April 2017 Archives
April 30
"If They Could Pay Us Less, They Would"
Melbourne-based cartoonist Sam Wallman examines the the minimum wage debate for May Day.
Sam Wallman previously and previouslier...
women in combat on the web
Hundreds of us will die in Raqqa an extraordinary long web page piece of journalism about English women volunteering with the YPG at the assault on Daesh in Raqqa. Read, watch and listen.
In Wyoming, LGBTQ advocates #LiveAndLetTutu #WeHaveSissysBack
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) visited Greybull High School for a scheduled Q&A with students in grades 6–12 on April 20. Enzi responded to a question about LGBTQ rights in Wyoming with an anecdote about a man being surprised at the fact that he gets beat up for “wearing a tutu to the bar.” For Wyomingites, Enzi’s anecdote wasn’t random. It instantly called to mind Wyoming resident Larry "Sissy" Goodwin, a Vietnam veteran, retired professor and well-known crossdresser whose story has been featured by media outlets. Enzi apologized to Goodwin, and Sissy said “he offered an apology and I have no doubt to believe it was genuine.” [more inside]
DEAR WHITE PEOPLE
'Dear White People' Is Hilarious, Real, and Necessary [Vice] “It also understands the layers of racism and microaggressions: It isn't just about being called a "nigger" or having a cop pull a gun on you—though these events are in the series, because they're in our lives. It's also about the smaller, shitty moments that pile up: When a professor asks if anyone with a "special connection" to slavery wants to lead the discussion, as the white students all glance toward the one black student in a room, or a coach confusing a black student for the black athlete on his team. Or a white woman touching a black man's Afro, while saying he looks like Wiz Khalifa. These moments within the series are often played, simultaneously, for laughs and devastation: It's funny, because we've been there and know how utterly ridiculous these microaggressions are, and it's devastating because we've been there and know that how hurtful it was.” [more inside]
feeding lego reliably from a hopper is surprisingly hard
Not thinking too hard I put in some bids on large lots of lego on the local ebay subsidiary and went to bed. The next morning I woke up to a rather large number of emails congratulating me on having won almost every bid (lesson 1: if you win almost all bids you are bidding too high). This was both good and bad.
The dummy is a trifle. It is nothing.
Twenty Simple Steps To Ventriloquism A surprisingly creepy story (slPseudopod) by author, voice actor, Thomas Ligotti scholar, and lapsed ventriloquist Jon Padgett.
"wisecracking Anglo-Saxon engineers addicted to alcohol and tobacco"
Slowcore: A Brief Timeline
You could easily argue against the idea of “slowcore” as a genre. But, crucially, there is a sound—or, rather, a continuity of sound—a commitment to allowing songs the room to breathe, to stripping things down to their essence before something bigger can be built back up around them. Even when the songs are fast or loud or busy, they never lose that essential clarity, that push toward beauty as its own end.
slBandcamp
"They are slaughtering us like animals"
“There is a new way of dying in the Philippines,” said Redentor C. Ulsano, the police superintendent in the Tondo district. He smiled and held his wrists together in front of him, pretending to be handcuffed. A photo essay by Daniel Derehulak documenting Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte's horrific antidrug campaign which has left more than 7,000 people dead [CW: Graphic descriptions of violence]. [more inside]
My dad wrote a porno--and I turned it into a podcast
On retirement, [Jamie Morton's] dad decided he was going to write a novel, along the lines of “50 Colours of Grey,” as he called it. When his son Jamie realized the draft chapter of Belinda Blinked that his dad had sent him was actually erotica, he decided to read bits of it out loud to friends at a Christmas lunch. This eventually evolved into the popular UK comedy podcast My Dad Wrote A Porno, where Jamie and his friends Alice Levine and James Cooper read a chapter a week and provide commentary. So far the trio have had over 18 million downloads on iTunes, hosted fellow fans and guest stars Elijah Wood and Star Wars' Daisy Ridley, and been featured in a live show at the Edinburgh Fringe. Later this year they will tour Australia and New Zealand. [more inside]
The American South's greatest postmodern novel, circa 1886
The Lost Symphony: "It is difficult to get very far into Don Miff without suddenly holding the book very gingerly, examining the binding for radioactive scorch marks or other signs of time travel, and then finally exclaiming—“What the hell is this?”" [more inside]
secrets of the orient
Diane...
You're warming up for the new season of Twin Peaks next month. You've watched the previous series and Fire Walk With Me; you've read The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer; you're reading recaps and analysis... but have you heard Diane... The Twin Peaks Tapes Of Agent Cooper? [45m] Originally released only on cassette, sort of in the wild now due to its inclusion in the Internet Archive [download link available].
Not now, Derek!
Born Sexy Yesterday
An interesting dissection of a common gendered trope prevalent in sci-fi, in which the mind of a naive, yet highly skilled girl is written into the body of a mature sexualized woman. (SLYT)
Never Lose Your Glasses
How I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography then got into more trouble An entertaining yarn by the author of Can computers cope with human races?
The Mother of All Application Letters
Before becoming one of the greatest minds who ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci had to really market himself for a job at the court of Ludovico Sforza.
RIP Ueli Steck, the Swiss Machine
Renowned speed climber Ueli Steck has died at the age of 41 after falling from the Nuptse face of Mt. Everest. The Swiss Machine is most well known for solo climbing the north face of the Eiger without ropes in 2 hours 47 minutes, and for climbing all 82 peaks over 4,000m in the Alps in 62 days, choosing to bike and walk between each peak. Video series.
Street Food OTOH
Destroying a tradition of Asian street food? Maybe. In contrast to the post yesterday about the youtube channel on vibrant street food culture is this article about efforts to shoo cooking off the sidewalks.
We were out for a Sunday drive
50th Anniversary of the "Black Sunday" Tornado Outbreak [PDF, 86 pages] - Maps, documents and records, photographs, newspaper clippings, stories and recollections from Southern Minnesota in 1967. [more inside]
"...and now you know what it feels like to be a minority."
April 29
"It's a symbiotic relationship."
A feisty duck has chosen a pretty unusual best friend - a loving golden retriever. Proud duck owner Pam Ishiguro has a flock of seven ducks but her four-year-old Pekin duck Rudy and golden retriever Barclay have formed the strongest bond. The Orange County-based mum said: “The animals are much like my two boys - they have a love-hate relationship. When they are together, somebody is always chasing or jumping on someone else, but when they are apart, they’re always calling for each other.”
American Banksy
Artist Rides Rivers in a Homemade Shantyboat to Learn About the People Who Live on the Banks. Wes Modes, an artist and lecturing professor at UC Santa Cruz and a crew full of creative mates built a shanty boat out of found materials and trash and rode down both the Mississippi River and the Tennessee River over the course of the past two summers. The collective purpose of these journeys is to learn about the people who live on and around the banks and the about the ecology of the rivers. These collected stories are part of the larger multimedia project entitled “A Secret History of American River People“. (it's okay to read the comments on this link folks as it mostly pertains to Water Law.) [more inside]
And he raved on, and I saw that his tears were not only for himself
The Love and Terror of Nick Cave - GQ But what about the other songs, the ones where the anger or disdain or sarcasm or malevolence or aggression dominates, the ones that have traditionally been performed by what Cave will describe to me, somewhat wryly, as the “deranged preacher”? How can that guy possibly turn up now?
You say you want a counter-revolution
Calling Thunder
Calling Thunder: The Unsung History of Manhattan: "Immersive soundscapes compare today's urban cacophony to the island Henry Hudson encountered in 1609. History unearths wonder in the green heart of New York." The goal, according to the producers, is to create an immersive audio environment, one that resonates as historically accurate even without realistic images.
Peep Neat Street Eats
Hey friend! Do you like cities? Do you like watching people preparing food? Now there's a YouTube channel just for you! Street Food World is a series of videos documenting street vendor cuisine all over the world. Let's start with Japan. [more inside]
30 years.
Over the past five months, my father and I have taken on the monumental task of getting to know each other (after he spent 30 years in prison). "You're my daughter. Everything you do is interesting to me. I know you're upset, but if you'll let me, I'd like to try and help. Can we just keep talking?" I smiled at the longing in his voice. This was what he never got to do, be there for me in hard times. I could give him this.
"Sure, Dad," I said. "I'd love to keep talking." And so we did."
The Changing of the Global Economic Guard
In January 2017 the global economy changed guard. [...] The assembled hedge-fund tycoons, Silicon Valley data executives, management gurus, and government officials were treated to a preview of how rapidly the world is about to change. Xi Jinping, the president of China, had come to the Swiss Alpine resort to defend the global trade system against the attacks of the U.S. president-elect, Donald Trump.
“...the humility that comes only with sucking and persevering.”
(It’s Great to) Suck at Something by Karen Rinaldi [The New York Times] “I suck at it. In the sport of (Hawaiian) kings, I’m a jester. In surfing parlance, a “kook.” I fall and flail. I get hit on the head by my own board. I run out of breath when held down by a four-foot wave. I wimp out when the waves get overhead and I paddle back to shore. When I do catch a wave, I’m rarely graceful. On those rare occasions when I manage a decent drop, turn and trim, I usually blow it by celebrating with a fist pump or a hoot. Once, I actually cried tears of joy over what any observer would have thought a so-so performance on a so-so wave. Yes, I was moved to tears by mediocrity. So why continue? Why pursue something I’ll never be good at? Because it’s great to suck at something.”
Play some games today
Nelson v Colorado and Civil Assets Forfeiture
'Last week, in a case called Nelson v. Colorado, the court laid a foundation for upcoming challenges to roll back law enforcement overreach. As a result of respective 2005 and 2006 convictions, Louis Alonzo Maddon and Shannon Nelson were required to pay a few thousand dollars in court costs, fees, and restitution to Colorado (on top of serving prison time). [more inside]
Nice racks. (And modules and patches.)
ModularGrid is a database for modular synthesizers with an integrated planner where people gather information and sketch out their modulars. Alternate, unmusical description: OMG look at all the knobs and sliders and buttons and switches and toggles! [via]
Orange is the new hack
Whole Foods = Whole Paycheck
Whole Foods may be for sale. Earlier this week, the Financial Times reported that Cerberus Capital Management, the New York private equity firm that owns Albertsons and Safeway, had initiated talks with bankers about making a bid [more inside]
April 28
just keep it between the lines bro...
There is no better sports car loop in the USA-- The 75 mile Scenic Loop in far west Texas is a desolate, eye opening...damn I gotta drive. [more inside]
A Dog is like an eternal Peter Pan
Meet Maru (no, not that one), The Happiest Husky In The World That Is Secretly A Panda. More on Instagram.
Throw Confetti To Celebrate Oppression
What Fiesta fails to recognize is the consequential oppression and violence of Mexicans at the hands of Anglo Texans following Texas’ “independence.” Fiesta San Antonio is a ten-day festival held every spring. But as writer Denise Hernández explains, what it means to nonwhite residents of the city is darker and more complex.
11:11am until 3:10pm
Man gets wrong number text in the morning. First response is that it's a wrong number text. He's ignored contradicted. Hijinx ensue. [imgur gallery]
THE CHASE
Hissing, knocking, clunking, squealing, screeching, rattling and more
A library of car noises. A new automotive diagnostic app, called ClingClanger, When Your Car Makes Noise, uses a library of failing car noises to help car owners diagnose mechanical problems.
+23
"Besides, there’s also the odd business of bog butter."
Europe’s Famed Bog Bodies Are Starting to Reveal Their Secrets: High-tech tools divulge new information about the mysterious and violent fates met by these corpses (SL Smithsonian Magazine)
Ibadan’s Tailors, Traders, and Textiles: A Narrative Photodocumentary
Ibadan’s Tailors, Traders, and Textiles: A Narrative Photodocumentary. Join MeFites infini and glasseyes in a journey through fabric shops and fashion magazines of Ibadan, the state capital of Oyo State, Nigeria, to see how brands are built through word of mouth and hard work in the informal economy. Meet Mama Segun, fashion designer and seamstress, Ayoola Adedokun, the face of modern Nigeria, Lanre Ogunleye, stylist, trader, broker, and maker, and others. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
OMG you guys it's a greenhouse bus
"Currently hoping for a cold winter so I can ride across a frozen lake"
"The Explorer Max Square leaderboard has brought together a small but remarkably dedicated international community of riders taking in new roads and trails at every opportunity in order to increase their Explorer Max Square. What drives them to ride across frozen lakes, attempt to access military bases and buy opera tickets to tick off map squares? Let’s ask them!" [more inside]
Who Killed Otzi?
Often called the Iceman, he is the world’s most perfectly preserved mummy, a Copper Age fellow who had been frozen inside a glacier along the northern Italian border with Austria until warming global temperatures melted the ice and two hikers discovered him in 1991. Now clues emerge about his death.
Fonts of wisdom
Joseph "Joey Bottles" Bonaparte, ex-King, New Jersey Art Collector
The National Gallery of Art special exhibit, "America Collects Eighteenth-Century French Painting," opens May 21. From the program notes: When Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, arrived in the United States in 1815, he brought with him his exquisite collection of eighteenth-century French paintings. Put on public view, the works caused a sensation, and a new American taste for French art was born. [more inside]
Code Name: The Puppy Episode
His Minipops
I feel like this person has created a career for herself off the back of my work. She may no longer be actively copying my work, but she’s still ripping the style, and would never have got to that place had it not been for copying my work in the first place. It feels wrong. I’m not happy about it. And I wanna be that pebble in her shoe. Minipops, these tiny pixelly versions of famous people, are mine. I’m proud of them and the many hours I put into them. Artist Craig Robinson busts a plagiarist. [more inside]
How ‘body positivity’ lost its true and radical meaning
'The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was snatching body positivity out of the hands of fat women and then convincing them it was never theirs in the first place.' Writing for Dazed, fatshion blogger Bethany Rutter dissects the ways in which the body positive movement has been 'co-opted by [Instagram] models and fashion labels to reject bodies it should celebrate'. [TW: discussion of fatphobia.] [more inside]
Fyre Festival
"The luxury party that turned into the Hunger Games." "Watching vapid, rich millennials livetweet the horrors of this thing brought me more joy than anything has in weeks." (from Twitter)
All This I Do for Glory
Saxophonist Colin Stetson has a new album out today, All This I Do for Glory. As is the norm for his solo work, Stetson builds an astonishingly deep and varied soundscape using only his bass saxophone and his voice. Even when the music videos for Spindrift and In the Clinches [epilepsy/migraine trigger warning for flashing light and dark] show intimate and close-up looks (like, inside the saxophone close) at just how he summons forth all that sound, it's difficult to believe it's all coming from one man, live, in a single take. Stetson cites early 90s electronica as an influence on this album, and he's engineered and mixed the album himself. [more inside]
Ride a monorail, see non-linear cinema, or relax at the Asbestos Plaza
Fifty years ago today, Expo 67 opened in Montreal. The Montreal Gazette and the Toronto Star look back. [more inside]
"Paul Revere" -- the American Nazi who worked for National Geographic
Douglas Chandler's 1937 feature on Berlin for National Geographic magazine painted a citizenry content under Nazi rule. He later collaborated with the Nazis, working as a radio propagandist.Chandler was convicted of treason, but his sentence would be commuted by President Kennedy. He later tried to bill National Geographic for expenses. (h/t Neatorama)
Classics of Japanese Animation Now Online
"The National Film Center in Tokyo is celebrating the centenary of Japanese animation this year...Thanks to funding from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs as part of the National Project for the Sustainability of Born-Digital Cinema, the NFC has selected 64 works released between 1917 and 1941 and made them available for screening online complete with fresh subtitles by Dean Shimauchi (Rosemary Dean and Tetsuro Shimauchi)."
Dictator lit
The author's goal is to subject himself to as much tyrant prose as he can bear, reporting back on his findings in this space, until the will to live deserts him. In 2009, Daniel Kalder began an occasional series of reviews of books written by dictators, starting with Hoxha's memoir on Stalin. He moved on to Brezhnev ("bathetic agitprop"), Rahmon ("it could be much worse"), Khomeini ("Open the door of the tavern and let us go there day and night"), Gaddafi ("surreal rants and bizarre streams of consciousness"), Kim Jong Il ("awful enough to kill infants if read aloud"), and Saddam Hussein ("a sudden eruption of interspecies lust"). Castro's Che memoir seems to have finally done him in in 2013.
Danger is my middle name
The Physics of Poo
The physics of poo, or why it takes you and an elephant the same amount of time. From the tiniest to the most massive of poos, physics predicts we should all spend the same amount of time on the john.
Some are pretty good
Garbage Nerd Pitches (slt)
It's an anime set in a quaint English village, but with BB-8 as the devil.
The Culture Vs Earth
I don't cut up women. I don't eat women, either.
The tragic death of Ledell Lee
The US State of Arkansas killed a man convicted of murder, Ledell Lee, a few days ago even as considerable doubt remained about his guilt and the fairness of his trial and despite his own insistence that he was innocent of the crime. The reason the State of Arkansas was in such a hurry to execute him and three other people on death row? Their lethal injection drugs were close to the expiry date. Elizabeth Vartkessian talked to Leddel Lee and read his life story. [more inside]
Pig Out
An upcoming Netflix movie directed by Bong Joon Ho (of Snowpiercer fame) is being teased with a fake commercial for a not-yet-existing product. Yes, that is Tilda Swinton. (more conventional teaser here)
April 27
Snitches get Witness Protection
What happens when you enter Witness Protection? -- 12 facts about witness protection -- A top heroin dealer in 2007 -- Longform magazine piece about leaving a life behind in 1996 -- witness protection in the UK
Someone who'll watch over me...
A Gershwin classic, Willie Nelson, Someone Who'll Watch Over me. A four minute, six second interlude from today's world. enjoy
Men Who Have Sex With Men
You think you know, but you have no idea
We spent months bracing and preparing for the death of our daughter. But guess what? We weren’t ready. Royce Young writes about his unborn daughter's anencephaly, and the journey of despair, purpose, and hope he and his wife undertook.
NaCl
The Single Most Important Ingredient [The New York Times] “James Beard, the father of modern American cookery, once asked, “Where would we be without salt?” I know the answer: adrift in a sea of blandness. Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient. Learn to use it well, and food will taste good. Salt’s relationship to flavor is multidimensional: It has its own particular taste, and it both balances and enhances the flavor of other ingredients. Imagine taking a bite of a rich espresso brownie sprinkled with flaky sea salt. The salt minimizes the espresso’s bitterness, intensifies the flavor of the chocolate and offers a savory contrast to the sugar’s sweetness. Does this mean you should simply use more salt? No. It means use salt better.”
Jeans represent democracy in fashion
If clear-knee jeans don't go far enough, TopShop now offers full clear jeans (or used to; perhaps they came to their senses). And Nordstrom takes virtue-signaling to new, er, heights with pre-mudcaked jeans. Baffled commentary at Consumerist.
"Car cries are like, extra cathartic. What's with that?"
Grief Is Weird (part 2, part 3) is a short comic by artist Sara Goetter about dealing with losing her mom. (Goetter previously.)
Kung-Fu Flying
No wires are needed for these Shaolin monks to fly. This is the only video I found of it in use. It's short but exuberant. The wind tunnel seems to have come about by an accidental meeting of the Latvian architect and a representative of the Shaolin monastery.
Real risks that Americans face when they get on the road
ClickHole: Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Is A Sobering Commentary On The Perils Of America’s Crumbling Infrastructure
Portly astronauts doing a moon walk underwater
Fiona the Hippo (previously) spending more time in deep water and occasionally napping in the shower. But she's not learning to swim; she is practicing her series of porpoise-like leaps and high prancing steps in service of an underwater gallop.
Here's Looking at You
Amazon's latest iteration of its popular Echo device, the Echo Look, will not only include the voice-activated Alexa personal assistant, but also a camera that can take full-length pictures and video of you, and a "Style Check" that uses "advanced machine learning algorithms and advice from fashion specialists" to give you suggestions on what to wear. What could possibly go wrong? [more inside]
Take a little trip, take a little trip, Take a little trip with me ♩ ♪ ♫
Cassidy the #MiracleKitten He was missing both back legs below the knee when Tiny Kittens HQ rescued him from a feral cat colony. There's no way he should have survived, but their little fighter refused to give up. TinyKittens HQ is located in Fort Langley, BC, and is operated by Shelly Roche. They trap-neuter-release (TNR) local feral cats and foster found pregnant feral moms and their kittens until they're adopted, live streaming their efforts since 2013.
Miss Lily Todd's Aeroplane, 1906-1910
"Miss Todd" (Vimeo, 13 minutes) is an award-winning short, stop-motion, musical animation inspired by the first woman to design and build an airplane, Emma Lilian Todd. The self-taught inventor wasn't permitted to pilot her craft, or she might have been the first female pilot, too, when her aircraft first took flight in 1910 (that title would go to the Baroness Raymonde de la Roche [previously]). Lily Todd wrote about her life and how she built her aeroplane in a 1909 article in Woman's Home Companion.
Full of sound and fury/ Signifying, umm, what?
This weekend the Trump Administrations will mark 100 days in office, with little of substance, but plenty of activity and noise, often breaking (or seriously bending) Trump's own promises in the process. Lots of goalpost-moving in just the last 24 hours, so shall we wade in? [more inside]
How to wash your hair.
Because you (if you're a woman) are probably doing it wrong wrong wrong.
Robots, ceramics, bigfoot, and a mad scientist's lab
Opened in 2013, The Bailey Art Museum in Crockett, California (under the Carquinez bridge on the I-80 route between San Francisco to Sacramento) is run by artists Clayton and Betty Bailey. (2002 Previously.)
It features robot sculptures made from salvaged metal, some of which have motion-activated electronics, rayguns, a mad scientist's lab, ceramics including face jugs, kinetic ceramics, and exploding clinker bottles.
Clayton Bailey's associate Dr. Gladstone has also discovered a kaolithic skeleton of a Bigfoot and artifacts from the Pre-Credulous Era. [more inside]
Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon
"Yet in the last week of March 1997, with The Wallflowers' "One Headlight" topping Billboard's Modern Rock chart, Capitol Records quietly released one of the noisiest, most wired and willfully perverse major label debuts of the year from a band called Skeleton Key." With inspiration from the Jesus Lizard, Primus, Led Zep, and even Prince, Skeleton Key produced taut pop songs that sound "...like a clockwork junkyard." Members of the band would go on to produce macabre puppet shows, seed bands like Enon, and compose the music for Bob's Burgers. [more inside]
Blowing Up St Helens
It took ten years of waiting for the right conditions, but on April 21, Aaron Sales made the 3,150-foot ascent to the rim of Mt. St Helens in a record-setting 35 minutes...using a kite. He also made a 200-foot, 40-second snow kite jump.
Can I get a Bisquick?
Naomi Watts, Laura Dern & Patricia Arquette Tell Stories About David Lynch. Spoiler: Lynch's nickname for Laura Dern is 'Tidbit'. Naomi Watts is 'Buttercup' and Patricia Arquette is 'Solid Gold'.
Pugs turn out to be small-dog catalysts
From the 80-kilogram Great Dane to the 1-kilogram tiny teacup poodle, there seems to be a dog for everyone. Now, the largest genetic analysis to date has figured out how those breeds came to be, which ones are really closely related, and what makes some dogs more susceptible to certain diseases.
The full 360 degrees in all directions
What you are seeing when you look at a Termesphere® painting is an optical illusion. An inside-out view of the total physical world around you on the outside surface of a hanging and rotating sphere. If you were on the inside of this sphere, this painted image around you would seem normal, but it is read from the outside. [more inside]
A refund is due unto me
Shirleen goes to get her hair done and ends up with a pineapple. Shirleen is one of the characters played by the fantastic Christianee Porter, creator of The Christi Show.
April 26
Anne of Japan
Canadian World, a now-abandoned Canada-themed amusement park in Japan, prominently featured Anne of Green Gables, the subject of a new CBC miniseries (as well as the classic Megan Follows version). [more inside]
What bullets do to bodies
The gun debate would change in an instant if Americans witnessed the horrors that trauma surgeons confront every day.24 hours with Dr. Amy Goldberg, Chair of Surgery at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.
Conservative Party of Canada Leadership Race Finally Enters Final Stage
Who says Canadian political campaigns are short? For over a year, candidates have been vying to replace Stephen Harper as leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. There are 14 13 of them. The final official debate featured all 14 13 candidates earlier tonight in Toronto. Voting begins this Friday, with 259,010 party members registered. The new leader will be chosen on May 26-27, 2017 using a preferential ballot and per-riding points system. [more inside]
The Shipping News: Containers (Podcast)
Oakland, California. The war in Vietnam. Global trade. Logistics, then and now. The thread that links them over time and space? Containers, the subject of an 8-part audio documentary hosted by Alexis Madrigal. "Throughout the documentary, Alexis uses a collection of anecdotes to explore how global trade has transformed the economy and ourselves. In doing so, he provides an insightful, in-depth perspective regarding the role that global trade has had in shaping capitalism, ushering in the world of commerce as we know it today."
Cap being a Nazi can't help, but...
What the hell is wrong with Marvel Comics anyway? Marvel is in trouble. In February 2017, their best selling ongoing superhero title barely passed 60k. By contrast, DC has fifteen superhero comics selling 50k or more that same month. But why is the brand synonymous with superhero comics in the minds of the general public doing poorly? [more inside]
Flavor Text
New Scientist reports that scientists in Singapore found a new way to taste the rainbow, by electronically transmitting the flavor and color of lemonade to a tumbler of water. [more inside]
You are actually looking at thirty-meter bushes
Everybody knows that mountains are giant piles of rock. What this video presupposes is, what if they're actually giant tree stumps?
Happy Birthday, Mr Pei
IM Pei at 100: 10 of the architect's most significant buildings
Ieoh Ming Pei was born on 26 April 1917 in Guangzhou, China. He moved to the US to study architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, then engineering at MIT and finally Harvard's Graduate School of Design – where he studied under former Bauhaus masters Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. After a stint working for the US National Defense Research Committee towards the end of the second world war, Pei began his architectural career, and worked for American real-estate magnate William Zeckendorf from 1948.
😬 amirite?
According to Emojipedia, the grimacing emoji (😬)—approved as part of Unicode 6.1 in 2012 and added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015—is “generally used when a mistake or unfavorable situation has arisen—aka ‘eek’”! But this explanation, while accurate, underestimates the versatility, and sheer human poetry, contained in a simple cartoon grimace. In these awkward, uncomfortable times, we all feel like gritting our teeth in a straight line sometimes. Here are just a few reasons why the grimacing emoji is the best.
RIP Jonathan Demme, "A Champion of the Soul"
Jonathan Demme, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who observed emphatically American characters with a discerning eye, a social conscience and a rock ’n’ roll heart, achieving especially wide acclaim with “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Philadelphia,” died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 73. [NYT] [more inside]
"May the Great Worm Gnaw Your Vitals"
In which Beatrice Patton, widow of General George S. Patton, Jr., places a seemingly effective curse on his former mistress. (SLWaPo)
We in that sunshine state with a bomb ass hemp beat
Unknown humans may have been in California 130,000 years ago [SL Ars Technica] Date is a whopping 115,000 years earlier than previous findings of humans in the Americas.
Read and Destroy, A Survivor's Story
"It has travelled around and throughout my life, this fucking tube. It – and a small passel of 21 more letters from the same sender – has taken up room in every home I’ve occupied. The tube and the packet contain letters from a man who molested me. After the molestation stopped, I wrote to him from the age of 13, on and off for a decade. And he wrote me back. Why would anyone maintain a relationship with someone who abused them? The tube and the packet contain at least part of the answer." ... "The letters almost always contained this instruction: R.A.D. Read and destroy. " cw: the link contains disturbing descriptions of child abuse, molestation and self-harm.
“Everything was fine, except the left rear motor with a bullet hole"
Ars Technica: Man takes drone out for a sunset flight, drone gets shot down
“I took two pictures, then I heard the gunshot, and all of a sudden my drone started spiraling down—I’m sitting there trying to keep it aloft and there was no lift.”Is it okay to shoot down your neighbor's drone? Under the law, you just shot at an airplane, but the case law is unclear. [more inside]
Stories in Games Aren't Problems, They're Solutions
Stories in Games Aren't Problems, They're Solutions. "We make stories out of our trips to the convenience store and turn our co-workers into characters as we relay the events of the day to our partners. Driven by both profit motive and creative impulse, we contort our words (and worlds) until broken stories are whole. Sometimes we tell stories without spoken language and other times we build new languages from whole cloth just so that we can evoke a feeling we can't find in the sounds and symbols we already have. We invent new problems so that we can solve them with new stories and this rules." Waypoint's Austin Walker responds to a particularly polarizing piece from Ian Bogost. [more inside]
“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Creates a Chilling Man’s World [The New York Times] “In Hulu’s spectacular “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Ms. Moss is Offred, a baby-making slave in the Republic of Gilead, which is what part of the United States (New England, roughly) has become after a fertility crisis and a theocratic coup. It’s set in a near future that looks like the 1600s. “Mad Men” may have resonated with today, but it gave viewers the comfortable vantage of history, the reassurance that we had come a long way, baby. “The Handmaid’s Tale” argues — with an assist from current events — that progress is neither automatic nor irreversible. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel, is a cautionary tale, a story of resistance and a work of impeccable world-building. It is unflinching, vital and scary as hell.” [more inside]
High-Tech Solution to Earworm Songs Discovered
Got a song in your head and can't seem to get it out? Chew gum. Or do a puzzle, or listen to another song. (I personally find that listening to the complete earworm song works, but I know it doesn't work for everyone.)
A large but weak web.
The Republican Lawmaker Who Secretly Created Reddit’s Women-Hating ‘Red Pill’. An investigation by The Daily Beast has discovered a trail of posts and aliases linking a Republican New Hampshire state representative to the creation of Reddit's misogynist RedPill sub.
Subreddit Drama thread.
r/politics thread.
r/TheRedPill itself, for those unfamiliar with the topic.
(content warning for all of the above reddit threads, especially the last.)
Just in time for the Twin Peaks reboot...
"With the rise of digital design tools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, 'old guard' design rules were torn down and gave way to new ways of thinking about graphic design. As a result, many new graphic styles were created and came to define an era rooted in remixing and experimentation. One of the best examples of this is in the form of logos for 90s-era TV shows." Typography expert Alexander Tochilovsky, Design Curator of the Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography in New York City, breaks it down for you (and you can download the fonts for your own experimentation).
72 years ago you were Bjorn, I mean born
Hey, at 72 years old, Björn Ulvaeus is still going strong. But since it's his birthday today, we get to listen to ABBA! Let's start with a lead vocal track from ABBA's first album, Another Town, Another Train. [more inside]
April 25
You can’t sell a box that stops people from trusting their daughters
Sarah Jeong in GQ: "We all know what it’s like to receive mass-mailed spam. But most people aren’t going to attract enough attention to merit being spearphished. What’s that like, anyway? And how is it different from regular phishing? To search for those answers, I went out and found someone to spearphish me. "
New Guinea Singing Dogs Are Not Extinct in the Wild
He Was Searching For Intersexual Pigs And Ended Up Finding The World’s Rarest Dog.
New Guinea singing dogs have been described as the world’s “most primitive” domesticated dog. Their forebears are thought to be closely related to the dingo, a wild canine in Australia, and may have been brought to New Guinea by humans about 6,000 years ago. ... The wild dog is believed to have been the only canine living in the New Guinea highlands, which meant the animal did not interbreed with other species. They’ve been called “living fossils” as a result — possibly a key evolutionary link between modern domesticated dogs and their wild canine ancestors.[more inside]
Trial by Pencil
Rosalie Ritz was a courtroom reporter and artist based out of San Francisco from the 1960s to 1980s. Almost two thousand of her trial sketches are online, including: Angela Davis; Patty Hearst and the Harris Trials (Symbionese Liberation Army); Huey Newton; Daniel Ellsberg; Sara Jane Moore (attempted assasin of Gerald Ford); Sirhan Sirhan; the San Quentin Six; and Dan White. [more inside]
Boldly going?
I am a great believer in half measures / Or no measures at all.
The Inertia Variations by John Tottenham: a series of poems about not getting shit done. Caution: may be depressing.
The Struggles of Writing About Chinese Food as a Chinese Person
Our food is still largely looked on upon from the sidelines as a mysterious cuisine of antiquity. Only certain dishes like noodles, dumplings, kebabs, and rice bowls have been normalized. The majority is still largely stigmatized because, bluntly put, white people have not decided they like it yet. Clarissa Wei writes 2500 words for Vice.com's Munchies section.
🌌🌅
Every day, our planet rotates 360°, right? Only if you mean a Sidereal Day. Solar days are 4 minutes longer on average. [more inside]
DepARTment of Corrections
I wish I was a spaceman, the fastest guy alive
Barry Gray composed all the music for Gerry Anderson productions up through the second season of Space: 1999. Nothing he wrote has resonated through the ages like a simple little tune based on 'ice cream changes': the closing theme for Anderson's second SF-based supermarionation television series -- Fireball Xl-5. [more inside]
Fixed stars, rotating Earth
Just a short video with the stars fixed while the Earth rotates (SLYT).
I will hug him and pet him and squeeze him and draw on him
It's probably not a good idea to leave your pet with kids. Or with your friends, apparently. (A bit of overlap, but not much.)
The longer the race, the stronger we become.
The longer the race, the stronger we become. From the article: "A growing pattern of race results suggests that the longer and more arduous the event, the better the chances women have of beating men."
Dion! You’re banned from the skating party until you start acting right.
Dion Waiters: The NBA Is Lucky I’m Home Doing Damn Articles: Y'all seen Casino, right?
You know, the one with Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci in Vegas? Anyway — that one.
If you want to know what it’s like to meet Pat Riley, you need to watch that movie. [slPlayersTribune]
Think Globally; Pod Locally
Learn the Secret History of Your State With These Addictive Podcasts curated by Smithsonian.com: Talk of Alaska; Changing Denver; Idaho History; Past and Present (Kansas); Amplified Oklahoma; The Island Wave (Pacific Islanders in Utah); Memphis Type History; Wise about Texas; Brave Little State (Vermont) and more!
We came from somewhere out there.
Our grandparents and their grandparents were born in Kentucky, and my brother and I grew up in Louisville. Like many black people from the south, my family has been unable to trace our lineage beyond slavery, so we don't know where in Africa our ancestors from. Just that we came from somewhere out there. All we had to go on was an oral family history that maintained that we were, in the words of my grandmother, Tootsie, "black, white, and (American) Indian." This is the case for a lot of black families; the idea that we have "Indian in our family" is a bit of a cultural meme in black America at this point, and I've always wanted to examine how true that actually is.
The Philosemitic / Antisemitic Tchotchke Market
Prior to WWII, there were over 3 million Jews in Poland. Today, estimates of the number of Jews living there range from 7,000 to 200,000. Many Poles have never met a Jewish person. But "lucky Jew" (Żyd na szczęście) figurines and oil paintings depicting stereotypical Jews (often wearing black hats, holding money and sporting long noses and sideburns) are becoming popular. [more inside]
White Collar Crime Risk Zones
Modern life is fraught with perils, but thanks to The New Inquiry's new tool, you can know what your risk of being the victim of a financial crime is at any moment, anywhere in the US. Using state-of-the-art machine learning technology and predictive policing methods, combined with geospatial feature predictors and risk terrain modeling, you can see the risk to your livelihood presented block-by-block across the whole US. Using a database of people at a high risk to commit such crimes, the app even presents a generalized image of the potential perpetrator to allow you to be on the watch for anyone suspicious who may present a threat. [more inside]
Shooting people is stupid. Guns are stupid. THAT SAID...
Shea Serrano brings us an explanation of why movie shootouts are so awesome, a list of the best multi-person shootouts in movie history (if said history begins in 1980 and doesn't include war movies), and a quiz to determine whether you would survive such a gunfight. (Hint: Don't be a hero.) ((And watch out for those scuba tanks.))
April 24
No I Can't Even Is Just The Beginning
Weirdly, thinking about Graham’s number has actually made me feel a little bit calmer about death...
On coming to grips with g_64.
“Prey feels, on a conceptual level, like madness.”
Why Prey is Frontrunner for Game of the Year 2017 [GamesRadar+] “Prey asks 'What if BioShock was fuelled not by weapons, traps, RPG-flavoured FPS and the guided use of weird abilities, but by an unguided set of powers that we don't even want to predict, let alone control? What if we gave players not a Metroid-like set of tools for passing certain obstacles, but left our obstacles open-ended, in terms of both interpretation and solution? What if we didn’t design a set of player abilities, and then built puzzles to fit, but rather designed our world with a rough idea of how things worked, and then played around to see what was really possible? And what if we then redesigned the game on the fly to accommodate everything we could?’ ” [more inside]
Beau Geste
At the Legion’s tomblike headquarters there is a shrine: a wooden prosthetic hand that once belonged to Legion Captain Jean Danjou, who died in Mexico in 1863 defending a road for a long-forgotten cause. Around the roped off hand-shrine hang placards inscribed minutely with the names of the dead – all 40,000 of them, dating back to the Legion’s inception in 1831. The message is clear. Sacrifice is essential but you will not be forgotten.
Wikitribune, evidence-based journalism and combating fake news
From the founder of Wikipedia comes Wikitribune, a platform for evidence-based journalism. NiemanLab. Guardian.
How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive
John Muir, not the naturalist but a descendent, was the bestselling self-published hippie author of the ultimate guide for VW bus repair. The book was part R. Crumb comic, part auto manual, and part philosophical musing that detailed in simple terms how to fix VW microbuses for the mechanically uninformed. His publishing company produced a similar book for Subarus and the format may have inspired the line of For Dummies and For Idiots books of later years.
He also penned a treatise on societal justice called The Velvet Monkeywrench
Goodbye, Phaedrus
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of “the” books of 70’s, and has sold over 5 million copies since it was released in 1974. It’s story of a narrator calling himself Phaedrus who explores the philosophical concept of quality while on a motorcycle journey with his son. It’s author, Robert Pirsig, died today at age 88. [more inside]
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (The ORIGINAL launch)
In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. An interesting look at the early days of Warhammer 40K, before it forgot it was a satirical.
Cities Seek Deliverance From the E-Commerce Boom
It’s the flip-side to the “retail apocalypse:” A siege of delivery trucks is threatening to choke cities with traffic. But not everyone agrees on what to do about it. "While truck traffic currently represents about 7 percent of urban traffic in American cities, it bears a disproportionate congestion cost of $28 billion, or about 17 percent of the total U.S. congestion costs, in wasted hours and gas. Cities, struggling to keep up with the deluge of delivery drivers, are seeing their curb space and streets overtaken by double-parked vehicles, to say nothing of the bonus pollution and roadwear produced thanks to a surfeit of Amazon Prime orders."
Super Collier shares the gist of why he's so precocious
Jacob Collier discusses harmony and music theory. The jazz wunderkind shows off his ridiculously precise perfect pitch by, among other things, singing the super-ultra-hyper-mega-meta lydian scale PERFECTLY.
300
How fast can a bowler roll 12 consecutive strikes and achieve a perfect game? For Ben Ketola, the answer is 86.9 seconds.
Thank you for being my neighbor.
After years of sharing a wall, saying goodbye to my Upper West Side neighbor:"Here’s what I do know: She worked in radio for years and was a pioneer of sorts, being one of only a handful of female executives at her office in the 1980s. She loved WWD magazine and other fashion publications; her subscriptions showed up regularly at her doorstep, hand-delivered. (Weeks after S.'s death, I opened my door to see one in the middle of our landing right by the elevator—her subscription hadn't been cancelled yet—and my heart ached a little, seeing it just lie there; I grabbed it and propped it by her front door, even though I knew she wasn't there to read it.)"
"Actually, I think I can sort this out myself"
Join me.... for Unsolved Mysteries
Finally at long last, full-episodes of the classic masterpiece: Unsolved Mysteries are streaming on Amazon Prime.
Join me... perhaps you may be able to help solve a mystery! [more inside]
What the Hell is This Beautiful Thing?
Thanks to social media and the power of citizen scientists chasing the northern lights, a
new feature was discovered recently. Nobody knew what this
strange ribbon of purple light was, so … it was called Steve. Also labeled a ProtonArc (
video) [more inside]
“So how else have you fucked me on this deal?”
Sean Tejaratchi, better known as the mind behind LiarTownUSA (previously), has produced a book. He is pleased to announce that the publisher "has honored my desire to keep all the bad words and bird dicks and lunchbox tits and other improprieties. I was not asked to change a single thing." [Readers who wish to avoid the eyestraining retro white-on-black page design should acquire the appropriate bookmarklet.]
Reindeer herding with NRK
Join NRK, the Norwegian national broadcaster, live as they follow a reindeer migration across Finnmarksvidda and down to their summer pastures by the coast. The broadcast is expected to last for five to seven days as the reindeer herd travels around 100km. [more inside]
The Myth of the Monolith "Millennial"
Don’t Call Me a Millennial — I’m an Old Millennial [nymag] Old Millennials, as I’ll call them, who were born around 1988 or earlier (meaning they’re 29 and older today), really have lived substantively different lives than Young Millennials, who were born around 1989 or later, as a result of two epochal events that occurred around the time when members of the older group were mostly young adults and when members of the younger were mostly early adolescents: the financial crisis and smartphones’ profound takeover of society.
with the furrrrrrrrrrrrr
We voted, we debated, and we have our answers: Billboard's list of the 100 greatest choruses of the 21st century, ranked by no metric other than the songs that most immediately came to mind when thinking about everything that a great chorus should be -- clever, catchy, singular, and utterly unforgettable. And perhaps most importantly: When you see the song title, does the chorus immediately jump to mind, not to leave anytime soon? If so, it's the right song for this list.
a gap between my head and the piano
"I could play fluently. Then I struggled to play the song. Then I struggled to remember that I used to play the song. Then I struggled to remember I was the person who wrote the song." A story about Alzheimer's and music, from the Oregonian.
Concise and austere but not necessarily brief
Postal Pieces is a series of 11 musical compositions (on 10 postcards) by written by James Tenney between 1965 and 1971. Details and images from an essay by Larry Polansky. I'm particularly fond of the look and sound of Cellogram.
1941 State Fair
Reports of Her Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
Emily Gould covers author Cat Marnell in her piece Cat Marnell is Still Alive for NY Magazine. Gould writes "There’s always a fine line between appreciating the art that someone’s making out of her fucked-up life and feeling like your attention makes you complicit in her self-destruction." [more inside]
Japan Made Secret Deals with the NSA that Expanded Global Surveillance
Ryan Gallagher of The Intercept provides a fascinating look at the complex relationship between the US and Japanese surveillance organizations who have been cooperating and surveilling each other since the end of the second World War. [more inside]
Lifestyles of the Rich and Tasteless
TOTALLY STOAKED = VERY HAPPY!
Remember awesome Mario miscellany Tumblr Supper Mario Broth? (Previously) Here's some equal time for the other side of the console war: Sonic the Hedgeblog! SPECIAL STAGE: Sonic Retro's epic list of romhacks. [more inside]
April 23
What?
It's too noisy to communicate verbally. Or maybe there's a language barrier. Or you're trying to be silent. Non-verbal gestures to the rescue! Be ready in the following situations: [more inside]
ASH used REPAIR. It's super effective!
This Is How You Fix A Really Busted Copy Of Pokémon Red [Kotaku] “Grant Haack, who goes by Snip3r95 on Imgur, found an old Pokémon cartridge while wandering around a flea market. The game only set them back $5, but actually getting the Game Boy classic up and running required some serious elbow grease. “It was at the bottom of a bin and in pretty bad shape,” Haack wrote in a post on Imgur [Full Image Album] documenting the project. The game wouldn’t properly boot up, so they unscrewed the back and dismantled the game to reveal a bunch of dirt and rust underneath.”
RIP Joanie
Wherefore art thou, Mariotto, Romeus, Rhomeo, Romeo, Etc.?
Three lines from Dante's Purgatorio (early 14th C.). A few motifs from Boccaccio's Decameron, 10th Day, 4th Tale (1353). Masuccio Salernitano's Mariotto and Gianozza (1476; orig. "Ganozza" [PDF]). Luigi da Porto's Giulietta and Romeo (1531; alt. translation). Matteo Bandello's Romeo and Giulietta (1554). Arthur Brooke's Romeus and Juliet (1562; orig. orthography). William Painter's Rhomeo and Iulietta (1567) ... These are just a few antecedents of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1597, etc.), according to Olin Moore's The Legend of Romeo and Juliet (1950; PDF). [more inside]
They're good doggos Brent
"When they stick out their tongues, they're doing a mlem, a blep, a blop. They bork. They boof. Once in a while they do each other a frighten."
Jessica Boddy looks at the rise of "DoggoLingo," the language of dog enthusiasts as spread by Facebook communities like Dogspotting and, of course, the twitter account We Rate Dogs (previously).
And, for the 6-year-olds, they may actually believe I am a pirate.
Living with an Eye Patch in a Big City This week alone, two complete strangers have asked me outright, “What happened to your eye?” This happens to me all the time; sometimes, I get a “Hello!” first. For years, this constant questioning made me really mad. I felt like I could never hide. I didn't understand why strangers would ask such a personal question. After fielding this question hundreds of times, though, I have learned that most people are not trying to make me feel bad. Usually the opposite is true.
But 40 and 50 meters would be very difficult
A blindness to boundaries is not uncommon for Silicon Valley
Uber’s C.E.O. Plays With Fire - Mike Isaac (NYT) Inside Uber, Mr. Kalanick began codifying the pillars of the company’s culture. He particularly admired Amazon, the e-commerce company that espouses 14 leadership principles including “learn and be curious” and “insist on the highest standards.” So he created 14 values for Uber, with tenets such as being “super pumped” and “always be hustlin.’” [more inside]
If music be the food of love, bay on
Buddy, a rescue beagle, demonstrates his soulful singing voice. He's also a talented piano player [videos contain multi-species mouth noises].
I like juice and I like bars...
I firmly believe that picking a team is sacrosanct
A father sends a letter to all 30 MLB teams, asking them to make their pitch to be his infant son's favorite team.
“I must tell you I don’t take this lightly. I firmly believe that picking a team is sacrosanct,” wrote Pete, an Ashland resident who works as a senior digital video content manager for PBS. “Friends may come and go, political affiliations and beliefs in higher powers may change, but one’s team is one’s team. Forever.
Just let me pull a few strings
Oliver Mobeli is a young talent from Lobaye, Central African Republic, who performs local music with his handmade band/orchestra made with puppets, toys and marionettes.
Facebook links (original source) [more inside]
Yessiree, just your average ordinary week of healthy eating.
April 22
How Candy Stretches Around the World
Lately, I've found that there are few activities as enchanting as watching candy being pulled. Includes Korean yeot, American taffy, Turkish macun, Japanese amezaiku, and Nepalese chaku.
A failure of imagination
Protesters showed up to physically block and voice their objections to “Open Casket” (2016), a painting of Emmett Till by Dana Schutz. [more inside]
Horse Walk Tests
"Tu sera peintre, mon enfant, ou jamais il n'en sera."
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun: "A Delayed Tribute to a French Trailblazer" [NYT]; exhibition trailer; 8 minutes at the exhibition; web gallery of exhibition objects; audio tour / slideshow; and the Memoirs of Madame Vigée Lebrun. [more inside]
Oh Canada...
The 3 hrs of LeMelons! Get a dirt track cut into a field. Take $300 beaters and race them for 3 hours, or until they all fail. That’s the Three Hours of LeMelons, Canada’s take on the epic beater race...
the 24 hrs of LeMons-- previously on the Blue [more inside]
the 24 hrs of LeMons-- previously on the Blue [more inside]
Can you tell the sculpture in the pond is only 8mm tall?
The Miniature Paper Pavilion Club met biweekly throughout 2012 - 2015 in Vancouver, Canada, to build tiny commemorative public spaces. They created approximately sixty imaginary landscapes with structures using paper exclusively.
bizarre true stories from the footnotes of history
Have you ever wondered what would happen if the President made his dog a cabinet secretary? Or if a famous scientist tried to summon a god? What about if Virginia Woolf wore blackface and pranked the Royal Navy?
There’s no need to wonder. It all happened.
Something True is the most recent podcast from the Idle Thumbs podcast network, written by Duncan Fyfe and narrated by Alex Ashby.
Something True is the most recent podcast from the Idle Thumbs podcast network, written by Duncan Fyfe and narrated by Alex Ashby.
Signs From The March For Science
CNN has a slideshow (doesn't reload entire page for each image) of 11 signs from the March For Science. WaPo has their own single page picture set. Time has a decidedly anti-Trump editorial selection. Boston gets really nerdy, which is sort of expected.
“...like out there is the true world, and in here is the dream.”
The Next Four Avatar Movies Now Have Release Dates Again [io9] “Follow-ups to the highest-grossing movie of all time were originally slated to start coming out next year. But recent statements by director James Cameron disclosed that there’d be a delay for the coming wave of Avatar sequels. Now we know the exact dates that Cameron and his team are aiming for, starting with December 18, 2020.”
“Great to be working with the best team in the business! Avatar takes flight as we begin concurrent production on four sequels. The journey continues December 18, 2020, December 17, 2021, December 20, 2024 and December 19, 2025!” [via: Facebook]
baby llama hums a tune hums a tune tune
♫ Llama llama
red pajama
feels alone
without his mama ♪
J. Cruz, the host of The Cruz Show has been asking rappers to freestyle the words to the popular children's book Llama Llama Red Pajama (previously) "for my kids." Ludacris' version this week may be the best one yet.
red pajama
feels alone
without his mama ♪
J. Cruz, the host of The Cruz Show has been asking rappers to freestyle the words to the popular children's book Llama Llama Red Pajama (previously) "for my kids." Ludacris' version this week may be the best one yet.
Who knew drinking water infrastructure could sound beautiful?
Jordan Nobles won the 2017 Juno Award for Classical Composition for a work written for, and recorded in, a massive and empty underground water tank at the new Seymour Capilano filtration project in North Vancouver, BC. "Normally you hit a bass drum and get a boom sound. But down there you'd get the boom sound for 30 seconds. That's really fun," Nobles said. [more inside]
"Hello land dog, I am water dog."
Start the weekend off right with this collection of charming animal memes.
Probably the worst day in history
Computer models date ancient catastrophe Recent analysis of carvings from the Vulture Stone may indicate ancient astronomers in modern Turkey recording a strike by comet fragments. The strikes likely induced a mini-ice age. The symbol of a headless man may symbolize great loss of life.
More information on the Gobekli Tepe archaeological site.
Autumn Foliage Strike Fun
Herbstlaubtrittvergnügen (Autumn Foliage Strike Fun): The joy of kicking a pile of autumn leaves!
I stumbled upon this random forum post and found a comment about a few nice German words to study.
About bloody time!
It's the magic of life, mushed into a pad | In which the ladies of SkitBox deliver a bloody good statement about one of the fundamental foundations of human existence. [more inside]
April 21
Hope
Two modern chaotic beatmakers on Bandcamp
For your listening pleasure, here are two rather different producers of beat-driven music on Bandcamp: Mexico City-based, jungle/electronic master-mangler, priestess of chaotic drum & bass, formerly known as Smurphy [Soundcloud, NSFW header image], now Upgrayedd Smurphy. If that's too chaotic in a random sort of way, Canterbury-based sound-twister (Facebook video) an energetic beat manipulator making glitch-hop with appreciation of old IDM masters a la Four Tet or Aphex Twin.
Field Hockey Coach's Firing: Two Civil Suits and Title IX Investigation
Tracey Griesbaum was fired from her job as women's field hockey coach at the University of Iowa due to complaints of being overly harsh to her players in practice. Her significant other Jane Meyer was senior associate athletic director; as events progressed, she was eventually fired as well. Both are now suing the State of Iowa, the University of Iowa, and Iowa Board of Regents. Meyer's trial got underway this week and Griesbaum will have her day in court later this summer. And there's more. Members of the field hockey team filed a Title IX complaint for the exact opposite reason their coach was fired, they want to be treated like their male counterparts and get yelled at.
Seventeen years later, it’s a GAS
While Kompakt records co-founder Wolfgang Voigt has hundreds of releases to his pseudonyms, its likely his 1997-2000 ambient/techno project GAS that has had the most influence. Critics took last year’s vinyl reissue of four albums (Zauberberg, Königsforst, Pop, and the long-missed Oktember 12”) as an opportunity to lavish praise: The Quietus, Spectrum Culture, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor. Recently, Boiler Room’s Music Editor Gabreil Szatan interviewed Voigt about the project.
Today, Voigt released the first new GAS album in seventeen years: Narkopop. Early reviews are in from NPR, Pitchfork, The A.V. Club, and Line of Best Fit.
Today, Voigt released the first new GAS album in seventeen years: Narkopop. Early reviews are in from NPR, Pitchfork, The A.V. Club, and Line of Best Fit.
Choate Rosemary Hall Discloses Decades of Sexual Abuse
Sexual Abuse at Choate Went On for Decades, School Acknowledges "Choate Rosemary Hall, the elite Connecticut boarding school, said on Thursday that at least 12 former teachers had sexually molested — and, in at least one case, raped — students in a pattern of abuse dating to the 1960s." [more inside]
"What's Next?
How liberals fell in love with The West Wing.
All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm Ready for My Nose Up
Sheep, panthers, seals, cats, puffer fish, dogs, sloths, elephants, donkeys, pelicans, monkeys, pigeons, cows — and so many more — are just some of the animals who like cameras or are at least camera-curious at Ready for My Nose Up
New Jersey’s One Million Acres of Undeveloped, Otherworldly Land
Even more deadly than The House on Pooh Corner
In the University of Michigan library, they have the most dangerous book in the world: Shadows from the Walls of Death. Eighty-six pages long, it has no words.
something something oscilloscope your ocelot
Some Fava Beans and a nice Chianti to start...
The classic "Silence of the Lambs" trailer recut as a romantic comedy. (SLYT)
The very air he exhales is indexed and filed away.
Friday fiction: Symbols and Signs by Vladimir Nabokov. In a letter to Katharine A. White, The New Yorker’s fiction editor at the time, Nabokov said that “a second (main) story is woven into, or placed behind, the superficial semitransparent one.” What that story is, he never specified. Enjoy it for its graceful evocation of everyday life, of the struggle to find footing amidst loss and for the mysterious chill of its ending. [more inside]
Das ist nur meine Meinung Mann
Meine Meinung is a jazz combo out of Japan that posts and streams a lot of their sessions on Youtube, frequently interpreting classics of videogame music. (You can click this one before going to the inside, it's exciting!!!! (Chrono Trigger theme)) [more inside]
A Spider With a Knack for Geometry
Tarantulas measure distance with their lateral eyes The species doesn't retrace its steps. Instead, it calculates its two-dimensional movements as if they were the sides of a right-angle triangle. The hypotenuse of the hypothetical triangle guides the spider home.
Trust no one.
‘The X-Files’ Will Return [The New York Times] “The truth is out there, and soon, new episodes of “The X-Files” will be, too. Fox announced late on Thursday that 10 more episodes of the show, about two F.B.I. agents who gravitate toward the unexplained, would air in the 2017-18 television season. Production is set to begin this summer. Fox did not announce details of the show’s plot but said that its two stars, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who play the agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, would appear.”
Scritch your birdos.
Subject: Arthur was 100% black
"After thinking about it a bit more, I realized that, for many, this wasn't an inherent fact. Bugs Bunny is a rabbit, and while he is anthropomorphic, the suspension of disbelief only stretches so far for some people. It might not be a widely held understanding for white people, so immediately after talking to my friend about Bugs Bunny being black, I turned to my (admittedly, mostly white) colleagues and asked around. "Do you think Bugs Bunny is black?" I asked, only for many to not really understand the question." [more inside]
Why You Shouldn't Exercise To Lose Weight
A summary of 60+ studies shows that, while exercise is good for your health in many ways, you shouldn't exercise to lose weight.
Ledell Lee executed Thursday 11:56 PM CT in Arkansas
Following an evening of repeated appeals, Arkansas officials proceeded with their first execution in 12 years. Ledell Lee, on death row for over two decades, was declared dead this Thursday at 11:56 PM. His death warrant was set to expire 4 minutes later. AR Governor Asa Hutchinson is rushing to execute 8 men before April ends and the state's midazolam supply expires. The lethal cocktail reportedly also included one drug acquired under false pretenses and another "donated" by a mystery supplier in a parking lot. Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the conservative majority in denying a stay—his first recorded vote. [more inside]
Living by the Girl Scout Law, Even Without a Home
Girl Scout Troop 6000's home is a former Sleep Inn in Queens, New York, that now accommodates homeless families. The troop's more than 20 members come from the families who live there, and costs are covered by the Girl Scouts of Greater New York. (main link from NYT; the Today Show also covered it)
The Informational Zip Line
The Buena Vista Hypothesis: the ancient creatures who first crawled onto land may have been lured by the informational benefit that comes from seeing through air.
Investigative theatre with black gay and bi, HIV+ men in southern cities
From a review of As Much as I Can: 'We peer through face-sized holes into a room where, one after another, two diagnoses are delivered to two men: one HIV negative, the other positive. We press to walls listening to the exhausted, anguished 12-step testimony of a community mentor. We eavesdrop on a Greek chorus of homophobes at a barber shop. We hear a mom worry that her son will be shot for walking, driving, living, while black. "You can't run away; you can't clock out of that experience," Isa (an audience member) said, "because you're also never in a room long enough to get stuck."' [more inside]
Adoption Is A Feminist Issue, But Not For The Reasons You Think
In their efforts to cure what they see as a moral crisis infecting our nation, the anti-choice movement has historically thrown their power, money, and influence behind their two favorite antidotes to abortion: abstinence-only education and adoption. In any era when reproductive rights are being rolled back, as they are now, feminists need to get stronger and clearer about where we stand and what we’re fighting for. We all know, both from data and from common sense, that abstinence education is not only a failure but wildly detrimental to the health and safety of young people. But there doesn’t yet seem to be a broader understanding, even in the mainstream feminist and pro-choice movements, that promoting adoption has its problems too.
Aux Armes, Citoyens (part deux)
Previously in the 2017 French presidential election: It was looking like the top two winners in the first round this Sunday would be Emmanuel Macron (of the centrist one-man party Forward!) and Marine Le Pen (of the far-right National Front), with François Fillon (of the center-right Republicans) lagging in third. Macron was then expected to win easily over Le Pen in the runoff. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Elysée: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the far-left France Unbowed (and star of the video game Fiscal Kombat), has surged to tie Fillon for third place in most polls, as support for Benoît Hamon (of the center-left Socialist Party) has collapsed. Macron and Le Pen are still expected to make it to the runoff, but the possibility of either Mélenchon or even Fillon upsetting that outcome can't be dismissed. And with ISIS claiming responsibility for yesterday's shooting in Paris, the race is more up in the air than ever. [more inside]
Bondvillan terrorism
Two weeks ago, the Borussia Dortmund team bus was on route to their Quarter-final first leg Champions league match against AS Monaco, when it was attacked by a remotely detonated bomb. Theories were flowing: Islamic terrorists? Antifas displeased by the clubs' association with far-right fans? The same far-right fans displeased with the club's attempts to remove them from the Südtribüne over recent incidents? Leipzig hooligans trying a pay back for those incidents? The truth might be a lot stranger. [more inside]
Miscast
Carmen Cusack performs "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton at this year's Miscast gala celebrating 30 years of the MCC Theatre in New York. The goal of Miscast is to allow Broadway stars perform songs from roles in which they would NEVER be cast. Jennifer Holliday sings “I Am What I Am” from La Cage aux Folles. Brian D’Arcy James performs “Unusual Way” from Nine. Kelli O’Hara performs “Pure Imagination” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. [more inside]
Again the mantle of pity descended upon me like a wet, sodden blanket
In February, 93-year-old Tom Sitter entered The Moth in Madison StorySLAM storytelling contest in Madison, Wisconsin. He told about his Valentine's Day experience in 1933, when he was in third grade. Sitter scored the competition's first-ever perfect ten. [laughter and cheers; h/t Miss Cellania]. The Moth previously.
What's a Jello Biafra?
Graham Isadore writes: "Earlier this month I decided to live a week as Ian Mackaye. I wanted to see what I could learn by emulating my hero. What I discovered is that most people don’t know who Ian Mackaye is."
April 20
Build a Better Monster
The correct way to play Pac Man, of course, is to consume as much as possible while running from the ghosts that relentlessly pursue you. This was a valuable early lesson in what it means to be an American.
But can we do more?
Secret Empire #0 reveals that he was simply returned to his true base
A fundamental change to the history of World War II in Marvel Comics "Secret Empire #0 reveals a flip on that narrative. As we’re to understand it now, in the “true” history of the Marvel Universe, the Allies actually lost World War II. The only reason no one remembers this is because the Allies used a Cosmic Cube to change reality, warping it into a false history where they won and Captain America was always the Sentinel of Liberty and representative of the American dream." (previously on MeFi, when diversity was blamed for the poor sales)
0x100 bytes, no filler
A Mind Is Born is a C64 demo with a driving hypnotic soundtrack. The program is 256 bytes long. How it works: A Mind Is Born
How deep is my lack of artistic character? Pretty deep, it turns out.
My Life As a Failed Artist by Jerry Saltz [previously on mefi]. "I miss art terribly. I’ve never really talked about my work to anyone. In my writing, I’ve occasionally mentioned bygone times of once being an artist, usually laughingly. Whenever I think of that time, I feel stabs of regret. But once I quit, I quit; I never made art again and never even looked at the work I had made. Until last month..."
'We should have called them education camps.'
Late in the evening, early in the morning, really, on this day, at just about this time, 72 years ago, Norbert Masur, a Swedish volunteer from the World Jewish Congress sat down to talk to Heinrich Himmler in hopes of freeing and bettering treatment of Jews still remaining in concentration camps. Himmler was meant to arrive on the evening of the 20th, but was held up late celebrating Hitler's birthday and did not arrive until 2:30AM on the 21st. This is his first-hand account.
Admittedly, courage acorns ARE good bait
Almost 17 months ago (previously), MetaFilter enjoyed the tale of Biisuke, the ball who bravely saved his ball brothers after they were kidnapped by traversing a Rube Goldberg world full of enemies. Now can Biita and Biigoro return the favor? Find out in the action-packed, also-musical sequel Save Biisuke! Ball Brothers Big Adventure (SLYT). [more inside]
French bowldog, am I right?
"On a day of general perturbation, I bring you a French bulldog, skateboarding in Clissold Park." Children's book critic Imogen Russell Williams went to the park, and in the skate bowl, a dog was skateboarding. So she took a 45 second SLTwitter video of it. Despite the fact that it hasn't learnt any tricks yet.
Why the Snake?
The sort of isolation that gave us tall and short and light and dark and other variations in our species was no protection against the advance of language. It crossed mountains and oceans as if they werent there. Did it meet some need? No. The other five thousand plus mammals among us do fine without it. But useful? Oh yes. We might further point out that when it arrived it had no place to go. The brain was not expecting it and had made no plans for its arrival. It simply invaded those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. ... What we do know—pretty much without question—is that once you have language everything else follows pretty quickly. The simple understanding that one thing can be another thing is at the root of all things of our doing. --Cormac McCarthy, "The Kekulé Problem"
“It is in the most dangerous times that art is the voice —”
'The Book Of Joan' Recasts A Historic Heroine — In Space [NPR] “What does it mean to be human? In Lidia Yuknavitch's new novel The Book of Joan, what's left of the human race is orbiting above the Earth, sexless and ageless, prisoners in a technological hell. Their lives are preserved through growing limbs and grafting skin. Presiding over it all is a one-time billionaire celebrity who evolved through media and technology into a despot. His adversary is a girl called Joan; Yuknavitch says she adapted the story of Joan of Arc to make her heroine "an eco-terrorist of sorts, although that name would depend on your point of view. She has allegiance to the planet, and diversity on the planet, including plants and animals and people. And as the story progresses, her allegiance turns into a question somewhat like "what's the worth of humans, and what's our relationship to the planet?"” [more inside]
Votre pain est exquis
Give up on Your Dreams of Becoming a Baker, a catchy music video by Brian David Gilbert. See also e.g. Thom Yorke was raised in a barn, Justin [Timberlake] checks WebMD, or When I Make a Good Pun.
MORTIMER had his photograph taken in his dress suit.
If the hostess asks him to have a chair Freddie comes right back at her with "No, thanks; we have chairs at home." If the host offers him a cigar he will say just like a flash, "What's the matter with it?" If one of the men borrows a cigarette and a light from him Freddie will say in that dry voice of his, "Do you want the coupons too?" Of course his wit is pretty fairly caustic, but no one ever seems to take offense at it. I suppose there is everything in the way he says things."Men I'm Not Married To", Dorothy Parker, 1922 [more inside]
The Ugly Side of Getting Rich
In one photograph, the German-born, Harvard-educated hedge fund manager Florian Homm, who made and lost a personal fortune of more than $800 million, poses in a German brothel that he once co-owned. In another, Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines accused of stealing billions from state coffers, sits in her Manila apartment beneath a gold-framed Picasso. Later on, a 43-year-old Chinese billionaire Huang Qiaoling is pictured walking from his mansion, built as a full-scale replica of the White House, to his chauffeured Mercedes S Class. Lauren Greenfield’s Generation Wealth will be published in May. Dozens more similarly lavish and disconcerting vignettes fill Generation Wealth (Phaidon, 2017), a 504-page monograph by Lauren Greenfield and out on May 15. [more inside]
First Listen: Willie Nelson, 'God's Problem Child'
Still going strong at 84, Willie Nelson releases yet another album and you can listen to it before it's released thanks to NPR.
“Is there a time traveling portal in your dashboard?”
Alex Tom took his car to the shop because its airbag had been recalled. But the tech found something odd in the airbag compartment: a smartphone, locked and stuck in January 2015. Tom, naturally, posted about it on social media, and eventually found the owner thanks to a dating app.
I still hear it. It's still going!
Many of these birds have flown thousands of miles to reach your yard
There are a lot of dumb birds out there. Here's how you can figure out what they are.
HERE SWEETIE. DINNERTIME.
Perhaps you're wondering, how does PawBot really work?
Joe Miller was a "snapper up of unconsidered trifles"
Joe Miller, also known as Joseph or Josias (1684–1738), was an English actor who favored comedies, but was in fact, known for his grave demeanor and subdued humor. This led to an in-joke whereby all his companions ascribed all new jokes to him, though he is also said to have collected jokes himself. After his death, John Mottley (1692–1750), using the pseudonym of Elijah Jenkins, Esquire, published a book called Joe Miller's Jests, or the Wit's Vade-Mecum in 1739 (Archive.org; also available in a semi-modern web format), containing 247 jokes, but that was just the first of many editions and copies. [more inside]
It's about coming in second and thriving anyway
Gudetama, a lazy, perpetually weary egg yolk, is a Sanrio cartoon character. Since its creation in 2013, it has become very popular in Japan, and is now starting to find an enthusiastic audience abroad, causing some to theorise that
Gudetama may be the cartoon mascot for our troubled age.
Monogamy Is In The Genes
A boring mouse who tends to their home and children show monogamous behavior is genetic, just like humans! Oldfield Mice not only make lifelong connections with their partners, they never inbreed. They even build better nests! Lady mice all over the world are looking for an Oldfield mouse...
Don't give me that look.
Guy Frees Owl from Kitchen Using a Swiffer (SLYT). NSFW due to a small amount of cursing.
April 19
The American Government’s Secret Plan for Surviving the End of the World
Carter and his White House were interested in more specific questions. If the presidency could survive after a nuclear war, what exactly would it do afterward? How could the surviving commander in chief be identified? Who would identify him? How would he fulfill the three main functions of the presidency: to be the chief executive of the government, the head of state, and the commander in chief of its armed forces?
“Q Did y’all ever run out of breadsticks? If so what happened?”
@JoeWadlington: I went on a date last night and the guy meekly shared that he used to be THE GENERAL MANAGER FOR THE TIMES SQUARE OLIVE GARDEN. Clearly, he'd seen some shit. So the next hour and a half was me asking questions. I tried to do y'all right. (The thread continues for many tweets, and can be read here as a Twitter Moment.)
Randall Coburn at The A.V. Club.: “Former manager of the Times Square Olive Garden shares harrowing war stories”
Randall Coburn at The A.V. Club.: “Former manager of the Times Square Olive Garden shares harrowing war stories”
Directed by Arthur Slugworth?
"Mel Stuart's Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory is one of the most beloved family films ever made. Featuring an iconic performance from the late, great Gene Wilder, eyepopping production design, a sly sense of humor and a parade of memorable songs, the film is a stone-cold classic.
So, here's a fun idea: what if you turned that stone-cold classic into a horribly-animated, direct-to-video Tom And Jerry movie?"
So, here's a fun idea: what if you turned that stone-cold classic into a horribly-animated, direct-to-video Tom And Jerry movie?"
Looks a lot more like it does now than it did before
Boat builder Louis Sauzedde has been crafting a wooden work skiff from raw lumber and documenting the process each week in a series of 36 videos. His Rhode Island accent, complete mastery of his craft, ability to explain both what he is doing and why he is doing it, casual use of nautical jargon, and his general good natured enthusiasm -- combined with excellent production and editing -- makes this series well worth watching. [more inside]
Real Housecats Play The Real Housewives
In a Genocide, Who Are the Morally Upright?
Niyitegaka told the soldiers that, whether in life or in death, she would remain with the Tutsis she had sheltered. Singing and chanting, she followed them onto the buses, which headed for the notorious Commune Rouge, a public cemetery that served as a killing field. There, alongside her Tutsi friends, Niyitegeka was slain by an assassin’s bullet.On the motivations of rescuers in the Rwandan genocide.
A Day in the Life of a Food Vendor
"Mr. Ahmed, 46, is in the business of chicken and rice. He immigrated from Bangladesh 23 years ago, and is now one of two partners in a halal food cart that sets up on Greenwich Street close to the World Trade Center, all year long, rain or shine. He is also one of more than 10,000 people, most of them immigrants, who make a living selling food on the city’s sidewalks..." (New York Times link)
Sectors and Voxels and Sprites and more...
Ken Silverman's Build Engine served as the backbone for a generation of shooters that bridged the early efforts of DOOM and Wolfenstein with the later 3D revolution of Quake and Half-Life. The Build Engine's Golden Era (in Rock Paper Shotgun) traces the inception and legacy of the quirky and clunky, but powerful software: "... Build [engine] games took the action to urban centres, morgues and small-town Americana. We were whisked away to more fantastical worlds by Shadow Warrior and the wonderful Outlaws ... What unified all these environments is that they felt like real spaces designed for humans to reside in, but which just happened to be beset by zombies, aliens, or foul-mouthed shotgun-wielding hillbilly clones (that’s Redneck Rampage, in case you were wondering)." [more inside]
The Museum of Failure
From Colgate Lasagne to Crystal Pepsi The Guardian brings you news of a museum in Sweden that showcases - "products that swan-dived from the highest board; failures so legendary they have their own appendix in business-school textbooks. They’re proof that even with a multi-million dollar marketing budget, you still can’t buy someone who’ll see that the emperor’s new soft drink tastes like cat piss." [more inside]
I think maybe I am more like a child’s bench covered with fur.
My First Trip to Oakland, by Merle (and Sarah Miller).
10 quadrillion vulgar tongues
Vulgar is a constructed language (conlang) generator for fantasy fiction writing that creates unique and usable constructed languages in the click of a button. Vulgar’s output models the regularities, irregularities and quirks of real world languages; phonology, grammar, and a 2000 unique word vocabulary. [more inside]
Eighty Sixed
Love and Breakup in the digital age....or, "Curb Your Enthusiasm" for Millennials. Written by, and starring, Cazzie David, Larry David's daughter. All four episodes are on youtube.
World's biggest jukebox, Alan Lomax style (no quarters needed)
"Since 1990, the Global Jukebox has functioned as a digital repository of music from [folklorist Alan] Lomax’s global archive...Now, updated and put online, the newly-launched Global Jukebox web site provides an interactive interface, giving you access to detailed analyses of folk music from all over the world, and highly technical “descriptive data” for each song." Via Open Culture, thousands of international folk songs (and more!) are now available for your listening and learning pleasure. [more inside]
Screenings for Canadian Values
Today is National Canadian Film Day 150, a massive one-day celebration of Canadian cinema in honour of Canada’s sesquicentennial. To help you celebrate from your couch, the CBC is offering 7 Canadian feature films you can watch online for free. [more inside]
Grant me the carving of my name
Hey guys, you know about that rule in archeology that says never go looking for a specific thing, and especially don't go looking for famous people because you'll almost NEVER find them?? Well, we think we may have found the grave of Richard III under your car park, maybe under a spot marked “R” on the asphalt. May we excavate? [more inside]
Little boxes / on the game sprite / little boxes / made of rectangles
Here's a flickr album of images of and about hitboxes, the simplified mathematical regions—sometimes literally boxes (whether 2D or 3D), sometimes other shapes—used to quickly calculate collisions between objects in video games.
two fare zone
"New York’s MTA subway system is an essential part of many New Yorkers’ lives [...] RentHop’s data scientists love maps and rental data, so they’ve mapped out rental prices by subway stop to assist in your apartment hunting endeavors [...] This year, we’ve seen rents dropping across most of Manhattan Island while prices in the outer boroughs and Upper Manhattan rise due to what appears to be a migration in search of bigger apartments and/or cheaper rents." [more inside]
"why did I ever build this"
Can I be Sleepy and Dopey too?
The case for being grumpy at work "Research shows that forcing workers to appear more pleasant and more cheerful than they actually feel can lead to a whole host of negative consequences—from emotional exhaustion to withdrawal. And women in particular suffer from the expectation that they should constantly demonstrate happiness." Constantly being expected to smile, or other types of emotional dissonance, can wreak havoc. Other studies indicate that appearing too cheery can actually harm a woman's chances for promotion.
The Myth of Everyday Cooking
" I care a lot about quality ingredients but there is literally zero way I am making food as rich, complex, and expensive as what constitutes Prueitt’s notion of “all day.”"
Squeeze me till I pop, yeah, squeeze me till you drop
Silicon Valley’s $400 Juicer May Be Feeling the Squeeze: One of the most lavishly funded gadget startups in Silicon Valley last year was Juicero Inc. It makes a juice machine. The product was an unlikely pick for top technology investors, but they were drawn to the idea of an internet-connected device that transforms single-serving packets of chopped fruits and vegetables into a refreshing and healthy beverage.... But after the product hit the market, some investors were surprised to discover a much cheaper alternative: You can squeeze the Juicero bags with your bare hands.
Books Now! Books Wow!
Stop hurling insults on Twitter and start throwing rocks in Dark Castle.
Wired: Want to leave the internet behind for a simpler time, one where computer frogs crossed rivers instead of spewing hate speech? The Macintosh Software Library from the Internet Archive lets you run old-school Macintosh games and applications in your browser, so stop hurling insults on Twitter and start throwing rocks in Dark Castle. [more inside]
It's good to hear that voice again
New Music From Prince, Set For Release Friday, The Subject Of A Suit From His Estate from NPR. Here's the title track Deliverance [SoundCloud link].
The Definitive Internet Oral History of Internet Oral Histories
On kottke.org, Tim Carmody brings us a roundup of the Golden Age of Oral Histories in which we are living, including the previously discussed Golden Girls piece that has already disappeared into the Internet ether.
The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal
From Seattle's alt-weekly The Stranger, The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black [more inside]
Wah lau eh
Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders set an episode in Singapore. It made Kim Huat angry. Twice. [DLFBV] [more inside]
Scandal and Sculpture
"It was only when it became public that America’s wealthiest museum was bleeding money, its deficit on the verge of bloating to $40 million — since contained to $15 million — that trustees turned against him. “If the Met had been flush,” said one museum expert, “I don’t think we’d be talking about Tom Campbell today.” - What Broke The Met?
Our Wyoming Life
Join us on our journey as we leave a life in corporate america to come back to Wyoming and help on the family ranch. Our Wyoming Life features our Wyoming ranch and our ranch family. Giving you a look into the workings of ranching from raising cattle to raising and harvesting crops. Erin will join you weekly out of the garden, showing you how she helps provide for our family through growing produce and selling at local farmers markets, and Mike will take you along as he tends to the animals and land of ranch, from calving to fencing to planting and harvesting hay. [more inside]
Synthesizers and Dolls
Alien Knowledge
When machines justify knowledge. The new availability of huge amounts of data, along with the statistical tools to crunch these numbers, offers a whole new way of understanding the world. Correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.
April 18
☀ + ☃ = ♨
An Ice Scientist’s Worst Nightmare [The New York Times] “On April 2, the temperature of a storage freezer in the Canadian Ice Core Archive rose to about 100 degrees — some part of the cooling system failed, “then tried to get itself back into action and in the process, piped hot air back into the room,” according to Martin Sharp, the director of the archive. The freezer became so hot that it tripped the fire alarm, Dr. Sharp said, and partially or fully melted 180 ice cores collected by government scientists since the mid-1970s from the snowy expanse of the Canadian Arctic.”
Furry Meets Furries
Loco mía keeps your body movin'
Locomia is a Spanish pop group popular in the 1980s. Both their outfits and their fan-twirling (the eponymous song Locomia, 1986) became trademarks of the group and contributed to their huge popularity. Without the fan-twirling, they're not as impressive (Loco Vox, 1991). [more inside]
Now read it to the last bitter page
Why You Should Read Books You Hate: New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul on hate-reading Ayn Rand, parenting books and Harry Paget Flashman. [more inside]
Click "comments" for the fighting
The value of emotional labour
The New Zealand government has reached a $NZ2 billion settlement which will see aged care workers receive pay rises between 15 and 50 per cent, depending on their qualifications and experience. [more inside]
Working Violin Made Out of 16,000 Matchsticks
Hubert Gwiżdż made a violin of 16,000 matchsticks that has stood the test of time: beautifully, and without combusting into sudden flames even once. The matchstick violin eventually traveled back to Poland while, and there, after some time, it was finally exposed to the orchestral world thanks to efforts from Hubert's grandson.
Additional links: classicfm.com, boingboing.net
Additional links: classicfm.com, boingboing.net
"I'm not in spandex clothing, yeah. It wouldn't go with my personality."
How many supergroups can you name in 30 seconds without thinking? Let’s see… there’s Bad Company, Blind Faith, Cream, Them Crooked Vultures, Asia, GTR, Streets, The Highwaymen and Crosby, Stills & Nash… just to name a few. One that may slip under the radar—but should be on par with all the others—is Animal Logic. Thirty years ago, this trio, featuring the unique combo of Return to Forever bassist Stanley Clarke and Police drummer Stewart Copeland hit the scene with a sound that wasn’t quite jazz, wasn’t quite new wave (certainly wasn’t hair metal), but was all its own.[more inside]
Beer! Math! Beermath!
Craft beer — so hot right now. But what city is the microbrew capital of the US? An interactive data-visualization visual essay on the many ways to proclaim cities "Best" on beer, by Russell Goldenberg
The real party is in the SHUTTLEBUS!!!
Possibly the greatest artifact in the history of the demoscene: DAS BUS, a Powerpoint ode to the shuttlebus.
The piano playing nun
About the life and music of the 93 yr old Ethiopian nun Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. The guardian article links to this BBC Radio 4 documentary.
Birth of the Cool: RIP Barkley Hendricks
RIP, Barkley Hendricks. His paintings, most of which featured people of color, sit at the intersection of realism and postmodernism: portraits full of personality pictured against a flat plane of color. [more inside]
Squatty Potty sold separately
Days after legitimizing the theretofore secret-menu-only pink drink and announcing a new gluten-free breakfast sandwich, Starbucks has announced what might be the pinnacle of comestible engineering, the color and flavor changing unicorn frappuccino (North America only).
Chick-a-boom
All we know are the facts, ma’am
USAFacts.org is a new data-driven portrait of the American population, our government’s finances, and government’s impact on society. We are a non-partisan, not-for-profit civic initiative and have no political agenda or commercial motive. We provide this information as a free public service and are committed to maintaining and expanding it in the future. [more inside]
"They don’t believe that we’re even able to define what a place is."
Learning from Shankleville Scholars in Texas study unincorporated black "Freedom Colonies" formed during Reconstruction and still living communities -- upending conventional assumptions of community planning in the process. [more inside]
The Deadly Tomato
Tomatoes were nicknamed "the “poison apple” because it was thought that aristocrats got sick and died after eating them, but the truth of the matter was that wealthy Europeans used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. Because tomatoes are so high in acidity, when placed on this particular tableware, the fruit would leach lead from the plate, resulting in many deaths from lead poisoning. No one made this connection between plate and poison at the time; the tomato was picked as the culprit. " [I]t was an astonishing event when, in 1806, Jefferson served them to guests at the President’s House.
Accessibility and water parks and non-electric wheelchairs
The PneuChair is lighter than most powered wheelchairs, "recharges" faster, and has no electric components, meaning that it can be used in water parks. It would also allow users to bathe more independently and worry less about weather.
Big strides? No. But better steps to combating sexism in beer.
Brewers Association announces plans to crack down on offensive and sexist beer labels. [more inside]
He wasn’t her most gifted student. But he was the most persistent.
An annoying distraction from Eurovision
Prime Minister Theresa May has announced a general election for the UK on the 8th June. In a speech, the PM describes Brexit, unity et al, and Jeremy Corbyn, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP as the core reasons. With "I have only recently and reluctantly come to this conclusion", this reverses her previous position on a snap election. The PM needs first to overturn the 2011 Fixed-term Parliaments Act, which will be attempted in the House of Commons tomorrow. Before the general election, there are the local elections on May 4th.
God in the Machine
Bagoas - awesome (male) tribal fusion bellydancer
Bagoas dances with sinuous and rhythmic beauty and plenty of playfulness. Not typical bellydance/doumbek music most of the time, either. Art of the Belly solo - wow, I say - and a fab duet, Oriental Job and an early (2011) performance at Rakkasah East, with heavy metal cello. Also, a very playful Ya Halla Y'all , with the songs Mr. Sandman and Sheik of Araby. He has more vids, but these are some of the high spots. His FB fanpage, linked from his website, will give you his real name. Originally from Baltimore, he seems to be located in Seattle now.
April 17
You guys would be great in a van
#vanlife, The Bohemian Social Media Movement. Scroll through the images tagged #vanlife on Instagram and you’ll see plenty of photos that don’t have much to do with vehicles: starry skies, campfires, women in leggings doing yoga by the ocean. Like the best marketing terms, “vanlife” is both highly specific and expansive. It’s a one-word life-style signifier that has come to evoke a number of contemporary trends: a renewed interest in the American road trip, a culture of hippie-inflected outdoorsiness, and a life free from the tyranny of a nine-to-five office job.
“John B McLemore lives in Shit Town, Alabama.”
How The Best Podcast Of The Year Was Made. McLemore is a late-middle-age clock restorer, hedge-maze maker, acid-reflux sufferer, and all-around gadfly. The hook for S-Town is that he says he’s heard talk of a murder in Woodstock, but the listener quickly gets the sense that what McLemore says is less the point than how he says it. The tapes of his conversations with Reed are glorious, darkly comic linguistic sculptures, filigreed with vulgarity, custom slang, and scientific names for plants. S-Town Is a Well-Crafted Monument to Empathy. [more inside]
A-Mazing
The Good, the Bad and the Very Good Beaver
"The most heavily tabooed of all English words"
An appreciation and exploration of the history, usage and context of the four-letter word beginning with C.
NSFW.
What doesn't kill you....
“...the PS4 also has the most to offer as a roach hotel.”
Console Repairmen Explain Why Cockroaches Love PS4s [Kotaku] “The PS4’s design accommodates roaches better than other consoles’ because its ventilation grates are wider. Those vents are located at the bottom of the console, so roaches can get in with ease. Also, according to repair professionals, the PS4’s insides gets hotter than the Xbox One’s because of its internal power supply. Warm, in an enclosed space and close to the floor, PS4s are great roach nesting grounds.”
My first love will always be Collembola
A Chaos of Delight: The Wonderful World of Soil Mesofauna is the gorgeously photographed website of a macro photographer and obsessive fan of the strange, tiny animals that live in our soil. "For the last two years I've been travelling the world, studying and photographing Collembola, my greatest passion. This website was set up to have as complete an overview of the mesofauna as possible, within the limits of what I find funny."
Hu, the Loser
The term Diaosi (屌丝), which is roughly translated to mean ‘loser’, was originally used as an insult to mock other online users. By 2013, Analysys International, a consultancy, estimated that over 500 million Chinese—more than a quarter of the total population of the country—self-identified as a Diaosi. This throwaway derogatory slang had seemingly hit a deep and collective emotional chord among the wider Chinese population.Winning and Losing in Modern China
Happy Birthday, Madame Bovary
Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to me
For a long time, I’d respond to men’s Wallace recommendations with “he’s on my list,” or “I’ve been meaning to — totally.” And for a long time, I meant it. Now, thinking about becoming that kind of person makes me feel tired. This is how you become the right kind of person: if you’re not in a position of power, identify your oppressors — well-intentioned, oblivious, or otherwise — and love their art. This is why it’s hard to distinguish my reaction to Wallace from my reaction to patriarchy. This insistence that I read his work feels like yet another insistence that The Thing That’s Good Is The Thing Men Like.Deirdre Coyle reviews Brief Interviews with Hideous Men for Electric Lit's "Late to the Party." [TW: sexual assault]
"Dropping the Headphone Jack On the Game Boy Advance SP"
Last week, Nintendo discontinued the incredibly popular NES Classic, for some reason. This is far from the first questionable business decision they’ve made and it definitely won’t be the last. Find out which one of these decisions you are in this quiz, courtesy of Kotaku.
NeoGaf thread • Previously.
NeoGaf thread • Previously.
You're worth it! (You other two, not so much.)
Should you take a chance on the $9 all-you-can-eat buffet? Can a $2000 pizza possibly beat a Brooklyn slice? In their series, Worth It [YT playlist], Buzzfeed's Alex Choi, Steven Lim, and Andrew Ilnyckyj pit the most expensive, least expensive, and middle-priced versions of foods against each other to see which one is the best [Buzzfeed]. (Buzzfeed links include video plus a condensed review with photos.]
Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space
Agnes Denes' Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space-Map Projections is a series of drawings of world maps projected onto non-spherical shapes: pyramid, torus, cube, snail, and so on. Collected in the (very out of print) Map Projections, which you can browse here (or with zooming via a flash version).
Groundhog Day
NPR is hosting a First Listen of the Original Cast Recording of Groundhog Day: The Musical. Music and lyrics by Tim Minchin.
We gave you power, we can take it away. Watch us.
Despite sizable turnouts around the country for Tax Day marches, the majority of U.S. voters recently polled disapproving of most of Trump's actions, and his polls still close to his record low numbers, Trump continues to pull in money for his 2020 campaign, with a significant portion paying for use of his own properties. Meanwhile, Gorsuch's time on U.S. high court will begin with three cases, and the public focus may be on if he recuses himself from one of those cases, and there is a lot of speculation on Steve Bannon's future in the White House, and what happens if he's ousted. [more inside]
Pop Art Rooms
Wake-up call for your eyes are these rooms, mostly from the 1970s. We've gotten so blah in our designs and need more of this back.
A Permanent Restructuring Is Underway
Is American Retail at a Historic Tipping Point? [NYT]
More workers in general merchandise stores have been laid off since October, about 89,000 Americans. That is more than all of the people employed in the United States coal industry, which President Trump championed during the campaign as a prime example of the workers who have been left behind in the economic recovery.[more inside]
The art of constructing an entire fictional universe
To create a fictional universe, you might start with building 1000 stars. Okay, maybe a planetary system or even terrestrial planet is more manageable. Just don't forget your basic seasonbuilding. Obviously your higher life forms will require a language and eventually a writing system. Finally, celebrate your magnificent creation with this a cappella operatic rendition of Justin Bieber's Baby in the very language you've created. Need more help? Artifexian has got you covered.
An investigation into the joy and pain of fitting in
Talking to the Popular Girls, 20 Years Later | "Why we let male attention rule our entire world and why we were so devastatingly mean to each other still confounds me. To them the answer seemed at once utterly obvious and also unremarkable. 'Because we were immature,' Grace said. 'We didn’t know any better.' But I still can’t believe how much I gave up and how hard I worked at becoming cool simply because I had a crush on a Hot Guy in third grade. 'Having the boys’ approval was, like, everything,' Meg said, 'and so the meaner you were, the more attractive you were.' "
The Soviets Made A Real Doomsday Device In The '80s
Transformers: Talent Show Edition
Microphones can be instruments of possession; I'm sure we have all been unlucky enough to witness an otherwise decent person turn into (gender neutral) "that guy" by virtue of being behind a live mic. But possession by microphone spirits can be magnificent. Consider these two very different contestants on Britain's Got Talent: 12-year-old Beau Dermott (2016) and 28-year-old Alice Fredenham (2013). [more inside]
April 16
Look, Sully - this street is in Dohchestah, not Roxbury!
Crowdsourcing Boston neighborhood boundaries.
You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.
Bet you didn't think a turtle sneezing would be so adorable. If you prefer to watch mostly mammals sneeze, here's a
ten-minute compilation [both videos have occasional annoying human noises].
To the closet! Or the pantry! Or both!
Not pictured: pointless shaking of developing photo
Nine Polaroid Photographs of a Mirror, by William Anastasi.
The Elements of Bureaucratic Style
The bureaucratic voice presents governments and corporations as placid, apologetic, and unmovable. It also makes their victims as active as possible. [more inside]
Tea comes out of a teapot
In disturbing news from the further-divided Motherland, an academic from a lesser nation has suggested (back in 2012) using so-called "science" that tea is best made in a microwave oven. This followed shocking and graphic scenes in a TV crime drama when David Tennant's character "made" a mug of "tea" with the same device, leading some to question modern manners. A few have attempted to replicate this morally questionable experiment, with varying results. No comment yet from the head of state, but some on social media and from cousins in the Western Colonies, and further considered analysis from Blighty.
Here's Eddie impaling the Earth.
April 15
Because Easter Needs Truffles too
Don't tell Scalzi
What has Christ / Got To Do / With An En-er-gy Drink 🎜
A life that touched three centuries
Emma Morano, the world's oldest person, and the last person who was born in the 1800s, has died at age 117. She had attributed her longevity to her genetics (having multiple relatives who lived beyond 100 years), a diet of three eggs a day (two of them raw), and her decision to kick out her abusive husband in 1938.
A Hero for our times
The best video you'll see this weekend is Sara Carson and Hero the border collie freestyling to "Faith" by Stevie Wonder and Ariana Grande [ridiculously catchy music; h/t Miss Cellania]. [more inside]
“We're talkin' bout Rick James, man.”
Comedian Charlie Murphy, Brother of Eddie, Dies at 57 [The New York Times] “Charlie Murphy, the older brother of Eddie Murphy and a comic performer in his own right who turned encounters with Rick James and Prince into standout sketches on "Chappelle's Show," has died. He was 57. Murphy died Wednesday in New York of leukemia, according to his representative, Domenick Nati. He was perhaps best-known for his appearances on Dave Chappelle's Comedy Central show. In the recurring segment "Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories," Murphy would recount how his brother's fame brought him into the orbit of the biggest stars. His versions of the experiences, played out by him, Chappelle and others, became enduring hits.”
webshit weekly
An internet posts a C programming tutorial, in which the reader is taught how to build a toy text editor for unix. Hackernews trades examples of favorite toy text editors and favorite toy programming languages. A particularly haunting comment is posted by one Hackernews: a Haskell program that translates C to Rust, which gives us a brief peek into the grotesque Godless painscape where the Rust Evangelism Strike Force plans its webshit-brigading operations.webshit weekly is an annotated digest of the top "Hacker" "News" posts.
Crazy Talk: What Free Mental Health Apps Should I Know About?
You’re probably thinking, “Sam, how does a raccoon wearing a fanny pack help with your mental health?” Don’t knock it until you try it.
White People are Scared of Us
So it was with anger and sadness (rather than shock or rage) I took in the news about San Bernadino and took in how the news of that loss was being told: as though this were a radical and inexplicable act, a violence that disrupted the calm, rather than a pulse, a beat, in the song of violence that has sung our country into existence. There is a debt of blood that must be paid. And white people aren’t the piper, they are the song.The Savage Mind: A powerful three part essay on growing up, becoming, and being Native American, from Ojibwe writer and professor David Treuer.
You say potato, I say climate change
Japanese snack food manufacturers Calbee Inc. and Koike-Ya Inc. are halting sales of 49 potato chip products due to potato shortages. This is the result of poor crops in Hokkaido, a key potato-producing region, where a series of typhoons hit the island in 2016 for the first time on record. Calbee has said that imported potatoes from the United States are of insufficient quality and cannot cover the deficit. [more inside]
Meet Maro, the cosplaying cat.
10/10, would fuss again
Welcome to The Cat Reviewer! Fussed a cat on the street that isn't yours? Please send in a review!
Bruce Langhorne 1938 - 2017 aka Mr. Tambourine Man
Bruce Langhorne 1938 - 2017
An inspiration for many a beginning guitarist, he was a remarkable person and musician.
An inspiration for many a beginning guitarist, he was a remarkable person and musician.
April is giving birth at last
The event everyone has been waiting for with bated breath, April the Giraffe is now giving birth. (April 15, 2017, 9:40 EDT) . Previously [more inside]
April 14
Squirrels & Squee is not just an indie band
From the Department Of Isn't That Cute: A North Carolina Squirrel Eats Tiny Ice Cream Cones Every Day [more inside]
Deep Network, Deep Flaw
A recent study of neural networks found that for every correctly classified image, one can generate an "adversarial", visually indistinguishable image that will be misclassified. This suggests potential deep flaws in all neural networks (with a hint of a solution). [more inside]
“If you don’t want to know the scores, please look away now.”
If You Don’t Want to Know What This Article Is About, Please Look Away Now [The New York Times] “The formula remains the same after all these years, its familiarity a comfort, its consistency its charm. Every Saturday night, about 10:20 p.m., Kate Silverton, the anchor for the BBC’s 10 o’clock news — the marquee news program of Britain’s national broadcaster, watched by more than four million people — hands over from the corporation’s home in London to a studio in Salford, where the BBC’s sports arm is based. One of four sports presenters sits waiting. A cheery welcome and short introduction follow. And then, every week, without fail, comes that warning. It is such an intrinsic part of the broadcast, and has been for so long, that it is not far short of a national ritual, one of those few sentences a whole country knows by heart.”
Heart to Heart
“I picked him up from school and the first thing he said when he got in the car was, ‘Mom, I met Rod Carew today!” Mary recalled. That was the first time Konrad gave his heart to Rod Carew.Konrad & Carew: How an NFL player’s donated heart saved (the) life of a baseball Hall of Famer
"It's not safe to run an internet facing Windows box right now."
Ars Technica: The Shadow Brokers—the mysterious person or group that over the past eight months has leaked a gigabyte worth of the National Security Agency's weaponized software exploits—just published its most significant release yet. [more inside]
The Moderators
The Moderators is a 20-minute documentary by Adrian Chen and Ciaran Cassidy that follows a team of new internet moderators at an outsourcing firm in India as they look for pornography and scams (film contains some NSFW images in the background). The film is based in part on Chen's 2014 Wired article on content moderation (previously on the blue), which goes into more depth on the rapid culturally-sensitive decisions required and the psychological impact of this work for the humans who constantly see these images.
dweet your heart out
Head to dwitter to look at and play with (and even create your own) tiny JavaScript demos. Lots of rad programmatic art: scratchy lines, a colorful random walk, some sort of hypercubic butterfly, pulsing and inverting abstract shapes, etc. There's even interactive stuff, both sights and sounds.
The Company Continued
You may remember science fiction author Kage Baker (previously), who wrote reams of words about time-travelling immortal cyborgs. Since her untimely death five years ago, her sister Kathleen Bartholomew has been editing and releasing some of Baker's remaining work and blogging regularly about the process, about Baker's life and their relationship. [more inside]
Kasey Rogers
Hitchcock fans might recognize Kasey Rogers as the ex-wife doomed as soon as strangers met on a train, Bewitched fans might recognize as Darren's boss's second wife Louise Tate*. But after all that, she became involved with motorcycles after her young son began riding and this led her to motocross racing. In 1972, she began writing a Powder Puff column for Modern Cycle Magazine and did feature stories on the mini-cycle nationals and other racing events, and eventually she worked with the American Motocross Association to establish PURR ("PowderPuffs Unlimited Riders and Racers"), bringing women into the male-dominated sport, in 1974 with a national event sponsored by Yamaha (original program pdf ). PURR would later evolve into what is now motocross's Women's Pro-Class division. [more inside]
The useful village
LucasFilm celebrates Carrie Fisher
The Star Wars Celebration is going this weekend, celebrating 40 years since the first movie's release. As part of the main panel, there was a Tribute To Carrie Fisher created by LucasFilm. It's touching and is truly a celebration. [more inside]
Consciousness consciousness
From Nautil.us Magazine's current thematic issue on Consciousness, a series of short essays, including:Is matter conscious? Is there awareness behind vegetative states? What do animals see in the mirror? Do Aliens have inalienable rights?
For-profit college, without the pesky college part
Forest Trail was something new: a program branded as a university and that offered athletics but no teachers, libraries or curriculum of its own. Athletes would pay to play sports year-round and live on campus.What could go wrong? Spoiler alert: lots.
One weird trick for your cat
Thinking inside the box: Veterinarian Chris Brown read on the internet that if you mark a rectangle on your floor with masking tape, your cat will be drawn to it like Maru to an Amazon box. So he tried it. And so did thousands of other people in the comments. [FB, some non-FB links inside.] [more inside]
"Breathe. Just Breathe."
The alternative to "there's no alternative'.
"...the scare of the near-bankruptcy brought together the elite groups within the city, and enabled them to act in concert in ways that otherwise would have proved difficult to attain. The framework of “crisis” generated a sense of inevitability, making it seem that there were no alternatives. Across the Atlantic, “there is no alternative” would soon become one of Thatcher’s favorite slogans. "How The Rich Seized Control of New York City." New Republic, Kim Phillips-Fein
Think before you do anything. You need a lot of knowledge first.
Until now, [Gene] Sharp’s ideas have largely been applied in authoritarian contexts abroad, whether in the Middle East, post-Communist Europe, or elsewhere. But under Trump, Sharp’s ideas have become all too relevant to the contemporary United States. What insights could American activists today glean from his work about the possibility of resisting the Trump administration? How to Bring Down a Dictator: Reading Gene Sharp in Trump’s America (Dissent Magazine) [more inside]
It's Like Uber for Birds
So this guy picks up a cute little redhead on his way to work.
"Winds are super bad. Love to everyone."
'I'M A GONER': El Faro's last hours as ship sails into storm. Jason Dearen has written a gripping long-form investigation of bad decisions, corporate greed, maritime culture, and human tragedy aboard the doomed cargo ship El Faro for AP News. [more inside]
Two years making daily art
Making Things is a page of pulsing, shimmering geometrical animations and designs made with Processing. The artist, Saskia Freeke, has also written a thoughtful article about making daily artwork.
Two Guys Who Hate Each Other - "At A Party"
"It’s not like there aren’t a ton of options for white hair"
Polish Priests Blessing Things
Celebrate holy week! Only the best in Polish priests blessing things. Cats, neurosurgical microscopes, well-endowed cycling teams, IKEA stores, and so much more.
Do Not Try This
Casual drinker Emmett Farnan finishes the first documented beer half marathon. Farnan competed in The Holy Half Marathon in Half Bend, Indiana, shotgunning a beer at every mile marker. That is 13 beers drank while running over 13 miles, and he managed it all in 1:43.
April 13
Oh. Oh dear.
Producer Steven Paul’s (Ghost in the Shell, Ghost Rider) SP Entertainment Group is launching development of Piers Anthony's Xanth novels into both a feature film and a television series.
FFFFOUND is LLLLOST
The great image-sharing site ffffound.com is closing down as of May 8. For sure, the site has a lot of pictures of exposed breasts there, but also a whole swath of other photos of all kinds from all sorts of sources.
Get stuff out there.
1001 Rogues
1001 Rogues: a browser-playable roguelike with a new story every day. There is also a twitter account to keep you updated on today's story. [via]
Oh Canada...
A New World Record! Toby set the record at the YMCA in Calgary on his 9th birthday as he frantically ran around and used his teeth and paws to pop the balloons while Springs cheered him on. [more inside]
"My childhood is ruined!"
Parents Explain Birth Control. Funny and sweet. [facts, laughter, pizzicato music]
Cannabis to be legal in Canada by July 2018
Proposed cannabis legislation from the Canadian Liberal government has provinces bracing for impact. Following recommendations from the Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, Health Minister Philpot says that protecting the health of Canadians is the top priority, but the proposed legislation still has Canadian physicians, pediatricians, and psychiatrists concerned about the link between cannabis usage and mental illness. [more inside]
“—and so biomedical companies are bleeding 500,000 every year.”
The Blood Of The Crab [Popular Mechanics] “Their distinctive blue blood is used to detect dangerous Gram-negative bacteria such as E. coli in injectable drugs such as insulin, implantable medical devices such as knee replacements, and hospital instruments such as scalpels and IVs. Components of this crab blood have a unique and invaluable talent for finding infection, and that has driven up an insatiable demand. Every year the medical testing industry catches a half-million horseshoe crabs to sample their blood. But that demand cannot climb forever. There's a growing concern among scientists that the biomedical industry's bleeding of these crabs may be endangering a creature that's been around since dinosaur days.”
You are accused of attempting to kill President Erdogan
Tickle Me Elmo, without fur
The Bad Batch
Ana Lily Amirpour, the director of A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (previously on MeFi), is back with The Bad Batch, a dystopian love story set in a community of cannibals in a Texas wasteland. Trailer #1. Trailer #2. [more inside]
You know your man is working hard/HE'S WORTH A DEUCE!!!
A Love Letter to Ace Frehley: Artists Share the Blazing KISS Solos That Inspired Them
The crisis with Russia deepens
With a month to go until the finals week, Russia has announced that it is withdrawing from the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest in Ukraine. This follows the entry ban imposed on the Russian singer Yulia Samoylova for traveling to the Crimea via Russia post-annexation, and a tense standoff, unresolved by an offer of a satellite performance or intervention by Burger King's Russian office. In a statement, Russian Channel 1 station confirmed they will not show the event. [more inside]
Ride or die, remember?
How does Fate of the Furious stack up against the rest of the franchise? And now they've done one with a tank and one with a submarine and one that's in Japan but set 10 years after it was filmed and one where a man in his 30s is a teenager from that movie where can the franchise go next? Space, maybe. [contains spoilers, nitro, shots that zoom through the engine of a car in motion]
Jimmy The Cat Refinds His Home
Woman Looking At Shelter's Facebook Page Sees Her Cat — Who's Been Missing 2 Years "He walked over and head-butted me and I just starting crying."
We are creatures of duty, Captain
Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift. There is no other way to put this: essentially everything about Popular Consciousness Kirk is bullshit. Kirk, as received through mass culture memory and reflected in its productive imaginary (and subsequent franchise output, including the reboot movies), has little or no basis in Shatner’s performance and the television show as aired. Macho, brash Kirk is a mass hallucination.
Let's get naked-er
Zekevivor
Zeke Smith, on being outed as a transgender man on Survivor: The lights magnified in brightness. The cameras, though 30 feet away, suddenly felt inches from my face. All sound faded. Something primal deep inside me screamed: run. I lost control of my body, my legs bounced up and down uncontrollably, willing me to flee, but the rest of me sat dead as stone. To my left was The Abyss. I could’ve made a clean break for it, but I knew there was no running from what had happened. Cameras would follow me, if not that night, then eventually. Running was not an option. So I sat blank, almost in a trance, unaware of what happened around me, trying to form a plan. [more inside]
Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year
I asked her what her secret was, and she said something that would change my professional life as a writer: “Collect rejections. Set rejection goals. I know someone who shoots for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.”
Sculptor wants "Fearless Girl" to back down (or at least step away)
The sculptor of the celebrated “Charging Bull” statue in New York City’s Bowling Green has complained that the recent installation nearby of another statue, “Fearless Girl, ” violates his copyright. [more inside]
8-Year-Old Hero Steals Car After Learning to Drive on YouTube
There’s something beautiful in every corner.
NYT Magazine: The Return of Lorde
April 12
DJ Sumirock: "She's got this energy that goes beyond age"
DJ Sumirock is a monthly fixture at DecabarZ, a club in Shinjuku, Tokyo. She always usually starts her sets with the theme to the 1960s Japanese anime series Astro Boy, then transitions to techno, rock, jazz, French chanson and classical music. She's been DJing for about a decade, which generally isn't too notable, except she started in her 70s, and she's now 82. Before this, she was running her family gyoza restaurant, where she has worked since she was 19, but when her husband died, she wanted to try something new. [more inside]
"It doesn't get more physics-y than that"
Famous still-living theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, though British, has been dealing not only with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig's disease) for decades, but with an American accent as well - even after a system upgrade a couple of years ago. Now, however - perhaps nudged by the availability of voices recorded by celebrities for GPS systems - he's decided it's time for a change and is reviewing audition tapes from a few hopefuls. [more inside]
Death Is Real
Phil Elverum has been recording music since the late 1990s, first as The Microphones and then as Mount Eerie. His most recent album, A Crow Looked At Me, chronicles "the feelings and events and realities" in the months following his wife Geneviève's death from pancreatic cancer. The opening words of the first song, "Real Death," are these: "Death is real. Someone’s there and then they’re not, and it’s not for singing about. It’s not for making into art." [more inside]
Thessaly
Crooked Timber ran a seminar last year on Jo Walton's The Just City and The Philosopher Kings.
John Holbo: Walton's Republic
Thanks to Jo Walton for writing an SF novel in which people, including a pair of gods, try to realize Plato’s Republic. (I’ve only read the first Thessaly novel, The Just City. So if what follows is premature? That sort of thing happens.) This is an experimental novel. Succeed or fail, you learn from an experiment. But even well-constructed experiments can be failures. That’s the risk.[more inside]
Diagnosing genetic disorders with your smartphone
Facial-recognition software finds a new use: diagnosing genetic disorders Diagnosing diseases from a face alone presents an additional challenge in countries where the majority of the population isn’t of northern European descent, because some facial areas that vary with ethnic background can often overlap with areas that signify a genetic disorder. [more inside]
Thin line between heaven and here.
William Horton takes spectacular photographs of soap bubbles and mandalas, among other things. This spectacular shot of autumn leaves in Croatia won a prize.
Where does Canada's accent come from?
Take Meow to the Ball Game
An athletic purrformance at Marlins Park
Play is pawsed at Marlins Park in Miami while a cat runs through the outfield and up the scoreboard. [more inside]
Paper-Based Procrastination Project
Setting the Crease is a long-running origami blog with an extensive archive you can dive into. [more inside]
Atmosphere: breathable. Gravity: moderate. Temperature: cold.
"That's a u with an umlaut"
(Better late than never) a teacher sets a fiendish spelling test as an April Fool's prank. Beware the silent letters.
The Arc of Her Survival
A decade ago, Kristina Anderson was shot while in her French class at Virginia Tech, during a morning when a troubled student killed 32 people and wounded 17. [more inside]
One million comic book panels
Mohit Iyyer, Varun Manjunatha, Anupam Guha, Yogarshi Vyas, Jordan Boyd-Graber, Hal Daumé III and Larry Davis decided to train a neural network on ordered sequences of comic book panels to see if they could then determine what was happening in the current panel. (No.)
To feed the network, they created a 120 gigabyte collection of one million comic book panels in isolation. You can download it here. (source code) (h/t Data Is Plural)
To feed the network, they created a 120 gigabyte collection of one million comic book panels in isolation. You can download it here. (source code) (h/t Data Is Plural)
Yardsharing
Matching gardeners to neighbors with access to space. Right now it mostly works in Boston, but I remember when ChipDrop (which connects gardeners with mega-piles of arborists' unwanted woodchip mulch) was this small, and it basically spread like wildfire.
Historic GIFs wot I did
Jacques Pépin doesn't want your water
Jacques Pépin talks about the importance of cooking with wine and Julia Child's surprise calls for beer and Crisco. [more inside]
How to enrich your otter.
Puzzle play. Hoop dreams. Inhaler use. Snow days. Piano playing. Frisbee. Cup stacking. Hoses. Snowmen. Ball pit. Pumpkins (and monkeys). Pumpkins (and goPros). Fish in a bottle. Frozen shrimp in a bottle. Green jello. Rainbow trout. Sea urchins. Clam shells. Water slides. Ice. Candy corn.
Things to stick tiny paws in.
Speaking as an old, I'm here for this
This Post Cost Me $_____
How much is your time worth to you? The answer is, of course, "it depends". Still, if you're trying to decide whether to spend some money to save time it helps to have some idea of how much that saved time is worth to you.
“Like millions around the world, I’m not from one place.”
Where Are You Really From by Zara Rahman [Real Life] “I’m baffled at your sense of entitlement. It’s not that you ask in the first place; it’s that you ask again, after I’ve answered. No, where are you really from? Is there any other personal question to which you would outright reject my answer? Would you say that about my height, or my profession? I can refuse — no, it’s not your role to define my identity, to put boundaries on who I can and can’t be — and yet you do it over and over. I can’t spend too much time thinking about you, though. I meet people like you regularly, at least once a week. It’s exhausting. Sometimes I will say whatever I think you want to hear, anything to make the conversation progress before we get to the awkward part where you realize that you wouldn’t be talking to me like this if I were white.”
"I have judged his behavior for myself, and I do not feel safe"
Odyssey Con, a Wisconsin science fiction and fantasy convention, became the center of controversy yesterday after Guest of Honor Monica Valentinelli withdrew from the convention when she was assigned serial harasser Jim Frenkel (Frenkel previously on the Blue) as her guest liaison. Fellow guest Patrick S. Tomlinson canceled his appearance in solidarity, and authors Catherine Lundoff and Melissa F. Olson revealed that they had refused invitations after finding out Frenkel was on the convention committee. However, rather than taking the concerns of their guests seriously, Odyssey Con's initial response was to defend Frankel as an upstanding member of the convention committee and post private e-mail correspondence with Valentinelli on Facebook without her consent in the name of "transparency." [more inside]
"if the picture is taken with a certain energy, the viewer will feel it"
"Photographer Alexander Petrosyan has spent years and years discovering and documenting infinite layers of St. Petersburg. His wide collection - not only beautiful, but also grotesque - invites outsiders to step inside the raw and unpredictable streets and experience them without a filter..." 170 remarkable photographs by Alexander Petrosyan, each one like a little story. [more inside]
More and more young kids are being prescribed anti-psychotics off-label
In 2014, nearly 20,000 prescriptions for atypical anti-psychotic drugs like Risperdal, Abilify, Zyprexa, and Seroquel were written for children 2 years old and younger, up from 13,000 the previous year.
if it’s not Jane Austen or Dickens, the audience don’t understand
"Between 2006-2016, of the films produced in the UK, 59% did not have any black actors in a named character role, and 80% of historical dramas in this 10-year period featured not one single black actor. The problem is not isolated to the United Kingdom by any means."
Race and Roles in Historical Costume Dramas [more inside]
Mambo Del Pachuco
The history of the zoot suit is different from the history of pachuco culture, so is the history of caló, the tattoo of the cross, jive, swing music, and the other associations with pachuco culture. It just so happens that all these historical trajectories came together in a unique way in Los Angeles during World War II. Because of Sleepy Lagoon and the Zoot Suit Riots, this unique intersection of histories was photographed, written about, and popularized in a way that froze in time a culture that was actually evolving and expanding.
Pachucos: Not Just Mexican-American Males or Juvenile Delinquents [more inside]
Musta Got Lost, Somewhere Down the Line...
John Warren "J." Geils Jr. founder of the band that bears his name, famous for such boogie smokers as "Musta Got Lost" "Houseparty", "Southside Shuffle" and "Give It To Me" and pop hits "Love Stinks" and "Centerfold" has passed on at 71.
"I think tomorrow I'll go endear myself to about 500 furries."
So, the background about this is that the Rocky Mountain Furry Convention for 2017 and into the foreseeable future has been cancelled. It's a bit of a twisted tale (tail?), involving alt-right/neo-nazi furries, threats of violence, failure to pay taxes, and amongst yet more things, a SovCit "legal" letter. This, somehow, came to the attention of the Lawyers And Liqour blog and he wrote a blog post about it, dissecting SovCit viewpoints in light of the actual law and offering some commentary about the furry fandom. And that's where the fun started. [more inside]
Pictionary just got a lot easier
Google’s latest AI toy may be its most clever: an automated drawing bot that analyzes what you’re doodling in real time to suggest a more polished piece of clip art to replace it . (via)
Baking a Pie in Her Honor
Dorothy Mengering, the mother of David Letterman, passed away on Tuesday. Stephen Colbert and many other took to Twitter to express their condolences to the woman the NY Times dubbed her "the sweetest, nicest mother in America" in a 1995 interview. Letterman and his siblings composed their mother's obituary, full of love and appreciation of a well-lived, well-traveled, happy life.
A legal alternative to academic publishing paywalls
Unpaywall is a web browser extension which finds free versions of paywalled or fee-to-view articles. Launched in early April, it provides an interface to a database of 86+ million digital object identifiers (DOIs). When an Unpaywall user lands on the page of a research article, the software scours thousands of institutional repositories, preprint servers, and websites like PubMed Central to see if an open-access copy of the article is available. If it is, users can click a small green tab on the side of the screen to view a PDF. The developers say Unpaywall doesn't ask for, track or store any personal information. Developed by Impactstory and funded by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Alternatives are available... [more inside]
April 11
Jumping Penny is a peeky pupper
"My neighbors German Shepherd is super curious about the goings on in our yard. She jumps to peek over the fence all day long. I made her a peeking spot and I think she really likes it." [YouTube triplet]
The online foreclosure bid to redeem my city's soul
How to mess with a cat, chapter 374
Cats vs. the rotating snake version of the peripheral drift illusion. One is merely mesmerized but another takes a more aggressive approach. These cats have other priorities. Is this cat dumb, or is he too smart to participate in his human's science experiments? Does the illusion have the same effect on dogs? Apparently some prefer to be more interactive. [no narration in any video, just music, animal noises, human laughter]
A good handwritten letter is a creative act -Catherine Field
April is National Letter Writing Month, expanded from a single week by the USPS in 2001. The Write_On campaign has a goal of a letter per day, and has a (pay what you can) kit available, as well as a list of resources to assist you in writing letters. [more inside]
To Wash Your Soul
In 1963, long after being President of the United States, Herbert Hoover published a short collection of meditations on the act of fishing. Justin Smith traces the growth of Hoover's philosophical leanings. [more inside]
Do Human Rights Exist?
Wonder what else he could have done without...
"In the boldest Chart Party simulation yet, we’re sending Barry Bonds back in time to re-live every plate appearance of his historic 2004 season without a baseball bat. " [more inside]
🎶 No irony to be found here.
Introducing 11 Obscenely Optimistic Songs For Ukulele: A Micro-Folk Record For The 21st Century And Beyond, a new songbook by me, jeremy messersmith. It's jam-packed with ridiculous songs about kittens, world peace, flying cars and the transformative power of love. Why? Because we all need a ray of sunshine every now and again. Because it's important to not lose sight of how good things could be. Because the first step to a better world is to imagine a better world. (FAQ)Get a free digital copy of the book in exchange for your email address. Record a video cover of one of the songs, tag it with#ObscenelyOptimistic and he'll add it to his YouTube playlist.
A Dcntralizd and Fdratd Social Ntwork
Oulipo.social is a Mastodon instance [previously], with one special rule: you cannot use the letter E.
Read The Fracking Manual!
None of these women were drinking Pepsi
Just a wee thread of women who truly don't have any time for your shit. (SLTwitter)
Ancient History Encyclopedia
Ancient History Encyclopedia has been slowly but surely expanding since 2009. Besides the thousands of entries on various historical places, people and topics, there is a timeline search as well as maps. There's so much to check out you might as well just click random and see what you get (I got Lasus of Hermione, A Visual Glossary of Hindu Architecture and Samguk Sagi).
Cuckoo Blocks: Berlin Plattenbau goes Cuckoo Clock
Tiny, family-run newspaper wins Pulitzer for taking on big business
Print journalism is alive and well in Storm Lake, Iowa. Check out The Storm Lake Times! The LA Times gives some back-story.
Lucknow celebrates its first ever queer pride parade
Lucknow, India held its first ever LGBT pride parade on April 9, 2017. Times of India provides coverage and shares 40 pictures.
April 10
Laz said he wished they could have suffered more.
Deadspin looks at perhaps the world's most brutal race, the Barkley Marathons.
[Barkley previously on MF: 1, 2]
[Barkley previously on MF: 1, 2]
In Birmingham They Love The Governor
After more than a year of saying he had nothing to resign for, embattled Alabama governor Robert Bentley resigned, pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of misusing campaign contributions as part of a coverup, and agreed never to hold office again. All of this stemmed from the reveal on March 22nd that Bentley was carrying on an affair with Rebekah Mason, his married senior political adviser. [more inside]
“you feel as if you are not in a bookstore but a marketing experiment”
Amazon takes a page from bricks-and-mortar bookstores. Here's what it's like inside. [Chicago Tribune] “Amazon Books on Southport Avenue, the fifth physical store from the Seattle online giant and its first in the Midwest, is a deeply, unsettlingly normal place, a soulless, antiseptic 6,000 square feet, a stone's throw from a J. Crew and a SoulCycle. It has the personality of an airport bookstore and conveys all the charm of its stone floor. Shopping there is as frictionless as a one-click purchase. There are no quirks, no attempts at warmth. There is no store cat. There are no handwritten notes about what the staff loves. The only difference between the children's section and the rest of the store is that the children's section has a rug. It is, in businessspeak, a bricks-and-mortar presence, so unimaginative its facade is brick.”
In the flesh
MAKE AMERICA SWOLE AGAIN
At this festival of strength, brought to us by an American-dreaming immigrant turned pageant king turned movie star turned politician, there are so many sensational things on display, so much to be distracted and dazzled by, and yet I find I’m looking for something that isn’t there. I’m at The Arnold, and I’m thinking about The Donald. Here in the flyover, in the middle of a swing state committed to the delusion that it’s shaped like a heart, I’m looking at men. I’m trying to understand something about the difference between looking powerful and feeling it, between having strength and using it.Suzannah Showler goes to the 2017 Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, OH, for BuzzFeed
The Soul of Attentiveness
"Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed — to be seen, heard and companioned exactly as it is. When we make that kind of deep bow to the soul of a suffering person, our respect reinforces the soul’s healing resources, the only resources that can help the sufferer make it through." From Parker Palmer's "The Gift of Presence, The Perils of Advice," an essay for On Being. If you've ever tried to explain a difficult emotional situation and cringed at advice that begins with "Why don't you just...?"--or if someone has simply shown up and sat with you in the hard moments--then this essay may resonate with you. It's a lovely meditation for tough times.
LiveJournal now bans political talk, LGBT talk.
Thanks to Russian Internet laws, LiveJournal posters are forbidden from certain topics of interest. Now that LiveJournal is now owned by Russians and the servers are there, LiveJournal has now banned "political solicitation" discussion, which can refer to fun things such as criticism of the Russian government and talking about anything LGBT-related such as slashfic. Yes, this applies to you even if you're not in Russia. [more inside]
If this case does not call for mitigation, then mitigation has no meaning
The 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing winner, C.J. Chiver's "The Fighter" charts the process of turning a young man into a Marine and the results of his combat in Afghanistan on his return home. While this is a story that has been seen repeatedly, Chiver shows that his "descent into violence reflected neither the actions of a simple criminal nor a stereotypical case of PTSD." (SLNYT, quote is from Pulitzer Citation)
The happiness of the bee and dolphin is to exist
Humans enjoy watching dolphin tricks, and vice versa [LOUD teenage girl narration]. And what other animals known for playfulness might enjoy dolphins? Aussie dogs, of course: Perth is a haven for inter-species frolic, as one can see in these videos from 2010, 2016 and 2017 [ambient noise].
TehRUN's secret marathon
After some organizers of TehRUN, Tehran's first international marathon, decided that female runners would not be allowed to run alongside men, due to the country's strict segregation rules, and could only partake in an indoor 6 mile (10km) "ladies run", 8 women ran the whole thing anyway. "That these women chose to run outdoors with men is technically against the law in Iran." [more inside]
“We’re really at an amazing moment with bail"
Following a national wave of lawsuits asserting that cash bail requirements violate the Fourteenth Amendment, New Jersey and Maryland have drastically reduced the use of cash bail, instead granting pretrial release to accused persons who would have qualified for release on bail in 2017. New York City similarly expanded the use of supervised release in 2016. Now California, New York State, and even Texas are considering similar bills, as is Chicago. Has bail reform in America finally reached a tipping point?
Fly the Whimsical Skies
Orphanage for Lost Adventures: Jeroen van Kesteren creates steampunk-influenced airships from cardboard, paper and aluminum foil. [via] [more inside]
ENTER THE MONKMAN
In but a few hours, after much hype and a high profile tournament the most eagerly awaited final of 2017 (after Eurovision) will take place. Balliol College, Oxford - led by Joey "whatever" Goldman - will play Wolfson College, Cambridge - led by Eric Monkman. Controversy over the all-male final, added to the viral nature and media profiles of the contestants, plus the lingering Cambridge vs Oxford rivalry make for much media print. Despite fandom, the Monkman of many talents remains modest. Let battle commence to see if legends are made and here's your starters for ten.
u better chkdsk urself before etc etc
Master Boot Record is a band that makes very good very heavy synthy metal that you should listen to immediately and at a high volume. Their albums include C:\>COPY *.* A: /V, C:\>CHKDSK /F, C:\>EDIT AUTOEXEC.BAT,
C:\>EDIT CONFIG.SYS, and C:\>FIXMBR. They also make some badass video game soundtrack stuff.
Bringing New Meaning To "Pop And Lock"
Discussing Main Street, USA: marketing, livability and nostalgia
The Myth of Main Street: Don’t listen to President Trump. Going back to the good old days will cost us. ~ a New York Times op-ed by Louis Hyman, an economic historian, director of the Institute for Workplace Studies at the ILR School at Cornell. Response: "The Myth of Main Street" Myth: Globalism Fueled the Right, on Daily Kos | But what is this mythical Main Street some seek? You might find some answers in the blog The Myths of Main Street: exploring the developmental history of the American small town in its heyday (1870-1930), written by Kirin Makker, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture at Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Stairs, forever
Friendly skies
Raising that last offer of $800 might not sound so bad ...when you are facing protests and lawsuits after having a passenger dragged and injured, due to your overbooking of a flight. While perhaps within their legal rights, United Airlines is not looking good after they physically removed a passenger this weekend, despite his impassioned pleas. [more inside]
Can I Hire The Production Designer To Re-do My Condo?
Classic Doctor Who: An American's Guide
Marilyn Monroe — Philosophy in Motion
How does one encourage film viewers to think about how film actors think about, and through, their performances? With their video, Bryn Hewko and Aaron Taylor do just that: translating a complex, cognitive approach to film acting into a lucid, even pleasurable, videographic lesson – one which tests their opening assertion that ‘screen acting can be an embodied form of philosophical activity’. [more inside]
April 9
John Clarke (established New Zealand, 1948)
John Clarke, celebrated Australian/New Zealander actor, satirist, and comedian, died of natural causes while hiking in Victoria’s Grampians National Park at the weekend.
Obituaries: ABC, Guardian, Radio NZ. [more inside]
...make it untenable to run for office and be against women's rights.
Maryland has become the first state to promise to cover proposed Planned Parenthood cuts. The Republican governor didn't sign, but also didn't NOT sign (so to speak), legislation that will cover any cuts to Planned Parenthood, which many women rely on for health needs. [more inside]
What does Passover tell us about international relations?
When I was pregnant, I tried to make a SuperBaby.
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
Gaza's women of steel
Women in Gaza are stepping up as family breadwinners, breaking cultural norms as they strive to make ends meet.
United Nations in Gaza.
In other news could an offshore seaport be Gaza's salvation together with an extended Rail Network.
This is not an I/P post and it would be nice to keep it that way.
Women in Gaza are stepping up as family breadwinners, breaking cultural norms as they strive to make ends meet.
United Nations in Gaza.
In other news could an offshore seaport be Gaza's salvation together with an extended Rail Network.
This is not an I/P post and it would be nice to keep it that way.
Oscar-Zero
At this very moment, as you are reading this article, 90 highly trained U.S. Air Force Officers are on alert across a network of Minuteman III Launch Control Centers. Working in pairs, the missileers, as the officers are called, are on 24-hour shifts, or Alerts, where they await orders not to “push the button,” as it’s commonly said, but instead to “turn the keys.”Notes from a Nuclear Tourist, via.
Top Spiders-Crawling-All-Over-Your-Monitor Simulators 2017
Mateusz Marpi Marcinowski is a prolific digital artist who makes trippy, psychedelic, abstract and sometimes interactive installations including a digital terrarium for colorful papercraft arthropods, weird ASCII creatures and living Dali landscapes. But here's what you really want: a toy to spawn endless procedurally generated arthropods all over your screen. You're welcome.
“He really just prefers butter for a number of reasons.”
Butter or Margarine? In Dunkin’ Donuts Lawsuit, Man Accepts No Substitutes [The New York Times] “If you order chicken, you expect chicken. If you order a coffee, you expect a coffee. But if you order butter, is margarine or a vegetable spread an acceptable substitute?
It wasn’t to Jan Polanik, who sued 23 Dunkin’ Donuts locations in Massachusetts for serving him “margarine or a butter substitute” instead of butter with his bagels between June 2012 and June 2016. He filed a pair of class-action lawsuits in March against franchise owners who are responsible for multiple stores. He paid 25 cents for butter and was not told a substitute was used, according to the suits.”
Username: Admin, password: Test
Rash of in-the-wild attacks permanently destroys poorly secured IoT devices - which may actually be for the best if your dishwasher's webserver has unpatched vulnerabilities or your garage door opener is run by a troll.
"What I've tried to do with my work is eliminate the human figure"
New York artist Martin Wittfooth produces stunningly beautiful and detailed allegorical paintings featuring animals wandering through a post-apocalyptic world…The world humans have bequeathed these animals is choked with plastic, devastated by pollution, and illuminated by all-consuming fire. The one hope is a progression to a better more fruitful world through personal sacrifice and death. Animals snared in manmade tangles of telephone cords sprout flowers from their eyes; a dead wolf bursts with colorful blooms that nourish a hummingbird; a white horse is set on fire by deranged monkeys. [more inside]
PTA Gift for Someone Else’s Child? A Touchy Subject in California
My lips purse, like a cat’s arse that’s brushed against nettles.
"Irritated by reader complaints about the cost of eating out I decided to visit a classic Parisian gastro-palace, as a reality check." In which Jay Rayner goes out to dine at a place that costs ... a lot ... and things go badly wrong. Currently the most recommended comment: "Providing a stool for the lady's bag is only marginally better than providing a bag for the lady's stool."
Who else could substitute for Chris Squire?
Rolling Stone has lots of coverage of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction ceremony, including video and transcripts, but I just want to draw your attention to Rush's Geddy Lee playing bass with Yes in a performance of Roundabout. [Direct video link]
April 8
The hijack was so complete that the bank wasn’t even able to send email
Researchers at the security firm Kaspersky on Tuesday described an unprecedented case of wholesale bank fraud, one that essentially hijacked a bank’s entire internet footprint.
Poor little sister, I hope you understand
The babe in the woods will be taken by a wolf
The Assassination of Julius Caesar - Ulver[more inside]
1941: Chicago's South Side
In 1941, Farm Security Administration photographer Edwin Rosskam visited Chicago together with novelist Richard Wright and photographed the black residents of the segregated South Side. These images were later used in Wright's book Twelve Million Black Voices. (Many of those living on the South Side had taken part in the Great Migration from the South to the Northern industrial cities.)
"that lust for winning...has led Cubs fans to accept a Faustian bargain"
RIP Wrigleyville. Welcome to Rickettsville. It appears small businesses not directly affiliated with the Cubs can no longer afford to exist in a neighborhood that, as Crane Kenney, the Cubs' president of business operations, said on an ESPN podcast last year, is being developed to cater to the scions of the corporate class.
I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it.
In a video posted to YouTube on January 30th, Andrew Huang (previously 1, 2) set out to see what would happen if you played Beethoven upside down. That is: suppose you had a piano roll and flipped it horizontally. All the low notes become high notes and vice-versa, but the intervals between them remain the same. Here, Andrew explains the concept and reacts to his own first playing of an inverted "Für Elise." You can also hear the full "Für Elise" without the commentary. But this is just the beginning. [more inside]
Locked In
How We Misunderstand Mass Incarceration: Adam Gopnik revises his "Caging of America" with a review of John Pfaff's Locked In.
A Clamor in My Kindergarten Heart
It is hardly surprising, then, that the more years I spent in graduate school, the more often the anxiety about money that I’d tried to calm with temporary safety measures began to express itself in periods of debilitating depression.Sara Appel, writing in Rhizomes, about how anxiety expresses itself in her life as an academic from a working-class background. [more inside]
They're all Doin' It The Best They Can.
Just the Ten of Us (1988-1999) is an American sitcom about a basketball coach, his wife, and their eight children, who all move to California. The Twitter account, Just The Ten Of Us (@justthetenofus), discovered that the theme song, I'm Doin' It The Best I Can, works with everything from No Country For Old Men, Ghostbusters, Wonder Woman, and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Even James Bond is Doin' It The Best He Can. (Direct link to YouTube playlist.) [via]
The Creators, the Protectors, and the Destroyers: a Reddit Turf War
When Pixels Collide is a brief recap of the pixel turf war played out on Reddit Place, a collaborative drawing space that allowed any user to place one pixel every few minutes. Surprisingly or not, the result was not just an awful combative mess.
^_^ >_> v_v
“It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently.”
One woman’s gamble on a £14 box of books has resulted in the discovery and sale of a lucrative, rare first edition of his classic novel Crime and Punishment. [The Guardian] “I didn’t really take much notice of this box, I didn’t have much time, and just wrote down £20 as my maximum bid – it was just a box of general books, I did’t think there was anything particularly exciting,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous. “I didn’t even spot this book, and even if I had I probably wouldn’t have taken much notice – editions of classic novels turn up in auction job lots all the time, and are generally only worth giving to Oxfam.”
There comes John, and I must put this away.
Hysteria, Witches, and the Wandering Uterus: A Brief History - Or, Why I Teach "The Yellow Wallpaper." An essay that explores The Yellow Wallpaper, the history of "hysteria," and the 2016 election. [more inside]
Google Pay
Google promotes gender equality through emojis, film analysis, diversity training and family leave. But according to the US Department of Labor, discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry based on salary data provided by Google. Google disputes the finding and has dismissed the Department of Labor's request for more data as a "fishing expedition that has absolutely no relevance".
Chicago City Planning: The Graphic Novel
No Small Plans, a graphic novel, is both a story of Chicago and a user's manual for youth to become Chicago's stewards. In the tradition of Wacker's Manual of the Plan of Chicago: Municipal Economy, a 1911 textbook fashioned from Daniel Burnham’s 1909 plan of Chicago.
The Mythical Page Turner
It didn’t take long for Spellerberg to figure out that what he had really purchased that day on Portobello Road was a paper-knife, whose thin, wide blade and dull edges were designed to follow the creases of a book’s uncut pages and expertly, gently, tear them apart.
Blondie is a group!
And so, in the year of our Lord 2017, there is a new album by seminal New Wave rock band Blondie. Early singles: Long Time, My Monster, and a Bowie inspired music video Fun.
Something wonderful
Book Artists and Their Illustrations is a deep and absorbing rabbithole of fantastic book illustrations and illustrators assembled by book lover Rivka Stein. With posts for over 650 books from around the world, each cover art image leads to a page of illustrations for that book, and includes publishing details plus occasional commentary and/or summarization by Stein. Rather amazing.
"I'm gonna need you behind the wheel, again."
Edgar Wright's Baby Driver. (knock, knock) "Questions?"
April 7
Some women woodworkers on the net
If you are just getting into woodworking as a hobby, your first impression might be that it's mainly a male pursuit (and usually done by men with beards). But there are women doing awesome woodworking out there, for example Popular Woodworking Magazine's editor Megan Fitzpatrick. And of course on YouTube: [more inside]
Read this review
Pac-Man 256 Review Ben McCurry reviews the new Namco Bandai release, and the Brash Games review site. [Archived link]
Strange Attractor
You remember Alphaville, right? They've dropped a new album, Strange Attractor. Giants - House Of Ghosts - Enigma are all tracks from this new album.
His friends call him "T-Kash"
Welcome To My Life is an animated short by Elizabeth Ito and a team at Cartoon Network, which follows a teenaged monster boy name Douglas through a day at school.
You take Bank Americard?
In the old days (1972) when you discovered a copyright violation you didn't have your lawyers fire off some boilerplate takedown notice. In the old days, if you were Neil Young, you just made off with it. After informing the manager and paying for the candle your production crew broke, of course. [more inside]
Crossed Wires and Community in 19th-Century Dreams
Make Mercia Great Again
Behold the scribings of King Donæld the Unready, the Greatest Bretwalda Mercia ever saw. The Bestwalda.
Hear ye of his many kingly exploits and brave pronouncements of divers matters:
on his use of St. Elmo's fire against Ivarr the Boneless in Cumbraland and the reaction of the Viking Rus, on efforts to fulfill his promise to build a shieldwall to protect our fair kingdom, on the fate of Ealdormann Bannon and those villainous fake chroniclers...
bīdaþ! King Donæld is not alone... [more inside]
Short Doc About My Hairstylist Doing Porn
Comedian and Chappelle's Show co-creator Neal Brennan makes a short documentary about his hairstylist entering the porn industry: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 (NSFW)
Cassini's Grand Finale
How to Mourn a Space Robot. "NASA’s Cassini probe will soon plunge into Saturn, ending its 13-year mission to the ringed planet and triggering a wave of grief among scientists, engineers, and an adoring public." [more inside]
Bean me up, Scotty.
Things full of beans that shouldn't be full of beans... [SLFB] Sadly, no plates, but I think those are where beans belong.
"A Visual Journey Through History"
Blvck Vrchives Cultural curator Renata Charlise presents"multimedia narratives centering black life in Chicago [and elsewhere], pulling from the Sun-Times photographic archive. " See also her projects Sunday Kinfolk & Blackflorida.
First cake of the season
Today began the 2017 Cricket County Championship, a tournament dating from between 1825 and 1890. 12 of the 18 counties which constitute the two divisions were in action from 11am, with lunch being taken around 1pm, tea and cake around mid-afternoon, and close of play at roughly 6pm. Matches last up to four days; possible results are win, loss, draw or tie, with bonus points available for various batting and bowling metrics. However, points can be deducted for poor pitches, slow over rates, ball tampering, a breach of salary cap, or poor discipline. This season, sponsored by an opticians, the championship began with controversial points deductions and will end in late September. For twenty of the other counties there is the minor counties championship, and for many spectators there will be cake. [more inside]
Eliza, how do I claim asylum?
Browder says this new functionality for his robot lawyer is “long overdue”. He told the Guardian: “I’ve been trying to launch this for about six months – I initially wanted to do it in the summer. But I wanted to make sure I got it right because it’s such a complicated issue. I kept showing it to lawyers throughout the process and I’d go back and tweak it.The creator of a chatbot which overturned more than 160,000 parking fines and helped vulnerable people apply for emergency housing is now turning the bot to helping refugees claim asylum.
"Obviously, it helps to explain the process to your cat beforehand."
The strike will not be televised
WGA East’s Council Asks Members To Authorize Strike . Almost one decade after the strike that paralyzed the TV industry, the writers are preparing to march again if no deal is reached before the Mayday deadline. [more inside]
Scotland should join
For Red 11... For Red 6... For Red Leader...
Darth Seder . Okay, so it was made for May the 4th, not Passover. Would it kill you to watch it early?
Election Profit Makers Mixtape #2
Gripping pictures on the front - absorbing stories on the back!
Desert Storm Cards:
Although we Americans remain strongly split in our beliefs about whether or not our military belonged in Iraq after the Twin Towers fell, most of us felt it was the right thing to do to help Kuwait in it's battle against Saddam Hussein's invasion way back in 1991.[more inside]
For cannibals, here’s the caloric content of humans—it’s just meh
Roots and Branches and Wind-Borne Seeds
Yes -
a woman falls from a cliff, but the important moment is just before that, when she, at age 51 (after two unhappy marriages) discovers a passion for botany - and just after that, when she continues her research and collections.
Park/Life
Parking can seem like the most humdrum concern in the world. Even planners, who thrill to things like zoning and floor-area ratios, find it unglamorous. But parking influences the way cities look, and how people travel around them, more powerfully than almost anything else. Many cities try to make themselves more appealing by building cycle paths and tram lines or by erecting swaggering buildings by famous architects. If they do not also change their parking policies, such efforts amount to little more than window-dressing. How not to create traffic jams, pollution and urban sprawl (from The Economist) [more inside]
How to make an earthquake in the Linux-sphere
In a short post, Mark Shuttleworth, the founder of GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu has announced that the next generation desktop environment, Unity 8, as well as the phone and tablet OS effort (commonly known as Ubuntu Touch) are being binned. Further adding to the magnitude of the announcement, he reveals that the desktop OS will revert to using GNOME as the default desktop environment starting with the 18.04 release next April. [more inside]
April 6
Honk
My country has a cooler one than yours.
8 Year Old Girl Raised by Monkeys
8 year old girl living comfortably with monkeys "The child was so acclimated to her simian lifestyle at the Katarniaghat Wildlife Sanctuary that when the cops tried to rescue the real-life “Mowgli girl,” both the apes and the child screeched at them, the Times of India reported."
There's nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend
Of our relation to all creation we can never know anything whatsoever. All is immensity and chaos. (SLYT)
Oh Garry! Well, You Came and You Gave Without Taking
Barry Manilow is gay and has been in a relationship with his manager, Garry, for forty years. Citing his belief that he would "disappoint fans", Manilow has stayed in the closet until coming out publicly two days ago. [more inside]
Dog, sometimes I suspect you of holding with the Arminian schismatics.
A message from Reformed theologian John Calvin to my dog Murphy, who I suspect is not a member of the elect, by Mallory Ortberg. [more inside]
“...actor is a non-gendered word that I use.”
Billions star Asia Kate Dillon doesn’t fit traditional awards categories. [The Toronto Star] “Fans of the series Billions [wiki] have spent much of the second season enamored of the relatively unknown Asia Kate Dillon, who portrays a gender non-binary character named Taylor Mason. Dillon’s breakout performance has arguably surpassed those of the show’s established stars, Paul Giamatti, Damian Lewis and Maggie Siff. In fact, it so impressed Showtime that the U.S. network planned to submit Dillon’s performance to this year’s Emmy Awards. There was only one issue. Much like the Mason character, Dillon identifies as gender non-binary and uses the pronoun “they.” The Emmy Awards, meanwhile, only have two categories for best supporting performance: actor and actress. The network asked Dillon which category Dillon would rather be submitted to.”
The Widening Gyre
President Trump boasts of a historically successful first 13 weeks of his Presidency. Falsely claiming that Rep. Cummings called him a "one of the great Presidents", he has had some significant successes in the past few weeks. Although the Obamacare repeal and replacement died an embarrassing death, and efforts to reanimate its corpse appear to have failed for now, and his Muslim-country travel ban seems destined to die in the courts (again), nevertheless, the Fiduciary Rule is stalled, his SCOTUS nominee is now moving toward confirmation and he has signed an Executive Order permitting government contractors to once again discriminate against LGBT workers.
The Syrian chemical attack has given Trump an opportunity to focus on foreign issues, at which he has fewer impediments to unilateral action, but the consequences of that range from measured to potentially quite dire.
Naked in the face of contamination
Sensorial Engagements with a Toxic World is a series of short essays on the lived experience of pollution around the globe. [more inside]
Og to til javanissen!
“In the winter,” you begin, “above the ice-locked fjørds, lies a creek, ash-white with the ghosts of glaciers–”
“You know what?” He interrupts. It was a beautiful story, but perhaps you can tell it later. “How about we do a little programming together? Just a basic exercise so I can get a sense of how you think.”
Hexing the technical interview
“You know what?” He interrupts. It was a beautiful story, but perhaps you can tell it later. “How about we do a little programming together? Just a basic exercise so I can get a sense of how you think.”
Hexing the technical interview
High Schoolers Attempt Suicide Because of Stress: One Suburb Reacts
"Small rocks from the beaches of eastern Massachusetts began appearing at Lexington High School last fall. They were painted in pastels and inscribed with pithy advice: Be happy.… Mistakes are O.K.… Don’t worry, it will be over soon. They had appeared almost by magic, boosting spirits and spreading calm at a public high school known for its sleep-deprived student body.
Crying jags over test scores are common here. Students say getting B’s can be deeply dispiriting, dashing college dreams and profoundly disappointing parents." [more inside]
Dueling cannons across the Channel
Allied big guns named "Winnie" and "Pooh" dueled Nazi cannons named "Adolf" and "Todt"across the English Channel. The Allied and Nazi cross-channel guns at Dover and Calais were among the last behemoth cannons of their kind in a new era of mobile warfare and soon-to-be guided missile technology.
(further Wiki)
(from the always interesting War is Boring)
“Now you know,” she said to me
Farewell, Mr. Warmth
a little bit of 😍 goes a long way in the virtual world
Brian Anderson (brson) of the Rust programming language talks about the minimally-nice open source software maintainer.
#allemannenhandinhand
Catastrophically loud
How loud would it be if all cats in the world meowed simultaneously? Reddit investigates.
Angelica Kitchen is Closing
These National Parks Wouldn't Exist Without Women
From Joshua Tree to Great Sand Dunes, these 6 special places are protected today thanks to their female champions. From the article, "Women were the driving force behind the creation of many of our most popular national parks, yet few today are household names. Time to give credit where credit is due. From Joshua Tree to Great Sand Dunes, these national parks simply wouldn’t exist as we know them today without the tireless efforts of dedicated women. Learn about the unsung heroes who made it happen."
I suspect this list is incomplete, but its a good start.
Commentators assume podcasting basically began with Serial.
A new article in The New Republic tries and fails, badly, to analyze contemporary podcasting. [more inside]
Shredded
Video of stuff being shredded ... accompanied by live performance sounds of shredding. Perhaps satisfying to anyone who's ever said "either that pink upholstered armchair goes, or I do" ... or for those of us who may be suffering from way too much peace, quiet and serenity. via the creator, cpi on mastodon
All you’re doing is making your salt smaller than it was before
Salt grinders are bullshit, and other lessons from growing up in the spice trade: A brief AV Club piece from Caitlin PenzeyMoog on her childhood memories of mixing spices and learning philosophy in the back store-room of Milwaukee's Spice House.
Research from the esteemed Arthur Vandelay Urological Research Institute
"John McCool is neither a researcher nor a urologist. When received an unsolicited invitation to submit a paper to an open-access urology journal, however, he just couldn’t resist. He is the owner of a freelance scientific editing company, and has long been concerned about so-called predatory journals, which often publish sub-par papers as long as authors pay. And he loves the TV show “Seinfeld.”"
Like many others before him, McCool decided to punk the journal by submitting a fake paper." [more inside]
On (wicked?) step-mothers
"I only ever found two fairy tales with good stepmothers, and they were both from Iceland. One stars a woman named Himinbjorg, who helps her stepson through his mourning by helping him fulfill the prophecy his mother delivered to him in a dream: that he will free a princess from a spell that had turned her into an ogre. By the time he returns from his mission victorious, the royal court is ready to burn Himinbjorg at the stake, because everyone is convinced that she is responsible for his disappearance. Perhaps I wanted credit for mothering more than I wanted to mother. Himinbjorg, on the other hand, is willing to look like a witch just to help her stepson break the spell he needs to break."
Over there
100 years ago today the United States entered World War I Majorities in the House and Senate supported president Wilson's call to declare war on Germany. [more inside]
Should you get the guacamole on your burrito?
Making a decent profit in the restaurant industry is a high hurdle. As a consumer, when eating out you’re paying for a lot more than just the food; it’s the excellent waitstaff, unique ambiance, convenient location, in addition to the delicious dish that makes for a memorable experience. In order to cover all of these costs and still make a slim profit (generally 3–5%), restaurants need to mark up ingredients on average 300%.
We live in the blue ruin
A short story by Felicia C. Sullivan The Preliminaries
You are permitted twenty things from the old life before the move. Fingers count. Single eyelashes count. A breath does not. Breathing is a given. Antiseptic is forbidden. Bones, you can have those. Don’t bother with your voice — it’ll be removed in stages. Besides, no one speaks inside The Blue.
Mask On, #MaskOff
Future Inspires Musicians to Take Part in Incredible #MaskOffChallenge — The flute is finally getting the respect it deserves. Thanks to Future's "Mask Off," [NSFW] taken from this year's very good self-titled album, a single sampled flute has inspired a new social media challenge. The growing #MaskOffChallenge hashtag puts black musicians in the spotlight with flute, recorder, violin, and piano covers of the Metro Boomin and Southside-produced cut. More at Buzzfeed.
April 5
My little dog—a heartbeat at my feet
When Brazilian illustrator Rafael Mantesso divorced with his ex-wife, she took all of the furniture with her, leaving behind an empty house with white walls. All he had was Jimmy Choo, his bull terrier. Mantesso started painting and drawing again, which is when his buddy Jimmy lent him a paw by posing for some silly illustrations. [more inside]
Occupiers! Stop Using Consensus!
Consensus process (the idea that a group must strictly adhere to a protocol where all decisions are unanimous) is the absolute worst idea that has ever been introduced to the activist community.
This, of course, was back when fucking anime pillows was fresh and new.
Don't be yourself. Be your best self.
"...the researchers actually found evidence for the opposite – that is, feelings of authenticity in a relationship seem to arise not from being our actual selves in the relationship, but from feeling that we can be our best or ideal self." [abstract]
Most of the males were managers
Being a woman in programming in the Soviet Union as well as her perspective on the same job in the US. I started with punch cards too.
Computer Games for the blind
This article is a look at how some blind people are able to play roguelike games, which are often regarded as hard for people who have full sight.
Italian Style
Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial
Being alive means you have a lot of work to do.
Forging Nature
There is perhaps no better word than “counterfeit” to describe cultural representations of the natural world: Colin Dickey reviews the newly translated book "The Rhinoceros and the Megatherium: An Essay in Natural History” by Juan Pimentel.
Something about dark lords, with rhyming couplets
When Tolkein helped create the modern fantasy genre, he also re-introduced a key fantasy trope, the prophetic poem that is key to the plot of the novel. Whether elegantly written (as in Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising poem or Clarke's Prophecy of John Uskglass) or rather awkwardly accumulated (as in the Wheel of Time's Karaethon Cycle), the prophetic verse is often a tired trope, but one which a variety of fantasy novels have used to good effect.
Children are our future [journalists]
High school journalism students uncovered some questions about their soon-to-be principal, after said principal had been hired by the school district. Days later, the principal resigned. [more inside]
It's college admissions week!
As teenagers check their email even more obsessively than usual for college acceptance letters, it's been a pretty good week for some particularly high-achieving ones. Ifeoma White-Thorpe was accepted at all eight Ivies (plus Stanford). The Wade quadruplets Nick, Aaron, Nigel, and Zach each got in to Harvard and Yale (and a bunch of other places among them). Ziad Ahmed wrote "#blacklivesmatter" 100 times on his Stanford application and got accepted. (via the Root)
"Kevin's work has easily been the most significant and groundbreaking"
"The thing about the [field-programmable gate array (FPGA)] is, it replicates the hardware at a very low level [...] It's not emulating it per se; there's no code running. What it does is, it's like a chip that you can program to turn into another chip, which I program to act exactly like an old Nintendo. It's so close to a real Nintendo console that you can actually run the game right off the real cartridge."Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior [more inside]
It was not how I had imagined spending Christmas Eve.
Twelve years after reporting on the conflict in Darfur, film-maker Phil Cox returned. But this time, the Sudanese government put a price on his head.
In the early morning of 24 December 2016, my friend Daoud and I lay side by side on a blanket, our legs chained at the ankles, secured with heavy padlocks. The sun beat down on the desert. We pleaded with our captors to be moved to the shade, but they ignored us. [more inside]
In the early morning of 24 December 2016, my friend Daoud and I lay side by side on a blanket, our legs chained at the ankles, secured with heavy padlocks. The sun beat down on the desert. We pleaded with our captors to be moved to the shade, but they ignored us. [more inside]
Craig Is A Contradiction, But He Does Not Know It.
Every Story I Have Read About Trump Supporters in the Past Week - Alexandra Petri, WaPo
True Norwegian Cat Metal
When buying clothing online—a t-shirt, for instance—you may find it helpful to see the item on a realistic model.
Best in Fashion, Make it Yours
The Vintage Pattern Wiki is a collaborative dedicated to Vintage Sewing Patterns (25 years old or older) and well worth browsing through for how some styles rarely change dramatically and how some things really do. Currently it lists over 83,500 patterns from companies you probably recognize (Vogue, Burda, Butterick, McCall/McCall’s) and ones you may not (Academy Patterns, ABC Schnitt, Pictorial Review). And lots of Mail Order Companies. Not sure about those vintage fabric suggestions (Barathea? Vicara? Poor boy?)? The Vintage Fashion Guild has got you covered.
"Could you fix yourself on the inside by shaking up what you wore"
Central European University in Peril
Central European University, an English-language postgraduate institution in Budapest that offers degrees that are accredited in both Hungary and the state of New York, is threatened with closure by a new law passed by the Hungarian parliament that imposes overly (and intentionally) onerous requirements on the CEU for its continued ability to enroll students. [more inside]
"I will not change and I will not be nice"
Morrissey, We're Through. (slNoiseyVice)
The hospital where parents care for premature babies
On a hospital ward in Leeds, parents of premature babies are encouraged to help care for their newborns. How does the approach benefit families?
Rock’n’Roll Animals
Rock’n’Roll Animals: Musicians Tell Us All About Their Pets — an article at Pitchfork by Quinn Moreland. Previously. [more inside]
Say Hello
The 50 Most Famous Cars From The Last 50 Years
Illustrations of 50 Famous Cars in just 2 minutes 15 seconds. [slyt]
I assume the inside is also succulent.
Sure, you could get a cake covered in icing roses, but what if you're more into water-friendly Xeriscaping?
April 4
Curtain Up! It's Time for Danger Theatre
Danger Theatre was an action comedy TV series aired in 1993. Most of the half-hour episodes were split into two segments, all introduced by host Robert Vaughn. Over the seven-episode run, there were three different shows which appeared in the segments. [more inside]
That sweater sounds lovely.
Patterns, generated from knitting machines, punched into music paper & fed through grinder organs. Also the different growth patterns of Yeast, E. coli and Lichen, and the natural rhythms of timber grain. (Music links go to SoundCloud.) [via]
Eight new boss queens of rap for 2017
Dazed Digital presents Eight rappers you need to hear in 2017 - From Cupcakke’s self-possessed and sexual lyrics to Paradise Sorouri protesting violence against women in Afghanistan, these are some of the most exciting new names in hip hop | 1. CupcakKe - LGBT [NSFW lyrics] | 2. Flohio : God Colony "SE16" feat. Flohio | 3. Kamaiyah - How Does It Feel | 4. Kari Faux - Fantasy | 5. Ms Banks - Roll | 6. 143BandMusic (including Paradise Sorouri) - Tragedy of Life | 7. Quay Dash - Ain't Gon' Stop It / BKLYN [NSFW lyrics] | 8. Young M.A - OOOUUU [NSFW lyrics]
“self-interest dominates our behavior”
Why You Shouldn’t Walk on Escalators [The New York Times] “It may sound counterintuitive, but researchers said it is more efficient if nobody walks on the escalator. To be clear, this is not better for the escalator itself, although that has been a matter of dispute. The question of standing versus walking flared up recently in Washington, D.C., after the general manager of the Metro, Paul Wiedefeld, said the practice of walking on the left and standing to the right — as outlined in the Metro’s rules and manners — could damage the escalator. The escalator company Otis said that was incorrect, an NBC affiliate reported, and Mr. Wiedefeld clarified that standing two abreast would be safer and reduce the chance of falls if everyone did it.”
Good dog
Extremely good dog interrupts soccer match for six minutes. (SLYT, audio is mostly ambient crowd noises and a cameraman laughing). The beagle evaded two attempts by players to grab it, and appeared to be a very good pupper who was having a good time. The home team Halesowen Town went on to defeat Skelmersdale United 1 - 0.
"I already had goats, so, same thing, right?"
Goat Crossfit is the bee's knees [narration, light music].
How French "Intellectuals" Ruined The West
The irrational and identitarian “symptoms” of postmodernism are easily recognizable and much criticized, but the ethos underlying them is not well understood. This is partly because postmodernists rarely explain themselves clearly and partly because of the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of a way of thought which denies a stable reality or reliable knowledge to exist. However, there are consistent ideas at the root of postmodernism and understanding them is essential if we intend to counter them. They underlie the problems we see today in Social Justice Activism, undermine the credibility of the Left and threaten to return us to an irrational and tribal “pre-modern” culture.
A tiny reproductive system in a dish.
A tweet pretends to be 140 chars, but a toot is 500 flat.
Welcome! Mastodon is an open-source, federated, “GNU Social-compatible microblogging server” developed by Eugen Rochko with some Patreon support. The main server is mastodon.social, but there are many others.
Per Casey Newton at The Verge, Mastodon launched six months ago with little notice. Since Twitter’s latest design change, however, sign ups on the main instance have gone through a sudden surge
The early adopters are voicing some dissatisfaction. with the crowd on Twitter, and signups on the main instance are currently locked. Never fear, Sarah Jeong at VICE Motherboard has a brief tour.
Per Casey Newton at The Verge, Mastodon launched six months ago with little notice. Since Twitter’s latest design change, however, sign ups on the main instance have gone through a sudden surge
The early adopters are voicing some dissatisfaction. with the crowd on Twitter, and signups on the main instance are currently locked. Never fear, Sarah Jeong at VICE Motherboard has a brief tour.
Federal Appeals Court Rules In Favor Of Job Protections For Gay Workers
Today, the Seventh Circuit (en banc) ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers employees based on their sexual orientation. Both the 11th and 2nd Circuits have recently ruled that Title VII does not cover LGBT rights at work, possibly setting up for an eventual SCOTUS showdown. [more inside]
As well as a CGI kangaroo that sings "Rapper's Delight" for some reason
The star of 'Jerry Maguire' and 'Stand by Me' on what it was like to act opposite a rapping CGI kangaroo.
Totally not actually the world's first cyborg
Here kitty kitty kitty
Ridley Scott reveals a much grimmer proposition for the original ending of Alien. Hyping up Alien: Covenant (previously, more-so), Scott reveals that his original proposal was for the Xenomorph to kill, then imitate Ripley. [more inside]
Use your turn signal at least 50% more than you use your middle finger
A Nude Horse is a Rude Horse
After seeing a small crowd's mortified reaction to two cattle behaving amorously on a Texas road in 1959, Alan Abel (previously) created SINA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. An article he wrote about the organization for the Saturday Evening Post was rejected, as the editor thought the group deplorable. Undeterred, he carried on his crusade against amoral animals. [more inside]
Diversity versus Hydra
Marvel’s recent Retailer Summit (2, 3) sparked controversy when Marvel’s flagging sales were blamed on an increase in diversity in they books, such as the recently Hugo nominated Ms Marvel. The actual sales numbers appear to tell a different story, with possible causes for their woes being event fatigue, a dip in the sales of X-Men books as Marvel fails to replace them with The Inhumans, and a lack of diversity amongst creators leading to mishandling of issues. A poorly timed storyline with Captain America becoming a Nazi and leading a Hydra takeover of the Marvel Universe (complete with a takeover of websites) may only be making matters worse. Meanwhile Ms. Marvel writer G Willow Wilson has her own take on diversity and the direction the market is going.
"A homely kind, apt for sundry necessary vses."
Of Englishe dogges, the diversities, the names, the natures and the properties "A short treatise written in Latine ... and newly drawne into Englishe by Abraham Fleming" at archive.org is a rather wonderful, often poetic, occasionally goofy 16th century geeky paean to (English)man's best friend. [more inside]
Let's All Watch Bertha Birth Together
Gigantic tunneling machine Bertha, after years stuck underneath downtown Seattle, is finally breaking through. Watch it live!
A Pro Wrestling Newby Liveblogs Wrestlemania 33
Hugos 2017: a tale of puppies.
The 2017 Hugo Finalists and Campbell Award Finalists have been announced, for works in science fiction and fantasy. For the first time since 2013, there was no clear Sad Puppies slate/list of recommendations (context). The Rabid Puppies slate, lead by extreme right-wing author and editor Vox Day, was largely successful in its (limited) slate, and File 770 has a breakdown of how many "Rabid Puppy" works made it to the final slate.
Climate change is happening, but not to me
American attitudes towards climate change, mapped. The latest Yale Climate Opinion Map is out, mapping attitudes on a number of questions onto states, Congressional districts, metro areas, and counties. [more inside]
"I knew I liked it too much."
I was a young ER doctor with a perfect life: gorgeous wife, three kids and a beautiful waterfront house. Then I got hooked on fentanyl and lost it all [more inside]
"It’s more of a crime to have the apostrophes wrong."
He's not the hero Bristol deserves. He's the hero Bristol needs. The BBC caught up with the Banksy of grammar:
The self-proclaimed "grammar vigilante" goes out undercover in the dead of night correcting street signs and shop fronts where the apostrophes are in the wrong place.
So I suppose we could call it Springval?
Theresa May has weighed in on an argument regarding the National Trust's decision to erase mention of Easter from their Egg Hunts, something the NT has denied. [more inside]
In defence of the so-called Worst Movie Ever Made
The ungrateful refugee
The ungrateful refugee. As refugees, we owed them our previous identity. We had to lay it at their door like an offering, and gleefully deny it to earn our place in this new country. There would be no straddling. No third culture here. A long personal essay in the Guardian.
April 3
He's hating in heaven now
First good archaeological evidence of preventing zombies from returning
The Guardian reports that "A study by archaeologists has revealed certain people in medieval Yorkshire were so afraid of the dead they chopped, smashed and burned their skeletons (abstract, link to full paper) to make sure they stayed in their graves." The remains were found in Wharram Percy, one of the largest and best preserved of Britain's 3,000 or so known deserted medieval villages. [more inside]
Yes, it is heavenly ⚔️ No, I would rather eat actual tar
Marmite: The Origins of the World's Most Divisive Condiment
As for those on the fence about the taste? Well, there’s not really a fence. “I have, to date,” says Watkins, “only met one person who has claimed to be ambivalent about the taste of Marmite, and I don’t believe them.”(h/t Miss Cellania)
A Genocidal Nursery Rhyme
Coming Up Again
Upcoming.org has returned! Originally founded by mefi’s own Andy Baio to help people find cool events, it was acquired by Yahoo back in 2006 and eventually killed off, its community squandered. After a successful 2014 kickstarter (as reported by The Verge and Engadget), a few years of background work, and a three-month code sprint, the site relaunched on March 30. Previously
(It also has the interesting distinction of being “the first major website to… use Archive Team's grab to recreate [its] data.”)
(It also has the interesting distinction of being “the first major website to… use Archive Team's grab to recreate [its] data.”)
I'm still in love with you, textbook author, but you need to cool it now
...because if this isn't love for your students (causing you to release another new edition), then you can count me out!
If High School and College Textbooks Were Honest.
Other Cracked Honest Ads.
"A System Designed to Make People Disappear"
I’m going to suggest something I have never suggested to any working person: If you are part of this machine—if you are a guard, an agent, a janitor, or anything in between—quit. Walk off your job. Right now. You’ve got bills to pay? A family to support? I get it. So do the people who come here looking for a better existence. The system you are contributing to is preposterously evil.Dan Canon: I tried to represent an undocumented man rounded up by ICE. I couldn’t even find him.
Da-da-da-dat-dat-da-da-da
The CBS-Turner networks NCAA theme song: A "diminutive masterpiece of auditory branding genius?" If you've watched any of the NCAA men's tournament (the 2017 version of which ends tonight) over the past quarter century, you've heard the CBS March Madness earworm jingle in some form of the other. The current arrangement comes to you via Trevor Rabin, a South African-born musician who was once the guitarist for and the brains-behind-"90125"-era Yes. The original, 1993 tourney version came from Bob Christianson, the "John Williams of TV Sports," who came up with it in a basement studio in Manhattan. It stayed intact through 2003. Then there were other arrangements.
For comparative purposes, here's the 1987-1992 theme. [more inside]
Learning, as an adult woman, you have autism
"In the old days we always thought that autism was very much a male condition," she said. "What we are now starting to realize is that it's not quite as simple as that, and that there are -- and always have been -- girls and women who are on the autism spectrum, but they present differently.
Visions of Jean-Pierre
A firsthand portrait of the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud at work by Olivier Assayas (Film Comment). [more inside]
Lisa S Davis meets Lisa S Davis
For 18 years, I thought she was stealing my identity. Until I found her. The tickets had something else in common. Brownsville, the South Bronx, East Harlem, Bed-Stuy (at least eight years ago, when the ticket was issued), all of them are neighborhoods with large black or Hispanic, and very small white, populations.
It was then that it became clear to me: the reason for the tickets wasn’t that these Lisa Davises were petty criminals.
Love in the Time of Cryptography
"In 2016, after several years of a simple and warm love affair, we hit a snag. We had decided to live together, and that I would emigrate to Europe. But to do this, we had to prove our relationship to the government. The instructions on how to do this skewed toward the modern forms of relationships: social media connections; emails; chats; pictures of the happy couple. He read through this, and showed it to me. We both laughed. Our relationship had left few traces in the digital world. We had none of these things." Love in the Time of Cryptography by Quinn Norton (previously).
“There are no missing objects. Only unsystematic searchers.”
How to Find Your Missing Keys and Stop Losing Other Things [The New York Times] “You were sure you left the keys right there on the counter, and now they are nowhere to be found. Where could they be? Misplacing objects is an everyday occurrence, but finding them can be like going on a treasure hunt without a map. Here are some recommendations from experts to help you recover what is lost.” [more inside]
It's like Uber, but for Wal-Mart!
Amazon Wants Cheerios, Oreos and Other Brands to Bypass Wal-Mart Amazon.com Inc. has invited some of the world's biggest brands to its Seattle headquarters in an audacious bid to persuade them that it's time to start shipping products directly to online shoppers and bypass chains like Wal-Mart, Target and Costco.
Murderous Sleepwalker
With Ghost in the Shell failing to overcome the problems of its casting, at least at the box office, Alasdair Stuart takes a look at why the original remains a cyberpunk classic.
Beautiful food
Despite Instagram, in-depth and beautiful food blogs are still a thing. A Life Worth Eating covers lovely fancy meals (and coffee) from around the world, such as El Bulli at its height and the sushi restaurant made famous by Jiro, and most recently, the (apparently much improved) Per Se. The long-standing ulterior epicure [prev] is similar, though the writing is longer and clever clever (see this older review of the famous Fat Duck), and there is a healthy (okay, not healthy) dose of much less upscale food from the American Midwest and South, and some excellent top dishes and restaurant lists.
“It’s really an exciting time to be a venom researcher.”
"Think about a venomous fang, and you’ll probably conjure up an image of a snake or spider. But perhaps you should also spare a thought for group of unassuming reef fish that are appropriately called fangblennies." [more inside]
More computer meta-weirdness from Tom7
The sky's awake, so I'm awake!
Twin babies act out their favorite scene from "Frozen". [Facebook link, also available here]. Cuteness ensues.
Jesus Christ Let's Help Them
Let's start the week off right with a Big Beautiful Day courtesy of ✨✨PWR BTTM✨✨ the queerpunk duo who have already conquered the NPR Tiny Desk, BESTIE$ FOR CA$H, A.V. Undercover (Counting Crows!), and yes, even frikkin SXSW. [n.b. Some songs have cussing] [more inside]
What do International Relations Academics think about Security Threats?
So I emailed 79 academic colleagues in politics and international relations departments across the world, all of whom had published work on security, most of whom offered courses on security at their institutions. I received responses from the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark and South Africa. Ultimately, 59 responded. There were three key ‘findings’ of this exercise.
April 2
Pick up your room when you're done!
Politics got you down? Want to just play with a wooden train set for a while? Dr. Whoop to the rescue with Tracks! (Windows-only, sorry.) [more inside]
It's about Boys. Entering the House.
Sunday evening fiction: Boys by Rick Moody. If you are/were a boy, if you know or knew a boy, you'd know all about this. "BOYS ENTER THE HOUSE, boys enter the house. Boys, and with them the ideas of boys (ideas leaden, reductive, inflexible), enter the house. Boys, two of them, wound into hospital
packaging, boys with infant-pattern baldness, slung in the arms of parents, boys dreaming of
breasts, enter the house. Twin boys, kettles on the boil, boys in hideous vinyl knapsacks that
young couples from Edison, NJ., wear on their shirt fronts, knapsacks coated with baby saliva
and staphylococcus and milk vomit, enter the house. Two boys, one striking the other with a
rubberized hot dog, enter the house... "
"I've already been hit by a truck once."
I travel often on this road in this odd corner of rural East Tennessee, but haven't seen or heard this particular story. Thankfully, a reporter devoted several minutes to The Hawkins County Highway Hula Dancer.
chh-THOKK
The world under heaven, after a long period of division, tends to unite
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms podcast is an epic retelling by John Zhu of the Chinese novel of the same name. 123 episodes in, it is still going strong. [more inside]
"Any lower and it's just throwing pieces"
After an April Fools' day post about an “Instant Chess” feature (playing with 0 seconds on the clock, essentially pre-move only), Lichess implemented “Ultrabullet” Chess: ¼ + 0 (15 seconds per player with no increment).
Watch 17-year-old International Master Andrew Tang (aka penguingim1 on lichess) play the two-hour Ultrabullet tournament (games start at about 4:50... and spoiler: he's really fast). [more inside]
Watch 17-year-old International Master Andrew Tang (aka penguingim1 on lichess) play the two-hour Ultrabullet tournament (games start at about 4:50... and spoiler: he's really fast). [more inside]
"I'm Good"
Calvin County is Bill Watterson and Berkeley Breathed collaborating on a comic. Posted yesterday, with collaborating NYT article.
King Me!
DOUBLE KING is a new 10-minute animation from surrealist Felix Colgrave (previewed here).
It's all about a little King who (SPOILER) wants ALL the crowns. [content: cartoon gore]
It's all about a little King who (SPOILER) wants ALL the crowns. [content: cartoon gore]
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.
Soothe your jangled nerves on a sleepy Sunday by perusing these 22 oddly satisfying pictures. More at r/oddlysatisfying.
Ikutaro Kakehashi (1930-2017)
James Rosenquist, 1933-2017
Pop Artist James Rosenquist has died. Rosenquist became well known in the 1960s as a leading American Pop artist alongside contemporaries Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and other figurative artists. As with his contemporaries, Rosenquist’s background in commercial art deeply influenced his nascent fine-art career and radically changed the face of the art world and the annals of art history. Jerry Saltz eulogizes. [Previously]
"You launder information like you launder money"
Meet Arron Banks, the triumphant arch-financier of the Brexit machine, his British and offshore business web, overlap with Russia, and his transatlantic alliances [Obs/Guardian]. [more inside]
Mulga Bill's Bicycle
Classic A.B. "Banjo" Paterson bush ballad from 1896. Text. A recitation by Barry Crocker. A renactment for a high school assignment. As portrayed in Lego. A sequel by Jack Drake. Also Vazoun Bill a bicykl by the Greenhorns. And wiki.
FOR THE REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD!
Twenty years ago today, the first episode of Shōjo Kakumei Utena was shown on TV Tokyo. [more inside]
April 1
Do Bears IT in the woods?
A bear is spotted in Montana carrying a laptop. At last we have photographic evidence of the fact that bears have joined humanity in the digital age. We should not be surprised, after all, bears are driving cars and sailing boats.
The 2017 Owl Renesting Season begins!
Every spring for the past four years, a team of volunteers with the Four Lakes Wildlife Center in Dane County, WI renest baby owls who have fallen out of their (often poorly built) homes.
Newspaper article from last year and related photoset.
Facebook albums (read the captions!):
2017 owl renesting season episode #1
and
episode #2
I have no idea how these people got bunnies wedged into cups, or why
Bunnies sleeping and relaxing in cups is one of the strangest trends I've seen in some time. It remains a scientific mystery why bunnies sleep in cups, but with adequate funding, our team of intrepid lapine experts will get to the bottom of this. [Multi-Link Bunny Videos] WARNING: Some bunny videos may contain hamsters.
Here you go, Bobokin
Videogame Dunkey experiments with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild physics engine (SLYT. NSFW, language.)
Watch Out For Fuzzy!
Yoshi the Dinosaur in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (YouTube link), an unfinished, but still amazing, romhack from 2010 that recently surfaced. [more inside]
Schmooze City: William H. Whyte and "The Social Life of Urban Spaces"
Do you enjoy the city? Vintage documentaries? People-watching and urban planning? The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, William "Holly" Whyte's 1979 documentary, may be right up your alley. It's also available in print (.pdf), and makes for fascinating reading. [more inside]
RIP Gilbert Baker, Gay Betsy Ross
UW campus shooting victim speaks up
Wounded anti-Milo protester speaks. Earlier this year, a Milo Yiannopoulos supporter shot and seriously injured a protester on the University of Washington campus. The victim, "Hex", recently gave an interview on KEXP expounding on why he is not seeking prison time for the shooter and why he prefers dialog and restorative justice over retribution, as well as other things: his medical ordeal and his happiness at marrying his partner while in hospital. Well worth reading. (Audio link; edited transcript) [more inside]
République Amazone
When West African chanteuses including Angelique Kidjo, Nneka, and Mariam Doumbia, form a supergroup, you get Les Amazones d'Afrique. [more inside]
After Article 50
Just four days after the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, Article 50 was officially triggered by Theresa May on Wednesday. Below are a few highlights and lowlights from the first four days after the official Brexit. (Apologies for the Guardian-heavy linking!) [more inside]
“Oh, that’s that goddamn egg thing.”
Cris Shapan has an amazing ability to produce memorabilia which seems authentic. His most devious effort is probably the story of Marlon Brando and Joe Flynn's Eggs. [more inside]
The art of the steal
“...soft power remains an elusive and ill-defined concept,”
Soft Power, National Branding, and the Process of Engineering Attraction (Part 1: Power in International Relations) [Chromatic Aberration Everywhere] “I'’ve been thinking a lot about this type of thing — soft power, how it affects us, how it’s discussed, and what it actually is. And, after a lot of thinking, much discussion (including some with Froggykun!), and lots of writing, I think I’ve finally come up with some answers. Surprisingly, many of them lead back to Outbreak Company — it turns out the scenario the show constructs actually is quite clever on a wide variety of fronts, and could easily be seen as the exact type of critique soft power needs right now (both in content and in form — what better way to criticize the valorizing of otaku culture than as a LN filled to the brim with otaku culture?!) or its exact opposite.” [more inside]
Celebrating April Fools' Day, Slashdot Wears Hacker News' Attire
To Celebrate April Fools' Day, Slashdot Wears Hacker News' Attire Slashdot parodied Hacker News today, turning their site Hacker News-orange and converting the front page into nothing but uber-geeky headlines. The stories include "There's A New New JavaScript Framework", as well as "Someone on Medium Just Said C++ Was Better Than C". And this morning they also posted "OS/2-Based 'Arcanos 5.0' Has Finally Been Releas -- Oh Wait, No It Wasn't. Never Mind".
He likes to move it, move it.
Donald Trump likes to move things around as noticed by Jimmy Kimmel. Also, Trump likes to move it, Business Cat Trump likes to move stuff.
Freeman's Mind 2
How 1,600 People Went Missing from Our Public Lands Without a Trace
When an initial search turns up nothing, who'll keep looking? | When 18-year-old Joe Keller vanished from a dude ranch in Colorado's Rio Grande National Forest, he joined the ranks of those missing on public land. No official tally exists, but their numbers are growing. "I thought that in the wild, someone would send in the National Guard, the Army Rangers, the A-Team, and that they wouldn’t rest until they found you. Now I’m not so sure."
“The optimal method of question delivery is found to be Secret Note”
Armstrong, E. (2017) A Neural Networks Approach to Predicting How Things Might Have Turned Out Had I Mustered the Nerve to Ask Barry Cottonfield to the Junior Prom Back in 1997, arxiv:1703.10449 [q-bio.NC] [more inside]
"Amorphous and inaccurate"
"Nothing Beside Remains: A History of the New Weird" by Jonathan McCalmont: "When popular cultural history tells us that the New Weird was born of lengthy discussions held on the now defunct TTA Press forums in May of 2003, it is tempting to imagine a well-ordered discussion in which a bunch of people hammered out a shared set of sensibilities, identified literary pre-cursors and set a creative agenda that would allow them to promote themselves as a new movement. This is not what happened ..."
Honor to the President!
The most outrageous thing about Donald Trump is that there is no most outrageous thing.
Two weeks ago the Russians featured their pal, President Donald Trump, with his own postage stamp. This is the first time the Russians have ever honored a U.S. president, and while the Russian issued the stamp without explanation, it doesn't take a genius to see what is going on here.
