell people where you're going and what you're doing, and if you get lost, stop, think, observe and plan to make sure you are thinking clearly and acting logically.
But loneliness and being alone are two different things. During the five weeks I spent on the trail, I felt less lonely than I have in years.
Celebrate Vi day.
Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Mote, and Mustardseed — in galvanized wire
Fantasywire: wire sculptures with a twist
Inspired by an inexplicable real life encounter, these galvanised or stainless wire sculptures make the perfect statement piece for the bottom of any garden. Every fairy is a handmade sculpture uniquely crafted to your desired pose and installation requirements.[more inside]
Biff! Pow! Zap! There are comics for kids once more
If we were to pick a Person Of The Year for 2014, I think it would be pretty obvious that it would have to be Raina Telgemeier who absolutely ruled the roost with the #1, 3 and 5th best-selling books ("Sisters," "Smile," and "Drama") through BookScan. And it is fairly certain that this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the New York Times reports that "Sisters" has printed more than 1.4 million copies so far, and it only came out in August of 2014!Raina Telgemeier, who on her own is responsible for 3.6 percent of all book sales reported through Bookscan, isn't the only one making a success of comics aimed at kids: the majority of the top 20 bestselling graphic novels are aimed at kids, Brian Hibbs shows.
"The Pueblo people orchestrated the unthinkable"
Frontera! Revolt and Rebellion on the Rio Grande (20:06; 2014) is an experimental animated documentary that briefly describes the Narváez, de Niza, Coronado, and Oñate expeditions en route to an account of Po'pay and the Pueblo Revolt. It features music by Greg Landau ("Women of the City" with Omar Sosa) with lyrics and vocals by Deuce Eclipse (SoundCloud; "Que Pasa" with J-Boogie).
Kutiman - Thru Tel Aviv
Kutiman (previously) has released Thru Tel Aviv, this time with a tool that allows you to create your own remixes.
March 13
People Who Live Forever: Indiana Jones’ Father, The Narrator in Borges’
TODD MAY
[PHILOSOPHER]
“In the seminar on death that I taught, there were moments where we were talking about death, and the class would just go quiet, because it was clear it was there in front of us… there wasn't really anything to say at that moment, because each of us just has to look." [more inside]
[PHILOSOPHER]
“In the seminar on death that I taught, there were moments where we were talking about death, and the class would just go quiet, because it was clear it was there in front of us… there wasn't really anything to say at that moment, because each of us just has to look." [more inside]
When your phone is also your doctor
The early days of Apple's ResearchKit software seem set to revolutionize clinical research recruitment, with one Parkinson's study enrolling thousands of people in just a few hours. Apple's new ResearchKit: 'Ethics quagmire' or medical research aid?, from The Verge, discusses some of the ethical quandaries surrounding recruitment for medical studies via mobile app. A follow-up article discusses some changes already made to the developer guidelines to address some of these concerns about informed consent and data sharing. Ars Technica covers the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory requirements for medical devices and how they may apply to mobile apps, including those using ResearchKit.
Five best moments
A nice collection of "Five best moments" at The Guardian:
"Each week readers help us pick five highlights from an actor's film career"
"Each week readers help us pick five highlights from an actor's film career"
You never blow yr trip forever
Daevid Allen, founder of Soft Machine and Gong, died today at age 77. It's very hard to describe his music - space rock, jazz-rock, prog-rock or some weird combination of all of them, but there was nothing quite like it. [more inside]
360° YouTube video
Time Couch is a VR demo video that plays on YouTube. Must be on Chrome or Android (SLYT).
Greece: Phase Two
Greek MP Costas Lapavitsas on the economic barriers ahead for Syriza and the challenges of eurozone exit "I want to come clean, and this a good venue to do it, and say the following: the obvious solution for Greece right now, when I look at it as a political economist, the optimal solution, would be a negotiated exit." [more inside]
Six degrees of breakfast proteins
Why do we still have tampons when we could invent tiny period-nano-bots?
"Couldn’t we come up with some nano “woombas” to suck up a couple of ounces of blood every month?" asks Kaleigh Rogers. Where, oh where, are our flashy, hi-tech menstruation solutions? After a hundred years of tampons, is it time to paint Silicon Valley red and develop some uterine upgrades?
Making sense of Matt Smith's 'Doctor Who' era
Pop culture website Cultbox has taken a stab at making sense of Matt Smith's tenure on "Doctor Who" by placing the events of the Eleventh Doctor's story in chronological order.
After a while, the circles begin to push YOU
This is a game where you push circles into other circles. This is a destructively massive time sink. You have been warned.
“Educated men are so impressive!”
Shakespeare in Tehran by Stephen Greenblatt [New York Review of Books]
"For more than four centuries now he has served as a crucial link across the boundaries that divide cultures, ideologies, religions, nations, and all the other ways in which humans define and demarcate their identities. The differences, of course, remain—Shakespeare cannot simply erase them—and yet he offers the opportunity for what he called “atonement.” He used the word in the special sense, no longer current, of “at-one-ment,” a bringing together in shared dialogue of those who have been for too long opposed and apart."
The growing pains of U.S. soccer’s dominant supporter’s group
In less than a decade, the Outlaws have become become the biggest and most influential force in U.S. national team fan culture, and it’s experiencing some growing pains. What began as a small idea started by three affable friends in Nebraska has become a movement with more than 34,000 people paying $25 per year to join the club. [more inside]
Ladies kindly remove your hats
Hot lava, hot lava
Azealia Banks offers an interactive experience for her song Wallace. Open in Chrome.
So what if Camus had made it to the cafe where Orwell was waiting?
One day in February 1945, in Paris, George Orwell waited at the café Deux Magots, where he was to meet Albert Camus for the first time."The Meeting That Never Was", an essay by Matthew Lamb in the LA Review of Books. [more inside]
During that same era, I had an insatiable addiction to Latin freestyle
Part 4 of an interview with noted video game developer M2, upon the completion of Outrun 3D, the latest on a series of 'SEGA 3D Classics', in which games from the golden era of arcades are meticulously ported to the Nintendo 3DS (!!) handheld system using a variety of interesting, fairly obsessive techniques. [more inside]
Does having "good posture" really matter?
Health-conscious people are haunted by the idea that they “should” correct their posture, and many fight a chronic, uncertain and tedious battle against crookedness. But is it necessary? After working as a massage therapist for many years, I became confident that poor posture is a “real” thing. I think it is sometimes a factor in chronic pain, mostly later in life, and probably can also be improved in some cases with a little effort. But it’s not a straightforward business, this posture stuff! There aren’t many “easy wins” for people here. And there’s plenty of potential to waste time and money — or even get hurt. Delving deeper into the topic as a journalist, studying the scientific literature and learning more from countless readers and experts, I have developed many reasonable doubts about posture’s importance.
still funk lord and queen after all
Groening and Barry Take New York (Sarah Larson, The New Yorker)
"In the early eighties, discovering non-mainstream culture (independent cinema, post-punk rock, comic strips that weren’t 'Beetle Bailey') was much like being a detective, and local alternative newsweeklies were valuable providers of clues. They reviewed art and music that was hard to find; most important, they printed Groening’s 'Life in Hell' and Barry’s 'Ernie Pook’s Comeek.' Both were electrifyingly good. You wondered who these people were, where they came from, why they did what they did. I remember the jolt I felt when looking at the copyright page of Groening’s book 'Love Is Hell' and seeing an odd message, like a note left in a knothole: LYNDA BARRY IS FUNK QUEEN OF THE GALAXY. Groening and Barry were friends!"
Well, San Francisco's right out...
Saving species is essentially a forever-type problem.
If other horses are the equivalent of feral dogs, then the Przewalski’s horse is a wolf. In its native Mongolia, where it goes by the name takhi, it is known as the father of horses. Mongolians regard the takhi as spiritual, holy animals, and for millennia they largely left them alone... The trouble all began in the late 19th century, when the Western world finally took note of the takhi. Nikolai Przewalski, a Polish-born explorer serving as a colonel in the Russian army, “discovered” the horses during an 1878 expedition to the Mongolian-Chinese frontier. Naturally, Przewalski named the horse after himself, and when he returned to the West, word quickly spread among zoos, adventurers, and curio collectors about the mysterious wild horses.
Moog schematics
The Bob Moog Foundation has posted schematics for various synthesiser odds and sods, some hand-drawn by Moog himself. Oddly attractive images even if (like me) you can't read a circuit diagram to save yourself.
NTP or Not NTP? That is the question.
The Network Time Protocol provides a foundation to modern computing. So why does NTP's support hinge so much on the shaky finances of one 59-year-old developer?
Wow, that literally costs an arm and a leg!
How much is your middle finger worth? A worker's comp breakdown by state.
"clothing is personal and everything has a story"
Clothes to Deploy for Uncomfortable Situations
Imagine this, you’re a start-up attending your first business card exchange. You’re in your zone, with speaking points ready to go and pockets stuffed with original laser cut business cards, but then the reality sets in. Everyone is already clustered in little groups conversing among themselves, and there you are left alone. It’s an awkward moment and suddenly you realize you aren’t as well prepared as you thought. Well, just deploy your mega cap sleeves to show them you’re boss, or activate your funnel neck collar to escape the embarrassment. It’s your clothing and you can command it. That’s the idea behind the Clothing for Moderns by Lea Albaugh.
More manly with two men
CRAZY PICTURES are a Swedish group of young comedians who produce short films. Their humour abuses tropes from all manner of genres, sometimes resulting in insightful social commentary, and sometimes just surreal silliness.
We shall lead off with the straight-played gender-swapping "Take Me" and the sequel "See Me", but there is so much more … (English subtitles may need to be manually activated.) [more inside]
Role-playing games and political economy in Brazil
A short history of gaming in Brazil: "To understand the history of gaming in Brazil dear reader, you must know a little bit about our political and economic history ... In 1991, a small publisher by the name of GSA published a roleplaying game called Tagmar [translation], often lauded as the first Brazilian RPG. ... They also released Desafio dos Bandeirantes, a game set in 17th century colonial Brazil using regional folklore instead of European myths, and a sci-fi game, Millenia [translation] ... In February 1994, the Brazilian authorities set in motion a major economic plan that invigorated the Brazilian economy for the first time since 1973. By March, the currency stabilized enough to assure the population (and companies) that their money would be worth the same by the end of the week ... The happy result for gamers was that companies started buying game licenses right and left."
Via. See also History of Brazilian RPGs, History of Brazilian RPG magazines, Role-playing games in education in Brazil: how we do it [PDF], and President Cardoso reflects on Brazil and sociology.
March 12
A Girl’s Guide to Sexual Purity
My friend Karla and I bought a book called And the Bride Wore White, a guide to remaining sexually pure. Three chapters of And the Bride Wore White are titled as follows: “Satan’s Big Fat Sex Lies,” “Satan’s Second Big Fat Sex Lie,” and “Satan’s Biggest, Fattest Sex Lie.” The book explained to me why condoms don’t work, why everyone isn’t “doing it,” and that oral sex is just as bad as intercourse. The author painstakingly outlined her own sexual foibles and missteps, honesty that I appreciated. I was ready to learn. I read the book steadily — during study breaks, walking through the hallways, before I went to sleep. Karla and I met at her house and talked about the different chapters while her mother brought us garden-grown beefsteak tomatoes that looked like hearts. We swore to strive for purity in every way possible. No more touching. No more being touchedCarmen Maria Machado writes about growing up, sexual assault, Christianity, family, realising your own queerness and more.
Writers, glass, Pliny the Elder, and family stories
Daniel Torday: A Writer in the Family
Are divisions of history arbitrary? Is it true they never coincide with eras of “artistic achievement”? What gets me on this first page of Glass in Antiquity isn’t so much the single-mindedness of that claim. It’s the one-sentence paragraph that follows: “For this reason it has been impossible not to overstep the bounds suggested by the title of this book.” It is not a question being asked. It’s an answer, and one of intention: There are moments, dear reader, in this book about ancient glass called Glass in Antiquity in which you’ll find … glass that’s not ancient.
Nothing to see here, just a new island
In December last year, the underwater volcano Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai began to erupt again. By January, an island had begun to form. Now three men have visited the island and taken the first pictures of the new island. More photos, including before/after aerial views showing the new fish-shaped island with its central lake of green. However, scientists warn the formation is unstable - the volcano may not have finished erupting.
First Ultra HD footage of the Himalayas
"The aerial cinema experts at Teton Gravity Research release the first ultra HD footage of the Himalayas shot from above 20,000 ft. with the GSS C520 system, the most advanced gyro-stabilized camera system in the world. Filmed from a helicopter with a crew flying from Kathmandu at 4,600 ft. up to 24,000 ft. on supplemental oxygen, these are some of the most stable, crisp, clear aerial shots of these mountains ever released, which include Mt. Everest, Ama Dablam, and Lhotse."
Harry Potter and the Very Long FanFic
It has taken nearly five years, but Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality [alternative link, previously] has reached its pre-penultimate chapter. The final chapter, 122, is due to post on March 14th, 2015 (Pi Day), at 9AM Pacific Time. Wrap parties are planned for many places across the world.
"No one cares about your problems if you're a shitty writer"
The Breakfast Club, Gratuitous Nudity, and John Hughes
How the Female Stars of The Breakfast Club Fought to Remove a Sexist Scene, and Won [Vanity Fair; excerpt from upcoming John Hughes biography]
Non biedt kat vis aan in ruil voor penis
Flaisch macht Flaisch: Instructions unclear, cat's got my dick. mlkshk and Reddit explain a 16th century German nun joke. [more inside]
The extraordinary life of Janet Vaughan
Douglas Starr, in Blood, quotes the British Secretary of War, asked in 1937 what the nation proposed to do about a mass blood supply. The secretary was dismissive. Blood could not be stored for long or in great quantities, he said. On the hoof was better. “It was more satisfactory to store our blood in our people.” Janet Vaughan did not agree, and Janet Vaughan did something about it. Her medical director gave her £100, and she sent off her assistants in taxis to find all the tubing that London shops could provide.Longreads profiles Janet Vaughan, a British scientist who found better treatments for anemia than arsenic using herself as a test subject, was a major force in creating London's first blood banks using cheap tubing and ice cream trucks, studied emergency nutrition in a post-liberation concentration Nazi death camp, and continued active research into blood and radiation into her eighties, while occasionally serving as a model for Virginia Woolf characters.
Ever Wonder what it's like to be a U.S. Navy Blue Angel?
Confessions of A U.S. Navy Blue Angel Gives you a firsthand account of how Commander Shaun "Linus" Swartz became a member of the U.S. Navy's Flight Demonstration Team, AKA the Blue Angels.
The scrub jays of Santa Cruz Island really love a good peanut.
This Jay Is Evolving in a Very, Very Weird Way. As she gathered more and more data on different populations of the island scrub jays around Santa Cruz Island, Katie Langin, a biologist at Colorado State University, had a revelation: The birds, members of one single species, had split into two varieties in different habitats. Ever since Darwin and his famous finches, biologists have thought that in order for a species to diverge into two new species, the two populations had to be physically isolated. Those finches, for instance, each live on a different Galapagos island, where their special circumstances have resulted in specialized bill shapes. Yet the two varieties of island scrub jay (they haven’t technically speciated—yet) live on the same tiny island. If they wanted to meet each other for a brunch of acorns and/or pine nuts and perhaps later some mating, they could just fly right over. [more inside]
Death Attends The Matinee
Tecmo Presents 1989 (is the name of my new band)
Although he's been out of the games industry for years, Keiji Yamagishi (known as the original composer for Ninja Gaiden[YT] and Tecmo Bowl[YT] among other soundtracks) has kept busy with work on ringtones and other music compositions. After contributing to a compilation put out by the game music label Brave Wave, he decided to put out a full album with label founder Mohammed Taher. You can listen to the first track on Soundcloud. (warning, may melt speakers/face) [more inside]
Magnetic reconnection, how does it work?
NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is set to lift off today, March 12, at 10:44 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. (NASA TV launch coverage) [more inside]
The Brief, Extraordinary Life of Cody Spafford
"He did terrible things but it did not define him as our friend and the person we knew" The Seattle Met explores the life of a loved and respected young man behind a tragic bank robbery attempt.
CBS brings you ....SUSPENSE!
Suspense was a thriller-style radio drama that ran on CBS from 1942 to 1962 and is widely considered to be one of the greatest Old Time Radio (or "Golden Age Of Radio") series and model for "The Twilight Zone". In addition to theme music by Bernard Herrmann and scripts by leading mystery authors of the day, Suspense also featured a stunning roll call of big-name Hollywood stars, often playing against type or in more lurid material then the movie studios would allow.
While nearly all 947 episodes are available online (exhaustively comprehensive previously) the sheer number of episodes can be daunting. Old Time Radio Review is halfway through the series with a convenient rating system to finding the best - why not enjoy these Youtube versions of a few episodes starring Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Robert Taylor, Orson Wells, Agnes Moorehead (again), Cary Grant, and more
Robert Downey Jr. Delivers a Real Bionic Arm
Meet Alex, a seven-year-old boy who loves superheroes and riding his bike. He was also born with a partially developed right arm. (SLYT)
The world's most dangerous hike
"The path, a meter wide, traverses the gorge at a height of over 100 meters above the torrents below ... Now the pathway is well over 100 years old and is at varying stages of decay. Several sections have fallen away entirely, leaving behind only the supporting iron bars." This is El Caminito del Rey, possibly the most dangerous hike in the world. A video of the hike. Another, this one in first-person and filled with butt-clenching moments. And another, in hi-def.
They Want to Privatize Paradise, the Anarchist Parking Lot
"You can’t remain static, or you go backward" Residents of Slab CIty (previously) debate how to handle the potential sale of state land. [more inside]
'She is a masculine looking woman, with a strong, unsympathetic face'
Over one hundred years ago, Lizzie Borden became infamous for supposedly brutally killing her parents with an ax. Few know that she was actually acquitted of the crime, and there was little evidence in fact suggesting that she had done it. Why was Lizzie maligned in history and the press? Some feminist interpretations, such as Carolyn Gage's, argue for another look at the story, suggesting that prejudice, not evidence, ruled the day. Fortunately for those interested, the advent of the internet has provided many opportunities for passionate scholarship and the presentation of evidence, providing the interested observer closer looks at the case, the trial [1] [2] , a potential plethora of suspects and at Lizzie herself.
She had taught a Sunday school class for Chinese men and had also taught classes for young women who worked in the mills. She participated in many women's groups at her church and had been a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, a hotbed of feminist organizing in its day. She had been elected a member of the board of the Fall River Hospital, a rare appointment for a woman, and in 1891 was a board member of the Good Samaritan Hospital... In other words, Lizzie had a full life outside the home at a time when employment opportunities for middle-class women were severely restricted.
Pie Fight '69: street theatrical as a soft bomb tossed in protest
"There are several ideas of what happened here this evening. It could have been a fantastic promotion stunt, or a demonstration against the film establishment, but a lot of people think it was actually a motion picture being produced here at the film festival. The only thing sure is that the 13th annual San Francisco Film Festival got off to a smashing start." That's a bit of reporter humor, which accurately captures the diverse goals and ideas behind Pie Fight '69, a most memorable yet virtually forgotten piece of San Francisco's cinema history. The film from a half dozen cameras, run by members of Grand Central Station independent film collective, was lost until 1999. The rediscovered film was cut into a short documentary, which you can see on Archive.org, YouTube, and Vimeo.
"Math and science do prove useful." (Having a Swiss Army Knife helps.)
#16: Used a magnifying glass made of a hairpin and wine to read names of spies from a watch.A list of all the problems solved by MacGyver [more inside]
"To all the men who turned their misogyny into a game"
"What I couldn't say" by Anita Sarkeesian, part of the "What I couldn't say" session at the All About Women Festival at the Sydney Opera House this week [more inside]
What can we do better as a community in these cases?
Coding Like a Girl - sailor mercury at Medium:
"Apparently, presenting as feminine makes you look like a beginner. It is very frustrating that I will either look like not a programmer or look like a permanent beginner because I have programmed since age 8. I have basically always wanted to be a programmer. I received undergrad and grad degrees from MIT. I’ve worked as a visiting researcher in Honda’s humanoid robotics division on machine learning algorithms for ASIMO.[more inside]
"I don’t think that any of these things make me a better programmer; I list them because I am pretty sure that if i were a white man with these credentials or even less than these credentials no one would doubt my programmer status."
Coming up with a derby name is the easy part
Body By Derby is a figure study of active derby athletes. No nudity, but may be NSFW anyway. [more inside]
Irish Women Writers
A grand parade of terrific female Irish writers, put together by the Irish Times. Complete with poster (pdf) (an earlier version)
What labor songs might Captain America have known?
Then I thought, hrm, a lot of what I know out of the Little Red Songbook is quite possibly more recent: what portion of it would Steve know? Long story short (you should all know how I roll by now), this has led to a week of researching the shit out of things to date particular songs, then listening carefully to as many versions of them as I could find to find the version that would be closest to the version Steve would've known it as. And the next thing I knew, I had a mix.
The First Chinese-American Movie Star
Anna May Wong was the first Chinese-American movie star, first appearing as an extra in 1919. Her first leading role came in 1922's Toll of the Sea, the first color feature made in Hollywood. She continued appearing in films until 1960, the year prior to her death. [more inside]
Terry Pratchett, 66. He aten't dead, in our hearts.
Terry Pratchett, best known for the Discworld series consisting of about 40 books, died today after a long, well publicized battle with Alzheimer's in which he's also been outspoken on right to die issues.
Let's go exploring!
Bill Watterson, the famously reclusive creator of Calvin & Hobbes, has given his longest interview to date, to be published in the exhibition catalog for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum's exhibit, Exploring Calvin & Hobbes.
"The most important thing I did was listen."
What's the scariest thing in the world? Ask your teenage daughter. Ninja Pizza Girl is a game from independent game studio Disparity Games.
I’m pitching my idea for "baddies" to the Disparity Games design think tank. It consists of me, my wife and however many of our daughters happen to be in the room at the time.… Raven looks up. "Robots aren’t scary Dad.… Zombies aren’t scary either."[more inside]
I’m getting a little tetchy with this unreceptive design group. I ask Raven, "So what are teenage girls scared of?"
Raven thinks for a moment. She looks sad. "Other teenagers," she says.
Who forgot to put gas in the car‽
Three years ago, for the 50th birthday of the interrobang, a punctuation mark combining both the shape and the meaning of a question mark and an exclamation mark, Nora Maynard interviewed Penny Spekter, the widow of its creator, about typography and working as a woman in advertising in the 1960s. [more inside]
March 11
drugs, sex, greed, grotesque behavior: it could only be opera, right?
In 2011, Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Anna Nicole premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. The story is based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith. [more inside]
Roads? Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads.
The Obama administration is investigating allegations that two senior Secret Service agents, including a top member of the president’s protective detail, drove a government car into White House security barricades after drinking at a late-night party last week, an agency official said Wednesday.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told CNN that his initial understanding is that the two agents were "partying in Georgetown" when they responded to an incident at the White House. Mr. Chaffetz added: “It’s never good to be drunk at work, especially if you are in the Secret Service.”
House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz told CNN that his initial understanding is that the two agents were "partying in Georgetown" when they responded to an incident at the White House. Mr. Chaffetz added: “It’s never good to be drunk at work, especially if you are in the Secret Service.”
The days are long, the years are short
Paul Kalanithi, writer and neurosurgeon, has died. A non-smoker, Kalanithi was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2013 but still managed to raise money for lung cancer awareness, worked to provide resources for doctors to educate them about palliative care. He and his wife, Lucy, also had a daughter who "filled a dying man’s days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more, but rests, satisfied". He also wrote moving articles (and previously) that have resonated with many, patients and doctors alike.
Creating breasts that look and move naturally in games
31 passes and a half-court set shot, nothing but net (SLTY)
What did basketball look like during the great depression? No bounce passes. Underhand freethrows. An actual key-shaped "key." Halftime scores of 4 (home) to 6 (visitors). Live footage of "the rubber band legs of Thorton's single male cheerleader." I'm addicted. 1932 through 1936 Illinois High School Association basketball tournaments footage
Make Acid
Families of the dead ultimately received $5,000 each, plus one goat.
Veronica Lake and Gooseneck Trailers: McPhee Ponders Points of Reference
In an essay for the New Yorker, John McPhee (previously, previously, and previously) reflects on the points of reference writers choose in order to illuminate their topics, sometimes to the annoyance of readers. "Mention Beyoncé and everyone knows who she is. Mention Veronica Lake and you might as well be in the Quetico-Superior." Frame of Reference: To illuminate—or to irritate? [more inside]
I have no idea how these people got their stones wedged into their walls
How Finding a Fat YA Heroine Changed My Life
I’ve been reading for, it feels like, as long as I have had sentience and consciousness, and it has taken me my entire life to meet someone in a book who looked like me and felt the same way I do and has struggled with some of the things I have struggled with, and is still loved.Kaye Toal at Buzzfeed on finally meeting a fat girl in young adult fiction, at the age of 23. Contains spoilers for Eleanor and Park and Harry Potter.
Hozier Tiny Desk Concert
Hozier is plugged into the big thing that connects us all. This is smoking hot. A unique and intelligent singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist who cites James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Leonard Cohen, John Lee Hooker, and community choral singing among his influences, Hozier (his stage and performing name) was born Andrew Hozier-Byrne on March 17, 1990 in Bray, County Wicklow, Ireland. [more inside]
It's your privilege, and you're entitled to every cent of that sale.
Come again?
“I don’t think the Dalai Lama would mind if you saw this through the prism of Monty Python,” said Robert Barnett, director of the modern Tibetan studies program at Columbia University. Zhu Weiqun, a Communist Party official who has long dealt with Tibetan issues, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that the Dalai Lama had, essentially, no say over whether he was reincarnated. That was ultimately for the Chinese government to decide, he said, according to a transcript (in Chinese) of his comments on the website of People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper.
Slippers, shovels or flat caps need not apply
We want plates is a Twitter account which shares people's pictures of food being served on things which aren't plates. What kind of things? Shopping trolleys, washing lines, and picnic tables as well as the more normal boards and slates. As seen on Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and many fine news sites.
Titchmarsh vs Pterry
When British daytime TV and geek heroes collide... a collection of youtube interviews with various sf, horror, fantasy people such as Terry Pratchett, several Dr Whos and William Shatner on various lightweight UK tv chatshows from years past
"fabrics and furnitures and experiences to which I will never belong"
Censorship at the symphony
The New York Youth Symphony has been accused of censorship after canceling a piece that quotes the Horst Wessel Song. The youth orchestra said on Tuesday it was canceling the premiere of Marsh u Nebuttya, a nine-minute work by Jonas Tarm, after the organization realized the piece contains a 45-second snippet of the “Horst Wessel” song, the Nazi anthem. Tarm is a third-year composition student at the New England Conservatory of Music; the piece is said to pay tribute to victims of totalitarianism and war by incorporating brief historical themes from the Soviet era and Nazi Germany.
The New York Times also reports.
The Notorious D.I.N.O.
Earl Sinclair performs "Hypnotize". SLYT, NSFW
The 1951 GM Le Sabre.
“From the beginning, the Le Sabre was conceived as Harley Earl’s personal automobile, and Earl held a (generally accurate) belief that if he liked something, the American public would also like it.” Sleek, airplane inspired, and innovative, the 1951 GM Le Sabre is often held to be the most influential concept car of the 20th Century. [more inside]
How Silicon Valley (WANTS to) Shape(s) Our Future
'ARE YOU READY TO GO INTO THE SEX BOX?'
Sex Box: [YouTube]
Sex Box: A television show where people have sex in a box and three total strangers gossip about their box sex.via: The Verge
well-written instruction manual & large, folded color map 🌏
"Some games make an enormous impact on you when you play them, and time and technology do little to diminish that impact. I feel that way about quite a few games: Elite, Super Mario Bros, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time are three that immediately come to mind. Secret of Mana is without question a fourth." [more inside]
You just might stop to check this out
Violent Femmes have just released "Love, Love, Love, Love," their first new song in 15 years. It's one of four songs from their new EP, Happy New Year, scheduled to be released in June.
"If Kubla Khan built his pleasure dome in St. Francois County...
...it might look something like this." Located in Missouri, Bonne Terre was an active mine until the early 1960s. In 1980, Doug and Cathy Goergens purchased it, flooded the 88 miles of passages on its three lowest levels, and turned into a scuba diving destination. Guests can take guided diving tours along dozens of underwater trails, past mining carts and other abandoned equipment.
Habibi funk
“I got to travel a lot in North Africa in the last years through touring with Blitz the Ambassador,” Jannis writes on his Soundcloud page, “and the studio session with Oddisee for Sawtuha in Tunisia. While being there, I did some digging and found some incredible music from the ’60s and ’70s. Some of the music in this mix has zero info on the Net, was never sold on eBay, and has not been ‘rediscovered’ yet. Others are somewhat classics in the field of ‘Arabic groove.’ The music in this mix comes from Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon, and Syria.”
The Kitchen Bladesmith
Kramer first became fascinated by sharpening when he was in his early twenties, hopping from restaurant to restaurant as a prep cook. In each kitchen, he found chefs who knew almost nothing about knives. (At many restaurants, in fact, the chefs got their knives sharpened by an old-timer who would drop by once a month to tune up knives in his van. For the next week, a lot of band-aids got used.) "These are our main tools," Kramer recalls thinking. "Why don't we know how to take care of them?"
Adult Wednesday Addams
How Wednesday Addams Would React To Catcalling went viral a few weeks ago with its darkly-humorous, sweet-revenge take on the issue. But it's only one episode of Melissa Hunter's "Adult Wednesday Addams" webseries - and season 2 concludes today. [more inside]
10 of the Safest Major Cities Around the World
For the Safe Cities Index 2015, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) ranked 50 of the world's biggest cities on:
Digital security: Identity theft, online privacy
Health security: Environment, air and water quality
Infrastructure safety: Buildings, roads, bridges
Personal safety: Crime, violence
Lifehacker looks at the results. [more inside]
Digital security: Identity theft, online privacy
Health security: Environment, air and water quality
Infrastructure safety: Buildings, roads, bridges
Personal safety: Crime, violence
Lifehacker looks at the results. [more inside]
Porntopia
Grantland's Molly Lambert visits the Adult Video News awards (SFW if you're worried about images, possibly NSFW if you're worried about text). [more inside]
"Diversity fuels conversation and creativity"
“You Are Welcome Here”: Small Stickers Make a Big Difference for LGBTQ Scientists
Upon entering, I immediately noticed tiny stickers dotting the halls: the iconic WHOI ship, sailing in front of a rainbow sky over the words, “You are welcome here.” I can’t describe how powerful it was to see those welcome messages on the office doors of scientists’ whose work had inspired me to pursue biological oceanography – in a building commemorating an oceanographer, Alfred C. Redfield, who discovered a conserved atomic ratio between carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus that I think about in my research every day. The ship stickers are small, maybe even easy to miss if you’re not attuned, but they packed a punch strong enough to rid me of my worries. I left the Redfield Building with renewed vigor, confident about what I was pursuing, only worried about feet that were literally wet, but not figuratively.
video: Def Leppard unplugged, 1995
In 1995, Def Leppard did a short tour supporting their first compilation album, Vault. This intimate pub gig in their hometown of Sheffield was recorded, and features some really well-executed acoustic renditions of some of their biggest hits, as well as a sensitive Bowie cover. Two Steps Behind -- Armageddon It -- When Love and Hate Collide -- Animal -- Pour Some Sugar On Me -- Ziggy Stardust. A post-grunge Def Leppard, with Joe Elliot looking like an older version of Kurt Cobain, drummer Rick Allen comfortable behind a fully acoustic drum kit, and then-newish guitarist Vivian Campell (now in his 23rd year with the band) on board. Joe's vocals are dropped a couple of vocals, and highly-polished Hysteria-era songs are thoughtfully re-imagined.
A system that offers no resolution
The Sound of Empty Space is an installation by Adam Basanta that explores ideas around silence, amplification and feedback.
March 10
Can any of you old-timers confirm or deny this or have any recollection?
The Quantified Hive
The Urban Bee Project builds bee hives kitted out with a wide array of sensors, and uses the gathered data to visualize the state of the hive. Includes great visualizations of the sound of the hive, and timelapse of bees building their combs from inside the hive.
JackDurden.com
Media consumption habits of liberals and conservatives in US
When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. The project – part of a year-long effort to shed light on political polarization in America – looks at the ways people get information about government and politics in three different settings: the news media, social media and the way people talk about politics with friends and family. In all three areas, the study finds that those with the most consistent ideological views on the left and right have information streams that are distinct from those of individuals with more mixed political views – and very distinct from each other. [more inside]
I wonder if he lives in a valley?
The new host of Q has been announced! It's Shad / Shadrach Kabango. Some coverage at the Globe and the Mothership. [more inside]
The lines just got blurrier.
In a move that will delight people who hate Robin Thicke but dismay those who care about limiting the scope of copyright, Thicke and co-writer Pharrell Williams have been ordered to pay the Gaye family $7.3 million for infringement based on stylistic similarities between "Blurred Lines" and "Got To Give It Up."
Living off the grid: portraits
Since 2010, photographer Antoine Bruy has travelled from the Pyrenees to Romania tracking down urban refuseniks
No, Mr Abbott, we are sick of cruelty*
The UN has released a report finding that Australian policies may breach the international convention against torture. Prime Minister Tony Abbott's response? "I really think Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations." * Not so much. Meanwhile, thousands of letters of support to detainees in Nauru have been returned, undelivered. [more inside]
We are the world...
It's been a long winter, everyone's a little loopy, and that's probably as good a reason as any for the Internet to have delved into the 30th anniversary of "We Are the World" a bit more (and more entertainingly) than strictly necessary: [more inside]
Jeremy Clarkson suspended by the BBC.
Jeremy Clarkson has been suspended by the BBC ater allegedly aiming a punch at a BBC producer. He was already on a final warning, after a series of incidents where he embarrassed the BBC. The final three episodes of the current series have been pulled pending an investigation.
How Reddit Became a Worse Black Hole of Violent Racism than Stormfront
The world of online hate, long dominated by website forums like Stormfront and its smaller neo-Nazi rival Vanguard News Network (VNN), has found a new — and wildly popular — home on the Internet. [NSFW racist language]
Keegan Hanks of the Southern Poverty Law Center discusses racism on the "front page of the internet".
Keegan Hanks of the Southern Poverty Law Center discusses racism on the "front page of the internet".
Graphic Journalism
The phone rang. It was my college rapist. (TW) "a comic account of my friend’s sexual assault in college. 33 years after the incident, she received a phone call from her assailant." [more inside]
We Can Remember It for You Wholesale
The Guardian: Researchers at CRNS in Paris have created artificial positive feelings in a mouse’s memory for first time during sleep, highlighting a possible new treatment for depression. In the study, positive feelings about a particular place were artificially written into the animal’s memory, which caused them to seek out that place in search of a reward when they woke up. [more inside]
He's the one who sucks.
Pop singer and extremely talented ass-clown Michael Bolton has shown his comedy chops before in his collaboration with The Lonely Island (previously). Now he takes his place in a role that was literally named for him.
Wikimedia v. NSA
Today, the Wikimedia Foundation is filing suit against the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) of the United States. The lawsuit challenges the NSA’s mass surveillance program, and specifically its large-scale search and seizure of internet communications — frequently referred to as “upstream” surveillance.
Let's go sunning / It's so good for you
Leafy, verdant Elysia chlorotica (the Eastern Emerald Elysia) is a sea slug with a secret: they photosynthesize. These marauding mollusks slurp up chloroplasts from their favorite algal snack, Vaucheria litorea, incorporating them into their own digestive cells and putting them to work soaking up sunshine (and, incidentally, acquiring a healthy green glow). But how? [more inside]
Pink Slimer for girls, blue Slimer for boys...
Don't Worry, Be Happy
Playing for Change presents a video of children around the world performing the Bobby McFerrin classic. PFC works with local community groups to "inspire and connect the world through music". Some of their initiatives include helping to create a new music school in Cajuru, Brazil, providing resources to the Mother’s Society in Tintale, Nepal who help educate women and girls about their rights through music drama and dance, and a music program for children in the slums of Khlong Toey, Bangkok. They also create videos of performances by musicians around the world, like this fantastic version of Guantanamera performed by 75 Cuban musicians from Havana and Santiago to Miami, Barcelona and Tokyo. [more inside]
Why don't rodents vomit?
A few years ago, it occurred to a few scientists that neither mice or rats are capable of vomiting. What about other rodents? It turns out that being unable to vomit is a trait common to all rodents, not just mice and rats. Interests piqued, the researchers set out to find out why.
"The fact that she is still in jail is the prosecutor."
Cherelle Baldwin has been in prison for 21 months for killing her abuser, despite the fact that a Connecticut jury refused to convict her of the crime. [more inside]
Shitphone: a Love Story
Gods and Gopniks
Simply said, we have reached a moment in Western history when, despite all appearances, no meaningful public debate over belief and unbelief is possible. Not only do convinced secularists no longer understand what the issue is; they are incapable of even suspecting that they do not understand, or of caring whether they do. David Bentley Hart on Adam Gopnik's review of the state of theism and atheism.
The Great 2015 Indie Press Review
"The feature began originally as an idea born from a discussion online with a number of indie press editors, authors, and readers about the deluge of 'best-of' and 'most anticipated' features and how the majority of these articles continue to be disproportionately favorable to the larger publishing houses. A lot gets lost in transit among the smaller presses, and I wondered why this was the case; the question I asked had been, Why wasn’t there a comprehensive gathering of what the indie community has to offer?" [more inside]
Power85 - your source for non-stop synth
Power 85 is non stop streaming of the best dreamwave, synthpop, outrun, and neo retro 80s music, featuring instant requests. (previously)
“...characters arise out of our need for them.”
It looks like a brain...
The Heslington Brain is a well-preserved 2600 year old brain that was found in an Iron Age excavation site in York in 2008. Its preservation was likely due to the low-oxygen environment of the mud in which it was found. The fact that the man was decapitated and the body disposed of elsewhere protected the brain from the ravages of gut bacteria as well. [more inside]
Karzai's life is split between Baltimore and his native Afghanistan
Last September, Hamid Karzai, the outgoing president of Afghanistan, made a number of disparaging remarks about U.S. involvement in that country. “America did not want peace for Afghanistan because it had its own agendas and goals here,” he said after pointedly leaving the U.S. out of the group of countries he thanked for helping during the course of his largely U.S.-backed administration. John Oliver, the former “Daily Show” correspondent, responded on his HBO show “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” by reading a series of negative Yelp reviews of The Helmand, one of the four Baltimore restaurants owned by Qayum Karzai, the president’s older brother.
“It was a funny joke,” Qayum says, pulling up in front of the restaurant in what he calls his “mujahideen Jeep—because you can only jump in and jump out.”
“They did not do their due diligence,” he adds. “It is known to everybody that my politics is not the same as my brother. I’m sorry that [Oliver] is thinking about collective guilt. My brother is a different person.”
The Indo-European Wars
Over the past few years, some researchers have been arguing using mathematical tree-building and dating techniques, that the Indo-Europeans originated in Anatolia. In an article [.pdf] in the latest issue of Language, a group of historical and computational linguists using similar techniques say otherwise . [more inside]
"the uncanniness of recorded music"
For a hip-hop fan, listening to ’60s and ’70s soul albums means regularly encountering familiar breaks. When I first heard “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)” by the Chi-Lites, I immediately recognized the horns and drums from Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love.” While I understand that, logically, the breaks in the Beyoncé song are really from the Chi-Lites, I still hear them as “belonging” to Beyoncé’s producer Rich Harrison.In the first of four posts about music composition, Ethan Hein looks at sampling, hiphop, copyright, the moral rights of artists and the idea that breaks only exists once they're used by a producer, starting out from “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and CL Smooth.
Peace as an existential threat.
The recent Republican letter to Iran has received an impressive, diplomatically amusing response on Twitter from Iran's Foreign Minister, in which he schools the Republican Party on the intricacies of international law and the US Constitution.
The letter, penned by a freshman senator who recently advocated regime change and an end to talks with Iran, appears to have violated the Logan Act, but probably can't be prosecuted. President Obama's response was short and classic.
Not suitable for corsage or boutonniere
Secrets of the orchid mantis revealed – it doesn’t mimic an orchid after all
In his 1879 account of wanderings in the Orient, the travel writer James Hingston describes how, in West Java, he was treated to a bizarre experience:[more inside]I am taken by my kind host around his garden, and shown, among other things, a flower, a red orchid, that catches and feeds upon live flies. It seized upon a butterfly while I was present, and enclosed it in its pretty but deadly leaves, as a spider would have enveloped it in network.What Hingston had seen was not a carnivorous orchid, as he thought. But the reality is no less weird or fascinating. He had seen – and been fooled by – an orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, not a plant but an insect.
American academics read too much Hegel
The Importance of Compost -- Lots of Compost
Writing for The Guardian, Charles Eisenstein argues that regenerative agriculture is crucial to an effective response to climate change, which in his view includes both technological and philosophical shifts: [more inside]
March 9
The Three Casino Royales, spanning the history of James Bond
The first James Bond on film is a forgettable character, from a time when the US wasn't so sure about Ian Fleming's first story, Casino Royale, and US publishers went to so far as to re-title the story to try and increase sales. In fact, the 1954 hour-long live teleplay was largely forgotten, lost until the 1970s when it was re-discovered at a flea market. "Card Sense" Jimmy Bond was portrayed as an American, played by Barry Nelson, who didn't know much about the character. The rights for the story was picked up inexpensively, produced as one of many stories in the Climax! anthology program. You can watch it online, and compare this 1954 production against the two other film versions of Casino Royale, the 1967 spy-spoof that came out just before the fifth serious Bond spy film, and the 2006 "canonical" version from EON Productions, the makers of the Official Bond movies.
Forgetting Fear
Repairing Bad Memories
[Daniela Schiller] explained how recent research, including her own, has shown that memories are not unchanging physical traces in the brain. Instead, they are malleable constructs that may be rebuilt every time they are recalled. The research suggests, she said, that doctors (and psychotherapists) might be able to use this knowledge to help patients block the fearful emotions they experience when recalling a traumatic event, converting chronic sources of debilitating anxiety into benign trips down memory lane. And then Schiller went back to what she had been doing, which was providing a slamming, rhythmic beat on drums and backup vocals for the Amygdaloids(previously), a rock band composed of New York City neuroscientists.[more inside]
The Lauren Bacall Collection
When the late Lauren Bacall's long time apartment at the Dakota was listed for $26 million in November, the photos accompanying the listing were drab, showing the apartment after it had been stripped of nearly all of the actress's possessions - new photos from the upcoming Bonham's auction show how the three bedroom apartment looked during the 50-odd years Bacall lived there.
Like Serial? You'll love The Jinx.
As HBO's "The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst" airs, the LA district attorney reopens the inquiry into the death of Robert Durst friend Susan Berman [more inside]
Dandy Jim And The Bodysnatchers--And Many Other Bodysnatcher Stories
Here's the story of "Dandy Jim" and the bodysnatchers . This is from a blog dedicated to telling the stories of these less than savoury characters .
A New Hope For Radio
let it go?
Who Farts? And Who Cares? "Sociologists Martin Weinberg and Colin Williams wanted to know. They and their team interviewed 172 college students about their habits and concerns about farting and pooping. They published their results in an article called Fecal Matters. They discovered that everybody farts and everybody cares, but not everyone cares all the time or equally." [more inside]
Walmart.horse: Postmodern Dadaism meets Corporate Takedown Notice
Why Is Walmart Upset with a Guy for Photoshopping This Picture of a Horse in Front of One of Its Stores? He was hanging out with some friends in July when they came across .horse and thought it was pretty much the funniest top-level domain one could own. So Jacques started checking periodically to see what big companies hadn't purchased their .horse domain yet and came across Walmart.
"I thought, 'Alright I'm gonna buy this and do something stupid with it and see what happens," he told me. And readers, he did just that. [more inside]
more weight than so much of what is printed on paper
Founded by celebrated poet and White House guest Kenneth Goldsmith, Ubuweb for years has been housing massive gigabites of work that exists outside the lines—from audio archives of rare performances by avant-garde musicians and video artists, known and unknown, to whole lifetimes of textual and interpretative work dug up and given new life online. -- Vice on how Ubu Publishes the Unpublishable. [more inside]
The Wheels of (the Department of) Justice Turn Slowly
The Department of Justice has postponed its NPRM on the accessibility requirements of websites for places of public accommodations under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, from March 2015 to June 2015. The NPRM for accessibility requirements of government websites was due in December 2014. [more inside]
A collection of short pieces on Russia's female creatives
International Women's Day was yesterday, but every day is a good day for reading about women cinematographers, photographers, fashion designers and chefs! The Calvert Journal presents here a number of past articles on contemporary Russian women in various creative professions, noting that, "someday, in an equal world, we wouldn’t need a special day to celebrate their achievements".
If they don't allow this to happen, the players, it doesn't happen.
An oral history of the 2009-10 Kentucky basketball season. Before those guys, the narrative on "one-and-done" basketball players was almost always the same. The kids were selfish and egotistical, using college only as a place to pad their stats before inevitably departing for the NBA. They didn't care about their team or their school, or class at all; heck, the commonly held belief was that most kids stopped attending classes after the first semester (if they went at all). As it turned out, one-and-done players could come to a school, play hard, work as a team, go to class and win big.
Women of the Supreme Court in Lego
The women justices of the Supreme Court, represented in Lego. More pictures here.
Not a commercially available set, unfortunately, but a custom design by Maia Weinstock. Maia's other Lego projects include scientists, album covers, and this infographic on gender representation in minifigs.
R.I.P Sam Simon
Sam Simon, writer, producer, philanthropist and co-creator of The Simpsons has passed away of colorectal cancer at the age of 59. Previously.
Women working with music technology
There's somehow a notion out there that women don't make their own electronic music. In a recent interview with Bjork in Pitchfork, she brought up an instance of sexism she's dealt with for decades: journalists hardly ever credit her with composing and producing her own music. Since she's not being photographed in the studio working at her computer, the men she collaborates with end up getting all the credit. She cites MIA and Missy Elliott as other examples of this phenomenon. The tumblr female:pressure attempts to counteract this. "Here we offer a visual catalogue of female producers, DJ’s, media artists and electronic music Performers at work. These are not our press photos. This is a collective effort to demonstrate women and their use of technology in music and media production." It's also just a fantastic collection of electronic musicians, many of whom have been overlooked. Further discussion from Create Digital Music.
H&R Block: Working Hard to Gouge the Lower Class
H & R Block's lobbyists shaped the Affordable Care Act behind closed doors. Now they're advertising heavily on the premise that "no one can understand" the ACA (aka Obamacare) tax filing requirements. [more inside]
Engineering the Perfect Baby
The Infinity Library
The Infinity Library. A short story about libraries, inspired by Discworld.
0h n0, another time waster
0h n0 is a game of logical deduction where each dot in a grid can only exist in the same row or column as a certain number of like-colored dots. The game will give you specific pieces of information about how many like-colored dots a single dot can "see", and you must deduce the remaining grid of dots. It's from the same people who brought us the zen-like logic game 0h h1 (previously). [more inside]
I Really Really Really Like You
Bittersweet
Since the late 19th century, the amount of her writing we have access to has more than doubled and our views of sexuality have changed, leading to constant modern reexamination of one of the greatest poets the world has ever seen: Who was Sappho? And just how much does her sexuality and her personal life matter to a discussion of her work?
Some ancient writers assumed that there had to have been two Sapphos: one the great poet, the other the notorious slut. There is an entry for each in the Suda. The uncertainties plaguing the biography of literature’s most famous Lesbian explain why classicists who study Sappho like to cite the entry for her in Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig’s “Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary” (1979). To honor Sappho’s central position in the history of female homosexuality, the two editors devoted an entire page to her. The page is blank. . . . Even as we strain to hear this remarkable woman’s sweet speech, the thrumming in our ears grows louder.Previously: Metafilter (awesomely) tackles the newly discovered "Brothers Poem" in real time.
Videos of Pre-Industrial Crafts
In case you haven't had your fill of pre-industrial craftsmanship in a while, watch some videos of folks at Colonial Williamsburg & Jamestown doing their things:
A gunsmith, a silversmith,
a cabinet maker, and a glass blower. [more inside]
Star Trek V: Kirk manoeuvres his way into the director's chair
In response to a perhaps unsurprising takedown of Spock in the wake of Leonard Nimoy's death from the Washington Free Beacon, Daniel Drezner at the Washington Post takes a hard look at the career of Captain Kirk (with a particular focus on the films), the neo-conservative's more obvious spirit animial. Kirk doesn't come out looking very good. [more inside]
the beauty of the visual arts for those unable to see them
“It’s an unbelievable sensation,” Mr. González said. “I’m feeling this painting down to the detail of each fingernail.” (SLNewYorker)
Men make their own brackets, but they do not make them as they please.
Marx Madness: The ultimate war of all against all. We start with 64 Marxists competing one-on-one in 32 match-ups. These elimination rounds continue every week throughout March until only one thinker is left.
WHAT HAPPENED ARE YOUR LITTLE BOOBIES LEAKING?
Tales of Whoa: My attempt to document a lifetime of embarrassments and missteps. [via mefi projects]
New scrutiny on re-homing of adopted kids
"Re-homing" is the largely unregulated practice by which parents of adopted children in the U.S. hand over those children to new families, with little or no government oversight. While some states started cracking down last year, the issue has gained new attention with the story of Arkansas Representative Justin Harris and his wife. They adopted a pair of girls, 3 and 6, who proved more troublesome than they seemed. Harris and his wife gave the girls to a worker in the religious school he owned, who subsequently raped the 6-year-old. The girls' previous foster family has now raised questions about Harris' story. [Previously, a 2013 Reuters investigation: The Child Exchange - Inside America's underground market for adopted children] [more inside]
This wall pees back!
In Hamburg, some walls are now treated with a special hydrophobic paint that discourages public urination. [more inside]
Speed skating on Lake Michigan
It was a "brief window of opportunity," the Lake Michigan ice smooth as a rink and the red lighthouse of Grand Haven, Mich. beckoning under a blue sky.
April Chernoby, a member of the West Michigan Speedskating Club, donned her skates and camera and took a spin along the shoreline last week, reaching speeds up to 20 mph.
“I mean, would you hire a chef who never fried an egg?”
Cabbies’ Street Knowledge Takes Back Seat [New York Times]
New York cabbies have long had to face a rigorous set of geography questions on the test they must pass to get a license. Now those questions have disappeared.Related: Who Needs a GPS? A New York Geography Quiz
The Curtain of Distraction
Imagine if you will: a curtain is pulled back just to the left of the basketball goal, and two unicorns are there aggressively making out. Perhaps they’re wearing tutus. Meanwhile, you are supposed to be making your free throws, or getting ready to rebound a missed free throw. You must be playing a basketball game at Arizona State, for that is the Curtain of Distraction (warning: auto-playing video). [more inside]
Pour Some Sugar On Me
A free to play DayZ/Minecraft mashup is Steam's most popular 2014 game
What is the most popular Steam game of 2014? The answer may surprise you, as it's a free to play game made by sixteen year old Nelson Sexton. (In totally unsurprising news, the game with the most hours played per user is Football Manager 2015.)
Enjoy, explore, berate or dismiss
Today is the official start of the 2015 Tournament of Books, an annual event where readers get fighty about books, vote for zombies, and eventually someone takes home a live rooster. The first round pits David Mitchell’s Booker-nominated The Bone Clocks against Adam, the debut prose novel of cartoonist Ariel Schrag.
My dreams to form a quartet named "Fried Donut Assault" lives on
Is This Band Name Taken? From glenn mcdonald, who previously brought you dispatches from The War Against Silence, exhaustive genre sampling via Every Noise at Once, and a statistical analysis of Pazz&Jop votes since 2008.
I Give All My Money To Millionaires...
...And I Don't Give A F**k About You. (SLYT - contains profanity)
Hell on earth.
Today marks the 70th anniversary of what is considered the single most deadly bombing raid in history, the 1945 US napalm firebombing of Tokyo. Today, there are still victims seeking redress and recognition from the Japanese government for the ‘unparalleled massacre’ of that horrific night.
Noah Segan, working actor
'Looper's Noah Segan (aka Kid Blue) Explains What It's Really Like As a Working Actor
While waiting to interview Looper director Rian Johnson during Fantastic Fest, a chance encounter challenged even my notions of what it meant to be a movie star. Sitting there, in the garish luxury of the Four Seasons hotel lobby, I met a rather lost-looking young man with whom I struck up a conversation. He was passionate and sharp, and it took a good five minutes before I recognized him as Noah Segan, the actor who played Kid Blue in Looper. I assumed he too had been sent by the studio to promote the movie, but in fact he had come of his own volition, on his own dime, and was being soundly ignored by the publicists.[more inside]
Talking with Noah, it became clear that, though he had appeared in several theatrical films, he was far from living the life of privilege and extreme comfort we tend to associate with movie stars. Noah’s experience echoes those of many with occupations in the creative field; the epitome of the blue-collar artist. This interview was completely unexpected, and we didn’t end up talking much about the movie, but if you’re struggling with the financial logistics of doing what you love professionally, you too will probably find a kindred spirit in Kid Blue.
Shades of A, Shades After
Shades of A is a webcomic about asexual Muslim Anwar, his genderqueer best friend JD, and his tentative steps towards a relationship with his boyfriend Chris. Starting as Anwar and JD graduate from uni, Shades of A is about navigating personal identity, sex and relationships as a young adult in a complex world. [more inside]
"Pure aural bliss"
"There's a song out there that could make you crash your car ... but in the most relaxing way possible." [more inside]
Why I’m Giving Away the Game I Spent Two Years Making
Mozilla's Darrin Henein writes about his decision to release his side project, the iOS game Lastronaut, completely free - no ads, no in-app purchases. He describes the game as "a love-letter to an industry". His co-creator is Stephan Leroux.
March 8
The hopalong attractor
These orbits are generated iterating this simple algorithm: (x, y) -> (y - sign(x)*sqrt(abs(b*x - c)), a -x )
Big Data looks at your poop
The team gathered samples over the course of a year from sewage treatment plants in 71 different cities in 31 states, chosen for their geographic spread and range of obesity rates. The leanest city sampled was Steamboat Springs, Colorado, with an obesity rate of 13.5 percent, while the heaviest was St. Joseph, Missouri, with a rate of 37.4 percent.
...
"If we had a city with a higher percentage of obese people, we would see a higher percentage of the kinds of bacteria associated with obesity,"
'You're on your own.'
СУВЕНИР №2 (and other Russian Jazz and Hip-Hop Sounds)
The author’s key creative task is to demonstrate the unique sound of soviet jazz school, where musicians complemented conventional musical tools with folk instruments and soviet electronics. "Souvenir" sets a goal of introducing as many listeners as it can to the legacy of the few jazz collectives there were in USSR. "Souvenir" is a bad mood remedy that will keep you warm throughout the long Russian winter.
Artem Ryazanov (Miracle Libido) is a DJ who likes the music of modern old Russia. And if you like what you hear above, you might also like the mix he just released for Nicolas Jaar's Other People label and the one he made for the Calvert Journal a few years ago.
And if you like those, you might also like the profile that Calvert published about RAD, the label/collective Ryazanov and Low Bob jointly lead.
Artem Ryazanov (Miracle Libido) is a DJ who likes the music of modern old Russia. And if you like what you hear above, you might also like the mix he just released for Nicolas Jaar's Other People label and the one he made for the Calvert Journal a few years ago.
And if you like those, you might also like the profile that Calvert published about RAD, the label/collective Ryazanov and Low Bob jointly lead.
What It's Like to Work at Waffle House for 24 Hours Straight
Since Bon Appetit writer Andrew Knowlton was a teen, Waffle House— that particularly Southern institution known for killer hash browns and late-night patty melts—has been there for him. To return the favor, he decided to work a few hours at the grill. Round-the-clock, to be exact. [more inside]
Arby's: Gleaming the void
Istaqsinaayok
Mummified Remains found on Pico de Orizaba, Mexico's Highest Peak
Mexico mummies: Climbers find eerie head in snow, dig to find mummies embracing The mummies will be transported down the mountain as early Monday. These frozen Mexico mummies will make their descent with climbers who have special cases to keep the frozen mummies intact. [more inside]
Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?
As openDemocracy.net focuses on women's voices for International Women's Day, Dawn Foster argues that we need to have a conversation about the unpaid labour that women are expected to do, and the impact it has on their lives. She presents us with some interesting statistics from the UK about the economic value of the unpaid (and often unnoticed) work that women carry out both in and around their paid jobs. [more inside]
"Are you boring? Are you evil?"
Cathy O'Neil left a job as a math professor at Columbia because she thought it was boring and slow-paced, reinvented herself in finance, and then reinvented herself again as a data scientist. [more inside]
Watching Williamsburg in Brooklyn NY Gentrify From Behind Its Oldest Bar
When Kirby came to the neighborhood in 1979 she was a community organizer trying to save buildings from abandonment or neglect. Part of her job was begging businesses to re-occupy the empty storefronts along Bedford Avenue, where Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks now pay premium rents. At the end of a long day, Teddy's was her local bar. When dinner time rolled around, Mary and Teddy would lock the door and say, "Watch the place." They'd be back in ten minutes with white bread and bologna for sandwiches.
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
Have you ever wondered just how Sherlock Holmes got information out of the people he spoke with? Well, wonder no more!
Was Comcast in the copper business four millenia ago?
The British Museum's artifacts include this Babylonian customer service complaint from 1750 B.C., expressing sentiments we can all sympathize with nearly four millenia later. [more inside]
Karoshi: Japanese for dying TO work, AT work, and BECAUSE of work.
The Japanese government is attempting to end Japan's culture of "death by overwork" (now known as karoshi) by moving to make it illegal to not take mandatory paid vacation days. Why won't Japanese workers go on vacation? The Japanese work some of the longest hours in the world and fear taking paid holidays in case they are ostracised by colleagues. The stress is so extreme that every year thousands of workers succumb to “karoshi”, or “death by overwork”. They either commit suicide (the see suicide as salvation), or die of a stroke or a heart attack. The Japanese are literally dying for work and the phenomenon is spreading to other Asian countries such as China, South Korea, and Bangladesh. A "chapter" of the award winning documentary "Happy" (now on Netflix and other online venues) looks at this Japanese phenomenon of Karoshi. HAPPY (trailer here) takes you on a journey from the swamps of Louisiana to the slums of Kolkata in search of what really makes people happy. Combining real life stories of people from around the world and powerful interviews with the leading scientists in happiness research, HAPPY explores the secrets behind our most valued emotion.
Looking for a tree with a story
"If someone stole it, it's got to be good."
San Francisco police are investigating a burglary [SLNYT] at Mr Holmes Bakehouse in the Tenderloin: “We don’t have a particular demographic, except it’s someone who wants to make a really delicious pastry.”
It's only a model...
"I captured these photos during my journeys through the Maramures (a small county in Transylvania, Romania). The landscapes I photographed in this region are serene and tranquil. Currently, I see my photographic style as traditional landscape photography." (SLPhotography, Bored Panda)
My toaster hates you
"We need to challenge the assumption that more is always better"
Recline, don’t ‘Lean In’ (Why I hate Sheryl Sandberg)
Sheryl, have you ever stopped to consider that all this “leaning in” is ruining life for the rest of us?[more inside]
Long ago, before Sandberg’s book “Lean In” convinced me to change my ways, I had a life. I had friends, family, children. I had hobbies. I had a job, too, of course, but I also took occasional vacations, knocked off work at a sensible hour and got eight hours of sleep each night.
Then I read “Lean In” and realized that I was self-sabotaging slacker.
What weren't you taught that you think you should have been?
Lifehacker asked "What Necessary Adult Skills Were You Never Taught Growing Up?" Since personal hygiene skills was a popular response, the site created "An Adult's Guide to Hygiene (for Those Who Weren't Taught Growing Up)"
March 7
“Mission accomplished!”
indoor model plane championships
Damoiselles and danger
Maybe you know Tom Jones' theme from Thunderball. Funny thing: before they decided on that track, there was "Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" sung by Shirley Bassey. And also sung by Dionne Warwick. And somewhere along the line, Johnny Cash had a turn at writing a Thunderball theme. Welcome to the wonderful world of James Bond themes that never were. [more inside]
Leveraging the synergy of ligatures
Shame and Ideology
"My business is built on everlasting trust.”
"a tomb in miniature for our souls”
The death of writing – if James Joyce were alive today he’d be working for Google: [Guardian Books]
There’s hardly an instant of our lives that isn’t electronically documented. These days, it is software that maps our new experiences, our values and beliefs. How should a writer respond? Tom McCarthy on fiction in the age of data saturation.
The Big Melt
Comparing photographs of glaciers from the 1920's to today: Repeat photography is a technique in which a historical photograph and a modern photograph, both having the same field of view, are compared and contrasted to quantitatively and qualitatively determine their similarities and differences. The following sections depict how this technique was used at a number of locations in Alaska... to document and understand changes to glaciers and landscapes as a result of changing climate. [more inside]
"It appears that the author takes the word for an insult"
Are they going to say this is fantasy? -- Ursula K. LeGuin answers Kazuo Ishiguro's anxiety about his latest novel.
Why Would Anyone Want to Kill Brianna Wu?
"What anyone can see by looking closely at Wu is an entrepreneurial archetype. She's not a countercultural artist like Quinn or a crusader like Sarkeesian." Inc. profiles Brianna Wu.
The piece mentions Wu's being interviewed for the movie GTFO, a documentary on women and video game culture. The New York Times has just run a feature on the film and its director, Shannon Sun-Higginson.
The piece mentions Wu's being interviewed for the movie GTFO, a documentary on women and video game culture. The New York Times has just run a feature on the film and its director, Shannon Sun-Higginson.
Did you like 'Starlost'?
Rocket Boy was a short-lived Canadian TV series. Starring Dave Thomas, Ron James, and an assortment of Thomas' SCTV comrades. Sadly, the series is not displayable on the internet. [more inside]
Or maybe it's about ethics in moon tourism
"In Creatures Such as We, living on the moon is lonely, and stressful, and exhausting. Video games have always offered you an escape to a better life. The easy, happy life you wish you had. Which makes it so frustrating when the game you’ve been playing ends badly. But you have a chance to figure it out, because the next tourist group is the game’s designers. You can debate with them about art, inspire them with the beauty of outer space, get closer to any one specific designer in particular, and finally find out how to get the ending you always wanted.[more inside]
What happens when Queen Elizabeth dies
Since ascending to the throne in 1952, the monarch has seen 12 Prime Ministers serve Britain, and lived through another 12 US Presidents. For at least 12 days — between her passing, the funeral and beyond — Britain will grind to a halt. It'll cost the British economy billions in lost earnings. The stock markets and banks will close for an indefinite period. And both the funeral and the subsequent coronation will become formal national holidays, each with an estimated economic hit to GDP of between £1.2 and £6 billion, to say nothing of organisational costs.
Obama Selma Speech
President Barack Obama delivers a speech to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Bloody Sunday March in Selma, Alabama.
BuzzFeed's self-congratulatory Dutch oven
"Or don’t. But please. Detox. Throw your phone in the fucking East River. DELETE YOUR TWITTER." The Concessionist, an advice column for the Awl written by Choire Sicha, fields "the letter that encapsulates the millennial age": I Hate Myself Because I Don't Work For BuzzFeed. [more inside]
LaVern Baker: Big Voice, Indomitable Spirit
LaVern Baker had a strong, soaring voice and scored hits such as Jim Dandy, Tweedle Dee, and I Cried A Tear. She also did some well-received duets, such as You're The Boss with Jimmy Ricks or Shake A Hand with Jackie Wilson.
Her life wasn't as smooth as her voice, though; her hits were constantly ripped off by a white singer, and when she went to Vietnam to entertain American troops, she came down with pneumonia and was left behind by the others on the tour. "She described the fantastical saga that ensued: "I didn't know what to do, who to go to. The tour was gone and I was in a strange country where telephone service was practically nonexistent. I hitched with farmers on wagons to Bangkok…. I'd had to slog through rice paddies in water up to my shoulders in some places to get to Bangkok, so by the time the Marines got me to the base I'd had a relapse."" The difficulties were just beginning..
MCD Centennial
Conservancy district 100 years old The Miami Conservancy District was the first of its kind in the world. It was used as a model for the much more famous Tennessee Valley Authority, as well as other conservancy projects in several states. [more inside]
Women of Aviation Week: March 2-8
Since the 1980s, the female pilot population has been stagnating at unbearably low levels. Out of more than 1 million pilots worldwide, there are only 50,000 female pilots. Other technical fields in the air and space industry are equally lacking female presence.
Women of Aviation Week Worldwide celebrates women's aviation history and encourages girls and women to get out and 'be the majority' at your local aviation site. [more inside]
Queen Nzinga: Angola's answer to Queen Elizabeth I
Nzinga Mbande (1581-1663) was a powerful queen and guerrilla commander in what is now modern day Angola. She is best remembered for a story about her first meeting with Portuguese leaders, who slighted her by providing her no chair upon which to sit. Famously, she ordered one of her maids to kneel on all fours and sat upon the maid's back while she conducted negotiations. However, the focus on this story belies Nzinga's accomplishments as a canny politician who successfully consolidated an effective power base despite starting from a very unstable position. [more inside]
Star Trek movies (ships only)
Youtube user ThomasHuntFilms has edited down the original Star Trek movies (i.e. no Abramsverse movies) to just the scenes with ships only. [more inside]
eight legs, no bones
Watch a large octopus depart a boat through a very small gap. [SLYT]
Bring on the Mole Women!
Suffering Parks and Recreation withdrawal after last week's series finale? Still heartbroken that 30 Rock is off the air? Vaguely worried about the Yahoo version of Community scheduled to arise later this month? Well, good news: Tina Fey's new show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt debuted on Netflix last yesterday. [more inside]
'I like art by men better.'
New York Magazine on MoMA's identity politics and gender balance. Art Basel Miami Beach gender balance by the numbers. The White Review on gender balance in the London gallery scene. Georg Baselitz in Der Spiegel:
As always, the market is right. [...] Women simply don't pass the test. The market test, the value test. Women don't paint very well. It's a fact.Collectors still pay more for male artists. [previously]
"He used to really get on my tits."
No Judgement Zone
After witnessing a transgender woman in the women's dressing room at Planet Fitness, Yvette Cormier made comments and complaints to other exercisers every day for a week. Rather than changing their established gender identity non-discrimination policy, Planet Fitness cancelled her gym membership for violating their "No Judgement Zone." [more inside]
The Garden of Alla(h): Hotel, Party, Radical Hotbed
in the 1920s and 1930s, the hottest spot in Hollywood was The Garden of Alla(h). In the mid 1920s, the actress Alla Nazimova turned her mansion into a hotel and surrounded the pool with cottages rented to famous actors, artists, musicians, mobsters, and writers. It was a legendary for its parties, affairs, feuds, and star power. It was also a "radical hotbed". [more inside]
Refuge Restrooms
Refuge Restrooms is a crowdsourced website that works to help trans, intersex, and gender nonconforming people find safe restrooms. They've recently launched an iPhone app, with an unofficial (and with-ads) android app already out. [more inside]
It's Radioactive Saturday!
Watch some U-238 decay in real time. The sample is placed in an alcohol cloud chamber, and transilluminated by a strip of LEDs. Hypnotic, after a while. After about 40 minutes, the sample begins to be coated by alcohol fumes and many of the emissions are absorbed on the surface.
Tampons against trafficking
Pivot: A Tool to Empower Human Trafficking Victims
Pivot provides rescue information to human trafficking victims without detection by their captors. Ordinary-looking sanitary pads are distributed by activists and healthcare providers to suspected victims. Hidden inside each pad is an insert with rescue information and a trafficking hotline number. A victims accesses the insert in the privacy of a restroom, detaches the phone number (disguised as a fortune-cookie tab), and flushes the rest of the insert in the toilet.[more inside]
Don't Look Away Now, the Climate Crisis Needs You!
If enough of us decide that climate change is a crisis worth of Marshall Plan levels of response, it will be. [more inside]
March 6
Darkness Lit From Within: On A.B. Yehoshua
"The soul-destroying weariness in A.B. Yehoshua’s stories seems as old as time itself—and unique to contemporary Israel."
A short analysis of the cultural specificity of a Russian meme
It's often suggested that Russia and the West have fundamentally different worldviews. In this article, author Jim Kovpak attempts to illustrate why that is by analysing the vatnik internet meme.
Even More Tiny Beautiful Things
Good news for fans of the now-defunct Dear Sugar advice column (previously on Metafilter): Sugar is back! [more inside]
Love Your Subjects
Albert Maysles, acclaimed documentary filmmaker and pioneer of “direct cinema,” has died at 88.
Best known for the films Grey Gardens (previously) and Gimme Shelter (in which he captured the murder of 18 year-old Meredith Hunter by a Hell’s Angel at the Stones’ legendary 1969 Altamont Free Concert), Maysles (along with his brother David) created an astounding array of diverse documentary films including the Beatles first trip to the US and films about Christo, Orson Welles, Jessye Norman, and on and on.
His most recent film, about NYC style maven Iris Apfel will be released on April 29th. A film community reflects. [more inside]
"We are largely doomed"
"Thanks to Cornell University researchers, the world can now predict how fast a zombie outbreak would spread from a single undead person.
Using data from the 2010 U.S. census and the SIR model, an epidemiological tool that can project the progress of actual infectious diseases, the scientists created "large-scale exact stochastic dynamical simulation" of a such an outbreak. Their findings were to be presented Thursday to the august American Physical Society. [more inside]
“We give our pain meaning, and that meaning alters our experience.”
Wounded Women by Jessa Crispin [Boston Review] The assumption of female vulnerability threatens to invigorate the sexist evils it aims to combat.
Save a loved-one's voicemail greeting
VMSave is a service by Pete Keen (zrail here on mefi). "When a loved-one passes away, sometimes the only recording you have of them is locked away on an answering machine or a voicemail box. Eventually the recording will disappear, either due to someone recording over it or service getting canceled. Before it disappears, use VMSave to save it, completely free." [via mefi projects]
Selfie-link
Florence Henderson takes a selfie at a Queen Latifah Show. How much fun can you have after 80? Apparently a lot... Here’s the story… of a lovely lady… who at 80 is getting busy with… [more inside]
Canada announces new thalidomide compensation
Canada, long considered a "global outlier" on compensation for thalidomide survivors, has announced new lump sum compensation payments. [more inside]
People Who Could Really Break the Internet
Regarding Norm Macdonald and the moth joke
"The infamous moth joke is an example of how particular and particularly misunderstood Macdonald’s sensibility can be. I do not believe Macdonald is a meta- or anti-comic. Like his delivery, the structure of the moth joke violates several deeply held principles of performed comedy, but it does so in pursuit of a genuine laugh." [more inside]
Like Disney decided to make a snuff version of "Swiss Family Robinson."
"Roar" is a 1981 film, nearing a theatrical re-release, that was written and directed by Noel Marshall and co-written and co-directed by a pride of lions. It is perhaps the most dangerous movie production ever. [more inside]
"Rainbow Dash underestimates how far Twilight will go."
"One fine day whilst visiting my cousin, we decided to color. If not for her enjoyment of this hobby, this past time would have never been born. We sat down to begin and I casually flipped through a rather large coloring book. Perhaps it was fated that this particular coloring book was full of slightly deranged looking animals. I could not help but imagine them plotting and feuding with one another. Inspired, I began to turn a seemingly innocent children’s coloring book into something both awful and hilarious (at least to me)." This is Coloring Book Corruptions. (NSFW)
Black Friday
Today, March 6, is Blackout Day, "a day where black people post, share, reblog, like, and distribute other photos of black people on social media. This includes Tumblr, Instagram, the petri dish known as Facebook, Vine, Twitter, and any other site that allows you to share photos." (FAQ, official master post)
IT'S DEFINITELY BEEN JUMPED ON, THAT EGG
Thomas and Friends
Some cybergoths meet for a rave under a bridge. If only they knew they could have more fun with their choice of music.
Blank Page
"Blank Page" Taylor Swift meets "Game of Thrones."
It's Never OK
Today, the Ontario Government released a video called #WhoWillYouHelp (TW; potentially triggering scenes in video relating to sexual assault) as part of the $41-million It's Never OK action plan to end sexual assault and harassment within the province. [more inside]
Fostering Profits
“You feel the pressure. You have to make those targets,” said a former worker whose name, due to a signed nondisclosure with Mentor, could not be used. “I went there because I care about services for kids. I eventually became a machine that cared about profits. I didn’t care about kids.” (SL Buzzfeed News Investigation. trigger warning: descriptions of sexual abuse and assault against children)
B4-XVI
beforesixteen - Highlighting an invisible conversation between hip hop and art before the 16th century. (SLTumblr)
Who better to host a nature show about animals than a Dogg?
Last year Jimmy Kimmel teamed up with Snoop Dogg to produce the nature series, Plizzanet Earth. In the latest episode, Snoop Dogg tackles Otters vs. Crocs. (Mostly bleeped but probably NSFW for a few people.) [more inside]
Another tale of an idiosyncratic lawman
Swery65 is a game designer known for the cult class Deadly Premonition. Deadly Premonition was distinguished by its quirky Twin Peaks inspired storyline, lovingly rendered American small town gameworld, memorable characters, and unique gameplay. Swery's new series is an atmospheric mystery game, D4 (Dark Dreams Don't Die). D4 notably ditches the somewhat tacked on combat of Deadly Prem. in favor of a series of investigation mini-games more in line with old-school point and click adventures. Noted Let's Player SuperGreatFriend has been working his way through the game as it's released, and you can follow along to get a taste of Swery's latest unique creation.
The Discipline of Blending In vs. Independence and Self-Confidence
Why Don’t Americans Know What Really Happened in Vietnam?
For a little perspective on the 50th anniversary, consider this: we’re now as distant from the 1960s as the young Bob Dylan was from Teddy Roosevelt. For today’s typical college students, the Age of Aquarius is ancient history. Most of their parents weren’t even alive in 1965 when President Lyndon Johnson launched a massive escalation of the Vietnam War, initiating the daily bombing of the entire country, North and South, and an enormous buildup of more than half a million troops.
Fathers have given their daughters to monsters before.
The Beauty and the Beast. The Children's Stories Made Horrific series at The Toast has always been nightmare fuel, drawing out the horror inherent in many children's stories, but the latest installment might be the most trenchant yet.
Mercury, the sweetest of the transition metals!
Mercury is such a dense liquid that cannonballs float in it. Humans float on it too (you'll have to scroll down a bit for the picture), but it's probably not a good idea. If you just can't resist hopping in the mercury vat, elemental mercury is less likely to kill you than mercury compounds. It used to be sold as a laxative (officially branded Dr. Rush's Bilious Pills but colloquially known as "thunder clappers"); Lewis and Clark's campsites can sometimes be identified by the mercury they deposited along the way.
"...the odds in all our games favor the lottery."
"It was the first step to uncovering what he says is a $134 million scam by the Oregon Lottery." Once upon a time, Oregon resident Justin Curzi was playing video poker on a Jacks or Better machine. He was playing draw poker, which allows you to discard cards. However, the game's "auto-hold" feature recommended that he discard a different card than he was considering--which he thought was terrible advice and would cut his chances of winning. [more inside]
How should we describe the sexuality of historical figures?
It's a discussion that flared up recently at the house of Jane Addams. "Let’s start with an art history mystery. In 2006, a lifetime after Jane Addams passed away, Lisa Yun Lee took up the position of Director of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. One day she came across a fetching painting of a brunette in the museum's back offices. But, Lee says, “As soon as I started asking ‘Who is that person in the painting,’ there were hushed tones and confusion. And people said, ‘Well, some people say that it’s Jane Addams’ partner.’ Other people say it’s her biggest business supporter. Other people said, ‘Well, of course. It’s her lesbian lover.’” "
"I wanted to make like a mini-movie."
Adam Ant - Stand & Deliver: The Documentary 2006. [SLYT]
Keep mining!
"I thought of it as an enterprise software problem I could solve."
Your new kidney is in the cloud. When former software developer David Jacobs was fortunate enough to get a kidney transplant eleven years ago, it occurred to him that there had to be a better way to match recipients with potential donors... so he bankrolled a company, and designed the cloud-based software needed to do it. As a result, thanks to paired kidney exchanges, a single kidney donation in San Francisco is saving six lives over the next few days... and will soon be saving a total of twelve lives, while removing people from the kidney waiting list, reducing the organ wait time for patients who don't have the time to spare.
Cooking by supercomputer
The robot cookbook: can a supercomputer write recipes? Watson, IBM’s supercomputer, has (with help from the Institute of Culinary Education) written what IBM's Florian Pinel calls "the first specimen of a new generation of smarter cookbooks". Do the unusual ingredient combinations work, or is plum pancetta cider really as disgusting as it sounds? IBM sent a food truck to SXSW to (ahem) road-test the recipes. Reports are, the Bengali butternut BBQ sauce is delicious. Of course, there's a TED talk.
Ready Rock
How did we get from the glorious battles of the Civil Rights Movement to the devastation of the crack plague? From the police crackdown on the marchers on the Selma bridge to the police killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner? From the nonviolence movement of courageous civil rights activists to the gang violence that has made homicide the number one cause of death for young black men? And finally from the impassioned eloquence of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” to the drug kingpin’s “I have a life sentence?” The War on Drugs.Marc Levin writes about Freeway Rick Ross’s connection to Selma and a generation of prisoners.
March 5
The Fourth War: My Lunch with a Jihadi
Why I've posted 27,000 times to one online forum
Facebook and Twitter are indifferent to your conversation, as long as you’re having it on their platform. A veteran of the Rotten Tomatoes forums laments the decline of online forums in the age of social media.
"My name comes out of my mouth in English."
The Right Words to Say: On Being Read as White (SLToast/Butter)
A man may have been kidnapped by Mexican drug cartels for his IT skills
A telecommunications worker has disappeared, and there seems to be evidence that drug cartels are responsible. Missing man Felipe del Jesús Peréz García is one of about 40 IT professionals who have been taken in the region, possibly to maintain communications infrastructure for drug lords.
Get ready to rumble, if you are furry and nurse your offspring.
That's right - it's time for Mammal March Madness! "Battle outcome is a function of the two species' attributes within the battle environment. Attributes considered in calculating battle outcome include temperament, weaponry, armor, body mass, fight style, and other fun facts that are relevant to the outcome. These are one on one- head to head combat situations- um except for the mythical mammals that have multiple heads. Some random error has been introduced into calculating battle outcome & the amount of that error is scaled to the disparity in rankings between combatants. Early rounds, the battle occurs in the better-ranked species' habitat (home court advantage). BUT once we get to the ELITE EIGHT, battle location will be random: forest, semi-arid desert, intertidal zone, or snowy tundra." Action kicks off on March 9 with the wildcard match up between the pygmy jerboa and the bumblebee bat (Kitti's Hognosed Bat). You can follow the action on twitter using the hashtag #2015MMM or on the blog Mammals Suck. In the meantime, start filling out your brackets - common names or binomial nomenclature.
To survive on this shore
To survive on this shore: Photographs and interviews with transgender and gender variant older adults is a joint project of photographer Jess Dugan and professor Vanessa Fabbre. It combines photographs of transgender and gender variant people over the age of fifty with interviews about their life experiences of gender, identity, age, and sexuality.
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Carowinds Amusement Park just released a video of the very first test run of their brand new "Fury 325" roller coaster, which they claim is the biggest and fastest in the world. The initial hill rises to a height of 325 feet and the first drop is 81 degrees. Top speed is 95 MPH. The video was shot by a camera mounted on the front of the train.
It’s like a barn-raising for the 21st century
These Neighbors Got Together to Buy Vacant Buildings. Now They’re Renting to Bakers and Brewers “I think when you work in social justice and economic justice, it’s not your first thought that you want to benefit the small business community, but actually the small business community is so important,” says Watson. “Any structure we can put in place that helps them be stronger and more resilient is good for all of us.”
Punished thirty years on
Adam Crapser was adopted from Korea to abusive parents who were arrested on multiple counts of child abuse and rape. Over thirty years later, one last sting of neglect from his parents came back to bite him: he has been served deportation papers because his adoptive parents failed to complete his naturalization process.
❅
A Giant Picture of Snow Across the United States [New York Times]
These composite satellite images compare the snow cover in February of 2013, 2014 and 2015. This year, much of the Northeast, including the New York metropolitan area and New England, received more than a foot of extra snow than in an average February.Each image is a composite of about 60 satellite pictures taken between Feb. 1 and March 5 of each year. Whiter areas indicate greater snow cover.
Observe how the light affects the fabric in the video
Anrealage AW15016
More information about Kunihiko Morinaga, and also some of his past work with cellphone-resistant clothing.
More information about Kunihiko Morinaga, and also some of his past work with cellphone-resistant clothing.
I'm still not totally sure who Kate Upton is
You might have noticed that there were three advertisements for video games aired during February's Super Bowl. All three were for free to play mobile games (1 2 3). Bloomberg Business explores how you make that kind of money (warning, super excessive design) while Giant Bomb plays the actual games. Also, just who are these people spending all that money?
Mrs. Christie, You Write Great Books
Fan Letters To Agatha Christie show how her works reached across the world to bring entertainment and solace to a wide variety of people, from prisoners to school children.
An Einstein supernova in the sky
Astronomers using the Hubble space telescope have discovered four images of the same supernova arranged in an Einstein Cross. They've released pictures and a video to explain what we're looking at. [more inside]
Hey Dad, I can't see real good- is that Bill Shakespeare over there?
This is where Norris has chosen to live while he tries to win a job in the Blue Jays' rotation: a broken down van parked under the blue fluorescent lights of a Wal-Mart in the Florida suburbs.
My Father, the Philosopher
Emily Adler remembers her father:
If your father is a philosopher, then you should expect to lose many arguments. You will never lose “because life isn’t fair,” or because your dad “says so.” You will always lose on strict logical grounds… If your father is a philosopher, your premises must support your conclusion. Then, maybe once or twice in a childhood filled with lost arguments, you will win. When you win, you win big.
Orwell: Some of his satirical writing looks like reality these days.
John Pilger describes a 'Faustian Pact' that allows the suppression of a modern fascism in the West and its reliance on propaganda as news, and the beckoning of a war that rarely speaks its name.
A follow on from War by media and the triumph of propaganda.
A glimpse into the past of the Dirty Dirty.
Photo sets of Atlanta neighborhoods from 1940s to the 1990s (Midtown, Cabbagetown, Ponce de Leon, Auburn Avenue).
That’s how you medal
...One night in October 2012, while Mary Cain was in bed, the house phone rang. Cain’s mother answered. A man claiming to be Alberto Salazar, the legendary runner and coach, was on the line. At first she thought the call was a prank. But then Salazar explained that he’d recently reviewed the video of her daughter’s Barcelona run. An obsessive about form, Salazar said that Cain’s lower-body mechanics were excellent, good enough to make her the best in the world, but that her upper body needed work. In particular, if she wanted to reach her potential, she needed to keep her left elbow closer to her body, swing it straight, front to back, instead of out and across her torso. He referred to the elbow as her “chicken wing.”
You Know Who Wears Sunglasses Inside?
We know that light affects our circadian rhythms and vitamin D levels. The wavelength or color of light matters at different times of day, as well as the amount we receive overall. But now we know that blue-blocking glasses really do help increase melatonin levels if worn at night before bed. Dr. Mariana Figueiro, program director at the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, says that they "need to remove transmission of light below 530 nm" to be effective. [more inside]
Head Out on the Highway
Rock Stars On Motorcycles Just what it claims to be. Photos of Bo. Bob. Jimi. Keith. Mick. Elvis. Jerry Lee. etc. (via Nitro-Retro)
"Fishfucker turned out to be a really nice dude."
Your Internet Friends Are Real: A Defense of Online Intimacy, by Kyle Chayka for TNR:
The perception that online relationships are somehow less real than their physical counterparts exemplifies what Nathan Jurgenson, a New York-based sociologist and researcher for the messaging platform Snapchat, calls "digital dualism." Contemporary identities and relationships are no more or less authentic in either space. "We're coming to terms with there being just one reality and digital is part of it, not any less real or true," Jurgenson said. "What you do online and what you do face-to-face are completely interwoven."(Keep an eye out for a brief in-article cameo from our once and always fearless leader!) [more inside]
"I think my job is ...numbers"
Lil Friendys - a chthonic office-sitcom puppetshow about Alma, a recent hire to the underworld bureaucracy. By Mefi's Own Greg Nog. [via mefi projects]
The Strange Lives of Andrew Blake
"Blake has owned up to much of what he’s done, both publicly and in an extensive interview session with the Kernel. He has admitted to spending a full decade of his life claiming the ability to channel the souls of fictional and real people, allegedly up to 168 different beings at once, including Hollywood actors and World War II veterans." (Kernelmag) [more inside]
Indifference helps me across all the mountains of rubbish.
"I got this book for free. I hate it."
"What the hell is 'Wild Animus'? It's a book with a story big enough that I could write an entire column about it without describing a single plot point. With the exception of religious texts, has anyone, ever, given away this many copies of a book in physical form?" [more inside]
Two Outcomes, Similar Paths
Two Outcomes, Similar Paths: Radical Muslim and Neo-Nazi. "Religious ideology plays a central role in the radicalization of young Muslim Europeans currently being lured to join the Islamic State or kill in the group’s name at home. But the psychological process underlying radicalization is remarkably universal, terrorism experts say." (previously)
"There's something special about each and every Disney villain."
A japanese artist designs perfume holders based on villains from 19 Disney films.
Hungry? How about a nice tarantula?
Fried spider is a regional delicacy in Cambodia. It is not clear how this practice started, but some have suggested that the population might have started eating spiders out of desperation during the years of Khmer Rouge rule, when food was in short supply. [more inside]
I once was (color) blind, but now I see!
Are you color blind? Not for long! Six percent of men and .4% of women are color blind because of the genes they've inherited from their parents. The most common color blindness interferes with the ability to see red and green.
While playing a game of ultimate Frisbee a decade ago a scientist discovered that glasses he and colleagues had created for use by doctors performing laser surgery allowed a color blind friend to see the colors he had been missing all his life.
Where does a song come from?
Led Zeppelin’s Gallows Pole was released in 1970 on Led Zeppelin III. Written/arranged by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, The song finds its antecedents in traditional European folk songs filtered through American lenses. [more inside]
cronch cronch snort cronch nom nom cronch snort nom nom nom nom nom
Tiny pigs eating an apple. Tiny pigs eating grapes. Tiny pigs eating mixed veggies. Tiny pig eating oatmeal.
Confidentiality Guaranteed (Unless You Sue The School)
When a female student sued the University of Oregon over their manipulation of the punishment of three basketball players for gangraping her in order to allow them to compete in the NCAA Tournament, the university came up with a novel defense strategy: they released her records from the campus health center from when she sought therapy after the rape to their legal team. Without either consent from the student or a legal order opening the records to discovery.
The scariest part: they may very well be in the legal clear. [more inside]
"I have to admit I've tasted it from time to time. It tastes terrible."
Most people know that the expiration date on bottled water is for the bottle, not for the water. However, if your stored water is orangey, has the consistency of maple syrup, and is a billion years old, you're going to have worse problems than just a plasticky taste. [more inside]
Knowledge is our Superpower
"Despite scant funding and resources, London’s Feminist Library is turning their 40th year into a celebration of storytelling, history – and, hopefully, sofas." Stephanie Boland at The New Statesman, 'She blinded me with library science': why the Feminist Library is more vital than ever. [more inside]
Definitely-Not-Filthy Sailing Terminology
Confusing and obtuse it may be... ...but if there's one thing sailing terminology is not, it's filthy. -- Lucy Bellwood puts things straight through the medium of comics. Want more salty seadogging? Down to the Seas is the story of her trip onboard the last wooden whaling ship in the world.
Measuring out My Life in K-Cups
A Brewing Problem:
“I don't have one. They're kind of expensive to use,” John Sylvan told me frankly, of Keurig K-Cups, the single-serve brewing pods that have fundamentally changed the coffee experience in recent years. “Plus it’s not like drip coffee is tough to make.” Which would seem like a pretty banal sentiment, were Sylvan not the inventor of the K-Cup.
"The accuracy of the sea came at the cost of the land."
That’s how I feel about the web these days. We have a map, but it’s not for me. So I am distanced. It feels like things are distorted. I am consistently confused.
— Frank Chimero, on What Screens Want
The Bizarro Universe of Italo Disco
Slotted somewhere amid such hits one night was a song featuring the chintziest of keyboards, the most tuna-can-like drum machines, and a chorus so idiotic that it made my prepubescent mind think: “If this is about sex, sex sounds stupid.” This song was so not cool. In the deepest, most dramatic register imaginable, singer Paul Lekakis intoned: “Boom boom boom/ Let’s go back to my room/ So we can do it all night/ And you can make me feel right.” It was as dumb as chewing gum and it stuck to my mind every time I came in contact with it on the radio, its tackiness inescapable.
"Why do you have that thing?"
"Being a grown-up is highly overrated"
Never Give Up, Never Surrender: Cosplay After 40
My name is Phaedra Cook, I am 46 years old and I’m a cosplayer. That sounds like some kind of intro to a confession at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, doesn’t it? There are certain types of people who would like me to have a sense of shame about my hobby, but that’s not going to happen.[more inside]
"‘You have to have some stuff to do,’ she said (she didn’t say ‘stuff’)"
Fit to Print documents the ways in which the New York Times writes around expletives even as it is often drawn to the very words it deems unprintable.
Kevin Hines, Golden Gate Bridge survivor
In September 2000, a teenager suffering from Bipolar Disorder named Kevin Hines attempted suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. A confluence of fortunate events (such as a Good Samaritan Sea Lion) came together and Kevin not only survived but did not suffer major mobility loss, as many other people who survive the fall do. Today he works as a suicide prevention/mental health awareness advocate and has authored a memoir. He is featured in the 2006 documentary The Bridge.
The Unknown War
The Unknown War: WWII And The Epic Battles Of The Russian Front, the 20-episode documentary of the Nazi-Germany/Soviet Union conflict, first aired in the United States in 1978 but was subsequently pulled after the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. "The footage was edited from over 3.5 million feet of film taken by Soviet camera crews from the first day of the war, 22 June 1941, to the Soviet entry into Berlin in May 1945. Most of these films have never been seen outside this documentary series." It is available in full (1040 minutes). [more inside]
March 4
This is a critical time in the history of American universities
Robert Pippin spoke at High Concept Labs for The Point Magazine's 'New Humanities' issue: Ways of Knowing
We’re here because universities are experiencing a sense of crisis in the organization of knowledge. But it probably should be said just briefly, at the beginning, that this is also taking place within a crisis in the university system in the United States more generally. It’s been a long time building and it’s now rather critical. I mean, the indications of the crisis are well known to all of us: The figure that I heard is that in the last 25 years, there has been a 500 percent increase in tuition at private and public universities on average. There’s been massive defunding of state universities by state legislatures. When I began my career at the University of California at San Diego, 70 percent of the budget was funded by the state legislature. That’s down to under 20 percent, and students now have to pay $14,000 per year tuition if they’re in-state students, and in the twenties if they’re not. And they often leave college with debts totaling more than $50,000 or $60,000. This is the new way that universities are financed.[more inside]
Etsy files for an IPO.
Online craft marketplace Etsy has filed for an initial public offering. Etsy "announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined." [more inside]
A light bulb in a man's 'smart home' DoSed his house
The creator of one of Germany's first 'smart homes' ran into a minor issue - a light bulb which needed changing was calling attention to the fact by essentially DoSing the house. This wasn't just a trial run, either, as homeowner Raul Rojas has lived in the house for the past five years.
Trading up
"Sweet Summer Rain: Like God's Own Mercy."
Character actor Daniel Von Bargen ("Seinfeld", "Lord of Illusions", "Super Troopers") has died at the age of 64. One tragic footnote is his 2012 suicide attempt that led to his long illness. Here are some facts about Diabetes and Depression and, as always, there is help for those who need it. (Post Title Quote here)
Women speak out about harassment at GDC 2015
Today at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Zoe Quinn [previously] and other female game developers spoke out about online harassment and how to fight back. Quinn expressed her disappointment with the lack of action on the part of the game industry and also announced a new partnership between her Crash Override anti-harassment network and Randi Harper [previously] of GG Autoblocker fame, a new anti-harrassment non-profit organization called the Online Abuse Prevention Initiative.
We should limit each student to 25W
Ray Perry recounts a speech by Howard Strauss (previously) that mined the discussions around the introduction of electricity to Princeton University.
When Mentally Ill Students Feel Alone
Following the apparent suicide of an undergraduate student, Yale University's community is grappling with questions and concerns about the school's handling of students with mental illnesses. In ""When Mentally Ill Students Feel Alone", The Atlantic discusses the school's policies, how they may be discouraging students from taking needed time off to address mental illness, and broader questions about the rise of mental health diagnoses on college campuses and how universities can better address their students' mental health needs.
At this very moment, countless dicks compete for your attention.
"With a bit of panic and a lot of excitement about debasing my philosophical heroes, I will attempt to place the dick pic at the intersection of anatomical and juridical photography, the #selfie, pornography, and finally, the global brand." [NSFW] [more inside]
The largest battleship in naval history
A research team led by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen claims to have finally found the wreckage of the Japanese Yamato-class Battleship Musashi, sunk at the
Battle of the Sibuyan Sea October 23-24, 1944, part of the largest naval battle of World War II. [more inside]
Hospitals For Bats, Hedgehogs, And More
Australia's Tolga Bat Hospital (slogan: "Batting For Australia"!) has many adorable patients . Meanwhile, one of England's shelters, Tiggywinkles, is home to "sick and injured hedgehogs, badgers, wild birds, foxes, even reptiles and amphibians."
On Being a Badass
Friedman's editorial in "The Cut" about what it means to be a badass woman If we can call any woman a badass, we can surely call Mac McClelland one. An international journalist who has traveled to and extensively reported on crisis situations, McClelland has recently published the book Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story. Friedman explores what we mean when we call her a "badass." [more inside]
Begging mercies for their sins
Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi has written a letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo, in hopes of swaying him to stop the impending execution of two Australian men in their prison system. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Iommi joins the many international appeals urging the Indonesian president to save the lives of the two convicts.
Welcome to Hope's Peak Academy
Originally released on the PSP system in 2010 the first Danganronpa game called Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc ( (ダンガンロンパ 希望の学園と絶望の高校生) developed and produced by Spike Chunsoft . It featured a classic whodunit game where the MC (Makoto Naegi) a Japanese teenger found himself stuck in a strange high school setting with a unique cast. [more inside]
"I still am embarrassed by this memory."
Game of Cards
Surprise Archaelogical Find in Paris: Mass Grave under Supermarket
The mass grave underneath a supermarket: Extraordinary burial pit containing 200 bodies found by accident in Paris Archaeologists from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) were called in to take a look and have spent days tirelessly uncovering the bones. [more inside]
(Ο_Ο)
an existential montage of boobery
The concept first bubbled up out of the pop-cultural ether when competitive reality shows hit upon their formula, in the form of “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race.” TV enthusiasts — part fan, part Roland Barthes with a TiVo — congregated on online message boards like Television Without Pity, creating a new slang with which to dis and deconstruct their favorites. Fifteen years later, the critical language used to carve up the phonies, saints and sad-sack wannabes of reality shows has migrated, and the loser edit has become a limber metaphor for exploring our own real-world failures.
Colson Whitehead: The ‘Loser Edit’ That Awaits Us All
People do not naturally assume that my family is a family.
Friends often try to assure me that people mean well, urging me to go easy on them, to be gracious, to give people the benefit of the doubt. "People don't mean to be offensive," they tell me. "They just don't know how to say it without coming across that way."Nishta Mehra writes about her family's experience with learning how to navigate the landscape of interracial adoption in a "post-racial" America: Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair.
What these friends don't understand is that when the act of defining your family structure becomes an expected part of every day of your entire life, you grow tired of being gracious. It's exhausting to have strangers view your life as an up-for-grabs educational experience. For my kid, it's to constantly hear the underlying message: "Your life, your family, doesn't make sense to me. Someone needs to explain it to me. You owe me an explanation."
It's the people who live comfortably inside majorities who tend to discount any sort of commentary from minorities as being "overly sensitive." And I imagine that it's hard to step back and grasp the fact that when the world you occupy is built to accommodate you, you fit inside the boxes. You make sense. You are expected.
"A Pattern or Practice of Unlawful Conduct"
Today, the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division released its report on the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department, whose officer, Darren Wilson, shot and killed Michael Brown in August 2014, prompting large-scale, nationwide protests, which only increased following a grand jury's choice not to indict Wilson for the killing. [more inside]
The Corinthian 15: Ann, Natalie, Latonya, Mallory, Hollie, Paul,...
...Natasha, Nathan, Jessica, Amanda, Ashlee, Deanda, Dawn, Makenzie, and Tasha. These are the names of the Corinthian 15, as signed to an open letter to the US Department of Education stating their refusal to repay their federal student loans. Their website includes a photo of each of the fifteen, and a brief story of each one's encounter with the for-profit Corinthian Colleges system, which is now being dismantled. (It operated colleges called Everest, Heald, and Wyotech.)
Related stories from The Atlantic, Washington Post, The New Yorker, Consumerist, Inside Higher Ed, and Al Jazeera America. [more inside]
Are they made from real Girl Scouts?
Do you know where your Girl Scout cookies come from? Are yours different from your neighbors? [more inside]
Carol how hungover are you
Is Charlie Brown the Worst Manager Ever?
Is Charlie Brown the Worst Manager Ever? Without box scores, we can’t measure Brown based on Pythag, and without statistics, we can’t even try to measure the team’s performance against its WAR, as Adam Darowski once suggested. We don’t even have an idea of the league’s playing environment, given that we know less about Brown’s rivals than even his own team. (It would seem, based on the pitches he’s seen to swing through, that most pitchers can throw harder than the batters can handle.) We can only broadly guess at Brown’s skills or habits as a tactician based on what little we know. Please consider the following science inexact. (via SpoFi)
Troubles in Paradise
Troubles in Paradise is a review of the history and arguments of the creationism/intelligent design movement, written by James Downard.
My dear sons, learn eloquence.
Beginning in 1808, a young man begins keeping a secret, ciphered journal of his life with terse detail of his days. Astronomical observations, interpersonal relationships (to put it mildly), weather notes, and the minutiae of a planter's life in 19th Century North Carolina were collected into these volumes that were nearly lost, decoded in 1979 and mostly forgotten again. The Coded Life of William Thomas Prestwood.
Making everyone's commute better, one concerto at a time
Bach on the A train. Every year on March 21, Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday, musicians around the world celebrate Bach in the Subways Day by offering free performances in subways and other public spaces. Performances are planned in Bonn, Berkeley, Seoul, Portland, Amherst, (which doesn't have a subway so the performance will be at a Subway), Singapore, and Budapest, among many others.
Ye truth is yt ys might surprise you!
The East India Company: The original corporate raiders
It was at this moment that the East India Company (EIC) ceased to be a conventional corporation, trading and silks and spices, and became something much more unusual. Within a few years, 250 company clerks backed by the military force of 20,000 locally recruited Indian soldiers had become the effective rulers of Bengal.
The Uncanny X-Men
"Once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
The Velveteen Rabbit read by Meryl Streep (24 min. 39 secs.); a shorter, more official source of the video is at Meryl Streep Info blog, with promotional material. Online edition of the 1922 book by Margery Williams, complete with original illustrations by William Nicholson, at the Digital Library at UPenn. [more inside]
Nobody's admitting that they're evicting the fairies
Fairy control is coming to Somerset woods It seems that the fairies of Wayford Woods, Crewkerne in Somerset have been neglecting the need for planning permission before they begin construction. [more inside]
GET THEM ON THE BLOWER
"Everyone will land, but some people fly first class"
Ronson’s argument is essentially a reactionary liberalism taking shelter in the privilege of the status quo: while the ideals of twitter shaming campaigns are well-founded, their application, in practice, is problematic. They go too far. Innocents have suffered. His rhetorical appeal, therefore, is like the many liberals who have written books and essays and memoirs about how they joined the communist party (or Occupy, or whatever) only to discover that it didn’t instantly solve everything painlessly and precisely, who find fault with every activist who isn’t literally the saintliest fantasy of MLK and Gandhi rolled into one. The theory is (still) good, they always say, but the practice leaves something to be desired. I’m all for anti-racism, but you know what, I can’t get on board with disrupting people’s commute.Aaron Bady: On Landings, Soft and Otherwise, and Aggressive Lacks of Proportion.
The Kaizen of Japanese Porn
As Shimiken's public profile grew, he began approaching his career with the commitment of an elite athlete: eating an all-protein diet, lifting weights, abstaining from alcohol, and staying up late at night to practice ejaculating on glamour shots of starlets to get the aim of his gansha (facial) just right. "It's rude to get it in a girl's eyes," he says. "I wanted to make it perfect."
The ultimate vegan ramen
Climbing Mt. Ramen, vegan-style. For the past four years, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats has gone vegan for the month of February.
This is hands-down the best bowl of ramen I've ever made. And it can all be yours—with a little bit of heavy-duty climbing, that is. It's a bear of a recipe with many moving parts and tons of individual elements that need to come together in one bowl at the end. Set aside at least half a day for this project because you won't be making it on a weeknight. That said, it's not very difficult, technique-wise, lots of simmering and straining and just a bit of roasting. Come with me. I can lead the way and put the anchors in for you, but you're going to have to pull yourself up to the top.
All hail the Monkey God!
Archaeologists in Honduras have discovered ruins deep in the rainforest that appear to be the fabled White City (known fancifully as "The City of the Monkey God"). Unfortunately there are deforestation threats to the site, including illegal cattle ranching.
March 3
Now playing: yrCodeIsBadAndYouShouldFeelBad
Gibber is a creative coding environment for audiovisual performance and composition. It contains features for audio synthesis and musical sequencing, 2d drawing, 3d scene construction and manipulation, and live-coding shaders.
It comes with a few demos (autoplaying audio)
To stop the current audio or animation, press Control-.
It comes with a few demos (autoplaying audio)
To stop the current audio or animation, press Control-.
Phranc talk (with a P-H and a hard C)
Phranc, the self-described "All-American Jewish Lesbian Folksinger" has been a little quiet lately, but she's back with a new website and a new instrumental song. And if that wasn't enough, her entire solo catalog is now available on Bandcamp. [more inside]
Scaled in Miles
Scaled in Miles is an interactive visualization that "... is a look at the history of Miles Davis' career and collaborations according to his recording sessions as documented by the Jazz Discography Project. Over four hundred recording sessions are shown in a timeline across the middle of the screen. The circles above it represent the nearly six hundred people who played those sessions; larger circles indicate more sessions with Miles. Scrub and click over the timeline to highlight the people who played with Miles on each date. You can also find specific artists and highlight their sessions by clicking on the circles, or by entering different names in the search box. And if your browser plays audio, you can listen to samples from iTunes in the upper left." [more inside]
Knitting patterns are only guidelines
Save the Honeybee, Sterilize the Earth
The state of the bees. "For the past seven years, as has been widely reported, honeybees have been dying at an alarming rate. Yet today there are slightly more hives in the country than before the die-offs began. That’s because beekeeping families like the Brownings have moved beyond panic and begun quietly adjusting to a strenuous way of doing business, one that requires constant monitoring, treatment, supplemental feeding, rapid replacement of dead hives, and grudging participation in an agricultural system that grows increasingly inhospitable to the bees it needs to survive."
HTTPS crypto protection suffers "FREAK" flaw
Washington Post: Technology companies are scrambling to fix a major security flaw that for more than a decade left users of Apple and Google devices vulnerable to hacking when they visited millions of supposedly secure Web sites, including Whitehouse.gov, NSA.gov and FBI.gov. The flaw resulted from a former U.S. government policy that forbade the export of strong encryption and required that weaker “export-grade” products be shipped to customers in other countries, say the researchers who discovered the problem. These restrictions were lifted in the late 1990s, but the weaker encryption got baked into widely used software that proliferated around the world and back into the United States, apparently unnoticed until this year. [more inside]
When Is a Robin Not a Robin? When It's a Thrush.
With spring just around the corner (Mother Nature swears for real this time), North Americans are eagerly on the lookout for one of the earliest migratory harbingers of spring, the robin.
Wait, what? Robins are a Christmas bird! Hey, that's not a robin at all! [more inside]
Wait, what? Robins are a Christmas bird! Hey, that's not a robin at all! [more inside]
Coke + Nutella + Mentos + Durex ITALIA world record
How the (human) penis lost its spikes
We're beginning to understand the genes behind how men lost their dick spines. In fact, smooth penises are a derived state in humans; many if not most mammals have some level of spikiness or roughness on the penile tissue. We've known that chimps have penile spines since 1944! However, no one's really quite sure exactly why humans lost their spines. [more inside]
"Yeah, what the hell, I'm Pope."
So what is Stephen Colbert doing between TV gigs? Two things: One, growing awesome facial hair and Two,
being an awesome Catholic (with Father James Martin).
The Unlost Generation
The White Negro, Norman Mailer, 1957.
It is on this bleak scene that a phenomenon has appeared: the American existentialist—the hipster, the man who knows that if our collective condition is to live with instant death by atomic war, relatively quick death by the State as l’univers concentrationnaire, or with a slow death by conformity with every creative and rebellious instinct stifled (at what damage to the mind and the heart and the liver and the nerves no research foundation for cancer will discover in a hurry) , if the fate of twentieth century man is to live with death from adolescence to premature senescence, why then the only life-giving answer is to accept the terms of death, to live with death as immediate danger, to divorce oneself from society, to exist without roots, to set out on that uncharted journey into the rebellious imperatives of the self.[more inside]
Sex, Lives, and Disability
Most debates around sex and disabled people in the mainstream press mirror those of medical ethicists, by focusing on whether disabled people have the ‘right’ to pay for sex. But this is just one small part of the overall picture. Disabled academics and activists paint on a much larger canvas, writing about issues such as consent around mental capacity, the forced sterilisation of disabled people, the rights of disabled people in institutions to have sex and be free from sexual abuse, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) disabled people."Sex, Lives, and Disability", from Mosaic Science, covers a lot of ground on many issues relating to including history of disability rights movements, what role sex workers may play in the lives of some people with disabilities, barriers often faced by LGBT people with disabilities, rethinking definitions of sex, and consent when verbal consent may not be possible. In sidebar videos, journalist and disability activist Mik Scarlet tackles Ten Myths about Sex and Disability and Alternate Erogenous Zones. Mik also co-authors The Love Lounge, an advice column focusing on love, sex, and relationship advice for people with disabilities. (Links contain possibly nsfw images and video, depending on your workplace. Clicker beware.)
... so here is a photo of a weasel riding a woodpecker.
Martin Le-May was birding with his wife when he caught this once-in-a-lifetime shot.
Hey... that guy looks kinda familiar.
Alternative Model Has Her Anus Cast In Bronze
Magnus Irvin and Michael Ritzema, run a company called Edible Anus. For fifteen years they’ve been producing chocolates made from a mould created by an actual human anus! And now they’ve taken things a step further, offering personal anus castings... made of a more permanent material, like glass or bronze. (SLYT/NSFW)
There is a rumbling in the sky. All the wheat disappears.
Squirrels? That's where I'm a Viking!
Common knowledge about squirrels is that they are basically furry rats. Yes, they are adorable in an amnesiac sort of way, what with their inability to remember where they buried their nuts, but the modern squirrel is not typically considered a manifestation of anything monstrous. Interestingly, much like Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks, if you combine Viking aesthetics with squirrels, you produce a malevolent little rodent called Ratatoskr (“Drill Tooth” in Old Norse) that spends his days spreading malicious gossip and trying to start a fight between the eagle at the top of the World Tree Yggdrasil and the angry Wyrm beneath called Níðhöggr, generally with phrases like, “Did you hear what he said about your mother?”
Curt Schilling 1, Internet Trolls 0
Curt Schilling's tweet congratulating his daughter on her college acceptance was met with the usual assortment of congratulatory replies from friends and fans, some light-heated "can't wait to date her" messages from current students at her future school, and a few seriously vile and offensive responses. The authors of the latter group probably regret their actions today.
Daughters of the Chorus
Unwanted babies had perhaps the best opportunities of all. If carefully placed in a basket in the portico of the Ospedale della Pietà on the Riva degli Schiavoni, they would be taken in, fed, clothed and educated ‘at enormous expense both public and private’. ‘Their prioress is appointed by the Doge himself,’ wrote the Venetian historiographer Francesco Sansovino in 1581. More than this, they would also learn singing or a musical instrument..."Venice's Ospedale della Pietà was one of the 18th century's greatest centers of musical instruction and development, and the foundling girls who lived there were counted among the finest musicians of the age. Antonio Vivaldi taught and conducted at the Pietà for 36 years, and the vast majority of his work was written expressly for performance there. The documentary Vivaldi's Women follows a modern attempt to understand and recreate the original context of that music—with women playing every instrument and singing every part, from soprano to bass. [more inside]
More than just a cheesy music video
"Total Eclipse of the Heart" is way more musically complex than you might have thought.
Another Derren Brown post
Infamous was a 2014 magic show from Derren Brown: This is an hour long Youtube video with a fantastic finale.
How does he do it, on Quora.
"...look like you are witnessing true magic": A positive review from a fellow magician.
How does he do it, on Quora.
"...look like you are witnessing true magic": A positive review from a fellow magician.
Keep Korma and Curry On
Scientists have figured out what makes Indian food so delicious. [Washington Post]
In a large new analysis of more than 2,000 popular recipes, data scientists have discovered perhaps the key reason why Indian food tastes so unique: It does something radical with flavors, something very different from what we tend to do in the United States and the rest of Western culture. And it does it at the molecular level.
55,000 pages of emails
The New York Times reports today that as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton used her personal e-mail address to conduct all business. In response to a new State Department effort to comply with federal record-keeping practices, Mrs. Clinton’s advisers reviewed tens of thousands of pages of her personal emails and decided which ones to turn over to the State Department. [more inside]
"...the scientific study of the problems of flight..."
One hundred years ago today, on March 3, 1915, a Naval Appropriations Bill was passed through Congress and signed by president Woodrow Wilson. A small rider was attached to the bill and went through the process almost completely unnoticed. That rider legislated the formation of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. [more inside]
nya nya nya nya
A corner of Japan where cats rule [SLR.tv]
Being Deaf in Prison
What rights can a Deaf person who has been incarcerated expect? The National Association of the Deaf has a list of rights that correctional facilities must issue to Deaf people. However, a three-part documentary series done by HEARD (Helping to Advance the Rights of the Deaf) in conjunction with Al Jeezera (originally aired in December 2013) reveals that the actual experiences of Deaf prisoners diverge vastly from that of what they are entitled on on paper (trailer). [more inside]
idea: a man exercising on a treadmill who is also going nowhere in life
I grew up in the American suburbs, that idyllic pastoral of white picket fences and bitter secrets. After amazing my primary school teachers with my advanced reading level and complex, nuanced analysis of The Waste Land, I continued my education in the Ivy League, letting the legacy of the many geniuses and impostors who walked those hallowed halls speak to my soul and enrich my literary perspective.Meet The Guy in Your MFA. [more inside]
Through my work, I seek to explore what it means to be an upper-middle-class, White, American male in the 21st century.
City of a Thousand Spires, One Of Which Has Giant Babies On It
A Tour of David Černý's Prague. David Černý is shaping Prague’s personality - one sculpture at a time. (previously)
I'm more of a "four desserts" person myself...
The 4 Deserts race series is a series of 250km ultramarathons held in the Atacama Desert, Gobi Desert, Sahara Desert, and Antarctica. Competitors are only provided with water, tents, and medical support; they must carry everything else themselves. [more inside]
Let us not wait for the millionaires to give us this money.
The Statue of Liberty is a shining symbol of Franco-American amity, but the story of its pedestal is a tribute to the immigrants, workers, and children who raised and donated money to build it. 1n 1885 - 120, 000 of them donated more than $100,000 to build the pedestal for the statue - at that time sitting in parts in boxes on the island where it would eventually stand. [more inside]
The humble quest to read all things lesbian
The Lesbrary - "The humble quest to read everything lesbian: a lesbian book blog." Also see sidebar for links to other lesbian book blogs, websites, and online resources. [more inside]
Boring rooftop? Put a house on it
If your apartment building is looking a little plain, just build a house on the roof. NYC isn’t the only place to find homes on rooftops, though some aren’t for the faint of heart.
I Want To Live In A House
Once upon a time there was a family that lived in a pub. Starstruck is an Australian musical released in 1982, directed by Gillian Armstrong, which was her second major film after 'My Brilliant Career'. [more inside]
Plunging deep into the manosphere
I already know that "the manosphere" refers to an online network, nascent but vast and like the universe constantly expanding, each twinkling star in its firmament dedicated—obviously—to men. Men and their problems. Usually with women.Jeff Sharlet asks: What Kind of Man Joins the Men’s Rights Movement?
Next I would like to visit Okonomiyaki Galaxy please
Okonomiyaki World is a surprisingly comprehensive cooking resource that includes a history, recipes and variations for both Osaka/Kansai and Hiroshima styles, information on ingredients and nutrition, supplies and utensils, restaurants serving okonomiyaki around the world, and even an okonomiyaki discussion group. The only thing it's missing is a banjo tribute that features animated, dancing cats, but this link has you covered.
The Drug Lord With a Social Mission
In 2013, New Zealand passed a law creating the world’s first set of regulations to allow the clinical testing and approval of new recreational drugs. Much as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration does for medicines, New Zealand’s system stands to create a government-regulated market for legal highs—an attempt to tame the industry not by stamping it out, but by guiding consumers to safe, reliable products, and giving suppliers an incentive to bring such products to market. [more inside]
"Every civilized nation has one or more characteristic drinks"
Odd Drinks To Be Had.
Here, from the December 26, 1893, issue of the New York Sun, is an article about the various drinking establishments of Lower Manhattan, from the Battery up to about 28th Street. Be aware, some of the ethnic attitudes expressed in this piece are very much of their time. You’ll also note peculiarities of style and spelling; those are all in the original.
March 2
West African Zaouli dance and trance music mashup
Zaouli dance from the Ivory Coast and Captain Hook & Astrix - Bungee Jump mashup is the latest vid for the Burning Mountain Festival held in the Engadin Valley, Switzerland. Zaouli, a popular mask dance, was created in the fifties. The Gouro ethnic group is the midwestern part of Ivory Coast / Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa. According to what people say, there are diverse legends regarding the origin of the Zaouli mask and dance; yet, all come to the agreement that such legends were inspired by a very beautiful girl - 'Dzela Lou Zaouli' - daughter of Zaouli."
Here they come just in time
In 1992, three little cartoon girls that had previously only been sketches were turned into a short animated film called Whoopass Stew! by Craig McCracken. It was picked up for a series by Cartoon Network in 1993, but the short didn't get much attention. The Powerpuff Girls series eventually debuted in 1998, and ran until 2005. And they're coming back in 2016. [more inside]
All Other Food Stands Are Terrible
Grab Them By The Eyes is a new Flash strategy game about advertising. By Terry Cavanagh of VVVVVV fame.
How period trackers presume/impose heterosexuality, fertility, feminity
Maggie Delano discusses the crushing assumption of heterosexual fertility planning written into the very code of period tracking apps. A participant in the Quantified Self movement (described here by the wonderful Whitney Erin Boesel), Delano articulates for us the often-hidden, unique needs of women who are infertile or partnered with women, trans men and those not sexually active. I felt keenly her frustration at the way period trackers can never be 'neutral' or customisable outside of certain prescribed limitations, which have nothing to do with usability and everything to do with cultural expectations.
If you’ve never needed the welfare system, consider yourself lucky
"Play is all about fun; what’s there to study?"
The Unlikely Life of Afghanistan's First Female Taxi Driver
"The Unlikely Life of Afghanistan's First Female Taxi Driver" profiles Sara Bayahi, believed to currently be Afghanistan's only female taxi driver. That may not be the case for long, though, as she is teaching other women to drive in defiance of cultural taboos.
“We aren’t judged by the worst mistake we ever make."
The country’s largest state university system says it doesn’t discriminate against former prison inmates. Applicants say otherwise. [more inside]
Please wear 25-D glasses
Join Mr. Piggy on an adventure through time and space in the short, animated film Mr. Piggy Dies in 25 Dimensions. [SLV NSFW]
Accuracy in reporting
38 / 50
In Nebraska, U.S. District Judge Joseph Bataillon has struck down the state's anti-SSM laws as unconstitutional. He has issued an injunction allowing the state until March 9th to appeal.
The Death of a Missouri Politician
Tom Schweich, Missouri's state auditor and a candidate in the Republican gubernatorial primary, died in an apparent suicide on Feb. 26. [more inside]
A Ranking of 1980s Fantasy That Would Please Crom Himself!
I have travelled back to that time to bring forth the Ultimate 1980s Fantasy Epic Ranking List Post! Single Link Tor Blog Post offering many further links, nostalgic euphoria and the inevitable objection to individual rankings.
You don’t need to be persuaded / You are being annotated.
Earlier this month, ...[(Rap) Genius] (previously)... quietly introduced what could become its most significant feature—the ability to annotate any page on the web. Currently in beta testing, the new functionality lets users add genius.com/ to the beginning of any URL to access a version of the page on Genius. The page is fully annotatable, so users can highlight and annotate any text on the page and view others’ annotations. The only public announcement of this feature so far is a mysterious, meme-bending billboard on Canal St. in NYC.
Those Who Wrote in Small Letters
For much of the tenth century, the Qarmatians enjoyed supreme power in northeastern Arabia, exacting tribute even from the caliphs in Baghdad and Cairo. They were an esoteric Isma'ili Shi'ite sect from the oases of the desert fringe and the islands of the Persian Gulf, where they built themselves an egalitarian utopia—"probably the only communist society to control a large territory, and to endure for more than a generation, before the twentieth century." Utopia, however, depended on the agricultural labor of thirty thousand Ethiopian slaves and the proceeds from constant raiding and pillaging. In 930, the Qarmatians stormed Mecca, killed thousands of pilgrims at the foot of the Kaaba, and removed the Black Stone to Bahrayn. A year later, they identified the Mahdi, their prophesied redeemer, in the form of a young Persian prisoner. They believed that once he assumed control of the Qarmatian state, he would lead them to even greater triumphs... [more inside]
KVLY-TV
If I asked you where the tallest structure in the Western hemisphere was located, would you say North Dakota? [more inside]
This is Criminal
Criminal is a podcast with "Stories of people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. The show’s producers [Phoebe Judge, Eric Mennel, and Lauren Spohr] are full-time radio people, but Criminal is what we do when we go home at night." Part of the Radiotopia collective, Criminal delivers fascination and intrigue in every episode.
Oddly soothing shapes and colors in motion
Fewer Women Run Big Companies Than Men Named John
Fewer large companies are run by women than by men named John, a sure indicator that the glass ceiling remains firmly in place in corporate America. Among chief executives of S&P 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James. We’re calling this ratio the Glass Ceiling Index. (SLNYT, inspired by a 2-page PDF report from Ernst & Young which computed analogous numbers for board directors.)
[more inside]
First-ever snapshot of the dual nature of light
Scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have captured "The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave" (images of the photo and the microscope in right hand column) using "EPFL’s ultrafast energy-filtered transmission electron microscope – one of the two in the world." The EPFL's explanatory video: Two-in-one photography: Light as wave and particle. Reference: Simultaneous observation of the quantization and the interference pattern of a plasmonic near-field. Nature Communications.
Rousey Demolishes Zingano - Is Cyborg Next?
Cat Zingano is one of the greatest mixed martial arts fighters in the world. She was the first woman in UFC history to win a fight by technical knockout, the first woman in UFC history to win Fight of the Night (awarded to both participants in the most impressive bout on a card) and was 9-0 in her professional career, with only one of those fights going the full five minutes (she won by unanimous decision).
It took Ronda Rousey 14 seconds to beat her in the headliner match of UFC 184. [more inside]
Sadness is a legitimate emotion.
Pre-therapy, this is the only thing I was ever taught, implicitly and explicitly, about sadness: It is bad.Journalist and author Mac McClelland explores the relationship between recovering from PTSD and learning how to live in the presence of sadness: How I Learned To Be OK With Feeling Sad. [more inside]
You do not want it. If you've got it, you should definitely try to get rid of it, fast as possible. Whatever you do, don't subject other people to it, because they do not like that.
Sadness can be legitimately problematic, absolutely. If your sadness comes from seemingly no place or even an obvious place but keeps you from participating in life or enjoying anything and refuses to abate no matter how long you go on letting it express itself, you of course can't keep living like that. But culturally, we aren't allowed to be sad even for a little while. Even when it's perfectly sensible. Even when, sometimes, we need it.
Isaiah 2:3-4
Introducing Wunderland Kalker: Come for the nuclear breeding facility, stay for the locomotive themed roller coaster and
flying elephant.
The Color of Pomegranates, rescored by Nicolas Jaar and Juno Reactor
When Martin Scorsese introduced his Film Foundation’s newly restored version of The Colour of Pomegranates at the Toronto film festival in September he told the expectant audience they were going to witness images and visions “pretty much unlike anything in cinema history”.For a taste of what has been restored, you can watch the entire unremastered film in two parts on YouTube, and the whole film in lower quality on Archive.org. For another novel experience, you can view a much higher quality of the film with a new score by Nicolas Jaar, and see a lower quality version with the new score by Ben Watkins AKA Juno Reactor, as commissioned by the Bialystok Film Festival in Poland last year. Juno Reactor had previously used visuals from Pomegranates for the video of "God is God." [more inside]
The 1969 Armenian film, voted 84th best of all-time in the most recent Sight & Sound magazine greatest movies poll, only gained a belated official release in western cinemas in 1982, but even the cinephiles and critics who have lauded the film with such extravagant praise since should now prepare to see Sergei Parajanov’s masterpiece afresh.
This story is about the guards.
My Fellow Prisoners by Mikhail Khodorkovsky [New York Review of Books]
I’m writing these notes because I want people who care about these things to know what I have personally experienced in prison. Over time I’ve turned from an ordinary victim into an interested observer, and I’ve discovered that for many people the prison world remains terra incognita. And yet in our country one in every hundred people is currently in prison; one in ten (maybe by now one in seven) of the male population passes through prison at some point in their lives. Moreover, prison has a terrible effect on the majority of both prisoners and guards. It’s not yet clear, in fact, which group is affected more. Society has to do something about this human tragedy. And for a start people need to know about it.
It's Not Crazy, It's Sports
It's Errol Morris Week at Grantland. Six short documentaries created by Academy Award winning filmmaker Errol Morris (previously) will be rolled out this week. The first, entitled The Subterranean Stadium, about a league of electric football players, was posted today.
The man with the golden arm
At age 14, James Harrison had major surgery and required 3.4 gallons of donated blood. As soon as he turned 18, he began donating blood himself, and it was discovered that his blood contained an antibody that, when given to Rh- mothers of Rh+ babies, prevents Rhesus disease. [more inside]
Either I'm a sexual deviant, or they're wrong
Did Amazon Sink the Queen of Online Erotica? - Phoebe Reilly, Vulture
"Engler is an underappreciated pioneer, a self-proclaimed feminist in furry-cat slippers. To put her crowning achievement demurely, she challenged the book-publishing industry's denial of women's appetite for sexually explicit books. She wrote tawdry, lowbrow novels, and published hundreds of others, that freed romance from its lame euphemisms well before Fifty Shades of Grey, and she did so in a digital format long before the Kindle and the iPad allowed e-books to flourish.
"To put it less demurely: There were readers out there, lots of them, who didn't want to read about thick manroots. They wanted hard cocks. So that's what Ellora's Cave gave them. Easily and often."
"Thank you. Goodbye."
"Thank you. Goodbye." Director Vania Heymann (previously, also of Interactive Bob Dylan Video fame) has set his sights on Israel's upcoming elections, and leant his considerable cinematic talents to a local change campaign. The result is a compelling minute-long commercial highlighting the power of voting. (SLYT)
A lie spread by turkeys who don't want to be stuffed
Perhaps no other classical composer was as obsessed with good food and wine as Gioachino Rossini, who claimed he would only visit America if his close friend, legendary chef Antonin Carême, accompanied him. Because of his culinary devotion, many dishes are named "alla Rossini." One of the most decadent is Tournedos Rossini, a heart-stopping combination of beef filet, fois gras, butter, black truffle, and Madeira. In honor of Signor Crescendo's birthday on February 29, here is a recipe for that infamous dish. And while it’s cooking, how about some bel canto? [more inside]
"In Chinese, mei-mei means sister."
Best friends forever: Separated in China, 2 girls reunite in U.S.
Mae and Mai spent the first years of their lives in the same orphanage in southern China, before they were adopted by families on opposite coasts of the United States. They were inseparable in China. As close as sisters. They ate together and played together, and even after they were moved to separate foster families in the same town, they went to school together and often shared meals at one girl’s home. Adoption may have saved their lives, but they both lost someone they loved.
This week, four years after the best friends were split up, the girls reunited in Oakland, where they’re receiving treatment for the same genetic blood disease at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland.
The Mass Murderer on Your $20
He was the worst kind of populist, and believed in a shortsighted, cheap, selfish populism. The kind of populist who sneers at wussy bleeding-heart Americans like Ralph Waldo Emerson and their moralizing against Indian removal when there’s cheap land to be had. The kind who rages at the expertise of elitist eggheads like Nicholas Biddle and Henry Clay putting regulations in the way of easy profits. The kind who’s absolutely OK with Southern postmasters ripping up abolitionist pamphlets in the mail.If the Reagan people want to put Ronald Reagan on the $20 bill and boot Andrew Jackson off, I’m all for it.
March 1
Violin videos: Women playing music written by women
Each video inside depicts at least one woman playing Western art music composed by a woman, on a violin. Most of the videos include other performers and other instruments as well. Before you can perform the music of women composers, first you have to find it. Links are included to some sheet music and recordings of violin music by women composers. [more inside]
Titan, awash in oceans of liquid methane and full of azotosomes?
"A press release from Cornell explains how the researchers used some creative chemical modeling to construct a hypothetical, methane-based cell that's stable in Titan's sub-zero oceans. They call their alien life form an "azotosome."" [more inside]
On pregnancy, waiting and the malleability of time
"I am waiting for my baby, waiting for summer, waiting for knowledge, but the waiting itself becomes the knowledge and then, even as I am so hungry for transition I am practically clawing out of my skin, I begin to mourn and maybe to fear the fading of this particular consciousness: the Zen state, the acid trip of gestation, and its changed relationship to time."
The Book of Life
After a year, The Philosophers' Mail (previously) has concluded its project. But fret not: it has been succeeded by The Book of Life, a continuously updated online book that "aims to be the curation of the best and most helpful ideas in the area of emotional life."
“But the man’s uniquely evil, isn’t he?”
John Gray: The Truth About Evil:
Blair made this observation in November 2002, four months before the invasion of Iraq, when he invited six experts to Downing Street to brief him on the likely consequences of the war. The experts warned that Iraq was a complicated place, riven by deep communal enmities, which Saddam had dominated for over 35 years. Destroying the regime would leave a vacuum; the country could be shaken by Sunni rebellion and might well descend into civil war. These dangers left the prime minster unmoved. What mattered was Saddam’s moral iniquity. The divided society over which he ruled was irrelevant. Get rid of the tyrant and his regime, and the forces of good would prevail. If Saddam was uniquely evil 12 years ago, we have it on the authority of our leaders that Isis is uniquely evil today. Until it swept into Iraq a few months ago, the jihadist group was just one of several that had benefited from the campaign being waged by western governments and their authoritarian allies in the Gulf in support of the Syrian opposition’s struggle to overthrow Bashar al-Assad. Since then Isis has been denounced continuously and with increasing intensity; but there has been no change in the ruthless ferocity of the group, which has always practised what a radical Islamist theorist writing under the name Abu Bakr Naji described in an internet handbook in 2006 as “the management of savagery”.[more inside]
In Style: The Dress Doctors
"Before ready-to-wear and before fast fashion, American women created affordable clothing for themselves and their families with help from the Dress Doctors—the thrift experts, home economics professors, and fashion guide authors who advised women how to craft the most appropriate looks for less." Historian Linda Przybyszewski talks about the rise of home economics, women's entry into academic departments in higher education, and the origins of American theory on suitable, affordable clothing for everyday wear. Before the Dress Doctors, however, there was Mary Brooks Picken, the First Lady of Fashion. [more inside]
"This movie was made in 1986. It invented all the cliches."
Matt Zoller Seitz hosted a sleepover for his 11 year old son and his son's friends. Soon it came time to watch a movie, which produced: Notes on watching "Aliens" for the first time again, with a bunch of kids .
Wonders of Destruction in Arabic Fiction
Historians of war and society would like to believe that military conflicts have fixed beginnings and ends. Conventional depictions of the Lebanese civil war are no exception and typically confine that conflict within the notional temporal parameters of 1975–90. But the key aggravating features generally identified with the events of the Lebanese civil war—class resentments, echoes of the Arab-Israeli conflict on a regional scale, domestic geographical inequalities, sectarian rancor, and political infighting across the Lebanese scene—had been accumulating since 1948, and even earlier. [more inside]
Baruch Morde... why?
Purim starts Wednesday night. A minor Jewish holiday best described as a cross between Halloween and St. Patrick's Day, Purim celebrates Esther. [more inside]
Spring's Herald in Bulgaria
Happy Baba Marta Day! Time to get your Martenitsas together and pick out a tree to hang them on when spring finally comes. ...Or, if you're not in Bulgaria, just read this. [more inside]
New music from L.A./Little Armenia
Bei Ru is a Los Angeles-based multi-genre music producer/composer known for his unconventional use of Middle Eastern melodies and rhythms combined with heavy drums, electronics, and a plethora of live instrumentation. His new album, ‘Saturday Night At The Magic Lamp’, blends electronica, Middle Eastern influences, funk and hip-hop, featuring musicians playing electric bass, electric guitar, electric oud, cello, keyboards and piano
If you listen to only one L.A.-based, Armenian-American, instrumental, electronic, Middle-Eastern, funk, hip-hop song today, make it "Sweet Temptress" [SLYT]
If you listen to only one L.A.-based, Armenian-American, instrumental, electronic, Middle-Eastern, funk, hip-hop song today, make it "Sweet Temptress" [SLYT]
The 27-year hunt for a mystery New Wave song: Solved!
In 1986, a German teenager hit "record" on his cassette player to catch a New Wave song from the radio. But he missed the intro, and so had no idea what the song was called or who the artist was. Contacting music journalists in the 1990s proved unfruitful, so in 2002 he posted it online on his "Most Wanted" music page. For 11 years, the mystery song - known as Stay (The second time around) for its lyrics - was the source of intense speculation and detective work (including in AskMe), with dozens of potential matches eliminated. A YouTube post in 2007 broadened the search, but still yielded no answers. It wasn't until 2013, when a Swedish Radio host chanced upon a Reddit thread about the song and played it on air, that the mystery was finally solved by two listeners. [more inside]
An argument for more cats and fewer humans in genetics class
Unfortunately, what textbooks, lab manuals and web pages say about these human traits is mostly wrong. Most of the common, visible human traits that are used in classrooms do NOT have a simple one-locus, two-allele, dominant vs. recessive method of inheritance. Rolling your tongue is not dominant to non-rolling, unattached earlobes are not dominant to attached, straight thumbs are not dominant to hitchhiker's thumb, etc.
Deep Soul: Rick Hall's brand of integration in segregated Muscle Shoals
How Muscle Shoals became music's most unlikely hit factory (previously, 2008) If you love music and musical history, you really owe it to yourself to see the superb "Must See" documentary Muscle Shoals now on NetFlix and other online venues - Trailer here. Rick Hall of Fame Studios is the quintessential American "rags to riches" story and the "peckerwood" group "The Swampers" (and eventually the competing Muscle Shoals Music Studio) that he unintentionlly spawned, are together responsible for many of the classic soul and R&B hits that are part of the very fabric of American Music. [more inside]
In Voodoo’s survival, a tale of black resilience
African religions fused with Christianity to create Voodoo, but today many open practitioners of the faith are white.
The plural of fish is not "tangible objects"
Last week the Supreme Court of the United States ruled (PDF) on the case of Yates v. United States, whether the captain of a fishing boat violated the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by throwing undersized red grouper overboard to avoid prosecution. [more inside]
Rediscovering San Francisco's Punk Scene in a Box of Old Negatives
In the late 70s, John Roberts was a visual arts major at San Francisco's Institute of Art who spent his free time documenting the Bay Area's blossoming punk scene. His photos—a mix of street photography, portraiture, and concert shots—uniquely captured the last moments of the city's pre-AIDS and post-hippie era. Roberts's best shots were from a tiny punk venue called the Deaf Club on Valencia Street. The Deaf Club was a deaf community center that hosted hardcore shows from 1978 to 1980—the resulting scene was grungy, sweaty, and truly bizarre, and Roberts's photos captured it perfectly.
Showcasing The Dreams and Passions Of Russians Aged 1 to 100
Photographer Keen Heick-Abildhauge loves Russia and decided to ask various residents about their passions and ambitions. The result is Portraits And Dreams Of People From 1 To 100 Years Of Age.
The first rule of Pittsburgh is you don't talk shit about Pittsburgh.
On January 6, 2014, Pittsburgh was in the middle of an especially harsh cold snap. The temperature had hit seven below zero, and the wind chill made going outside almost unbearable. But Kevin Sousa was elated. His Kickstarter campaign for Superior Motors had finally reached its goal of $250,000, and the contributions were still pouring in with nineteen hours left to go. Every time Sousa checked his phone, he saw dozens of new Twitter notifications letting him know that the campaign was doing better and better. He was pulling in an amount of restaurant seed money unprecedented in the history of Kickstarter, all to open a high-concept, multi-component restaurant in a seemingly hopeless place.On Pittsburgh chef Kevin Sousa's attempt to revitalize a failing steel town through food, his previous restaurants' allegedly troubled financial history, and what information is owed to Kickstarter backers about their investment. [more inside]
March First, Then Win
119 years ago, today, the unthinkable happened, as far as the Europeans were concerned. The Ethiopian army trounced the Italians in the Battle of Adwa. Headlines such as ‘Abyssinia (Ethiopia) Defeats Invading Italians’; ’80,000 Ethiopians Destroy 20,000 Italians at the Battle of Adwa’; ‘Italian Premier Crispi Resigns’; and ‘Abyssinia and Italy Sign Peace Treaty.’ peppered the European press. Adwa was placed on the world map and remained a historic story because of Ethiopia’s decisive victory against the Italian army on March 1st 1896 (Yekatit 23, 1888 according to the Ethiopian calendar).
'I am a woman. I do not like war. But I would rather die than accepting your deal."attributed to Empress Taitu Bitul*, Wife of Menelik II [more inside]
Rare Sierra Nevada Red Fox Spotted in Yosemite National Park
For the first time in 100 years, a Sierra Nevada Red Fox has been spotted at Yosemite. Scientists have estimated the total Sierra Nevada red fox population numbers below 50 (fifty). [more inside]
Zaire 74 - Return to Africa
Soul Power is a documentary produced by Jeff_Levy-Hinte about the Zaire 74 festival, a three day music festival held in Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) in 1974 as a precursor to "The Rumble in Jungle" boxing match between Muhammed Ali and George Foreman. [more inside]
Aphex Waits: Tom vs Computer Control mashed up by Esmko
Eskmo took a few Tom Waits songs that he love and mashed them with Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2 by Aphex Twin, and created Aphex Waits (Soundcloud with free DL; YouTube). If you'd like more weird electronic music from Eskmo, Dazed has a preview stream of his new album along with an interview about it. Then there's Eskmo's self-titled album on Grooveshark, which he released on Ninja Tune back in 2010, which lead to videos for Cloudlight [previously], We Got More [previously], and Color Dropping. He has also shared more music on Soundcloud.
Infocom and the Atomic Bomb
Over a series of nine blog posts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9), Jimmy Maher (previously) reviews and ruminates on Infocom's Trinity: Brian Moriarty's 1986 text adventure about the atomic bomb. Andrew Plotkin (previously) responds. If you weren't keeping up with the latest computer games in 1986, Trinity is playable online at the Internet Archive.
The $3,500 Shirt
Schiit Happened
Bowling ball shoulders
Anthony Mason, iconic Knicks player, dead at 48. Daily Beast: Soul of the 90's.
Where are they now in Sports? video interview.
Dad builds awesome snow sculptures every year
Dad builds awesome snow sculptures every year ...and paints them!
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Shirley Scott, Queen of the Organ
Shirley Scott was a hard bop and soul jazz master of the Hammond B-3. She was a gifted composer, combo leader, and prolific recording artist, releasing the majority of her 40+ albums from the late 1950s to the late 1970s: [more inside]
The Weird Al Yankovic Namesake Sandwich He Never Knew He Asked For
AVclub.com asked Weird Al Yankovic, "If a deli named a sandwich after you, what would be on it?" His answer:
I’d say a fire-roasted eggplant, some roasted red peppers, diced heirloom tomatoes, some thin-sliced red onions—maybe double up on the onions and have some caramelized onions on top of the sliced onions. A little basil, some arugula, some chopped and marinated mushrooms, maybe a slice of fresh avocado, some alfalfa sprouts, a dose of hummus, a drizzle of pomegranate molasses and put it on a warm toasted French roll lovingly sprinkled with some truffle oil.Challenge accepted.
"I'm here to get what's mine." - Fox's 'Empire'
Empire is a Monster That Is Eating Network Television - Buzzfeed, Feb. 26, 2015:
"When it comes to ratings, Fox’s Empire is on a trajectory that’s unprecedented in broadcast television’s recent history, which has mostly been marked by — to appropriate a phrase from Hakeem Lyon (Bryshere Y. Gray) — drip drops, if not just plain old slaughter. As of last week, it is the No. 1 show on network television in the 18 to 49 demographic advertisers seek. And once again, the show built on its ratings this week."[more inside]