August 2014 Archives
August 31
Game, Set and Murphy
James Murphy (formerly of LCD Soundsystem) has built an algorithm to musically interpret live data from the US Tennis Open which will create around 400 hours of music.
All previous games can be listened to and each has a different flavour - it can get a little glitchy but try Djokovic vs Querry or Brengle vs Lisick for starters. Or have a play with the algorithm yourself.
Men + Kittens
I feel like a Mommy [SLYT, Buzzfeed]
March in August: "Liar Liar, pants on fire" (also: "Kick this Knob Out")
March in August: thousands rally against Tony Abbott by taking to streets:
Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets for the latest wave of protests against the federal government.[more inside]
Demonstrations were held in cities across the country, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide, to protest against a range of of social and economic policies being implemented by the Abbott government.
About 3,000 protesters marched through Sydney, voicing their concerns on a range of issues, from Australia's asylum seeker policies, to education cuts and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Stampylonghead
Tens of millions a viewers a month watch Youtube videos of an orange and white cat and his friends playing in Minecraft. Twenty-three year old Joseph Garrett plans to use Minecraft as a platform for launching an educational channel. [more inside]
The Cats of World War I
Thousands of cats served in the First World War -- as rat killers, as mascots for troops in the trenches, at sea, and elsewhere. War at its furriest.
SPOOOOON!
The Tick is a big, blue, nigh-invulnerable, possibly brain-damaged super-hero created by Ben Edlund in 1986. He has appeared in comic books (1988), animated TV (1994), and live action TV (2001).
According to The Wrap, Patrick Warburton has worked out a deal with Sony to create a new Tick pilot for Amazon.
Get the lowdown on dreadlocks
Dreadlock Truth is an online community of people from all across the globe that have come together to share their information, experience, and knowledge regarding dreadlocks with others.
A beard, normcore glasses, and monitors makes a sysadmin, not a hipster
"I would love one day to see 1,000 of these."
Taco Bell opens its "upscale" brand extension, U.S. Taco Co., in Huntington Beach: the first of what could be many. "It's food truck food you don't have to chase." The LA Times takes a first look. Money describes it as taking (secret) aim at foodies: "The goal is to win over entirely new customers, notably the folks who wouldn’t be caught dead in a Taco Bell, KFC, or Cinnabon." [more inside]
Unwise choices for rebutting reviews
Authors can choose to respond to reviews in many ways. This is a bad choice.
Found at the LJ of James Nicoll.
HJ! BI....BI....BI...Hotshot!
all of these people are ridiculously cute
a current overview of nuns in the US
The Sad State of America’s Aging Sisters: Why are there so few nuns today?
You may wonder whether the global church the sisters belong to is interested in keeping the convents open. It sure seems like it isn't. By 2005, the Catholic Church had spent $1 billion on legal fees and settlements stemming from priests sexually abusing children. Yet church leaders have allocated no funds to take care of elderly sisters, and while priests’ retirement funds are covered by the church, the sisters have no such safety net. When their orders run out of money, that’s it.[more inside]
“Why would you want to be a nun if the archdiocese is going to treat you like they do?” Ann Frey at the Wartburg said. “Their whole lives they’ve been obedient and done what they were asked to do, and now nobody is helping them?”
Crunch, crunch, I don't want no lunch ...
Do you ever dream of starting again in a new skin?
Uncomfortable in His Own Skin ‘Your Face in Mine,’ by Jess Row, a Novel About Changing Race: [New York Times]
"When literary fiction dares examine the issue of race at all, it is usually done in an exceedingly tone-deaf way (think William Styron’s Confessions Of Nat Turner or Kathryn Stockett’s The Help) or from a somewhat safe remove (think Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue). It always seems as if the story is accompanied by a blaring announcement that it’s time for this (white) protagonist to learn something. Sometimes the pedantic drum-banging can get so excessive it drowns out everything else, including the inclination to tell a good story. If nothing else, the debut novel from Jess Row, Your Face In Mine, is a refreshing plunge into the deep end of the race conversation." [A.V. Club][more inside]
Eat Like A Robber Baron.
Bodypaint + photography =
Beautiful. NSFW imagery.
When suddenly and without warning, there was this
Deer banish cat from town
Workers of the World, Unplug!
End the Tyranny of 24/7 Email — THIS Labor Day weekend, odds are you’ll peek at your work email on your “day off” — and then feel guilty about it.
"The English," GK Chesterton wrote, "love a talented mediocrity."
I don't doubt characterising Orwell as a talented mediocrity will put noses out of joint. Not Orwell, surely! Orwell the tireless campaigner for social justice and economic equality; Orwell the prophetic voice, crying out in the wartime wilderness against the dangers of totalitarianism and the rise of the surveillance state; Orwell, who nobly took up arms in the cause of Spanish democracy, then, equally nobly, exposed the cause's subversion by Soviet realpolitik; Orwell, who lived in saintly penury and preached the solid virtues of homespun Englishness; Orwell, who died prematurely, his last gift to the people he so admired being a list of suspected Soviet agents he sent to MI5.For the BBC's Point of View series, Will Self tackles the cult of Orwell.
Vengaboys are back in town
If
you're
alone
and you need a friend
Someone to make you forget your problems
Just come along baby
Take my hand
I'll be your lover tonight
Someone to make you forget your problems
Just come along baby
Take my hand
I'll be your lover tonight
Can the World Really Set Aside Half of the Planet for Wildlife?
Wilson recently calculated that the only way humanity could stave off a mass extinction crisis, as devastating as the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, would be to set aside half the planet as permanently protected areas for the ten million other species. “Half Earth,” in other words, as I began calling it—half for us, half for them. [more inside]
August 30
Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway
Vulfpeck (previously) was "conceived...as a German version of the Funk Brothers – session musicians who performed most of the instrumentals on the 1960s Motown records [previously]. The idea was to channel that era of the live rhythm section." [more inside]
Federal Judge Overturns Some Provisions of Texas Abortion Law (Again)
Just 3 days before they would go into effect, Federal Judge Lee Yeakel struck down the admitting-privileges and ambulatory surgical center requirements of Texas's recently passed HB2 (remember the one with the filibuster?), finding that they placed an undue burden on women, especially those in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso. [more inside]
Chibatman, more impressive than BatLyft
Batman has been spotted on Japanese highways, or rather, someone dressed in a Dark Knight Rises style Batman suit and on a custom batcycle-like trike in the Chiba Prefecture, earning him the nickname Chibatman. He has been found and interviewed (Japanese without subtitles), and he even invited the interviewer back to his bat lair humble home. The 41 year-old Chibatman works as a welder, and he wears his Batman costume when he commutes to work, "because I want to see everyone smile."
"Do you... do you like Tina Turner, Ted?"
The Fast Show summary from Wikipedia:
The Fast Show, known as Brilliant in the US, was a BBC comedy sketch show programme that ran from 1994 to 1997, with a special in 2000 and 2014. It was one of the most popular sketch shows of the 1990s in the UK. The show's central performers were Paul Whitehouse, Charlie Higson, Simon Day, Mark Williams, John Thomson, Arabella Weir and Caroline Aherne. Other significant cast members included Paul Shearer, Rhys Thomas, Jeff Harding, Maria McErlane, Eryl Maynard, Colin McFarlane and Donna Ewin.[more inside]
It was loosely structured and relied on character sketches, recurring running gags, and many catchphrases. Its fast-paced "blackout" style set it apart from traditional sketch series because of the number and relative brevity of its sketches; a typical half-hour TV sketch comedy of the period might have consisted of nine or ten major items, with contrived situations and extended setups, whereas the premiere episode of The Fast Show featured twenty-seven sketches in thirty minutes, with some items lasting less than ten seconds and none running longer than three minutes. Its innovative style and presentation influenced many later series such as Little Britain and The Catherine Tate Show.
AM/FM - the story of London's pirate radio stations
🔙🙌🌼, ☁🌏. 👇💩. 🎦7⃣ 💯💯🆔 🌠😃💬: "😩"
Announced at the end of June, Emojli was billed as "the emoji-only network." One source called it worse than Yo. It launched yesterday with 70,000 names registered. The creators of the app 🌠 Tom Scott (previously on Metafilter) and 😃 Matt Gray (who shows up frequently on Tom's YouTube channel) presented a talk: "Emojli: Behind the Scenes and Why You Should Never Build An App."
And no birds sing
Invertebrate numbers nearly halve as human population doubles. The decline of birds might have something to do with this recent news that half the insects (and spiders, crustaceans, slugs, worms) are gone.
All that is needed is a rise and a fall
Ever wondered why your favourite movie star is now in straight-to-video hell? What the hell happened? is a series of articles about the career ups and (mostly) downs of contemporary actors, actresses and directors who were once Hollywood stars (but who stumbled at one point) or serious contenders for stardom (but who did not make it). While the articles are made of known material and rather-matter-of-fact ("...but it got terrible reviews and bombed at the box office"), they offer a singular perspective on what it takes to reach the A-list and stay on it. [more inside]
I like the toy. I like the hands on the toy.
It’s as if every child under age 5 in the United States has seen it. Four times. The New York Times Magazine explores the world of unboxing videos and boggles at the appeal of DisneyCollector, an anonymous and seemingly independent female toy 'reviewer' who may be earning over seven figures. Are the videos' popularity connected to ASMR?
"I CAN SWIMMMMMM!!!!!!!"
A New Yorker Faces His Phobia, One Stroke at a Time [New York Times] With Intensive Swim Lessons, a Man Attacks His Fear of Water
"Traumatized by childhood incidents, Attis Clopton was deathly afraid of water, so he attacked his phobia by enrolling in a program of swimming lessons."
John Glenn refused to fly until Katherine Johnson checked the math.
Ring the bells that still can ring
How did something as loud as a bell—something which is experienced so much more often, and more powerfully, by hearing than by sight—become dumb?[more inside]
August 29
I'm trying to impress people here. You don't win friends with salad.
Confessions of a Fat Bastard: Texas Monthly's Daniel Vaughn on the life of a full-time barbecue writer.
"Since Texas Monthly named me the nation’s first and only full-time barbecue editor in March 2013 (previously), my health has been a topic of international discussion. My job requires that I travel from one end of the state to the other eating smoked brisket, one of the fattiest cuts on the steer. And I can’t forget to order the pork ribs, sausage, and beef ribs. Of course my diet is going to raise eyebrows. Including those of my doctor."
"Since Texas Monthly named me the nation’s first and only full-time barbecue editor in March 2013 (previously), my health has been a topic of international discussion. My job requires that I travel from one end of the state to the other eating smoked brisket, one of the fattiest cuts on the steer. And I can’t forget to order the pork ribs, sausage, and beef ribs. Of course my diet is going to raise eyebrows. Including those of my doctor."
Internet Archive adds Millions of Public Domain Images to Flickr
Looking for another source of public domain images? Yahoo research fellow Kalev Leetaru has extracted over 14 million images from IA public domain book scans, and so far 2.6 million of them have been posted to the Internet Archive Book Images photostream, where they have become part of The Commons. [more inside]
Hidden patterns even in the most mundane of objects
Mathematician Zachary Abel builds impressive Mathematical Sculptures from office supplies and other household objects. [more inside]
Leading Ladies
Big list of Games – "An unfiltered list of games featuring a leading lady, because such a list should exist."
Have a suggestion for a game?
Leading Ladies in Media – "Highlighting female protagonists in Film, TV, Comics, and Books."
Bonus link: hardcore gaming – Fuck Yeah 1990s
Have a suggestion for a game?
Leading Ladies in Media – "Highlighting female protagonists in Film, TV, Comics, and Books."
Bonus link: hardcore gaming – Fuck Yeah 1990s
Alternate reality photos of her life as a married woman
Staging lives: "Who do you want to be? Or, more accurately, who could you have been? Czech photographer Dita Pepe takes these musings quite literally, re-imaging her life in a hundred different scenarios in her series Self Portraits with Men. Pepe’s photographs are disarming in their nonchalant subtly, the artist possessing an uncanny ability to become a seamless member of each family." [more inside]
"For years I lived in the dark, part dead, part asleep...."
"... now, my sight and my world and my life have all returned." Vision: Healing the Blind in Ethiopia [vimeo, 10m] [more inside]
"The problem is I'm black. That's the problem."
St. Paul police roughly assault and arrest man, who is black and sitting in public area waiting for his kids. [SLYT] Police defended arrest but all charges were dropped by St. Paul police against 27-year old Chris Lollie. Lollie is filing complaint and now plans on suing.
Always look both ways when running a red light
This week Allstate Insurance released its 10th annual Best Drivers Report for the 200 largest US cities. It's wicked pissah being at the bottom (again). [more inside]
Hypnotic machinery in silk making
The Nishiyama Silk company explains their silk production process from reeling silk out of the boiled cocoons through handweaving the final cloth. Their factory video is a three minutes of hypnotic machine motion (along with some adorable socks on the weavers).
"Visualize race and income data for your community, county, and [USA]."
“It’s okay, because someday they’ll all be dead.”
“Worldcon is like a family reunion,” said longtime convention-goer and fanzine writer Curt Phillips, at a panel about the history of Worldcon. After a few days, I could only agree. It was indeed like being at a family reunion, in that it felt like you were spending your time with elderly relatives. You might want to talk to them and listen to their stories, but you’ll have to tolerate some offensive and outdated opinions along the way.For the Daily Dot, Gavia Baker-Whitelaw examines how the growing generation gap is changing the face of fandom, comparing the recent London Worldcon with the Nine Worlds convention run the weekend before.
Happy Friday
In conversation: Chad Smith with Stone Gossard
In this video edition of Chad Smith's interview series, the Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer sits down with his old friend, Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard, to talk about their early days on tour together, their attempts to form a "jazz odyssey" band, producers Rick Rubin and Brendan O'Brien, and a whole lot more. A jam-packed, laugh-filled hour-long chat.
A Starbury is Born
A controversial player follows up a disappointing NBA career with a major success in the Chinese Basketball Association, including two national titles with the Beijing Ducks (yes, they're named after the delicious Peking Duck dish). Now, he's Starring in a musical about himself in Beijing.(NYT)
instructions from Superman's dad
"But not doing things too disastrously is not some minimal achievement; it is a maximal achievement, rarely managed." Does it help to know history?
Japanese slugger attempts to hit 186 mph fastball
Former Nippon Pro Baseball home-run king Takashi Yamasaki tries to hit a 186 mph (300 km/hour) fastball from a pitching machine. Skip to 3:29 for the fun part. (SLYT, Japanese)
Yes Sir!
“Until a person has experienced career-harming bias...they simply don’t believe it exists.”
Why Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.
Why Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person.
Pen Paper Ink Letter Massive Review Index
Pen Paper Ink Letter is a pen and paper blog maintained by Heath Cates. Currently holding Ink Week, its best feature is a massive index of product reviews, from the blog itself and other blogs. [more inside]
Praise The Machine
Unpredictable, undocumented, fleeting interactions with strangers
Somebody: A new app by Miranda July (previously) allows you to send somebody a message… sort of. When you send your friend a message through Somebody, it goes — not to your friend — but to the Somebody user nearest your friend. This person (likely a stranger) delivers the message verbally, acting as your stand-in. Watch the Somebody movie.
No, You Can't Pay The Interest In Catnip
To entice new homeowners, Russia's biggest bank is running a special promotion which adds unusual perk with its mortgage - a cat. [more inside]
Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind
Researchers at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital are reporting that xenon gas has the potential to become a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other memory-related disorders.
All that cardboard!
Coding for Journalists 101
So a little while ago, I set out to write some tutorials that would guide the non-coding-but-computer-savvy journalist through enough programming fundamentals so that he/she could write a web scraper to collect data from public websites.[more inside]
August 28
The origins of that stereotypical Chinese nine-note riff
Kat Chow, with NPR's Code Switch, put together a short piece on the history and the prevalence of the well-known nine note "stereotypical Asian theme." As described in a 2005 Straight Dope forum question: You know, the one that goes dee dee dee dee duh duh dee dee duh. Featured heavily in braindead Hollywood flicks made by clueless directors who want to give a scene an "oriental" feel. Also a variation of it can be heard in David Bowie's "China Girl." [more inside]
A wavebird of nostalgia: the history of the Nintendo GameCube controller
“Our target user for this controller is not very specific, it’s very general, as even a beginner who has never touched the controller can use it, your grandmother can use, or even children with small hands can use it." Shigeru Miyamoto devoted more time and energy into the GameCube’s controller than any of Nintendo’s previous controllers. The NES controller was the first controller to add a D-Pad, the SNES controller would be the first to add shoulder buttons, and Nintendo 64′s controller introduced the analogue stick to 3D consoles. How would Miyamoto be able to top his previous three achievements? The Pressure to Create the Perfect Controller, from Dromble.com's Emily Rogers.
Previous Dromble and Emily Rogers on Metafilter: A Dolphin's Tale: The Story of GameCube.
Previous Dromble and Emily Rogers on Metafilter: A Dolphin's Tale: The Story of GameCube.
All of our favorite bands suck.
Project Wing
Inside Google's Secret Drone Delivery Programme The Australian test flight and 30 others like it conducted in mid-August are the culmination of the first phase of Project Wing, a secret drone program that’s been running for two years at Google X, the company’s whoa-inducing, long-range research lab.
Losing Ground
Being a comedian means knowing a lot of people who've committed suicide.
"My count is now up to five. Five of my friends and fellow comedians have taken their own life. It's shocking, but, sadly, not surprising. Non-comedians — or as we call them, 'civilians' — are always surprised. And I am always surprised they're so surprised. They have yet to realize the Two Big Things all comedians know." [may be triggering] [more inside]
Movement of the People
Olodum ; - 'The God of Gods' or 'The Supreme God' in Yoruba
A group of Drummers dedicated to cultural activism who famously play in the Pelourinho in Salvador de Bahia.
In 1995 they came to have a wider audience as they appeared in They dont Care About Us, a Michael Jackson single which was shot both in the Pelourinho and the Dona Marta Favela of Rio de Janeiro.
Olodum.
A group of Drummers dedicated to cultural activism who famously play in the Pelourinho in Salvador de Bahia.
In 1995 they came to have a wider audience as they appeared in They dont Care About Us, a Michael Jackson single which was shot both in the Pelourinho and the Dona Marta Favela of Rio de Janeiro.
Olodum.
Ice cream bread?!
How to make 2 ingredient ice cream bread. Yes, ice cream bread. From the Simple Cooking Channel on you YouTube.
More evidence that assertive women are perceived as abrasive?
"The abrasiveness trap: High-achieving men and women are described differently in reviews" A study of 248 performance reviews of 180 people found that women received a much higher ratio of critical feedback than men. Moreover, the reviews of women were much more likely to contain criticisms of their personalities in addition to constructive criticism. According to the article:
"This kind of negative personality criticism—watch your tone! step back! stop being so judgmental!—shows up twice in the 83 critical reviews received by men. It shows up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women."
Let's make some holes!
This is a beginner's guide to drills and bits. Need something more basic? Then try An Idiot's Guide to Buying Power Tools or stick with Four Essential Power Tools.
Big big names on the small small screen
Some pretty big names are wading into the Amazon waters with a group of new instant video pilots debuting today. Marc Forster ("World War Z") directed Hand of God, "a psychological drama about a morally corrupt judge who suffers a breakdown and believes God is compelling him onto a path of vigilante justice"; David Gordon Green ("George Washington," "Pineapple Express") helmed Red Oaks, "a coming-of-age comedy set in the 'go-go' 80s about a college student enjoying a last hurrah before summer comes to an end--and the future begins"; Whit Stillman ("Metropolitan") turns in The Cosmopolitans, "a dramatic comedy about a group of young American expats in Paris searching for love and friendship and an ocean of distance from their past"; and Jay Chandrasekhar ("Super Troopers") is responsible for Really, "a funny, honest, behind-the-curtain look at the psychological and emotional complexities of marriage and the charged dynamics of a tight-knit group of friends grasping on to what's left of their youth." There's also Otto Bathurst's Hysteria, "an investigative thriller about a haunted young doctor who is summoned back to her hometown to investigate an epidemic that may be linked to social media - and her own tragic past." User reviews determine which pilots get picked up for series.
eventually we will just start writing in hieroglyphs again
And the experiment will explain the phenomenon of bitcoins
Let's be clear: Russia is invading Ukraine right now
Russia has invaded Ukraine opening a second front to the south to open a land-bridge between Russia and Crimea. The Southern Front Catastrophe – August 27, 2014 translated from Ukraine has military details. Map of Operations Aug 10-27 (detail Mariupol and detail Lugansk pink/red is separatists). So far it's been a stealth invasion and slow escalation, today Russian troops, armor columns and artillery have openly crossed the border (video). Thousands more Russian troops are amassed. Ukraine has announced a reinstatement of the draft to commence in the Fall, and is demanding EU military assistance. An emergency UN meeting is currently in session (the 24th). Russia claims "No Russian forces are crossing in any point the border of Ukraine."
Grab some sushi when you visit Mars
Say you find yourself at Stockholm's Globe Arena (the largest hemispherical building in the world) and don't feel like taking in a show. No problem -- just find Götgatan and head north. You'll come to the Stockholm City Museum. Look for a short pillar with an orb atop it. That's Mercury. You just walked one twenty-millionth of the distance from the Sun's corona to its first planet, and started your tour of the Sweden Solar System. [more inside]
Brickjest
Brickjest is a recreation of Infinite Jest ... in Lego!
The Grauniad interviews Kevin Griffin, who makes the recreations with his 11 year old son, Sebastian.
The Grauniad interviews Kevin Griffin, who makes the recreations with his 11 year old son, Sebastian.
No emails -- unless you’re scheduling an in-person meeting.
I don't always ignore your emails, but when I do, it's because the answer is on your syllabus. "In my effort to teach students appropriate use of emails, my syllabus policies [had] ballooned to cover every conceivable scenario -- when to email, when not to, how to write the subject line -- and still I spent class time discussing the email policies and logged hours upon hours answering emails that defied the policies. In a fit of self-preservation, I decided: no more." [more inside]
OH HALP I HAS A STUCK
3 Things You Might Not Know About the Arachnids That Live on Your Face
- Everyone has mites.
- Humans host (at least) two mite species that aren’t closely related to each other.
- Mites can tell us about the historical divergence of human populations.
"The whole industry knows DRM is just smoke and mirrors"
Online game retailer GOG--which started (as Good Old Games) with a focus on updating classics to run on modern computers, then branched into offering newer games DRM-free--has announced that they will start selling movies under their DRM-free model. [more inside]
Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com
[...]non-black [AirBnb] hosts earn roughly 12% more for a similar apartment with similar
ratings and photos relative to black hosts. [more inside]
I hope you'll understand
"The new Energy Elixir and “sparkling future pop sensation” QT has finally debuted its new jingle “Hey QT” in full. It’s as if the drink’s creators, SOPHIE and A. G. Cook, harnessed the most cloying earworms and pop tropes of the 21st century, shaped them into slightly grotesque manifestations, and then teamed up with the best marketers in the business to optimize it for mass consumption. The result? A song that provides its listeners with crisp focus, pure energy, and razor-sharp reaction." [more inside]
"the biggest crotch-desiccant since Piers Morgan"
I tend to measure most of my work in rent. Freelance game critics, like most freelance writers, probably measure most things in rent. I also like to measure my wellbeing in whether I can afford a bottle of Sailor Jerry that month. This only reflects a little of the type of person I am. The Sailor Jerry sort of helps to cope with the fact that I am my own worst commenter. Sailor Jerry is also very useful for coping with actual commenters and the hell of the internet.Cara Ellison: How to write about a game.
Gifbook
A self-styled 'digital nomad' aims to create 12 startups within 12 months.
"I don’t want to be a 40-year-old rapper."
Gridland
“‘Only you can know how crappy that feels,’ Maya said, empathizing.”
The Academy, by Monica Seles. Yes, that Monica Seles has written a young adult romance series.
Grantland writer Brian Phillips provides "62 scalding takeaways from The Academy, by M. Seles,1 Books 1 and 2."
objectification and its effects on women
"If a woman is objectified in a relationship, the research indicates, it's more likely that her male partner will sexually coerce and pressure her." [more inside]
44 Medieval Beasts That Cannot Even Handle It Right Now
The Internet sees censorship as data, and feeds on it
In a scientific study of Chinese online state censorship, Harvard researchers not only gathered large amounts of social media in real time from within the country but created a large amount themselves to see what got through and what was removed. Through this method, they reverse-engineered what they describe as "the largest selective suppression of human communication in the recorded history of any country". The results, to use a popular term, will surprise you. [more inside]
Give her a hand
Notice that cute girl on campus? Like to know her better? Why not give her a hand?
Referee!
"It involved four international teams and an empty stadium, no ticket sales and yet the game was (open) for betting," Steans explains.
"I sat and watched match fixers with a briefcase full of cash to pay the referees."
In the Ikea catalog, the humans are probably real. The rest is CGI.
Ikea migrated from product photography to digital rendering in V-Ray and Max so 75% of its catalog is virtual - down to the afternoon sunlight filtering through soft NORDIS curtains across SLÄTTEN floors near that framed BILD print resting against the BILLY bookcases...
August 27
xylem never looked so good
V Martineau Illustration: The Miracle of Trees, Sciencia Illustrations, Levels Of Complexity, Plants, The Paper Birch Tree, Why The Sky Is Far Away [more inside]
“It’s a matter of indifference to you?”
What's better than reading a judge ruthlessly dismantling arguments against marriage equality? Hearing the judge's own voice as he makes lawyers arguing for Indiana's and Wisconsin's bans on same-sex marriage look like fools. Previously.
Women as Background Decoration: Part 2 (Tropes vs Women in Video Games)
Women as Background Decoration: Part 2 – Tropes vs Women in Video Games (28 min 33 sec; here's a pointer to the identical video at YouTube). Warning: contains graphic sexual and violent game footage. Presented by Anita Sarkeesian of the video blog, Feminist Frequency. The website version (first link) is annotated to include links and resources, an "about the series" section, games referenced in this episode, and a transcript. [more inside]
The Cat Is A Lie
Christine R. Yano is an anthropologist from the University of Hawaii (and currently a visiting professor at Harvard) who has spent years studying the phenomenon that is Hello Kitty. When Yano was preparing her written texts for the exhibit at the Japanese American National Museum, she says she described Hello Kitty as a cat. "I was corrected — very firmly," she says. [more inside]
Eppur si muove
Axé Orixá
The origins, the story and the purposes of the Orixa traditions and practices of Brazil have made Candomblé very careful about what it openly reveals and how it shows itself.
Candomblé has had a fundamental role in preserving and nurturing Afro-Brazilian traditions (Video 7 mins) throughout the history of colonial and modern Brazil.
The Believers are stepping out of the shadows and remembering their past with it's distinctive spirtuality and ritual which is at the root of modern samba.
Candomblé rituals in Brazil were illegal until believers fused their religion with some Catholic beliefs and traditions. Social exclusion, to which the black population was subjected in Rio de Janeiro led to intensification in the development and practice of Afro-Brazilian religion and Samba as it is known today. Here exemplified by Gilberto Gil and Clara Nunes
Candomblé has had a fundamental role in preserving and nurturing Afro-Brazilian traditions (Video 7 mins) throughout the history of colonial and modern Brazil.
The Believers are stepping out of the shadows and remembering their past with it's distinctive spirtuality and ritual which is at the root of modern samba.
Candomblé rituals in Brazil were illegal until believers fused their religion with some Catholic beliefs and traditions. Social exclusion, to which the black population was subjected in Rio de Janeiro led to intensification in the development and practice of Afro-Brazilian religion and Samba as it is known today. Here exemplified by Gilberto Gil and Clara Nunes
Have we reached peak peak?
(SLTheGuardian) "This is an exhilarating time to be alive. All our efforts, all our resources, our consumption and tastes are maxing out in unison. Everything is hitting its peak."
Easily agitated protuberances and the thing you shouldn't call a flower
Child abuse in Rotherham UK
(Trigger warning) Systemic child sex abuse over at least a decade in Rotherham, involving an estimated 1400 victims. Timeline from the BBC. More news from the Guardian.. Most of the victims were white girls, many of the perpetrators were Asian men. Independent report published this week.
Drought in the American West
The drought in California and the American West is bad. Really bad. And it could get worse. The rich have their own plans.
Blue Suede Jew?
In Memphis in the early 1950s, young Elvis Presley would sometimes help out the upstairs neighbors, Rabbi Fruchter and his family, by acting as a "Shabbos goy," -- that is, by doing tasks that Jews may not do on the Sabbath. (The rabbi's son Harold, then a toddler, recalls the arrangement in an audio interview.) Yet Elvis knew he had some Jewish forebears. Tablet Magazine notes that his "great great maternal grandmother was Jewish and had a daughter who had a daughter who had a daughter that was Elvis’s mother." Though he embraced Christianity, he often used to wear a Chai necklace (sometimes paired with a cross), saying "I don't want to miss out on going to heaven on a technicality." In that spirit, a Hasidic Elvis impersonator named Dan Hartal, aka "Schmelvis," recently recited Kaddish at Graceland and traveled to Israel to plant a tree in Elvis's memory.
Nude Portraits: SFW
"These are nude portraits in the sense that I, the photographer, am nude, while the subject is not."
Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I'm just a caveman.
His nickname was "The Glue." Coinciding with the unveiling of his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, Grantland takes a closer look at one of the most celebrated comedic actors of the 80s and 90s known primarily for supporting roles: Phil Hartman. [more inside]
TL;DW - Biology first, THEN physics.
Why are Stars Star-Shaped? A SLYT of one of the innumerable little educational youtube channels explaining something that always fascinated me. [more inside]
For Kate I wait: BBC documentary and first live show in 35 years
Last night, Kate Bush performed her first concert in 35 years at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. She last toured in 1979, following the release of Lionheart. "Not since the surviving members of Led Zeppelin reunited for a one-off show in 2007 has there been such hype over a comeback." - The Guardian. Last week, BBC 4 released an hour-long documentary called The Kate Bush Story: Running Up That Hill that reflects on Bush’s long and enigmatic career. It features appearances from Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, Tori Amos, Annie Clark, Big Boi, Bat For Lashes’ Natasha Kahn, and more. Vimeo link. Guardian review.
*Shrug*
Galt's Gulch Chile is (was) meant to be a modern and real-world replica of Ayn Rand's objectivist hide-out in Atlas Shrugged.
Wealthy investors (or at least folks with a lot of bitcoin) envisioned a protected libertarian community where they could ride out the impending social and financial downfall of American society.
Unfortunately for those taken in by the project, it appears now that the whole enterprise was a greed-driven scam.
When he answered the "Did Tony die" question, he was laconic.
David Chase finally answers the question he wants fans to quit asking. (Agita warning: spoilers. Whaddya, nuts? ) [more inside]
Medium Egg Custard with Marshmallow
"You may think you know what a snowball is. That conical treat of chunky ice where all of the flavor drips out of the bottom of a paper triangle? Nope, that's a snowcone. That fruity, pureed ice that you have to scrape with a wooden spoon? Nope, that's Italian ice. Or maybe the fluffy bowl of ice with condensed milk on top? Wrong again—that's Hawaiian shave ice ... A classic Baltimore snowball arrives in a Styrofoam cup: shaved ice sloshed with sweet syrup—mostly artificial flavoring and not any of that "real fruit" stuff—and typically topped with marshmallow cream. While the ice is shaved, it's not fine enough to dissolve, leaving the snowball chunky and intact enough to survive humid Baltimore summers." SeriousEats covers Baltimore's delicious regional treat, the snowball. Summertime snowballs have been a staple of the city for many, many years. A little bit of ambient snowball stand audio.
The oral history of looking like a dork
SRLP and Laverne Cox
Last week, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project uploaded a YouTube video of Laverne Cox reading a letter written by a New York State inmate named Synthia China Blast, who described living in solitary confinement for the last decade. However, that video has since, at Cox's request, been taken down. (TW: descriptions of murder, sexual violence) [more inside]
"And I’m going to keep doing it, unless you pay me to stop."
Don’t Want Me to Recline My Airline Seat? You Can Pay Me [New York Times]
"...airline seats are an excellent case study for the Coase Theorem. This is an economic theory holding that it doesn’t matter very much who is initially given a property right; so long as you clearly define it and transaction costs are low, people will trade the right so that it ends up in the hands of whoever values it most. That is, I own the right to recline, and if my reclining bothers you, you can pay me to stop."
And the answer is...
Flowchart: Should you catcall her? From playboy.com. Flowchart designed by @sheastrauss. Link is NSFW (images) if you scroll all the way to the footer, or drawn silhouettes of women in the flowchart are problematic. Slightly NSFW text.
It's not easy getting out of your one-horse town.
Hello my lovely Sloggers!
"Using contractors it calls "brand ambassadors," Uber requests rides from Lyft and other competitors, recruits their drivers, and takes multiple precautions to avoid detection. The effort, which Uber appears to be rolling out nationally, has already resulted in thousands of canceled Lyft rides and made it more difficult for its rival to gain a foothold in new markets. Uber calls the program "SLOG," and it’s a previously unreported aspect of the company’s ruthless efforts to undermine its competitors."
America's Mental Health Crisis
Brave and afraid and heading down the longest road [Part 1/3]
The cars made a wet rushing sound as they swept past him, close enough that he could feel their motion in the air. He was certain if he tried, he could reach out and touch them. Mike Bourne stretched out both arms, fingertips extended. He was walking in the middle of the busy street. The yellow line on the pavement told him where to go. He thought of it as the yellow brick road. It would take him somewhere, he knew, somewhere beautiful. [more inside]
Go Ahead And Tase Me, Bro
The Taser Photoshoot: Portraits of People's Faces When Hit With A Stun Gun by Patrick Hall [Possibly NSFW]
August 26
“Osteobiography” : the “biography of the bones”
"There’s a wonderful term used by anthropologists: “osteobiography,” the “biography of the bones.” Kennewick Man’s osteobiography tells a tale of an eventful life, which a newer radiocarbon analysis puts at having taken place 8,900 to 9,000 years ago. He was a stocky, muscular man about 5 feet 7 inches tall, weighing about 160 pounds. He was right-handed. His age at death was around 40."
After years of legal wrangling and scientific arguments, Smithsonian Magazine takes on the history of the Kennewick Man and the long-awaited publication of studies co-edited by physical anthropologist Douglas Owsley (of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History's Anthropology department.) [more inside]
Coveillance
Wired 'Senior Maverick' Kevin Kelly suggests: Why You Should Embrace Surveillance, Not Fight It.
Because the VMAs were the night BEFORE and he wasn't invited
The highlight of Monday Night's Emmy Awards telecast was (MeFi's Beloved) Weird Al Yankovic performing a medley of the lyrics that popular shows' theme songs SHOULD have. (With Very Special Guest Andy Samberg as 'Joffrey' making a very special presentation to George R. R. Martin in the audience... that [SPOILER] apparently was NOT poisoned)
The compelling history of vaccination
A timeline of diseases and vaccines [warning: graphic photo of cutaneous diphtheria at year 1975]. Categories are: diphtheria, measles, polio, smallpox, yellow fever, and 'others'. You can select one keyword to view only that subject's timeline. From the History of Vaccines website (about page | FAQ). Similar timelines at the same site for pioneers, science and society, and there's an En Español timeline, too. [more inside]
"The Witness"
Michelle Lyons has witnessed 278 executions in Texas, first in her role as a reporter, and then as part of her job in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Texas Monthly has a long, fascinating profile.
A new and terrifying state has been born.
Patrick Cockburn a Middle East correspondent since 1979 has a couple of new articles:
Isis consolidates and The Underrated Saudi Connection, Why Washington’s War on Terror Failed.
Isis consolidates and The Underrated Saudi Connection, Why Washington’s War on Terror Failed.
Geometry in motion
Bees & Bombs is a tumblr of hypnotic GIF animations programmed by Dublin-based physics student Dave Whyte
Illegal Weapons Used in Wrestling Death Match
Illegal Weapons Used in Wrestling Death Match (slyt). Not the 'Most Illegal Thing I've Seen in the History of Wrestling', but still good. The pain is visceral. So, so visceral.
"Professors are citizens."
Former Virginia Tech professor Steven Salaita's blocked appointment to teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has ignited a debate over academic freedom. [more inside]
it was like a big mouthful of ‘Murica/Freedom
After customers started requesting it, Arby's started selling an off-menu item called the Meat Mountain. It costs $10, and has some of every meat Arby's sells. Naturally, pictures are popping up on twitter. Hungry?
Ninety-four years ago women won the right to vote
On Aug. 26, 1920, with the formal adoption of the 19th Amendment, women won the right to vote. Now, a newly discovered collection of Susan B. Anthony letters will help show how. 'The letters were written by Anthony to her “most cherished young lieutenant” Rachel Foster Avery from 1881 through the turn of the century. Acquired last week by the University of Rochester’s River Campus Libraries, the historic collection will help bring to life the suffrage movement through the eyes of two of its most important members.
Anthony and Avery were connected through the National Woman Suffrage Association and the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The new collection includes more than 60 autographed and typed letters, signed cabinet cards and photographs, and other related material.' [more inside]
Marvel
Fanvids have come a long way since Kandy Fong's first proto-vids/slideshows in the 1970s-1980s. Vidder lim provides a great example of how far the form has come. Her recent Marvel Cinematic Universe vids Expo (Iron Man), Marvel (MCU), and Time (Captain America 2) are gorgeous examples of vids at their best. [more inside]
have taxes your way
"International fast food behemoth Burger King Worldwide Inc. confirmed Tuesday that it will pay about $11 billion to buy Canadian chain Tim Hortons Inc., which sells coffee, donuts, and other breakfast food fare. The deal would merge America's second-largest burger chain, which is valued at nearly $10 billion, with the Canadian equivalent to Dunkin' Donuts, which is valued at more than $8 billion. It would also move the new company's headquarters to Canada, where corporate taxes are significantly lower." [more inside]
The Look of Funny
Two Ancient Mayan Cities Found in Mexican Jungle
A monster mouth doorway, ruined pyramid temples and palace remains emerged from the Mexican jungle as archaeologists unearthed two ancient Mayan cities.
1135 Feet, Two Bananas: World's Scariest Selfie
"Guns. Lots of Guns" Multiple Internet Movie Databases
Ever wanted an IMDB but for guns? Welcome to the IMFDB - The Internet Movie Database of Guns The IMDB [Internet Movie Database] is 23 years old this year. Launched in 1990, and filled with cast/crew info as well as trivia and goofs it is the go to location for film information online. But did you know that the IMFDB [Internet Movie Firearms Database] is the place to go to get the most comprehensive information on any firearms used in media? [more inside]
Mississippi fullfilling its proud tradition
"He Wears/She Wears" - an album of men and women's fashion
this is an album of men and women wearing very similar outfits placed side by side for comparison. I tried to find fits that not only had the same colour palette, but the same clothing cut/style as well. Most images were taken from Pinterest - I just pinned outfits that I thought would transfer well to the opposite gender and started matching. Some resemblances are better than others, but I think the individual touches are what make some fits more characteristically masculine or feminine.via /r/femalefashionadvice
Southern China's diverse karst landscape of mountains and caves
In the southern portion of China there is an expansive karst landscape, formed by the dissolution of soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum. The region is home to the South China Karst UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is actually seven different notable features, as well as the visually impressive Moon Hill, some of China's supercaves, and Xiaozhai Tiankeng, the world's deepest sinkhole. You can climb Moon Hill, but it's best to plan ahead. You can also explore China's great caves, but it is necessary to explore between October-November and February-March to avoid the monsoon seasons, and getting down Xiaozhai Tiankeng requires a lot of gear. You can read more about the Tiankengs (giant dolines or sinkholes) in the karst of China (PDF).
"What were the reasons behind the dictums and cooking lore?"
Parenting in the Internet Age: The Problem of Porn
A father finds pornographic websites in his 9-year-old son's browser history in a surprisingly charming and amusing first-person essay: “I know you were looking at porn.” A silence hung in the air between us as I tried to figure out where to go from there. He looked at me, eyebrows up and eyes wide open, on alert for whatever would come next. The past winter had torn up the road, and his still baby-fatted cheeks bounced along with the car as we headed back towards our house. The anticipation of my response was clearly getting to him. “Are you gonna say anything else?” “To be honest, I hadn’t really thought this far ahead,” I told him. “I only planned as far as this, telling you I knew.” [more inside]
I have only the vaguest memory of a life before fear.
Sphere Gears
92 Gears is a lovely, hypnotic animated GIF. Ball Bearings in a Hypersphere is a mathematical discussion of its generalizations.
August 25
It's been too long on MeFi without the AlanRickman tag.
Scared Scientists
Photographer Nick Bower captures portraits of varying scientists contemplating global warming.
The incremental to surpass all incrementals
How could you not want More Spider?!
Entomologist and photographer Alex Wild on the process of photographing a funnel-web spider: These Spider Fangs Aren’t Going To Photograph Themselves. "Most photographs involve some combination of creativity and constraint, and this one was no different." [more inside]
I vould like to feed your fingerteeps to the volver-eenes
In honor of Saturday Night Live's 40th season, Grantland has been publishing an ongoing series of essays, remembrances, podcasts, and interviews, as well as asking you to cast your votes in The Battle for the Best SNL Cast Member. (They're already down to the final eight; sorry, your favorite cast member has already been eliminated.)
unknown lights in the Pacific
Unknown orange/red glow over Pacific Ocean "Then, very far in the distance ahead of us, just over the horizon an intense lightflash shot up from the ground. It looked like a lightning bolt, but way more intense and directed vertically up in the air. I have never seen anything like this, and there were no flashes before or after this single explosion of light." [more inside]
"I collect spores, molds, and fungus."
"Hollywood's pathological fear of being political has made them blind to the changes that women's friendships have undergone over the last forty years. We're so far past women's relationships revolving around men that no one is even offended by the suggestion that women have relationships that don't revolve around men. Bridesmaids was a smash among women AND men, and so was [Paul] Feig's follow-up, The Heat, another female driven, non-romantic comedy." (Hat-tip: Mick LaSalle) [more inside]
An Open Letter to Aaron Diaz
You’re allowed to make art with male gaze. But please call a spade a spade. "I don’t think I’ve seen a single page of Dresden Codak that doesn’t feature a woman posed in a male-gazey way, with loving focus on her ass or cleavage, or wearing a sexual costume, or in some situation that puts her in a compromising position (like the most recent page in which Kimiko’s clothing is burned off of her body, which has happened at least twice in the series’ run.) I have a very hard time believing that these details are accidental." [more inside]
All three volumes of The Feynman Lectures on Physics are now online.
The Feynman Lectures on Physics All three volumes of The Feynman Lectures on Physics are now online. A fantastic resource for anyone interested in Feynman or physics in general.
(Previously, when the first volume was available.)
Serendipity
Angelica Paez
Angelica Paez is a Texas-based collage artist whose works are wonderfully surreal and weird. She is also a collaborator in the decades-long One Thousand Thousand project, which aims to produce one million hand-made, original artworks.
What is the terminal velocity of a sheep? Can Vegans eat Jewelry?
Stack Exchange No Context collects all the weird and funny questions from the Q&A network. Viaby Mefi's own chrismear.
ICI FINIT LA CVLTVRE ALLEMANDE
On this day one hundred years ago, Imperial German soldiers who had peacefully arrived in the Belgian city of Leuven (Fr: Louvain), having taken hostages and accepted the parole of its mayor on behalf of its citizens, without warning set fire to the city and massacred its inhabitants forever altering the city, its university's library, and the course of the war.
[more inside]Belgian Judicial Report on the Sacking of Louvain in August 1914 The destruction and rebuilding of the Louvain Library: claim and counterclaim
The Construction of Whiteness
Gerald Horne is the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He is a prolific author whose most recent book is The Counter-Revolution of 1776: : Slave Resistance & the Origins of the United States of America (published by NYU Press; available on Google Books). From the publisher's description:
The so-called Revolutionary War, Horne writes, was in large part a counter-revolution, a conservative movement that the founding fathers fought in order to preserve their liberty to enslave others—and which today takes the form of a racialized conservatism and a persistent racism targeting the descendants of the enslaved.Early in the book, Horne writes:
The construction of 'whiteness' or the forging of bonds between and among European settlers across class, gender, ethnic, and religious lines was a concrete response to the real dangers faced by all of these migrants in the face of often violent rebellions from enslaved Africans and their indigenous comrades.He recently sat down with Paul Jay of the Real News Network for the show Reality Asserts Itself. The result is a far-ranging discussion that covers his youth growing up in Jim Crow era St. Louis, his personal and intellectual development, pre-revolutionary America and the lucrative business of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the Civil rights movement. The interview concludes by bringing us back to recent events, including the recent chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York, and the protests in Ferguson, Missouri. [more inside]
What's the matter with PGP?
If your cryptography predates The Fresh Prince, you need better cryptography. With recognition of the need for secure communication standards finally going mainstream, crypto researcher and Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew Green takes a hard look at the de facto standard everyone is jumping on, and suggests that we can and should do a lot better. [more inside]
"Bake 'em away, toys!"
A look back
Then and now in New Orleans as the ninth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches. This time it might not hurt to read the comments.
I got 99 beers and a bud ain't one
Award winning Texas brewery Austin Beerworks has announced a revolutionary new packaging option for their Peacemaker Anytime Ale - the 99 pack. It's real, and only $99.
Multiverse No More, a New Theory of Scale
Perhaps the fundamental description of the universe does not include the concepts of “mass” and “length,” implying that at its core, nature lacks a sense of scale. 'Supersymmetry posits the existence of a missing twin particle for every particle found in nature.' But there's 'one big problem with supersymmetry: in the particle physics that is observed in today's accelerators, every boson most definitely does NOT have a matching fermion with the same mass and charge. So if supersymmetry is a symmetry of Nature, it must somehow be broken.' 'Scale symmetry[warning: slow-loading pdf], constitutes a radical departure from long-standing assumptions about how elementary particles acquire their properties. 'With their field stuck at a nasty impasse,' 'researchers have returned to the master equations that describe the known particles and their interactions, and are asking: What happens when you erase the terms in the equations having to do with mass and length?' [more inside]
There and Back Again
"Even as a very small boy I was utterly fascinated by animals of every kind." Shortly before his 19th birthday in December 1957, Bob Goulding accompanied Gerald Durrell on an animal collecting trip to Cameroon. "Our trip to Cameroon, which lasted around six months, is the subject of Durrell’s book ‘A Zoo in my Luggage’, published in 1960 by Rupert Hart-Davis. I am Durrell’s ‘young assistant Bob’ in the book."
This was neither the beginning nor the end of a life-long involvement and fascination with tropical natural history which saw Goulding later take over management of the zoo attached to the Department of Zoology of the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1963. Now retired back to Bristol, he keeps a personal website which contains a fascinating record of those pioneering years. Particularly poignant is the story of the two gorillas, Aruna and Imade, from their capture by hunters to the years of their maturity.
Under Golding's leadership Ibadan Zoo became an early and exemplary instance of zoo habitat design. The website contains an account of building the gorilla enclosure; a heartfelt acknowledgement of his former staff; letters from past visitors, now grown up; stories of research and collecting; a snapshot of Nigeria in the 60's and 70's; an overview of local fauna; and lots and lots of photographs! Also, hairy frogs (don't look at them.)
If we're not in pain, we're not alive
You invest so much in it, don't you? It's what elevates you above the beasts of the field, it's what makes you special. Homo sapiens, you call yourself. Wise Man. Do you even know what it is, this consciousness you cite in your own exaltation? Do you even know what it's for?Dr. Peter Watts is no stranger to MetaFilter. But look past his sardonic nuptials, heartbreaking eulogies, and agonizing run-ins with fascists (and fasciitis) and you'll find one of the most brilliant, compelling, and disquieting science fiction authors at work today. A marine biologist skilled at deep background research, his acclaimed 2006 novel Blindsight [full text] -- a cerebral "first contact" tale led by a diverse crew of bleeding-edge post-humans -- is diamond-hard and deeply horrifying, wringing profound existential dread from such abstruse concepts as the Chinese Room, the Philosophical Zombie, Chernoff faces, and the myriad quirks and blind spots that haunt the human mind. But Blindsight's last, shattering insight is not the end of the story -- along with crew/ship/"Firefall" notes, a blackly funny in-universe lecture on resurrecting sociopathic vampirism (PDF - prev.), and a rigorously-cited (and spoiler-laden) reference section, tomorrow will see the release of
The Troll Slayer
A profile of classicist Mary Beard, and, among other things, her decision to confront sexist detractors online. "The real issue, she suggested, is not merely guaranteeing a woman’s right to speak; it is being aware of the prejudices that we bring to the way we hear her. Listening, she implied, is an essential element of speech."
country music's identity crisis
what IS country music? Tensions have been brewing and there’s been no shortage of public feuding among the genre’s A-list. As country fights to figure out what it should look and sound like, its biggest stars are airing some very honest (and sometimes harsh) opinions. Here’s a timeline of country’s wild, crazy, and sometimes mud-slinging year. [more inside]
We *Are* Aquatic Mammals
This Is What Happens To Your Heart When You Dive Into The Sea
Human blood has a chemical composition 98% similar to seawater. An infant will reflexively breaststroke when placed underwater and can comfortably hold his breath for about 40 seconds, longer than many adults. We lose this ability only when we learn how to walk.
VU's The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes: stick your head inside Lou’s amp
On March 15, 1969, The Velvet Underground played its last show of a three-day engagement at The Boston Tea Party in Boston, Massachusetts. The entire set was recorded by a fan directly from Lou Reed's guitar amplifier. "Reed’s guitar is, of course, way up front and the rest of the band is barely audible. The result is a mighty electronic roar that reveals the depth and layers of Reed’s playing. Over and undertones, feedback, string buzz, the scratch of fingers on frets and the crackle and hum of tube amps combine to create a monolithic blast of metal machine music." - Head Heritage.
Previously available on a bootleg CD, The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes has finally made it to vinyl, courtesy of Tummy Tapes. Check out one of the most unique VU boots in existence. [more inside]
Previously available on a bootleg CD, The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes has finally made it to vinyl, courtesy of Tummy Tapes. Check out one of the most unique VU boots in existence. [more inside]
"MY INVISIBLE GIRLFRIEND… WILL I LOVE HER?"
"Finally. A girlfriend your family can believe in." "Invisible Girlfriend gives you real-world and social proof that you’re in a relationship - even if you’re not - so you can get back to living life on your own terms." [more inside]
downsides of the ice bucket challenge
Why the Ice Bucket Challenge is bad for you: "The ALS campaign may be a great way to raise money – but it is a horrible reason to donate it" [more inside]
"I used to be with 'it,' then they changed what 'it' was."
What Happens When 'The Simpsons' Becomes Dad Humor? With a ratings-smashing marathon running on FXX and a streaming app due to launch in October, perhaps now is the time to ask an impertinent question: When will The Simpsons become passé? Culture has moved on from The Simpsons, despite the show’s unwillingness to pass into comedy Valhalla. In other words, Simpsons is becoming dad humor: structures so well trod that they can never again surprise, no matter how perfectly crafted. The aesthetic earmarks of this mid-90s humor juggernaut are becoming as antiquated as puns and pies-in-the-face.
As long as it's not mean, it should come from your heart.
YouTube theater critic Iain Armitage has never given a bad review. He's six years old. [more inside]
...takes greater formal and intellectual risks than most
The New York Times calls David Mitchell's new novel, "The Bone Clocks," his most ambitious novel. This is significant because his other novels are fairly ambitious. [more inside]
"mouthwash with delusions of grandeur"
'It’s hard to describe what Fernet Branca tastes like; it mostly tastes like Fernet Branca.' Fernet Branca is a kind of fernet, themselves a classifcation of amaro, bitter Italian digestifs. The Fernet Hot House: Don't Let Hipsters Ruin It For You [more inside]
Twenty four days to go
The second televised debate between Alex Salmond and Alistair Darling is to be shown across the UK tonight. After a lacklustre first debate, the final days of the referendum campaign are ticking down. There are signs of growing momentum for the Yes side, with undecideds moving to Yes in some polls and the 'Yes Declaration' recently hitting a million signatures. But the Better Together campaign still has some heavy hitters on side, with Sir Ian Wood recently casting doubt on oil extraction figures he had previously agreed with. [more inside]
Story is powerful
Someone once asked me why "alpha males" were so popular in so much romantic speculative fiction, and I hesitated to answer it. Not because I didn't know, but because I knew I was going to have to have a discussion about teasing out the difference between finding pleasure in something you genuinely find pleasurable and taking pleasure in something you think you're supposed to find pleasurable.Kameron Hurley talks about Gender, Family, Nookie: The Speculative Frontier.
Fareed Zakaria busted?
Fareed Zakaria has been taken to task for plagiarism by twitter users @blippoblappo and @crushingbort on their website Our Bad Media.
(1) Did CNN, The Washington Post and Time actually check Fareed Zakaria's work for plagiarism?
(2) How and why lying about plagiarism is bad - a response to Fareed Zakaria and Fred Hiatt
(3) The Paste American World: How Fareed Zakaria plagiarized in his international bestseller (and the magazines he used to run)
(4) Our Bad Media previously on Metafilter.
"The Way They Were"
"The Way They Were" [Vimeo] Punk and New Wave 1976 - 1978. Channel 4 UK programme first broadcast circa 1984 / 1985-ish. Hosted by the late Tony Wilson, it's a compilation of performances by bands taken from his previous TV shows in the late 70's, such as So It Goes. [more inside]
August 24
The Aftershocks
The Aftershocks Seven of Italy’s top scientists were convicted of manslaughter after a catastrophic earthquake. What the hell happened in L’Aquila?
The World's Most Dangerous Room
Three and a half years after the most devastating nuclear accident in a generation, Fukushima Daiichi is still in crisis. Some 6,000 workers, somehow going about their jobs despite the suffocating gear they must wear for hours at a time, struggle to contain the damage. So much radiation still pulses inside the crippled reactor cores that no one has been able to get close enough to survey the full extent of the destruction.
776 - 778 - 780
So long, "Big X"
Known to one generation as Bartlett in The Great Escape and to another generation as John Hammond in Jurassic Park (plus many roles in between), actor Richard Attenborough has died at the age of 90.
"I once loved a girl..." - Suze and The Twerp
Tomorrow is a long time
Suze and The Twerp
Ballad In Plain D – Bob and Suze
We were both overly sensitive and needed shelter from the storm
Previously: I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul
Suze and The Twerp
Ballad In Plain D – Bob and Suze
We were both overly sensitive and needed shelter from the storm
Previously: I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul
"It’s not my choice."
Is Kink a Sexual Orientation?
BDSM As A Sexual Orientation, and Complications of the Orientation Model
SL Letters of the Day: Coming Out Kinky & BDSM as a Sexual Orientation
A conversation about kink with Natalie Zina Walschots
BDSM As A Sexual Orientation, and Complications of the Orientation Model
SL Letters of the Day: Coming Out Kinky & BDSM as a Sexual Orientation
A conversation about kink with Natalie Zina Walschots
The legacy of the '48 plane crash in Los Gatos and the Bracero deportees
In 1942, the US and Mexican governments created the Bracero Agreement, allowing Mexican agricultural workers to come into the United States for a limited time, to provide farm workers while the US was involved in World War II. The program was extended as a series of a series of laws and diplomatic agreements that finally ended in 1964. Probably the most famous popular memorial to the broad program was a poem by Woodie Guthrie, "the last great song he would write," after hearing about a plane crash in Los Gatos, which was reported as a flight full of nameless "deportees." A decade later, a young school teacher/folk singer named Martin (or Marty) Hoffman put the words to music, and Pete Seeger made the song popular, with numerous covers performed and recorded since. 65 years after the crash, those "deportees" were finally named, and that tombstone for "28 Mexican citizens" replaced with the names of those who died. [more inside]
That Panayiotou kid is doing alright for himself
30 year ago last week, on August 18, 1984, Careless Whisper reached the top spot on the UK music charts, ending Frankie Goes To Hollywood's 9-week reign with their single Two Tribes. The debut solo track from George Michael, it ushered in the career of a global music superstar that continues to this day. [more inside]
This makes murdering way too intimate
Environmental Justice
"EPA defines environmental justice (EJ) as "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."
To effectively address EJ concerns, the Agency recognizes that communities must be the driver for local solutions. However, far too many communities lack the capacity to truly affect their environmental conditions." [more inside]
Darknet drug markets kept alive by great customer service.
In 1972, long before eBay or Amazon, students from Stanford University in California and MIT in Massachusetts conducted the first ever ecommerce transaction. Using the "Arpa-net" account at their artificial intelligence lab, the Stanford students sold their counterparts a small amount of marijuana. Ever since, the net has turned over a steady but small trade in illicit narcotics. But last year approximately 20 per cent of UK drug users scored online. The majority of them went to one place: the dark net markets. [more inside]
"Hello Mr. Bond."
Pierce Brosnan Plays GoldenEye 007 with Jimmy Fallon [SLYT] Jimmy Fallon fulfills a childhood dream by playing the Nintendo 64 video game GoldenEye 007 against former James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan.
Carefree Black Girl
Buzzfeed reports: The Life and Death of 22 year old Karyn Washington, creator of the "For Brown Girls" blog and the #darkskinredlip project.
She was transfixed by the gleam of his uncooked chicken breast skin.
Film is dead, long live film
Fifteen years after "The Death of Cinema", Matt Zoller Seitz talks with Godfrey Cheshire about his prophetic series of articles in the New York Press predicting the effects of the coming death of film and the rise of digital video.
The Major's Body
The Major, or Motoko Kusanagi, is the protagonist of each incarnation of the Ghost in the Shell manga-anime-merchadise franchise. If you care to google, Motoko Kusanagi is autocompletes to “a man” and “is hot,” then “in bed with a boy” and “in bed.” For a science-fiction philosophy character named for her military position, we (the audience — although I don’t limit this to those who have experienced the fiction, as the Major is iconic) sure are caught up in thinking about her gender and sexual status. Why could that be?In a still ongoing series, Claire Napier looks at the Major's body throughout the various Ghost in the Shell mangas and anime series. NSFW, some spoilers. [more inside]
Supermensch
Mike Myers' recent appearance on Marc Maron's WTF podcast is thoroughly entertaining. Myers is promoting his film Supermensch, but he and Maron lengthily discuss Myers' career to date. They cover Myers' TV commerical work as a child, his membership of Second City, The Comedy Store Players and Saturday Night Live, and highlights of his film career (Wayne's World, Austin Powers and Shrek). Full of delightful anecdotes and vocal impressions, it's a revealing, amusing and engaging interview.
August 23
So which is it? Are we stupid? Or too full of ourselves?
Yet for some reason we'd escaped, had prospered, even.
The Caterpillars of Eastern Massachusetts
How does ('' == [] && this); make programmers feel?
Programming language subreddits and their choice of words presents an interactive chord graph showing how often particular languages are mentioned in other languages' communities. Another chart shows how proportional others' mentions are to the TIOBE Index. And some very elementary sentiment analysis suggests how often each language inspires pure theory, happiness and fun, or cursing. A tongue-in-cheek aside reveals that counting infrequently-mentioned languages yields another happiness/coolness chart that puts Elm at the top, just above other surprises.
The Hedge Fund and the Despot
Email, the "cockroach of the internet" (that's a compliment)
Email is still the best thing on the internet
Getting an email address was once a nerdy right of passage for Gen-Xers arriving on college campuses. Now, the kids are waging a war of indifference on poor old email, culling the weak and infirm old-people technology. One American professor maintained that, to his students, "e-mail was as antiquated as the spellings 'chuse' and 'musick' in the works by Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards." The vice-chancellor of Exeter University claimed, "There is no point in emailing students any more." The youth appear to think there are better, faster, more exciting ways to communicate than stupid email.
Yet, despite all the prognosticators predicting it will—choose the violence level of your metaphor—go out of style, be put out to pasture, or taken out back and shot, email grinds on.
"Cubs 1908. White Sox 2005. Jackie Robinson West 2014."
Chicago's Jackie Robinson West Little League team just clinched the U.S. Championship in the Little League World Series, becoming the first all-African-American team to do so. They face the South Korean squad tomorrow.
The team has attracted many prominent supporters, from Chicago and elsewhere.
A few peaks into Disney's Animation Research Library, the new morgue
Since at least the late 1950s, Walt Disney Studios had a morgue on site (auto-playing music, with option to pause), but rather than a place to temporarily keep dead bodies, the name is a reference to "morgue files" kept by newspaper reporters, where old materials were kept for reference. In 1989, the archives moved to larger, more modern facilities, renamed the Animation Research Library (ARL), a 12,000 square foot housed in a nondescript structure, which guests are required to not describe or identify by location or even neighborhood, as noted in this Telegraph article, The Jungle Book: the making of Disney's most troubled film. Given the limited access and strict controls over what can be recorded in ARL, Ultimate Disney's 2006 tour write-ups with photos and D23's Armchair Archivist interview with select Disney staff may be the closest you can get to getting inside. [more inside]
Consequences
Would you like furballs with that
A (fake) Pizza Hut in Japan is staffed entirely by cats.
Exposure is a job hazard, not a benefit
Stevie Nicks wants a shawl, and Stephen Fry wants a poster.
The catch: Both of them want you to do it for free. Or, rather, "for the exposure." [more inside]
"...and Sampras was a different cat entirely."
But can it core a apple?
On Thursday, NASA released the names and designs of three vehicles that could replace the space shuttle as means of sending our astronauts into space. [more inside]
Market Basket close to reaching a deal
And the winners are shoppers, workers, and Team Artie T. Previously. Boston-area grocery shoppers and Market Basket employees rejoice as the Demoulas families have agreed upon a settlement.
An "only in Boston" story, Market Basket's history of family feuding has been resolved with the assistance of MA Governor Deval Patrick and NH Governor Maggie Hassan. [more inside]
Love the one you're with.
Don't do what you love. "We rarely hear the advice of the person who did what they loved and stayed poor or was horribly injured for it. Professional gamblers, stuntmen, washed up cartoonists like myself: we don’t give speeches at corporate events. We aren’t paid to go to the World Domination Summit and make people feel bad. We don’t land book deals or speak on Good Morning America." [more inside]
Though I suspect that title is incorrect in this context
Damien Walter presents 21 of the best British sci-fi (sic) writers of 2014 you probably haven't heard of.
August 22
BOING!
A subreddit full of cats being ( amusingly) startled. ( hat tip feckless fecal fear mongering)
" They were paying for an experience. "
Behind Claude’s Doors
In 1960s Paris she became known as the world’s most exclusive madam, whose client list was said to include John Kennedy, de Gaulle, Onassis, and multiple Rothschilds, and whose beautiful and cultivated girls often went on to marry wealth, power, and prestige. But among the many secrets Madame Claude kept, perhaps the greatest were her own. William Stadiem, who knew the elusive Claude in the 1980s, follows her trail to the South of France.[more inside]
Getting to Know Whale Vaginas in 7 Steps
This Post Demands a Knee-Jerk Reaction
Human infants are born with a series of reflexes that help them survive -- or that helped their primate or mammalian ancestors survive, whose persistence marks their importance to primate survival. Reflexes are typically not sent to the brain; they occur along a much shorter pathway called a "reflex arc" (your doctor triggers a simple reflex arc by hitting your kneecap with a hammer; you can't control your leg kicking because the signal doesn't go to your brain but rather hits a reflex arc that is much shorter and only goes to your spinal cord) and "primitive" reflexes in infants are those that disappear and are "integrated" and overwritten by the growing nervous system. You can keep your adult knee-jerk reactions -- infants have much cooler reflexes. [more inside]
Hey you, up in the sky, learning to fly, tell me how high.
Why We're Not Driving the Friendly Skies A number of us can thank a cartoon character from the future, George Jetson, for instilling our longing. Students of aviation history might look for inspiration to the Autoplane prototype built in 1917 by the flight pioneer Glenn Curtiss. And tens of millions of motorists who have been stuck in traffic jams stretching toward the horizon must also feel a need to know: Where are the flying cars?
I've witnessed strange things ...
Jeff VanderMeer reflects on connections between personal experience and written SF/fantasy, including those in his own work as well as that of Angela Carter, Lev Grossman, Ann Leckie, Lauren Beukes, and Nnedi Okorafor. [more inside]
Three little letters, and it was time to fight.
The Loudest Word in Rock and Roll: "In a lot of ways it's really perfect and very cool, almost gang-like: 'We are The Stooges or The Kinks or The Sisters of Mercy.' The mind-set is, 'There is only one of us and we are it and we are gonna do it our way, no mercy.'" [more inside]
The Bro Whisperer
Bryan Goldberg's site for women was doomed from the start. One year later (previously), [bustle.com is] hugely successful. What’s his secret?" (Amanda Hess for Slate)
Please, mom, when can I use the iPad?
Haiku Decisis
"You can fit the cat in. If you want. If the cat wants to go in anyway."
Watch a very good YouTube video review of a Cambridge Satchel bag by Nix T., and enjoy the cat's appearance about 2 minutes in (you can hear the cat's jingle-bell collar just prior). (Cat makes valiant effort to keep appearing in that review.) A jingle-bell can be heard, once again, at the start of the follow-up video review of another Cambridge Satchel bag. Timing is everything; the cat waits until the four minute mark to video bomb its owner. Nix T. then proceeds to make use the cat by comparing its body size to his bag.
“They paid the ultimate price for standing up for the working class”
One Generation’s Time: The Legacy of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes (YouTube, 1 hour). The story of two activists who fought to improve the lives of Filipino workers in Alaskan canneries, their murders by members of a street gang, and the eight-year investigation that ultimately found Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos responsible for their deaths. [more inside]
Victor Gama: exploring musical terra incognita with unique instruments
Victor Gama is a self-taught composer and musician who has expanded his process of composing music for himself and others to perform into creating new or modified instruments, and is also involved with traveling to hard to access regions of Angola and recording local music, as documented on his website Tsikaya: Músicos do Interior. You can read an outstanding interview of Victor with Ned Sublette for Afropop, or read more on his creation of instruments as part of his creative process, or you can experience his performances on YouTube and his music on Soundcloud. [more inside]
One lawyer's look at his job
Why are lawyers so unhappy? One attorney by way of explanation demonstrates exactly what his days are like in an answer pulled out and published from a larger Quora thread.
It could be very dangerous. Or it could be a lot of fun.
Last night's season finale of Mythbusters marked the end of an era, with the departure of Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci after a 10-year run. [more inside]
shhh, it's sleeping.
It was a rite of passage to go in there, rent a movie and get snobbed on
With the approaching end of the last Mondo Kim's Video & Music, the one on First Avenue, here's an oral history of the iconic, idiosyncratic East Village video store from its clerks and customers, including Richard Foreman, Chloe Sevigny, Andrew WK, and many more. (previously)
1970s footballers at home
With the English Premier League season heading into its second week, The Guardian took the opportunity to publish a strange series of pictures from photographer Ray Wright of some of the top footballers of the 1970s posing at home with their families and a few choice possessions such as vacuum cleaners, radios, moving boxes, tricycles, wallpaper, axes and globes.
Enough is enough.
On Sunday, Tina Fontaine's body was found in the Red River in Manitoba after running away from a group home. There are more than 1100 missing or murdered indigenous women in Canada, and PM Harper has said that an inquiry into this is not needed, as it is "not a sociological phenomenon [but] crime". [more inside]
Eaton Science Fiction & Fantasy Archive in trouble?
Celebrated writer Nalo Hopkinson blogs that the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction & Fantasy, the largest publicly-accessible collection of sf/f genre books in the world, may be in danger, in the wake of changes in the library and university administration. The archive is housed by the library system of UC Riverside and currently hosts a biennial conference, a lifetime achievement award for celebrated writers in the genre and a student short story contest. The journal Science Fiction Studies (based at DePauw) sponsors a fellowship to promote research at the Eaton archive.
Underwater Puppies
To Everything (Kern Kern Kern) There Is A Season
HiLoBrow (the "p(HiLo)sophical blog" dedicated to highbrow AND lowbrow culture, but NEVER middlebrow, seen previously here) every August does a series of posts with a "(something) Your Enthusiasm" theme. In 2011, it was Jack Kirby for "Kirb Your Enthusiasm", in 2012, it was Captain Kirk for "Kirk Your Enthusiasm", in 2013, it was Very Old School Hip-Hop for "Herc* Your Enthusiasm" and this year, it's a mini-essay a day about specific typefaces: "KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM". [more inside]
Urbanicide
Not A Tea Party, A Confederate Party
Tea Partiers say you don’t understand them because you don’t understand American history. That’s probably true, but not in the way they want you to think.
The Weekly Sift examines the origins and beliefs of the Tea Party movement, tying it back to the Lost Cause movement. [more inside]
"When you hear the chime, it'll be time to turn the page."
Feeling nostalgic for those Read Along Adventure books of your youth? Well, this site has you covered with vintage audio files paired with Flash animation of the books (so you don't even need to turn the pages). List of titles here. Of course, if you're looking for the same format but with a harder edge, the Space Monkey X Audio Workshop just recently started creating their own based on "R" Rated films of the time. Their first project? John Carpenter's The Thing.
Le Sacre de Tasses
Words and Music with Oscar Peterson
Oscar Peterson interviews Joe Pass and Count Basie for his 1980 show "Words and Music." [more inside]
Heavy Metal Be Bop Part 1
In the imagination of a young Parisian named Pablo Padovani there’s a land called Moo. It’s a fantastical place that celebrates nature, the elements, romanticism and sweets [NSFW]. “I think you may like it if you like childhood, sex, dreams and surrealism,” Padovani [says]. “It’s a pornographic episode of Teletubbies mixed with Lord of the Rings.[...]The disc (Le Monde Möö by MOODOÏD) is a walk in the world Möö. This is a soft world made of cream hills and Turkish delight mountains. There are also Camembert mattresses and waterfalls of wine. This is a great, epic adventure."
Knowing where the trap is - that's the first step in evading it.
Omni Presents: The Top 10 Dune Art Tumblr Like Sites.
The All-Male Cast is a Revelation!
If pop culture treated men the same way it treats women.
I know you're all way too cool for Cracked but I thought this was both hilarious and on point.
Dad; one of Warhol's "13 Most Wanted Men"
George Lawler always knew his father was a criminal — his mug shot had been on New York City’s most wanted list in 1962. What he did not know was that his father had been a muse, of sorts, for Andy Warhol.
13 Most Wanted Men was installed by April 15, 1964 at The World's Fair site in Queens, NY. Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller had the work painted over before the Fair opened to the public.
Like taking a cold bath with someone you dislike
Reviews of classic books, culled from the internet's think tank.
"Liberty, tolerance, and respect are not zero-sum concepts."
A federal judge has struck down Florida's state constitutional ban against gay marriage. Four state justices have previously struck down the ban, but U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle became the first federal judge to rule the Sunshine State's ban unconstitutional. [more inside]
I care because you do...
Aphex Twin announces new album SYRO via the deep web! Richard D James uses deep web browser Tor to announce SYRO, his first album since Drukqs in 2001. [more inside]
August 21
Animal Spirits
The more we learn about the emotions shared by all mammals, the more we must rethink our own human intelligence [more inside]
"This is like an Olympic event during the days of Caligula"
Do you like games with awkward controls and physics? Do you dream of playing QWOP against your friends? Well, Mount Your Friends is just right for you! [more inside]
Club rats, sober alcoholics, the curious crowd, club kids, randoms.
"A great nightclub with amazing DJs, virgin drinks made with love, and hopefully an exciting atmosphere. It will be just like any club in Berlin, London, or Ibiza - minus the drunks." Stockholm's new nightclub Sober.
mince is not a meal
Jim Henson gets jazzy
the constant traffic of foreign objects through this woman's body
"When do women in Ireland get to say 'no'? Today we find out that the answer is 'never', not really – not if a man has other ideas and the state decides to enforce his use of a woman's body." [Warning: may be triggering.] New Statesman, "Violation after violation: why did Ireland force a woman on hunger strike to bear her rapist's child?" [more inside]
Budweiser is a better beer than you think
Today, there are new brewers in London diving straight in at the deep end, creating beers with wild yeasts, aggressive hops and whisky barrel ageing. Some of them are exceptional. Many are indifferent, and some are plain bad. Some of these cocky rebels could learn a thing or two from the bland brands they rail against: just as Picasso proved he was a master of painting human figures before he evolved into his unique abstract style, any new brewer should prove they can brew a fault-free, balanced lager or pale ale before they earn the right to tackle the hard stuff.Pete Brown: in defence of bland lagers.
Turn on, turn on, turn on, turn on the news: Zen Arcade hits 30
Hüsker Dü's landmark double LP hits its third decade this summer. "Nobody was prepared for Hüsker Dü‘s Zen Arcade. It didn’t sound like any other album slapped with the "punk" tag. It didn’t even sound like any other music being made in 1984. Zen Arcade was a double album released in an era when two-record sets were reserved for bloated and pointless live records or even more bloated and pointless “artistic statements” put out by artists with way too much creative freedom. Plus, it’s a concept album — the hoariest of ’70s music shackles. But Zen Arcade was different — a punk-based double album that wasn’t very punk at times. It wasn’t very focused either, moving from folk and pop to jazz and classic rock." - diffuser.fm
The sky's the limit on this chartered trip away. [more inside]
The sky's the limit on this chartered trip away. [more inside]
Touch the Pickle
Women in India face a whole host of period taboos such as sleeping apart from their husbands, not washing their hair, not touching jars of pickled foods, and not making cheese curd. Most women are too embarrassed to be seen purchasing sanitary napkins or even watching commercials for them. Napkin manufacturer, Whisper, has launched a campaign by addressing the taboo subject head on. So, go ahead and touch the pickle! [more inside]
C:\DONT
The butt-shakingly over the top video for Nicki Minaj's Anaconda (Previously) was released recently and while there's been discussion if it re-claims the twerk or refuses the male gaze, video artist Jeff Osborne has put the song into its 90s "Baby's Got Back" pop culture context with appearances by Jessica Rabbit, Beavis And Butthead, and more. (all videos quite NSFW) [more inside]
Much less than we realize, and much more.
What Should A 4-Year-Old Know? "She should know how to laugh, act silly, be goofy and use her imagination. She should know that it is always OK to paint the sky orange and give cats six legs. He should know his own interests and be encouraged to follow them. If he couldn't care less about learning his numbers, his parents should realize he'll learn them accidentally soon enough and let him immerse himself instead in rocket ships, drawing, dinosaurs or playing in the mud." (ht sonika on FB for this)
Cosmic pluralism: science, religion, and possible populations on Venus
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it became possible to believe in the existence of life on other planets on scientific grounds. Once the Earth was no longer the center of the universe according to Copernicus, once Galileo had aimed his telescope at the Moon and found it a rough globe with mountains and seas, the assumption of life on other planets became much less far-fetched. In general there were no actual differences between Earth and Venus, since both planets orbited the Sun, were of similar size, and possessed mountains and an atmosphere. If there is life on Earth, one may ponder why it could not also exist on Venus. In the extraterrestrial life debate of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Moon, our closest celestial body, was the prime candidate for life on other worlds, although a number of scientists and scholars also speculated about life on Venus and on other planets, both within our solar system and beyond its frontiers. Venusians: the Planet Venus in the 18th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (PDF), from The Journal of Astronomical Data (JAD) Volume 19, somewhat via NPR and their mention of amateur astronomer Thomas Dick's estimations of the populations of the other planets in our solar system (Archive.org online view of Celestial scenery, or, The Wonders of the planetary system displayed, 1845).
Welcome to this strange box with chairs in it.
The Shadow Syllabus: Writer and professor Sonya Huber offers some bullshit-free advice for her college students.
Goodbye & Good Luck!
"Each of us is born uniquely and dies uniquely. I think of dying as a final adventure with a predictably abrupt end. I know when it's time to leave and I do not find it scary." Gillian Bennett, whose last words are captured in her eloquent farewell website, has died. (Trigger warning for suicide.) [more inside]
A new trend in violence in The Big Easy
It was just after dark when Michael Martin, 56, was walking back to his home in New Orleans’ Marigny neighborhood, after helping a friend move... That's when he was jumped by a group of 13-year-olds and kicked, punched, and choked unconscious. He's not alone. It turns out that New Orleans middle schoolers are beating the shit out of artists and gays.
I want to be... under the sea...
explore.org livestreams beluga whales from Hudson Bay / Nelson River in Northern Manitoba. Thousands of belugas migrate hundreds of kilometres each summer from the Hudson Strait to warmer river waters on the western side of Hudson Bay so they can feed, mate and rear their young.
This year, their activities are being captured in real time by cameras mounted underwater and on the bow of a small Zodiac boat, which trolls the water for a few hours each day, Monday to Friday.
The next live showing is tonight @ 5pm EST. [more inside]
Middle East Peace Potential through Dynamics in Spherical Geometry
Middle East Peace Potential through Dynamics in Spherical Geometry: Engendering connectivity from incommensurable 5-fold and 6-fold conceptual frameworks. This is an exploration of the hypothesis that unique belief systems depend for their coherence on distinctive patterns typically embodied in geometrical symbols in two dimensions. On the basis of that assumption, the case tentatively explored here is that of the "incommensurability" of the 5-fold Star of Islam and the 6-fold Star of David of Judaism...Mathematically these patterns cannot be readily combined. This issue is described in mathematics in terms of tiling...A set of hexagons and pentagons can however be uniquely fitted together as a particular three-dimensional polyhedron, namely the truncated icosahedron. [more inside]
Talk with the animals?
A surprisingly dramatic world of lawsuits, mass resignations, and dysfunctional relationships between humans and apes. From Koko and Kanzi to Chantek and Nim Chimpsky,
research into human-ape communications used to be all the rage. Nowadays, not so much. What happened?
How Fast Can You Debug?
Will You Be Seated on a Jury?
If you've recently been called for jury duty, you may have been asked some rather personal questions. "In a recently concluded federal racketeering trial in Brooklyn, potential jurors were asked what public figures they admired the most and the least. For a political corruption trial, they were asked to list their three favorite movies and what the bumper stickers on their cars said." The New York Times, with the help of a jury consultant, created this quiz to see if you would potentially be seated on a jury.
Admittedly, it wasn't a fair fight.
Diagnostic Emoji: Laughing Face with Tears + Clapping Hands
Emojinalysis: You show me your recently used emojis. I tell you what's wrong with your life.
Previously from the same author. Emoji previously.
Previously from the same author. Emoji previously.
Perfectly Timed Dog Pictures
Perfectly Timed Dog Pictures. Does what it says on the tin.
ASL makes it obvious why "a room without a roof" = happy
For the second year, the campers at Deaf Film Camp, a two-week summer experience for deaf and hard-of-hearing teens interested in filmmaking, have made a great ASL music video. The video is entirely produced by the campers with guidance from a staff of filmmakers from the deaf community. This year's selection is Pharrell's "Happy", with ASL Interpretation created by Azora Telford and Rosa Lee Timm and performed by Telford, Timm, the campers and camp staff. [more inside]
Amazing deals on mannequin parts
"i’m really excited about this video……this Sears store is going out of business so we walked around the decaying retail ruins and the perfect song came on and we had a true vaporwave experience" from game developer Porpentine (previously)
You will also sense the life when you see the house's beating heart.
"I present to you Poseidon's Fortress (SYTL). Standing guard as you arrive is Poseidon himself as a winged muscular bronzed beast wielding his famous trident spear." One man's themed house in St. Cloud, Minnesota can now be yours. Turn on the laser light show for even more action and entertainment, enter the Cave Bedroom where if you leave the room disappointed you only have yourself to blame, and pump up in a gym complete with temple. [more inside]
A Charismatic Edge and a Dark Side
The National Portrait Gallery's exhibit American Cool is both an exhibition of portraits of 100 iconically cool Americans (pdf) and a meditation on what it means to be cool and how the concept has changed over time. Among those who made the cut are Bessie Smith, Joan Didion, and Benicio Del Toro. [more inside]
August 20
relative Pitch
Pitchfork recently released a list of what they consider the 200 best tracks of the decade so far (2010-14). [more inside]
D: "BREAAADDD!" D:
A Four-Year Old Reviews The French Laundry (with very cute photos.): "For our fifth installment, extreme fanciness edition, we took Lyla Hogan (favorite food: 'good ice cream in a hard cone') to what Anthony Bourdain has called 'the best restaurant in the world, period.' (It won that title officially in 2003 and 2004 and is still the #1 restaurant in California and #3 in the country). Lyla is the youngest person to eat a full tasting menu at the French Laundry."
Poetica: Jamaican poetry
The Australian Radio National program Poetica recently broadcast two episodes of Jamaican Poetry, and it's a real delight to listen to these contemporary and archival recordings of Jamaican poets (from all over the world) reading their poetry, some with musical accompaniment. Episode 1 ----- Episode 2. [more inside]
What's that rocket?
Arms Identification With Wikipedia, Holiday Photographs, and Shoe Size Conversion Charts - from the recently launched bellin¿cat 'by and for citizen investigative journalist'. [previously] [more previously]
This is who Guy is: a product of all of his influences and passions
Guy Fieri has made culinary TV into a viewer’s hell: "Unless I’m mistaken, you only had to give him one show." A thoughtful response from Allen Salkin, author From Scratch: Inside Food Network: "He isn’t the real problem at Food Network: The real problem is a loss of inventiveness at the company’s core." Leave Guy Fieri alone. [more inside]
Top Five Architecture Maps
Top Five Architecture Maps:
- Iconic Houses is an international network connecting architecturally significant houses from the 20th century that are open to the public as house museums. The Iconic Houses website includes a useful Google Map showing the location of architecturally significant houses around the world.
- Archilovers is a social network for architects, designers and lovers of architecture. Users of the network can post projects, exchange opinions and interests, and get to know designers and architects around the world.
- The World Architecture Map (WAM) is a database of architectural information that uses Google Maps to show the locations of architectural interesting buildings around the world. It is possible to search for buildings on WAM by location, building type, architectural style or by tags.
- Arti-Fact is great collection of architecturally important buildings and sculptures that can be found on Google Maps Street View.
- MIMOA is a Google Maps based guide to modern architecture around the world. It is possible to browse the collection of modern architectural gems by location and by type of project.
What if Michael Bay Directed "UP"?
The Art & Design of Protest
The Victoria & Albert Museum is hosting Disobedient Objects, an exhibit on 'out-designing authority.' [more inside]
I'm all about that controversy (no treble)
Meghan Trainor - a primer: "How many of you have no idea what we're talking about? Follow-up question: How many of you have looked at the iTunes chart and felt old recently? Come, let's learn together about Trainor, 'All About That Bass,' and the problematic nature of this song."
I've got millions of skills and tips and tricks and blah blah blah
Rónán Ó Snodaigh plays bodhrán, the Irish frame drum. For most traditional Irish musicians bodhrán's are the bane of their existence, often played poorly by people who can do nothing else, but in Rónán's hands, the bódhrán is a expressive instrument brought to life by a master who is willing to show you how to really play it. [more inside]
"someone who is beautiful and gets to do whatever she wants all day"
So if Thor is a woman now, and Marvel is a Disney subsidiary, does that make her a Disney Princess? For Tor.com, historian and geek Ada Palmer answers this joke question seriously and thoroughly while using it as a springboard to look at what makes a Disney Princess and what it says about us.
The Sexist Facebook Movement The Marine Corps Can’t Stop
That these men, these U.S. Marines, openly engage in this behavior, openly harass and denigrate women and minorities — under their real names, their real pictures, with no fear of repercussions — reflects a perceived tolerance of their actions. Senior leaders have never told them not to do it, never said that it’s unacceptable, and they’ve never seen anyone get in trouble for it.
Although women have been in the US Marines for nearly one hundred years now, a large "traditionalist" Marine culture still resents them and others in private and now increasingly in public through social media. [more inside]
When he heard the song of the chickadees, he could finally relax
GQ: The Strange and Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit. "For nearly thirty years, a phantom haunted the woods of Central Maine. Unseen and unknown, he lived in secret, creeping into homes in the dead of night and surviving on what he could steal. To the spooked locals, he became a legend - or maybe a myth. They wondered how he could possibly be real. Until one day last year, the hermit came out of the forest." [more inside]
Dancehall in Japan
Dancehall in Japan. A short mini documentary from the Scene Unseen project at #ListenForYourself. [more inside]
Well I'll Go To The Foot Of Our Stairs
This has nothing to do with the former Italian prime minister
Bárðarbunga, an Icelandic volcano named after a Norse viking, is maybe going to erupt soon. Webcams are standing by.
THERE WAS A BOX FULL OF FAMILY MATTERS CARDS. WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?
CSNY 1974
The Oral History of CSNY's Infamous 'Doom Tour'
Quick and agile, Aquarius has an aggressive fighting style
Bittersweet No More
In the wake of the great miracle fruit craze of the late 00's, Francis Lam tested two more obscure taste distorters: adenosine 5′-monophosphate, which blocks the sensation of bitter flavors, and Gymnema sylvestre, a South Asian herb that does the same for sweetness.
You had to have seen this coming, right?
A compilation of people fucking up the ice bucket challenge. (Mildly NSFW).
Pioneer Girl on the Prairie
This fall, the South Dakota Historical Society Press will publish Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder - apparently full of "not-safe-for-children tales includ[ing] stark scenes of domestic abuse, love triangles gone awry and a man who lit himself on fire while drunk off whiskey" (or, more academically put, "full of the everyday sorts of things that we don't care to think about when we think about history"). They've been blogging the process of research, annotation, and publication at The Pioneer Girl Project, as well as stories about crabs, a new letter from Pa, really useful books, as well as photos and a series of interviews with the researchers involved via.
It's a Denby
How do I get a static IP address for my teapot? The story of the teapot: HTCPCP (Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol) and the mentioned Wikipedia link.
Young Thomas Is A Longshoreman By Trade...
Jon runs the voodoo down
Pianist Jon Cleary is not a native New Orleanian (he hails from Cranbrook in Kent, England) but when it comes to the history and practice of New Orleans music, and piano music in particular, hell, you'd think he'd grown up on Basin Street or maybe next door to Tipitina's. You'll see what I mean when you watch this little clip, Jon Cleary - History of New Orleans Piano, and hear this masterful player roll through an exhaustive (and very entertaining) demonstration of the musical styles that the city is renowned and revered for.
Live happily and die majestically.
BKS Iyengar, one of the most prominent founders of modern yoga practice, has passed away. His 1965 book Light on Yoga (pdf link) sold millions of copies and began the growth of yoga into its current popularity. Namaste, Guruji. [more inside]
The Rise and Fall of Brownie Wise
In the 1951, impressed by the amount of Tupperware she was selling (especially compared to other outlets), Earl Tupper hired Brownie Wise to run his sales organization. As a VP of the company, she revolutionized Tupperware with her Tupperware parties, her salesforce management, and other sales and marketing techniques, thus allowing him to stay in the background, creating new designs. Sales skyrocketed and Tupperware became popular throughout the United States. [more inside]
FritoLay Blue, or May The Odds Be Ever In Your Flavor
One of the craziest "crowdsourcing" exercises in Marketing today is Lay's "Do Us A Flavor" Contest for new potato chip flavors. The first year in the U.S., 'Cheesy Garlic Bread' defeated 'Chicken & Waffles' and 'Sriracha' in a popular vote to earn its creator a million dollar prize. Exporting the competition to Canada (where it was named "Do Us A Flavour"), had a more dubious result when 'Maple Moose' outpolled 'Creamy Garlic Caesar', 'Perogy Platter' and 'Grilled Cheese & Ketchup' then bombed in the stores. But both contests are back for 2014, with American contenders 'Bacon Mac & Cheese', 'Cappuccino', 'Mango Salsa' and 'Wasabi Ginger' and the Canadian competitors 'Bacon Poutine', 'Cinnamon Bun', 'Jalapeño Mac & Cheese' and 'Tzatziki'. No wild animals there, but in the U.K., their British brand Walkers is doing it's own "Flavour" with six choices: 'Cheesy Beans on Toast', 'Hot Dog with Ketchup', 'Pulled Pork in BBQ Sauce', 'Steak Fajita', 'Chicken Curry' and 'Ranch Raccoon' (no Rocket Raccoon endorsement implied).
If you thought it couldn't possibly be worse, here's how it could be. (based on past experience, 'Rancid Owl' and 'Marsupial Medley' COULD be future contenders)
If you thought it couldn't possibly be worse, here's how it could be. (based on past experience, 'Rancid Owl' and 'Marsupial Medley' COULD be future contenders)
Become a citizen scientist!
It's Science Week in Australia and the crowdsourcing call has gone out for Weather Detectives to look through old ships' log books and track weather observations from the 1890s and 1900s. It's a good project for older kids, and aims to improve weather forecasting and track climate change. Do try this at home, kids.
August 19
That's us, boys, that's us
Representing New England in the Little League World Series, the Cumberland, RI American team lost to Jackie Robinson West of Chicago in a 8 - 7 game Monday night. Coach Dave Belisle's consolation speech to his team has been making the rounds as an example of the best of youth coaching. [more inside]
"My Sex Is Magic"
Brenna Twohy, representing Portland, OR, performs her poem "Fantastic Breasts and Where To Find Them," about Harry Potter, pornography, and non-consent, at the 2014 National Poetry Slam.
15 years later, Fark discovers moderation
Deus ex machina
Patrick Lin discusses ethics, responsibility and liability related to safety programming in self-driving cars: Robot Cars With Adjustable Ethics Settings.
Explosive Crude By Rail
Gaza Writes Back
Mahmoud Darwish once wrote, of Gaza, “We are unfair to her when we search for her poems.” [more inside]
Isis claims to have beheaded an American journalist missing in Syria
Video has emerged showing the beheading of journalist James Foley. James Foley has been reportedly beheaded by Isis in retaliation for US airstrikes in Iraq. He was working in Syria when he was reported missing in 2012. [more inside]
...depending on how much support you have to give
Before IMDb, there was The Guide
For over 25 years, film critic Leonard Maltin (along with a team of contributors and editors) have produced what has been the Bible of movie geeks everywhere in his annual movie guide. The 2015 edition that will be released next month will be his last. The Dissolve has offered their own eulogy.
(The folks at MST3k were also fans, as evidenced to three memorable moments that pay tribute to the man, the book and his not entirely accurate rating system.)
Ice Cream without the screaming
Nigella Lawson's Coffee Ice Cream: 4 ingredients. 1 step. No cooking. No churning. One of Food52's Genius Recipes.
After Bill & Ted there was Tommy Scissorkicks & Billy Hammerfist
Billy Hammerfist avenges Tommy Scissorkicks for killing his lover numerous styles of filming - some very bad, some very well done, a 2D Dr. Mario homage, a 3D outer space scene, most definitely amateur, most definitely B-movie at the best of times.
and with a cat like that you know you should be cats
The world is a dark and a terrible place. Horrible, morally insane things are happening. Let us resist them as best we are able, and in the meantime replace various nouns in the lyrics of well-known pop songs with the word “cats,” that we might whistle against the coming of the night together a while longer.Song Lyrics Improved By Replacing Proper Nouns With Cats: Part 1. Part 2. By Mallory Ortberg. DLTT.
"That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery."
Things That Don't Suck, Some Notes on The Stand
[Spoiler alert: assume everything, from the link above to those below, contains SPOILERS.] [more inside]
I recently reread The Stand for no particular reason other than I felt like it. I'm honestly not sure how many time[s] I've read it at this point, more than three, less than a half dozen (though I can clearly remember my first visit to that horrifyingly stripped bare world as I can remember the first reading of all the truly great King stories). It's not my favorite of King's work, but it is arguably his most richly and completely imagined. It truly is the American Lord of The Rings, with the concerns of England (Pastorialism vs. Industrialism, Germany's tendency to try and blow it up every thirty years or so) replaced by those of America (Religion, the omnipresent struggle between our liberal and libertarian ideals, our fear of and dependence on the military, racial and gender tension) and given harrowing size.
I'm happy to say that The Stand holds up well past the bounds of nostalgia and revisiting the world and these characters was as pleasurable as ever. But you can't step in the same river twice, even when you're revisiting a favorite book. Even if the river hasn't changed you have. This isn't meant as any kind of comprehensive essay on The Stand. Just a couple of things I noticed upon dipping my toes in the river this time.
[Spoiler alert: assume everything, from the link above to those below, contains SPOILERS.] [more inside]
Oh Canada...
A "secret" government proposal would no longer mean automatic citizenship to babies born to foreign parents on Canadian soil, despite this happening fewer than a few hundred times each year.
Lev Grossman on finding his true genre
You have demons in your subconscious? In a fantasy world those demons can get out, where you can grapple with them face to face. The story I was telling was impossible, and I believed in it more than I believed in the 10,000 entirely reasonable, plausible things I’d written before. Lev Grossman, author of the Magicians series of books, on how he found his voice as a fantasy novelist.
There was no BBC in Shakespeare's time.
Shakespeare's Restless World is a BBC radio series (podcast link) where the director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, explores England during the lifetime of William Shakespeare as represented by twenty objects, much in the way of his earlier A History of the World in a 100 Objects (previously). The focus is on Shakespeare's plays and how they were understood by his contemporaries. The series was also published as a book.
"I keep the tank in Wales."
"Depressives can fake it better than Meg Ryan"
Broadway's Patrick Page Shares His Personal Struggle with Depression The night I heard that Robin Williams died, I slept very little. And it wasn't just grief keeping me awake. It was fear. I know my depression is lurking just around the corner-waiting. As Harvey Fierstein says, "All it wants to do is get you alone in a room and kill you."
Like Shooting Stars
Back in 2012, fashion photographer and filmmaker Milton Tan shot a time lapse film over a six month period, of planes overflying Singapore's Changi Beach on their way to and from Changi airport. After his "The Air Traffic" video went viral, managers at the airport made Tan an offer: six months of access to a restricted runway for a second film: The Air Traffic Two. (Via) [more inside]
"Captivated" on HBO
'"The good news is we solved the murder of your husband. The bad news is you're under arrest.' Everyone's a noir hero!" A new HBO documentary explores what happens when the media are mixed up in a crime from the very beginning-- with fiction and film added in for good measure.
A local news writer is incensed with HBO for bringing it all up again. (She will not be watching the documentary.)
The Evolution of Slang
For a century and a half, The New York Times has been earnestly—and hilariously—defining the evolving language of cities.
We marveled at the way these expressions—the ones we understood, anyway—captured the spirit of the era in which they were defined. It makes sense, for instance, that the Times defined acid ("a slang term for the drug LSD") in 1970, grunt ("a slang word for an infantryman") during the Vietnam War, diss ("a slang term for a perceived act of disrespect") in 1994, and macking ("a slang term for making out") in 1999.[more inside]
"I probably should have told Jordan and Dan about that beforehand."
Jesse Thorn tells a story from his childhood about police violence. Story starts at the four-minute mark.
It presumably refers to either a kind of sofa or a kind of birth control
The Upshot asked: Where are the hardest places to live in the U.S.? (A bit more on the ranking.) Now, given continuing economic divergence (previously): What do the two Americas search for?
The Black Widow
Three times she married, and all three times her husbands died. Her first husband, David Stegall, a young, talented dentist, shot himself to death in 1975. Her second husband, a popular hotelier and investor who conceived the luxurious Mansion Hotel on Turtle Creek, died of cancer in 1982. Her third husband, Alan Rehrig, a former college basketball star in Oklahoma who had come to Dallas to hit it rich in real estate, was found murdered in December 1985. [more inside]
Because You're Worthless: The Dark Side of Indie PR
Struggling UK indie developer PuppyGames' uncomfortable truths about selling indie games: Steam and bundles have destroyed the market for games, individual customers are now worthless, but everyone has to keep on smiling. Oh, and the demo is dead: 1, 2.
August 18
Escalating Tensions in Ferguson, Missouri
We are now entering day 10 of protests in Ferguson, MO, protesting the murder of unarmed teenager Michael Brown by local law enforcement officer Darren Wilson on August 9th. [more inside]
Don Pardo, 1918-2014
Don Pardo, announcer for Saturday Night Live, The Price Is Right and Jeopardy!, has died. [more inside]
Spidey Spidey Awesome: The World of Disneycartoys
Somewhere on the internet Barbie, Elsa, and Anna are BFFs. Disneycartoys is a mashup of doll, action figure, and play-doh "unboxing" videos which often break out of the unboxing genre and evolve into full-on crossfic narratives, featuring Barbie, the Disney princesses, and occasionally an effeminate Spiderman.
A look back at the funky, psychedelic, soulful 70s in Nigeria
According to the Daptone Gold compilation liner notes (auto-playing music, click on "Biography"to read the notes), written by Pitchfork contributor Douglas Wolk, "the world capital of soul" has moved from the US ("between Memphis and Detroit, with occasional stopovers in New Orleans, Cincinnati and elsewhere") in the 1960, to Lagos in the 1970s, then it went into hiding, finally reappearing in Brooklyn, with Daptone Records. Let's go back - why Lagos in the 1970s? [more inside]
California Drought Update
All of California remains in drought with over 80% in worst categories of 'extreme' or 'exceptional' drought. Reservoir levels are 50% below average. (previously) [more inside]
A signature song not just for an album, or for a film, but for a career
I Know Times Are Changing: Anil Dash dives deep into Prince's Purple Rain.
Damn video rental outlets and cheese stores selling Argentine parmesan!
Has your neighborhood become 'upscale'? Take a San Francisco gentrification quiz from 1985 and find out. In 1985, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a tongue-in-cheek quiz allowing readers to see if their neighborhood had turned upscale. It's interesting to see how many of these types of business no longer exist (travel agencies!) and to think about what some of the others have morphed into almost three decades later.
Apartment Houses of the Metropolis
Breathtaking Russian dancing - men in uniform
Amazing Russian dancing men in uniform Don't know much about this, but thought you'd like it.
"See you next year at the halloween parade" - Lou Reed's New York at 25
Lou Reed's New York LP hit the quarter-century mark earlier this year. "Meant to be listened to in one 58-minute sitting as though it were a book or a movie," New York couples an unusually accessible rock style with some of most topical lyrics of Lou's career. "Protesting, elegizing, carping, waxing sarcastic, forcing jokes, stating facts, garbling what he just read in the Times, free-associating to doomsday, Lou carries on a New York conversation--all that's missing is a disquisition on real estate." - Robert Christgau
Get caught between the twisted stars, the plotted lines, the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York. [more inside]
Get caught between the twisted stars, the plotted lines, the faulty map that brought Columbus to New York. [more inside]
Oh No Ross and Carrie
Ross and Carrie are "curious investigators who love asking questions about spirituality, fringe science, religion and the paranormal." They investigate by joining religions, attending events, trying out alternative treatments, and just generally participating in anything weird. [more inside]
In the horror community, the guy who gets all the other guys together
Director, writer, and producer Mick Garris releases videos of his interviews with people in the horror and sci-fi entertainment industry at his new website, Mick Garris Interviews. There is also a YouTube channel. An introduction can be found at the about page. According to The Nerdist, interviews will be released at the rate of one per week. Interviews already uploaded: a four-parter with Director John Carpenter (here's Part 1 YT), and one segment with John Badham, director of Dracula (1979) and, incidentally, Saturday Night Fever (1977).
"My heroes have always been pocket cowboys."
You go!
The 2014 Hugo Award Winners were announced at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, Loncon3. The Hugo Awards are "the premier awards in the Science Fiction field, given annually for over 50 years in over a dozen categories." [more inside]
A heart rather than a phone call.
A Memoir Is Not a Status Update by Dani Shapiro [The New Yorker] "What would have become of me if I had come of age as a writer during these years of living out loud?"
human connection with & despite algorithmic curation
I quit liking things on Facebook for two weeks. Here's how it changed my view of humanity [more inside]
Streamers in the solar flux
They saw "birds entering the solar flux and igniting, consequently become a streamer," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. BrightSource concentrated solar plant is a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays. Estimates range as high as one streamer every two minutes at a single plant, though this is disputed. A Federal report (PDF) is "occasionally gruesome".
34 Panoramic Shots gone disturbingly wrong, wrong, wrong.
34 Panoramic Shots which illustrate why leaving all the photography decisions to your phone software, is not always the best decision Do not click link if you don't want to see images which simulate bodyhorror. Think videodrome-esque. As per usual YMMV. [more inside]
How to talk Australians
Delhi College of Linguistics presents How to Talk Australians. (YouTube playlist).
I go to the syege.
Speke latyn lyke a scoler!
“I am almoost beshytten”: A 16th Century English to Latin Textbook
Here is a direct link to the start of the phrasebook
“I am almoost beshytten”: A 16th Century English to Latin Textbook
Here is a direct link to the start of the phrasebook
Our Microbiome May Be Looking Out for Itself
Your body is home to about 100 trillion bacteria and other microbes, collectively known as your microbiome. Naturalists first became aware of our invisible lodgers in the 1600s, but it wasn’t until the past few years that we’ve become really familiar with them. This recent research has given the microbiome a cuddly kind of fame. We’ve come to appreciate how beneficial our microbes are — breaking down our food, fighting off infections and nurturing our immune system. It’s a lovely, invisible garden we should be tending for our own well-being. But in the journal Bioessays, a team of scientists has raised a creepier possibility. Perhaps our menagerie of germs is also influencing our behavior in order to advance its own evolutionary success — giving us cravings for certain foods, for example.
Maybe the microbiome is our puppet master.[more inside]
Google and CSU team up to advance the state of artificial intelligence
Evolving QWOP gaits is the first work that samples video from the QWOP game to drive the fitness function of a genetic algorithm, which allows a fully autonomous simulated runner to kind of slowly shuffle forward, effectively achieving human-like levels of performance.
occasionally, she wears flannel.
when my boyfriend proposed, I cried — more like panic tears. but I wasn't certain I should end it — until I met her
It was born in the stables. It died in the snow.
The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles Jon Bois (previously) writes what Spencer Hall called "the world's first CFL-seaventure-GIFstory novella" covering Tim Tebow's future as a Toronto Argonaut and a whole lot more.
Run you cowardly Italian!
On 16 April 1746, the Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart fought loyalist troops commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. In 1964, Peter Watkins wrote and produced a docudrama for the BBC, from the perspective of a documentary crew on the ground, depicting the battle and its aftermath: Culloden. [1:12:14]
August 17
How To Tell When Fruit is Ripe
Facebook tests satire tag.
Who wants to live tweet the revolution?
Marina Abramopug
Fifth Use of a Physics Degree: Proceed to Nerd Out
Amusing Surface Tension Experiment (SLYT) Mad science with a ball point pen, cup of water and a bit of liquid soap. [more inside]
Cakes and Ale and Richard III
New analysis on Richard III's bones reveal the richer diet available to a king, as well as his drinking habits.
Iceland From Above
You've Been 'Mingoed!
Playing Magic with Geek Friends
So all of your friends have either just started playing Magic: the Gathering or have picked it up again or else admitted to having played it continually for twenty years now, and eyes are glazing over as they discuss bomb rares and 2-for-1s and mana flooding and drafting. You're not sure if you actually want to immerse yourself in this but you can't know for sure without, well, immersing yourself in it. We've all been there. Thankfully, Felicia Day's Geek & Sundry channel has a show for you - Spellslingers! [more inside]
"'Holy cow?!' What, are you Amish?"
Who are you now, Doctor?
A hypnotic video merging every actor who's played Doctor Who into one average face. [SLYT] (Laughing Squid via)
I'm Just a Guy Whose Library Went Dark
"Friends tell me I’ll be remembered as the author of the definitive book on football [The Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football]. Or as the writer who popularized weekly NFL picks. Or one of the early crossovers into 24-hour sports television. To me, none of that matters. Right now, I’m just a guy whose library went dark on November 22, 2008."[auto play video] - Paul Zimmerman, known as Dr. Z, collaborates with Ken Rodgers, the supervising producer for NFL Films, to tell his story. Thank you, Dr. Z. Yours truly, Everybody.
Kim Jong Un hits Obama with the dreaded "Your mum"
"A run-of-the-mill report on Kim Jong Un attending the test fire of a rocket showed a series of photos of the Supreme Leader enjoying himself far too much as he farts about with weapons of mass destruction.
Oh-ho! Says an internet wag." #KimMischief
Exploring the Invisible
Dr. Simon Park is Exploring the Invisible, the world of microbial art, with Physarum (writeup), A New Field Guide To The Wild Flowers Of The Crystal World, Designing Flowers For A Bee-Less World, Ghost. [more inside]
"Fool the Axis -- Use Prophylaxis!"
"The posters are paragons of graphic design principle—but beneath their tidy exteriors are convulsions of pure lust and panic." From the Paris Review, Sam Sweet draws our eyes to Ryan Mungia's "Protect Yourself: Venereal Disease Posters of World War II." Brief interview with Mungia, plus a few more images, here.
"I AM ____ LOCKED"
Tony Zhou (previously) has created another great video essay on filmmaking techniques: "A brief look at texting and the internet in film" (also previously).
Okay, angry owls it is
One of the great things about medieval art and architecture is that people just went in and did things. They didn’t build models and scale them up. Building great cathedrals and abbeys was a learning process as much as anything else. This means many of these apparently perfect aspirations to the Heavenly Jerusalem have some often quite comical mistakes, corrections and bodge-jobs that once you see, you can’t unnotice. Great Mistakes in English Medieval Architecture.
You still see the bars closing in when you close your eyes
Kiesza's Hideaway's Russian Cousin
Kiesza's Hideaway video is a fantastic single-shot tribute to 1990s dance. (She even broke a rib shooting the video.) But check out what happens when Russian performance duo Bonia and Kuzmich (Mikhail Kuzmin and Julia Starikova) (Боня и Кузьмич) created a tribute video.
August 16
The Incorrigible Reprobate of Twentieth Century Publishing
L. W. De Laurence has been called "the incorrigible reprobate of twentieth century publishing" but his extensive and well-written catalog, and the books he offered on subjects ranging from mind-control to Hindoo magic, had an immense influence over American voodoo and hoodoo, as well as Jamaican obeah. The general hatred for De Laurence seems to stem primarily from his plagiarizing of magic-related texts by other famous authors.
While this sort of act was frowned upon, at the time that he was operating it was all perfectly legal; the only thing he did that was not, was the actual selling of occult products by mail. Carolyn Morrow Long's book Spiritual Merchants contains excerpts from the trial. The lawsuit didn't seem to stop the De Laurence company, however. They continued going strong for many years, even outlasting the companies that manufactured most of their original perfumes and incenses.
The De Laurence Company is still in business but no longer produces the fancy catalog and appears to have turned its 21st century focus toward jewelry making.
This is Mr Fine Wine, playing old soul 45s for the next two hours...
Downtown Soulville, WFMU's weekly show for classic soul 45s, hit its 20th anniversary on Friday. The learned, laidback cratedigger Mr Fine Wine has played an estimated 20,000 old soul 45s since the show's launch.
The full shows from the last six years are available on the WFMU website.
Expect two-hour bursts of soul vinyl, early RnB and Detroit funk from Matt Weingarden.
John is the new Jon
With a combination of humor and fearlessness, Last Week Tonight has done an unlikely thing: spurred action. John Oliver’s segment on net neutrality this past June perfectly summed up what his HBO show Last Week Tonight is so good at: transcending apathy. It’s an ingenious formula that’s making a difference in the real world. “Making a difference” isn’t hyperbole. The FCC’s website actually crashed from overwhelming web traffic the day after Oliver’s segment originally aired. The Atlantic looks at How John Oliver Beats Apathy.
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, previously
- John Oliver on net neutrality, previously
- Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on FanFare
The raygun Gothic future which never came still exists for me
But in addition to our retreat into wishfulness, something else was brewing: a sense that the past was not only better than the present, but that the past’s predictions for the future were also better than what had actually become the present. No longer content to live in (or through) our memories of the past, we also yearned to live in the past’s vision of the future. We were nostalgic for yesterday’s prognostications: You could say that we succumbed to prognostalgia. Living with our backs to the future, on the cultural fixation with past dreams of the future, on the 50th anniversary of Isaac Asimov's write-up on the 1964 World's Fair, which is still being reviewing to track Asimov's hits and misses [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Welcome to the Instant Gratification Econonomy
A series from Re/code exploring the explosion of tech startups that cater to our every need and desire, on demand. [more inside]
When we profile your rage we are reacting to the facts.
Regulations For Your Rage – The Toast
Beyond the sweeping majesty of the snorfle snorfle snarf
Sometimes, life is like a box of cacao products
"Enrique Martinez didn't like chocolate, but he was eating as many as 10 pieces a day, drinking chocolate protein shakes and rubbing a chocolate-based skin cream on his face. It was expensive chocolate, too. Martinez and his wife, Michelle, were going through $2,000 in chocolate a month."
How Should a Person Tweet?
"There are a lot of people who are so innovative on twitter. That’s why it’s so puzzling to me when someone like Jonathan Franzen is like, 'twitter is murdering literature with a gun!' Twitter is seen as a millenial thing. Naturally, older people assume we only use it to send thousands of disrespectful selfies to God, or whatever the stereotype is nowadays." - Kimmy Walters (@arealliveghost) to Sheila Heti in Part One of The Believer Logger's interview series, "What Would Twitter Do?" [more inside]
Homosexuality Is For The Birds
Koryos, who previously explained how cats got domesticated using tumblr, now explains why homosexual pair-bonding can be a successful reproductive stratagem. Also, Coot Parenting Tips, Queen Cowbird Of The Brood Parasites , There's No Such Thing As An Alpha Wolf, and Can Animals Have Pets?
The Cello and The Nightingale
In 1924 the BBC transmitted its first live outside broadcast: a duet between cellist Beatrice Harrison and the nightingales nesting in the garden of her Surrey home. Capturing the song of the Nightingale. [more inside]
A moving story about anonymous donors to the Miami Zoo
The angel approached in the summer of 1993, after the storm.
Ron Magill, the goodwill ambassador and communications director of Zoo Miami, wrote this first-person article for the Miami Herald as a tribute to two longtime donors to the zoo.
girls and technology!
WYNC's Manoush Zomorodi investigates the gender gap in tech and computer science, and finds a number of people working towards bridging that gap, from childhood to university: completely restructuring a required computer science course to make it more welcoming to female university students, celebrating women in computing history (and recognizing that computer science wasn't so male-dominated, and making children's books and toys (even dollhouses!) for kids to explore programming concepts on their own. She also noticed that the majority of female computer science students in the US had grown up overseas - possibly because computer science isn't a common subject in American high schools. This is slated to change: a new AP Computer Science subject is in the works, with efforts to get 10,000 highly-trained computer science teachers in 10,000 high schools across the US.
If you want to join Mindy Kaling in supporting young girls entering computer science, tech, and coding, there's a lot [more inside]
Stirlitz had a thought. He liked it, so he had another one.
A Soviet take on Rambo (brief clip; Rutube) is "unique in its violence and anti-Americanism." A Russian point of view on James Bond remarks that "so widespread was the interest in Bond that an official Soviet spy serial ... was released." But the spy novel / miniseries Seventeen Moments of Spring (somewhat digestible in 17 highlights with commentary: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17) is for interesting reasons not a Soviet counterpart to James Bond or Rambo. See also Seventeen Moments fanfic, two pages of jokes about its hero, and how he figures in the present. [more inside]
August 15
'how everyday technology fools our brains into seeing more'
This explains so much academic writing
"It seems that, if you just present the correct information, five things happen," he said. "One, students think they know it. Two, they don’t pay their utmost attention. Three, they don’t recognize that what was presented differs from what they were already thinking. Four, they don’t learn a thing. And five, perhaps most troublingly, they get more confident in the ideas they were thinking before." It turns out that confusion is a powerful force in education.
What font do fish fear the most? Gill Sans
No One Was Sticking Up For Him; Not Even Him
Five-O
Georgia Teens Develop App to Document Police Abuse - Five-O, allows citizens to enter the details of every interaction with a police officer. It also allows them to rate that officer in terms of courtesy and professionalism and provides the ability to enter a short description of what transpired. [more inside]
Public Corruption Unit
authentic point of view
Modcloth just became the first fashion retailer to sign the Heroes Pledge for Advertisers, promising the following: [more inside]
What's for Lunch?
Ever wonder what giant people eat? Ever have the feeling that you're a "weird eater"? Ever feel like you need some inspiration to eat more? EliteFTS, a website geared mostly towards selling powerlifting gear and educating competitive strength athletes, has put together a list of what their staff and sponsored athletes typically eat for lunch. [more inside]
why we care about what we wear
"— a fixer who knew just what to do."
PAPER BOYS: The Dark World of Debt Collection [New York Times] In the murky world of unpaid bills, a banker and an ex-con can make a fortune — if they don’t run into too many crooks.
The Hunt is on
Huntbnb is a new service that helps landlords and neighbors find Airbnb listings within their own buildings. While Airbnb does not list actual addresses for listings, HuntBnB matches user-entered exact addresses to Airbnb listings within close proximity. [more inside]
Everyone, meet the Pipe Guy
The Pipe Guy is a 10min medley of songs played on PVC pipes with flip-flops by a busker at a mall that is so good I can't stop playing it over and over.
"Good News, Everyone..."
What's not to like?
46 Photography eBooks to download for free. Among the free resources compiled by LS are National Geographic‘s “Ultimate Field Guide to Photography,” Strobist‘s “Lighting 101,” Adorama‘s “Guide to Lighting” and many many more.
FRIENDLIEST SCADA ON THE NET
A scan for systems allowing remote desktop connections without passwords performed during a Defcon talk about the Masscan tool found a wide variety of system open for anyone with knowledge of the correct IP address, such as access to a hockey rink, a manufacturing plant for a Swedish condiment, hydroelectric plants and
a lot more. [more inside]
"But really, if you can make tea, then you can make beer."
Meet craft brewers, home brewing enthusiasts, bartenders in "Craft Beer – A Hopumentary", which focuses on California. [YT] [more inside]
Sweet Tooth
The Cherry Cordial Revolution Do I help Grandma? Or do I follow the (eavesdropped) rules and refuse to buy Grandma her cherries?
Prediction: Winter is coming. Pretty sure.
I finally gave in and started reading Game of Thrones. When I got to the end of the first chapter, I texted a bunch of my nerd friends like, "Why do people think this is surprising? It is like super-obviously signposted!" From there, it turned into a project where I try to predict what will happen in Game of Thrones. Predicting Game of Thrones, a blog by Eyebrows McGee, with an accompanying predictions log. NOTE: this is full of spoilers for the first two books, and the first half of Book III (Storm of Swords) will be online soon. Plus any number of theories could come true in the later books. [via mefi projects] [more inside]
A tale of easy student Loans, for-profit schools & private equity
The most striking feature of the Direct PLUS Loan program is that it limits neither the amount that a school can charge for attendance nor the amount that can be borrowed in federal loans. "This is, for a private-equity firm, a remarkably attractive arrangement: the investors get their money up front, in the form of the tuition paid for by student loans. Meanwhile, any subsequent default on those loans is somebody else’s problem—in this case, the federal government’s." [more inside]
Aaaand the winner is...
Last night was the third annual Internet Cat Video Film Festival in Minneapolis. (previously, previouslier) This year's fest was curated by 2012 Golden Kitty award winner, Will Braden, of Henri fame. [more inside]
Meryl Streep has been omitted
It's just a jump to the ... well, in any legal direction really
The Peg Solitaire Army is a problem spun off from a classic recreation, and yet another example of the golden ratio turning up where you least expect it. If you want to look at the game more deeply, George Bell's solitaire pages are the ne plus ultra: There's more about the solitaire army (and variants), ... [more inside]
It crawled out from some dark corner of my computer
I've no idea what this video is. It crawled out from some dark corner of my computer after evolving from the virtual maggots that feast on rotting film footage.
The new thing by Cyriak Harris.
Metal Cat
That's not a hard drive. THIS is a hard drive.
In Search at San Jose the R&D minds at IBM describe how they designed & built the world's first hard drive, the IBM 305 RAMAC (previously). First sold in 1956, it stored a whopping 5 million characters of information, all ready for immediate access to the user.
Nobody says "Menzoberranzan" like Ice-T
Love Drow? Love Copkiller? These two great tastes come together as Law & Order star Ice-T reads a tale of the Forgotten Realms' most misunderstood of dark elves, Drizzt Do’Urden. And it's free!
And Ice is bringing all his celebrity friends: The Legend of Drizzt: The Collected Stories expands upon the epic legend of the dark elf with 12 tales performed by the all-star cast of Felicia Day, Dan Harmon, Greg Grunberg, Tom Felton, Danny Pudi, Sean Astin, Melissa Rauch, Ice-T, Wil Wheaton, Al Yankovic, Michael Chiklis, and David Duchovny! And there are behind the scenes glimpses.
How to Be Polite
August 14
A Straw? Seriously? That's just too clever.
Sirens of the Sea
Wave instruments: San Francisco's gurgly Wave Organ; Blackpool's moaning High Tide Organ; Zadar's hypnotic Sea Organ. [more inside]
Hey Ladies! and the Shudder of Recognition
Ok, this may be the most important email I send all year, so PLEASE RESPOND RIGHT AWAY. We need to figure out our summer weekend plans ASAP!!!! We’re closing in on our mid-twenties and I think this is gonna be the summer we all meet our potential first husbands, so location is EVERYTHING!!! Plus Sex and the City. Let’s take a vote!
Creeping psychological horror, hilarious satire, or terribly accurate glimpse into the emails of a group of passive aggressive group of "friends" in their mid-late twenties? The Hey Ladies saga by Michelle Markowitz and Caroline Moss at The Toast chronicles the adventures of a group of friends who live in New York via their group emails as they plan various outings and events. [more inside]
Colonial American Digressions
On the visual imagination of the literary character
If I said to you, “Describe Anna Karenina,” perhaps you’d mention her beauty. If you were reading closely you’d mention her “thick lashes,” her weight, or maybe even her little downy mustache (yes—it’s there). Matthew Arnold remarks upon “Anna’s shoulders, and masses of hair, and half-shut eyes … ” But what does Anna Karenina look like? What do we see when we read?
♫ 'Cuz I know that I will never get these songs out of my head... ♫
You've Gotta Hear this One Song, It'll Change Your Life I Swear
In honor of the 10 year anniversary of Garden State, we explore some alternative soundtracks to that infamous "this song will change your life" scene, featuring the aforelinked Spin Doctors (#1) and Katy Perry (#2)
as well as such musical luminaries as [more inside]
How the sun sees you
A mind left utterly to its own devices...
How extreme isolation warps the mind Among other things, extreme isolation can warp our perception of time, lead to both visual and auditory hallucinations, and impair our social functioning.
“A Shocking Sabbath Carnival of Death”
On November 9, 1874, one of the worse incidents in New York history occurred when a polar bear, a panther, a Numidian lion, several hyenas, and a Bengal tiger, slipped their cages from the Central Park Zoo. "The animals, some of which had first attacked each other, then turned on nearby pedestrians who happened to be strolling through Central Park. People were trampled, mauled, dismembered—and worse." [more inside]
This Man Thought He Would "Sail About a Little" ...
Millennials Don't Stand A Chance (gasp!)
Millennials Don't Stand A Chance. A terrific debate from Intelligence Squared: "...spotlight is shown on millennials and their use of revolutionary technology while growing up in a time of recession. Some think they are coddled, narcissistic and lazy. Have we let conventional wisdom blind us to the millennial's openness to change, innovation, and optimism in the face of uncertainty, which, in any generation, are qualities to be admired?" (running time ~50:00) [more inside]
Where We Came From, State by State
A New York Times interactive graphic feature charting how Americans have moved between states since 1900.
EXCLUSIVE: 10 Ways to Use Our Sponsor's Product More Often
AdDetector is a browser extension that spots articles with corporate sponsors. It puts a big banner on top of any article that may appear unbiased at first glance, but is actually paid for by an advertiser.
For example, it turns the small, light-grey-on-white "Sponsored" on this deadspin article into a giant red banner.
"Native advertising" previously.
In third grade, I wrote a parody of Portnoy’s Complaint that killed.
"This fall, the long-running NBS sketch show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is set to enter its 29th season, and no one has been a larger part of the program's success than its head writer and executive producer Matt Albie, who has been a major creative force behind the show since he was first hired in 1997.
I was fortunate to be granted a rare interview with Albie, who contacted me via his Twitter account to set things up during his summer break from S60."
The Expose Project
but without italics we don't know when spaghetti was still exotic
"Respectfully officer, I don't have to answer that."
"Explore & race through Wikipedia articles"
The Wiki Game is a collection of five browser-based games that challenge you to find things in Wikipedia. Play modes are Speed Race, Least Clicks, Six Degrees of Wikipedia, Five Clicks to Jesus, and No United States. Warning: VERY addictive.
Working anything but 9 to 5
Magical Realism Menu
Tables For One is a collection of restaurant reviews "from another New York City" by A. Ponitus and illustrated by Evan Johnson. The restaurants include Frito-Lay themed places, salt-obsessed aliens, a gelato cult, notable NPR personalities, and a cafe for heartbreak.
Controlling the genetics of wild populations, a next step in GM research
New GM technique injects mosquitoes with a gene that results in mostly male offspring, eventually leading to a population crash. Previous efforts to tackle the disease, that kills more than 1 million people each year – most of whom are African children – have included bed nets to protect people and insecticides to kill the mosquito species most responsible for the transmission of malaria (Anopheles gambiae). The new technique by a team at Imperial College London involves injecting mosquitoes with a gene that causes the vast majority of their offspring to be male, leading to an eventual dramatic decline in population within six generations as females disappear. “You have a short-term benefit because males don’t bite humans [and transmit malaria],” Andrea Crisanti, one of the authors of the new research, which was published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday, told the Guardian. “But in the long term you will eventually eradicate or substantially reduce mosquitoes. This could make a substantial contribution to eradicating malaria, combined with other tools such as insecticides.”
These new mosquitoes are now set to be used in Brazil, having been approved for use by the Brazilian government with a factory for their production now opened.[more inside]
Welcome to The Future! (Please enjoy responsibly.)
Congratulations on winning our sweepstakes! We’re pleased to welcome you on a most-expenses-paid, open-ended trip to The Future, where you will enjoy fantastic technologies, abundant luxuries, exhilarating freedoms and opportunities, an inexhaustible supply of entertainment, and other truly ludicrous privileges.
Offer may expire without notice. Please take advantage while supplies last. Prizes may not be exactly as described; some may be replaced with others for logistical reasons, but the approximate value remains the same. For example, instead of squirrels, you may receive additional birds. Bartering of prizes is allowed and encouraged.
Fine, you've guessed the ending to Game of Thrones
As production of the fifth (of a probable seven) season of Games of Thrones proceeds, book author G.R.R. Martin admits that fans have accurately guessed major spoilers for the ending of the series. [more inside]
What Can a White Man Say About a Black Woman’s Hair?
Jenée Desmond-Harris, associate editor of features for The Root, answers a reader who wrote in wondering if his compliment of a stranger's Afro was out of line. Though acknowledging that some women won't want to hear a compliment, regardless, Desmond-Harris elucidates three points on how to compliment a black woman's hair without being a jerk: 1) Hands to yourself. 2) Compliment, don't query. 3) Consider the context.
The Painted Horses of Sweden
First they're carved, then they are dipped, and finally they are painted. In the late 1930s, the Dalahäst (Dalecarlian horse, or Dala horse to Americans) made the transition from traditional home-made Swedish toy to Swedish symbol when they became the centerpiece of the Swedish Pavilions at the 1939 World's Fair. Although many (Scandinavian-)Americans associate the brightly painted wooden horses painted in the kurbits style with yuletide decor, the toys have no seasonal assignation for Swedes.
do while !glory
Welcome to Al Zimmermann's Programming Contests. You've entered an arena where demented computer programmers compete for glory and for some cool prizes. The current challenge is just about to come to an end, but you can peruse the previous contests and prepare for the new one starting next month.
August 13
Ruth Crawford Seeger, American composer
In 1930, a 29-year-old composer named Ruth Crawford (wiki) became the first woman to ever receive a Guggenheim fellowship—despite the chairman of the awards wondering, of women composers, "Is there any such beast?" The next year she wrote her modernist masterpiece String Quartet. [more inside]
SORRY, I'M DEAD.
Chronicler of the gross and creepy Bogleech presents a look at the bosses of classic NES weirdfest Monster Party and the sprites recently discovered in a ROM dump from a Japanese prototype cart.
In the eye of the storm: Typhoons in Hong Kong
South China Morning Post interactive graphic detailing the effect typhoons have had on Hong Kong since settlement.
‘When the typhoon was at its height a Chinese was blown down Pedder Street toward the wharf, and unable to stop went headlong into the harbour… A European rushed across the windswept space and boldly jumped in to the rescue. He succeeded in securing the drowning man with the aid of an Indian constable who unrolled his turban and threw the end to the rescuer.’
Shades of the Masked Man!
BAH GAWD! (exp.) — A shocked evocation of the deity in order to underscore the gravity of a moment or situation, popularized by announcer Jim Ross. Must be screamed loudly in a pinched Southern tenor. (Related expressions: MAH GAWD!; GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY!; slobberknocker — an unsightly brawl; shades of [wrestler X] — when a wrestler uses a move in a manner reminiscent of a previous wrestler; business has just picked up — an unexpected entrance that raises the stakes in a segment; bowling shoe ugly — a roughneck or plainly (and woefully) uncoordinated match; That’s [wrestler X]’s music! — a surprise appearance by a wrestler, as forewarned by his entrance music playing before he appears in person.)
Feeling overwhelmed by wrestling, sorry, sports entertainment lingo? David Shoemaker at Grantland presents the Grantland Dictionary: Pro Wrestling Edition.
Feeling overwhelmed by wrestling, sorry, sports entertainment lingo? David Shoemaker at Grantland presents the Grantland Dictionary: Pro Wrestling Edition.
Behold, the fish cannon
Behold, the fish cannon. Fish ladders are passé. If you want to move your salmon upriver, shoot them there!
BuzzFeed Motion Pictures President Ze Frank
Producer Michael Shamberg Wants to 'Invent the Future' With BuzzFeed Motion Pictures - "I don't think there's ever been a Hollywood R&D model like we have here." (previously 1,2,3) [more inside]
“not that many guys knew about stretching.”
The Rise of Beefcake Yoga. (slnyt) Not the trend piece the title suggests, instead a very particular story centered around Diamond Dallas Page.
Don't Look Down on Me
Jonathan Novick gives us a bit of his background and shows us a day in his life as an achondroplastic dwarf living in New York City.
Collectif Textile
Walk a mile in her face.
Men Try Women's Makeup For The First Time (SLYT) Five ordinary, average Joe's get women's make-up applied to half their face. The film includes their comments about the experience as it occurs, a split screen at the end showing the "male" and "female" halves of their faces (it can help to pause and compare each one), and an interesting effect where they slowly turn from one side to the other. [more inside]
Mining and mapping comments to the FCC on Net Neutrality
Despite the comment collecting engine crashing on the last day to submit comments on the very popular topic of Network Neutrality, the system worked well enough to collect 1.1 million comments, which the FCC has made available to the general public as six XML files, totaling over 1.4 gigs of raw data. Mailed comments postmarked prior to July 18 are still being scanned and entered, so this isn't everything, but it's a lot of data. TechCrunch graphed the frequency of certain words, with the high score going to Comcast, with 4,613 mentions. NPR shared the visualized results of Quid's analysis of a sample of 250,000 comments, and Quid's analysis of a sample of 317,000 comments to map geographic sources of the public comments and adjusted them based on state populations to depict which states care more about net neutrality, while The Verge dug deeper, mapping comments by zip code.
BGP Hijacking for fun and profit!
Dell SecureWorks has discovered that a blackhat used spoofed BGP announcements in order to steal cryptocurrency worth about $83,000 over the course of a few months earlier this year. [more inside]
Gaming's race problem
GenCon, the best four days of gaming starts tomorrow. It is also very white.
It's perfect! Everything we need is right here!
A 14-year-old Texas boy ran away from home on July 28. Rather then flee to a friend's or relative's home, or hiding out in nearby woods, the boy chose a location with more abundant resources. A Corsicana, Texas, Wal-Mart. The boy managed to remain undetected inside the store for roughly two and a half days (some reports count it as four days based on the dates) through some surprisingly sophisticated techniques to avoid discovery using the materials available to him. The boy is now back with his family, and Child Protective Services was not formally brought into the case as police report he did not appear to be suffering from neglect or otherwise living in a dangerous environment.
memes that demean
"Having influential figures like George Takei publishing a meme that reinforces disabled=fake is incredibly damaging to disabled people." [more inside]
15,000 Useful Phrases
Being a practical handbook of pertinent expressions, striking similes, literary, commercial, conversational, and oratorical terms, for the embellishment of speech and literature, and the improvement of the vocabulary of those persons who read, write, and speak English. (Grenville Kleiser, 1917)
Beauty itself doth of itself persuade The eyes of men without an orator.
Folger Shakespeare Library Releases 80,000 Images for Creative Common Use. The Folger Shakespeare Library announced yesterday, that they have released the contents of their Digital Image Collection under a Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) license. Full database can be accessed here.
Flat and happy
"However you look at this style, truth is, it's the best cluster of masculine, feminine, chic, laid back, basic, put together & casual and does really work with everything: skirts, dresses, trousers, jeans for either work or not." Oxford shoes, "flat and happy". [more inside]
Sorting our world: The Nairarbi and the Diiwi code
Even the first-year student of anthropology quickly learns that cultural groups are “varied” and “diverse.” Yet one group that has not been studied in all its diversity is the Nairarbi, an information-working caste scattered through many societies in the modern world.
You're gonna need a bigger haringbuis.
Selected pages from Adriaen Coenen's Visboek, an illustrated guide to the strange and wonderful world of fish. No sixteenth-century mariner should leave shore without it. The National Library of the Netherlands has the complete book, with commentary.
An Angel, A Flower, A Bird
Cross-dressing trapeze and tightrope artist Barbette seems to have sprung out of a Jean Cocteau fantasy, but surely was a real person. Exact birthdate and parentage subject to dispute, but somewhere around the dawn of the 20th Century in Texas. Subsequent to highschool, he replaced a deceased woman in the Alfaretta Sisters aerialist circus act. Barbette toured the vaudeville circuit and debuted in Europe in 1923. Barbette's curtain-call wig-ripping-off move was ripped off for Victor/Victoria. [more inside]
Dougiestan: A clear mind and a full heart
A north Texas man in the "sovereign citizen" movement attempted to take over a mansion in north Dallas on Monday. Upset with the current state of affairs in the United States, Douglas LeGuin attempted to occupy a mansion in far north Dallas. After knocking on the door and threatening a nanny, he started a dumpster fire. When first responders arrived, he began shooting at them, but no one was injured. LeGuin had also set up propane canisters around the house as explosives but none were detonated. He called 911 and it really is a doozy. [more inside]
"This stuff isn't science fiction. The robots are here right now."
Humans Need Not Apply. Video essayist CGP Grey explains why we need to start preparing for a post-human economy.
The most wanted man in the world
Edward Snowden - The Untold Story, from Wired's Threat Level.
photos of home
Breathtaking collection of images at The Atlantic: Viewing the Earth From Space
August 12
"We have a rape gif problem and Gawker media won't do anything about it"
In refusing to address the problem, Gawker's leadership is prioritizing theoretical anonymous tipsters over a very real and immediate threat to the mental health of Jezebel's staff and readers. If this were happening at another website, if another workplace was essentially requiring its female employees to manage a malevolent human pornbot, we'd report the hell out of it here and cite it as another example of employers failing to take the safety of its female employees seriously. But it's happening to us. It's been happening to us for months. And it feels hypocritical to continue to remain silent about it.Because somebody is spamming Jezebel with violent porn gifs and Gawker has been lackadaisical in dealing with it, the problem has now spread to other Gawker sites.
Dave's definitely not here.
Google Tackles Aging With Calico
Calico, the company Google launched in September to try to cure death by tackling aging and illness, now has an official website..." [more inside]
Law students battle trolls
I will name him "Puffy"
The air-conditioner hummed like an over-sized bear eating a large salmon
Elizabeth Dorfman of Bainbridge Island, WA, is the 32nd grand prize winner of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which challenges writers to concoct the worst opening sentence of a hypothetical novel. The winning entry:
When the dead moose floated into view the famished crew cheered – this had to mean land! – but Captain Walgrove, flinty-eyed and clear headed thanks to the starvation cleanse in progress, gave fateful orders to remain on the original course and await the appearance of a second and confirming moose.More notable entries from this year. [more inside]
Goodnight, Slim.
Lauren Bacall, the film and stage actress and model who was known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks, died Tuesday at the age of 89.
IMDB,
Wikipedia,
An interview from 1994.
You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve?
Previously
Hum Hum Beep
The Sky(lab) is Falling!
Skylab is Falling! (SLYT) A seven minute Indian film about the 1979 Skylab "disaster" as seen through the eyes of a child. [more inside]
"Don’t shoot me"
Why Did Michael Brown Die in Ferguson? - According to the police of Fergusson, Missouri it was because he reached for an officer's weapon, necessitating that he be shot multiple times as he ran away empty handed. Eyewitness tell a different story. Whatever happened the killing has prompted demonstrations and looting. Ferguson police responded in full force, firing teargas and wooden rounds into crowds of protestors and sealing the area off from the media. In the wake of the tragedy questions of racial profiling, the paramilitarization of police and media depictions of black shooting victims have been raised. Meanwhile the shooter has not been named to preserve his safety.
2014 Fields Medals
The 2014 Fields Medals have been awarded to Artur Avila, Manjul Bhargava, Martin Hairer, and Maryam Mirzakhani. Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford, is the first woman to win math's highest prize, and Avila is the first South American. Erica Klarreich at Quanta Magazine has profiles of all four winners. [more inside]
Chillax
Balls to the Wall: Inside New York City's Thriving Lacrosse Culture
Advice from the Book Doctor
Julia Eccleshare knows what kids should read in order to experience an antidote to our money-fuelled world, to learn to question authority, have smart female role models, learn about feminism, get to know South Asian characters and families with same-sex parents. Which books help to feel good about wearing glasses, when one feels 'weird' or different, which make the dark less scary or would lure a 13-year-old boy away from his Xbox. She is the book doctor. [more inside]
The Cod Will Never Return, And We Must Go To Alberta
De Islanda Insvla
Íslandskort is a digital collection of historical maps of Iceland put online in high quality pdf-files and jpegs by the National Library of Iceland. Here are a few of my favorites: 1, 2, 3. You can either browse a timeline of all the maps or browse categories such as first maps of Iceland, Iceland on sea charts in the 17th and 18th centuries and other maps, which includes maps of Frisland (1, 2), a phantom island that bedeviled cartographers for centuries.
In conclusion, LEGO is a land of contrasts.
LEGO does something good! (Sets revolving around female scientists sold out in one day; previously.)
LEGO does something bad! (Sets with major petro-company branding.) [more inside]
This surgery could pay for itself after around 90 hours
Tamale Recipes, Sweet and Savory
Delta Hot Tamales Are Hotter Than Ever
Delta "hots" themselves perfectly exemplify the tamale's malleable properties. Made with cornmeal instead of the lime-treated masa used in Mexico, a Delta hot is simmered (rather than steamed) in a spiced broth—hence the name. Though the dish's precise origin remains elusive, it's said that at one point in the 1920s a few Mexican cotton pickers made their way up from the Rio Grande Valley, toting a recipe that was then transformed by local African-American cooks—possibly aided by southern Italians who'd settled in the area. Whatever. By 1936, tamales were so entrenched in Delta culture that Robert Johnson, who'd made his pact with the devil just up the road from Greenville, recorded a song about them called "They're Red Hot."[more inside]
Vice in the Islamic State
Vice has obtained "unprecedented access" inside the Islamic State in a 5-part documentary The Islamic State. War photographer and corespondent Medyan Dairieh spent weeks alone among the Jihadists. Other films by Dairieh include Rebels of the Bridge, and A City Left in Ruins: The Battle for Aleppo
Una fontera entre el valor y el miedo por un bocado de mar
Depression is like being forced to wear a cloak made of lead
Depression is like being forced to wear a cloak made of lead. You don’t get to choose when to put it on and take it off. It is a second skin which gradually seeps into your own real skin and poisons it until you are a walking, toxic, corrosive bundle of infectious awfulness. The thought of suicide is the only real respite and the only chink of light at the end of the tunnel. You can "pull yourself together" only inasmuch as you can make yourself three feet taller. [more inside]
The King of Beer
Meet the Beer Bottle Dictator: For years, one man has approved virtually every beer label design in the United States. Among brewers, he’s a tyrant. A legend. A pedantic pain in the ass. Brewers and legal experts speak of him in hushed tones, with equal parts irritation and reverence. "He’s the king of beer. His will is law," said one lawyer who works with him regularly. The lawyer asked to remain anonymous, for fear of crossing the beer specialist. "There’s one dude in the government who gets to control a multibillion-dollar industry with almost no supervision." And he goes by the name "Battle."
She Throws Like a Girl (with a 70 MPH fastball)
This past Sunday, Philadelphia's Taney Dragons punched their ticket to the Little League World Series behind the complete game shutout pitching performance of Mo'Ne Davis, who at 13-years-old already throws a 70 MPH fastball. Davis will become only the 17th girl to play in the LLWS in 68 years. She has become an inspiration to others as she redefines what it means to "throw like a girl".
"This is a book for both the new and experienced reader."
Deep Chords: Haruki Murakami’s ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage’ [New York Times] Patti Smith reviews Haruki Murakami's latest novel. Book Trailer
Unfolding an exquisite corpse
Grumbling Fur are a pair of former choir boys drawn to each other as teenagers by a love of metal and hardcore punk. Now they "make music that is terribly English: both polite and sinister," one part drone, one part rural psychedelia. Their new album, Preternaturals, released yesterday, is now streaming over at The Quietus. [more inside]
...it is impossible to know the true number of works that exist...
The Public Art Archive is a free database of publically visible and accessible works of art, primarily in the United States.
It currently contains 8605 works of art, by 3578 artists. For an idea of what's there, they also produced an overview map
August 11
Out of thousands of typefaces, all we need are a few basic ones…
Why the Security of USB Is Fundamentally Broken
Computer users pass around USB sticks like silicon business cards. Although we know they often carry malware infections, we depend on antivirus scans and the occasional reformatting to keep our thumbdrives from becoming the carrier for the next digital epidemic. But the security problems with USB devices run deeper than you think: Their risk isn't just in what they carry, it's built into the core of how they work.
A nice story about baseball
Baseball writer Rany Jazayerli tells us about his online acquaintance Sung Woo Lee, fan of the Kansas City Royals, who is having a good week. He's been a Royals fan since the 1990s and this week, he came to the US to see them play for the first time. KC rolled out the red carpet and the Royals are even winning. [more inside]
Everyone thinks they can DJ (SLYT)
Wired Profiles Stewart Butterfield
Like Ouroboros
RIP Robin Williams
Robin Wiliams famous for his impressions, role as Genie in Aladdin, standup comedy, Mrs. Doubtfire and many other comedy roles has died at the age of 63.
The Interstate Limburger War of 1935
"Burkhard challenged Miller to a 'Cheese Duel': Burkhard and Miller would sit at a table, and if Burkhard could cut a piece of Limburger cheese and Miller not wretch, Miller would be forbidden from complaining about Wisconsin and her cheese ever again." [more inside]
The humanity has been reduced to nothingness.
"The world isn't being destroyed by democrats or republicans, red or blue, liberal or conservative, religious or atheist -- the world is being destroyed by one side believing the other side is destroying the world. The world is being hurt and damaged by one group of people believing they're truly better people than the others who think differently. The world officially ends when we let our beliefs conquer love. We must not let this happen."Andrew W.K. (previously applauded advice columnist) offers advice to a guy who reduces even his own father to a set of beliefs and political views and how it relates to him.
Amazon vs. Hachette, an Epic Battle Faught with Letters and Addresses
Best Selling author Douglas Preston, along with 907 other authors, signed a letter that ran as a double full-page ad in yesterday’s print edition of the New York Times, asking Amazon to stop blocking or delaying the sale of books on their site as a tactic to lower the e-book prices that Amazon is charged by the publisher Hachette.* The three month dispute between Hachette and Amazon previously prompted a response by Amazon’s self-published authors and readers, but it took an odd turn Saturday night when Amazon posted this letter on a site called ReadersUnited.com, after sending it as an email to all of its Kindle Direct Publishing authors. In that letter they include Hachette’s CEO’s email, and have asked their KDP authors to write to Hachette’s CEO telling him what they think about cheaper ebooks. [more inside]
The bike of the future?
Automatic gear shifting, auto-adjusting lights, built-in fenders and platform rack, an electric motor (with detachable rechargeable battery) for pedaling assist, and a detachable handlebar that turns into a bike lock: "The Denny," designed in Seattle, has won a nationwide design contest and will be produced by Fuji.
Beyond menswear and womenswear
Gender-neutral fashion + The right to be handsome: Clothing for gender non-conforming people on the rise.
What does it mean to follow Metroid?
Maddy Myers of Paste magazine connects the influence of the film Alien on the game Metroid and looks at how subsequent imitators have failed to live up to the promise of Metroid's original design. 'Troid Rage: Why Game Devs Should Watch Alien—and Play Metroid—Again
Talking the Talk
Guest Comics are as much a part of Webcomic Culture as missed deadlines and hiatuses (but often intended to prevent the other two)*. But occasionally there's a special reason to drag other creators into your webspace. Semi-infamous Penny Arcade artist Mike Krahulik has been featuring his young son (actually named Gabriel after his comic alter-ego) as a plot device, but when the real Little Gabe started asking about "where babies come from", he did what any successful media creator would do: "have a carousel of strangers explain 'the penis' to you while I hide in the basement". And it's an All-Star Carousel of Strangers (by webcomic standards), obviously kinda NSFW, but with NO rapewolves, thankyouverymuch. [more inside]
An Aussie waxes eloquent about a quirky bit of artwork
Up, up and g'day: Superdoreen is Miss Galaxy 1982 A fascinating peek into Australian history and culture through a tiny sliver of artwork. [more inside]
dermokratiya
Watching The Eclipse - "Ambassador Michael McFaul was there when the promise of democracy came to Russia—and when it began to fade."
In the three months between McFaul’s appointment and his arrival in Moscow, a great deal changed. Putin, feeling betrayed by both the urban middle classes and the West, made it plain that he would go on the offensive against any sign of foreign interference, real or imagined. A raw and resentful anti-Americanism, unknown since the seventies, suffused Kremlin policy and the state-run airwaves. As a new Ambassador, McFaul was hardly ignorant of the chill, but he launched into his work with a characteristic earnestness. “Started with a bang,” he wrote in his official blog. During the next two years, McFaul would be America’s primary witness to the rise of an even harsher form of Putinism—and, often enough, he would be its unwitting target.[more inside]
Today We Honor Ralph Wiggum
There is no place on the social structure for a second-grade boy who thinks rats are “pointy kitties” and calls his teacher “Mommy.” Kids can be misfits (Milhouse), or they can be brownnosers (Martin), or they can be troublemakers (Nelson), or they can be tattle-tales (Sherri and Terri), but being Ralph is simply not a taxonomically viable option. Ralph Wiggum's Finest Moments.
shaky cam + time lapse + inferred geometry + smoothed path =
Reasoning with your muscles.
Every Good Boy Does Fine: A life in piano lessons. [SLNewYorker]
Mostly a watery anti-war movie. (mostly)
"Twenty-five years after its release, The Abyss remains an oddity in director James Cameron's filmography. But the fact that it's an oddity seems like an oddity. The underwater sci-fi epic, about a team of commercial drillers who stumble upon a deep-sea alien civilization, wasn't a flop by any means. It made more money than The Terminator and came very close to matching Aliens at the box office. It holds a higher critical rating than Avatar and Titanic (according to the almighty Rotten Tomatoes, at least). And yet it has utterly failed to reach the same levels of cultural saturation as Cameron’s other works."
“How well I would write if I were not here!”
Italo Calvino profiled on the BBC TV show Book Mark in 1985: [SLYT] Rare interview with the great Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels.
"...because they tell us dragons can be beaten."
Digital artist Laurie Fauvel knows about the terrors that haunt children's dreams. In her "Terreurs" series of digital manipulations, children fight against the monsters menacing them in their beds
You're 16. You're a pedophile. What do you do now?
Inside a group of young paedophiles and their fight to stop themselves from offending. Needless to say, trigger warning. [more inside]
How dope was the Arsenio Hall Show? This dope.
One-armed bandits
Slot machines and video gambling were once marginal to the success of casinos — but nowadays, they account for up to 85 percent of the gaming industry's profits. And casinos have devised a dizzying array of strategies to make these machines as addictive as possible, from the elaborate algorithms beneath the hood to the position of the armrests.
and it's making me feel like my trousers are torn...
American Nazi summer camps
I have one great party trick. Anytime someone asks me if I’ve ever come across something really cool while working in the Motion Picture Preservation Lab, I tell them about the time we had what looked like footage of a Boy Scout camp and then the Boy Scouts raised a Nazi flag along with the red, white, and blue.Audrey Amidon, of the (US) National Archives Motion Picture Preservation Lab, tells the story of that time they found 1937 film footage of an upstate New York nazi youth summer camp.
August 10
A history of electronic music
In These Hopeful Machines "James Gardner traces a personal path through the evolving world of electronic music – and meets some of the people who made it happen. In six content-rich episodes he looks at over 100 years of recording techniques, electronic instruments and gizmos, and their use in popular music, art music and their position in Western culture." [more inside]
“If I could come up with another absurd detail, I would”
The possibly sad truth about the "magical" bipedal bear of New Jersey
You may have seen stories about a magical bear in New Jersey who walks on its hind legs like a person (if not, here's a video and a second.) Sadly, this might be because it's front paw is injured, possibly "suffering a partial amputation." For another example of a bear making do with less, here is a three-legged bear walking on its hind legs at times.
Nixon's the One
Harry Shearer reenacts the moments preceding Nixon's resignation speech as captured by a running television camera. If it seems weird and stylized, the actual footage seems even weirder. The reenactment is part of a television series, Nixon's the One, created by comedian Shearer and Nixon scholar Stanley Kutler. Andrea DenHoed writes about the TV show and the strange scene before the speech in The New Yorker.
Fair Feast.
"Does this bulletproof jacket make me look fat?" (SLYT)
Who's Lying? Who's Self-Justifying?: Origins of the He Said/She Said Gap in Sexual Communications. Carol Tavris, a social psychology researcher, took the stage at The Amaz!ng Meeting 2014 to talk about sexual abuse allegations, feminism and rape culture.
Orchestrate Illusions (Superpermuter)
The Minimal Superpermutation Problem - Imagine that there is a TV series that you want to watch. The series consists of n episodes, with each episode on a single DVD. Unfortunately, however, the DVDs have become mixed up and the order of the episodes is in no way marked (and furthermore, the episodes of the TV show are not connected by any continuous storyline – there is no way to determine the order of the episodes just from watching them). Suppose that you want to watch the episodes of the TV series, consecutively, in the correct order. The question is: how many episodes must you watch in order to do this? [more inside]
Martin Solveig - Defected In The House
Need a few hours of relaxed, fun, afro-cuban and funk based house DJ mix music to help you get through the end of your weekend, or perhaps to give next weekend the fun party vibe it needs? Martin Solveig (French DJ/Producer, produced Madonna's MDNA album, but don't let that scare you off) has you covered. 2006's Defected In The House is a three disk album available on Grooveshark, full of bongo and conga beats, uplifting lyrics, and just enough fun and groove to keep your booty shaking or your day at work flying by.
The Yoyo Champs Are Here
Ever see someone who's so good at something that you just kind of have to take the crowd's word for it? Take a gander at the freshly enYouTubed championship performances from the World YoYo Championships in Prague this weekend.
Gentry Stein won the Single Hand String Trick (1A) championship, while Takuma Yamamoto took the Two Hands Looping Trick (2A) crown. [more inside]
SKREE clonk blONK REEE
A video of the Guitar Center store in Times Square. As per the video description, "36 seconds of hell on earth".
Why can they not, I say, form a foot-ball club?
The true origins of Australian rules football, first codified in 1859 following a famous letter by Tom Wills, have been the subject of sometimes bitter disputes that have been referred to as football's history war. Although the earliest formal football clubs were founded in 1858 (and the earliest known women's clubs in the 1910s), informal football games were widely played in the early 1850s. Scholarly and public discussions about the origins of the game centre on Marn Grook, a collection of indigenous games played with possum skin game balls. Although the lack of documentary evidence makes definitive answers hard to come by, the link between Marn Grook and Aussie rules in modern culture is very prominent, showing up in documentaries (clips: 1 2 3), TV shows, and even children's books. [more inside]
Being Gay in Iran
Chesscademy
Chesscademy is a chess teaching website modelled on Codecademy. As such, it gives a sequence of short puzzles and exercises which help you build up knowledge of everything from how the pieces move to the intricacies of positional play. Sections of each 'course' are introduced by a short video. It's like a well-written chess book with interactive diagrams!
Math and equations are fun.
The power of math: 17 Equations That Changed the World - a one table summary of the book by Ian Stewart FRS. Business Insider gives its interpretation of the importance of each equation. Brain pickings (2012) on this book and equations, and another extract from the book. [more inside]
The Foehr Reef
The Foehr Reef is part of the worldwide Crochet Coral Reef Project. It was made by over 700 women and combines more than 4000 individual pieces of marine wonder. A short video shows its beauty [alternating English and German audio]. PDFs with pictures.
"The Crochet Coral Reef is a woolly celebration of the intersection of higher geometry and feminine handicraft, and a testimony to the disappearing wonders of the marine world." It originated out of a desire to increase awareness of environmental threats to the world's reefs and is a conjunction of art, environmentalism, and geometry. [more inside]
The radiance of life
"Woolf often conceives of life this way: as a gift that you've been given, which you must hold onto and treasure but never open. Opening it would dispel the atmosphere, ruin the radiance—and the radiance of life is what makes it worth living. It's hard to say just what holding onto life without looking at it might mean; that's one of the puzzles of her books. But it has something to do with preserving life's mystery…" Virginia Woolf's Idea of Privacy
Springtime on Saturn
Storm Chasing on Saturn with Cassini [viz. cf.] - "The sun is slowly rising over Saturn's north pole, exposing an immense six-sided hurricane. The storm, big enough to swallow four Earths, was first spotted by the Voyager missions in the early 1980s. [Cassini] will be passing directly over the north pole with its cameras pointing down later this month." (previously 1,2)
Amway journalism
In their long and seemingly hopeless search for answers, journalists have internalized the abusive rhetoric of the “disruption” brigade. Jarvis tells beleaguered journalists that they themselves, the lowly content-serfs—not short-sighted newspaper proprietors, not the Wall Street backers of corporate media conglomerates, not the sociopathic unchecked tech monopolies, not hostile politicians and prosecutors—are to blame for their sudden loss of livelihood. Don’t blame remorseless corporate Vikings like Craig Newmark for killing the news business. Blame old-school reporters like Dana Priest for failing to cultivate their Facebook fanbases.The Baffler puts the boot into cyberjournalist hustler Jeff Jarvis.
Fully on the fence bro
New Zealand's next general election is in September. With the 2011 turnout (74%) the third lowest in a century, political groups are working hard to increase youth enrolment, turnout on the day and political engagement in general. And they're not afraid of using cartoon sheep where necessary. Bonus: record levels of political billboard vandalism.
A chassis in stasis
The closure of the Hindustan Motors factory in Uttarapara, West Bengal, is the end of an era in Indian history. The Ambassador is the perfect example of all that was wrong with Indian policy towards industrialization, manufacturing and business. Protectionism and the license raj created a seller's market where people waited years to buy a car. Until liberalization in the 1990s, the Amby hadn't known any real competition, and there was no pressure to either modernize or improve quality. None of this mattered, at least we had a car. And there wasn't any other quite like it in the world. RIP, motor gadi.
August 9
WarKitteh
Gender-inclusive language in D&D 5e raises roleplaying questions
How Dungeons and Dragons is endorsing the darkest parts of the RPG community "Three weeks ago the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons came out. D&D is the iconic tabletop role playing game, so a new edition is a big deal. It’s one of the few times that the small, insular pen and paper community gets noticed by the rest of the world. Many game websites have talked about it, notably Polygon’s piece on gender inclusive language. Yet at the same time as D&D tries to appeal to those outside the gender binary, it has been driving them away by employing two of the most toxic personalities in tabletop gaming." [more inside]
Suspended Wings, Confined Wings, Segmented Wings
The mechanical artwork of metalsmith and jewelry-maker Dukno Yoon simulate the flapping of wings through the simple swish of a finger, or powered by metronome. Artist's Series, youtube
Come with us and see how your shoes are made.
How To Make Shoes (silent SLYT), from the 1930's
Climate change and contemporary fiction
"Novels are no use at all in days like these, for they deal with people and their relationships, with fathers and mothers and daughters or sons and lovers, etc., with souls, usually unhappy ones, and with society etc., as if the place for all these things were assured, the earth for all time earth, the sea level fixed for all time." [more inside]
“Broken Windows” Liberalism
Bill de Blasio has reduced the use of stop-and-frisk, but he still supports the kind of policing that led to Eric Garner’s death. New York City cops are fuming. On Tuesday, union officials gathered to publicly denounce “police haters” and defend the conduct of police officers involved in the apprehension of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who was killed while being placed under arrest for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. Last week, the state medical examiner’s office said Garner died as a result of being put in a chokehold — a tactic banned by the New York Police Department. [more inside]
Humans of New York World Tour: Iraq and beyond
If you visit the Humans of New York website or on the Facebook page now and in the next few months, you'll find portraits and stories from beyond New York. Brandon Stanton and HONY will be going on a "world tour," to be part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group effort to raise awareness for the eight international Millennium Development Goals with a target date of 2015 . Currently, HONY is "suddenly a war report form Iraq". [more inside]
Fallout: New Jersey
"When Dystopia Rising went well, there were moments that felt natural, perfect. My first night was filled with gang warfare and hunts for a cult of radiation-worshipping Social Darwinists, but one of the parts I remember best was sitting next to a busker who played me a song from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, gave a mythologized retelling of the musical, and ended up explaining the origins of a group I believe was called the Church of Daft Punk" -- The Verge on playing in the massively complex post-apocalyptic LARP ( Live Action Role Playing) game, Dystopia Rising.
You don’t remember what it was like when there was no feminist internet
Matter and MSNBC.com, along with 40 writers, are rereading Susan Faludi’s 1991 feminist classic, Backlash, this summer, one chapter at a time, and inviting you to read along. [more inside]
“typical of Seuss’ late-period”
Check out the New York Public Library’s hilarious archive of librarians’ harsh children’s book reviews [more inside]
From "Not The Onion"
NSA Tried To Delete Court Transcript In Lawsuit Over Deleting Evidence On three separate occasions in the Jewel V. NSA case, the NSA sought to delete evidence. Then it sought to redact the transcript.
Believe it or don’t, turtles are horrifically well endowed...
Phrase of the day: “rogue taxidermy”
"First it was knitting; then came excessive facial grooming, vegan baking and urban beekeeping. You thought hipster hobbies couldn’t get weirder? Brace yourself." [more inside]
Statues Taking Selfies
Big, nasty, pointy.. swords?
Phosphates, Fizzes and Frappes
Personality Type: skeptic
This well-known personality test is taken by over two million people a year. It's the go-to-quiz for the career consultant industry. It is used by 89 of the Fortune 100 companies and 200 Federal agencies, including the CIA and the military. But not many know that this test was developed by two people in 1940 who had no formal training in psychology. And that the test is based on a 90-year old speculative framework that has no scientific support. Yes, the Myers-Briggs test is totally meaningless.
The Best Beer in Baseball
The Washington Post compares beers available at various ballparks, based on locality, quality and uniqueness.
Do not go slippery into that good night
James Brady
In an unprecedented move, former United States press secretary James Brady's death has been ruled a homicide, 33 years after he was shot by John Hinckley Jr.
Some history of the incident at the Washington Hilton and a sweet rememberance of "Bear".
Enter the Pyongyang
A Beijing-based tour company commissioned a moving time-lapse video of Pyongyang, the capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
Basically I'm just making potato salad. I haven't decided what kind yet.
Zack "Danger" Brown has never made potato salad before. So he decided to ask for ten dollars on Kickstarter to get him started.
. [more inside]
R.I.P. Menahem Golan
Menahem Golan has died at the age of 85. The name may mean very little to you at first glance, but for those of us who lived through the 1980's, he was a very big part of it. Here's an interview with the late producer and a bit more about his legacy.
Celebrating Tove Jansson
Today marks Tove Jansson’s 100th birthday. She was a free spirited artist, painter, political cartoonist, illustrator and author who defied the conventions of her time. Earlier this year, a postage stamp and a 2-Euro coin depicting Tove Jansson have been released in celebration of her birthday. She is probably best known for creating the Moomins, a beloved children's book series that was translated in over 40 languages. Unsurprisingly, some call her the queen of the Moomins. A current London exhibition [Tales from the Nordic Archipelago] allows a glimpse into her life and shows unseen photographs from her private island in the archipelago of Finland, where she spent over 30 summers. The English translation of a new biography is due later this year. [more inside]
You are *in* your birthday present
Best birthday gift ever: the secret treasure room.
August 8
A World of Pure Imagination...
"We're going to do that now?"
"If we’re big enough to fight a war ...
… we should be big enough to look at it." From The Atlantic, The War Photo No One Would Publish
The King of Paper Dolls is dead. Long live the art of Tom Tierney!
On a visit to Smithville, Texas, in 2012, the blogger behind My Big Gay Ears found himself talking with a local artist about paper dolls. The artist turned out to be Tom Tierney, a major force in reviving the tradition of drawing famous people in their skivvies (or swimsuits) and providing them with a 2-D wardrobe. He died last month at his home in Smithville (NYT obituary), leaving behind a memorable and varied body of work. [more inside]
"I'm his carer." "Yeah, my carer. She cares so I don't have to."
While Peter Capaldi has begun his promotional world tour as the Twelfth Doctor—with Youtube streaming upcoming appearances live on its official channel—artist and fan Stephen Byrne has imagined the very much unofficial Twelfth Doctor's Animated Adventures. [more inside]
SketchFactor
BigApps (previously) "is a competition that empowers the sharpest minds in tech, design, and business to solve NYC's toughest challenges." One of the finalists is the recently-launched SketchFactor, which aims to help users avoid "sketchy" neighborhoods by posting notes about crime, racial profiling, harassment, and desolation. Not surprisingly, the creators have faced racism accusations. The developers have responded to the charges on their website.
15 Maps That Don't Explain the Middle East at All
Violent upheaval in the Middle East has recently spawned all manner of maps purporting to explain how the region got this way. Here, instead, are 15 maps that don’t claim as much. Or rather, they do not seek, like many other maps, to capture some fixed set of core facts about the region. Instead, these maps provide a more fluid perspective on the Middle East, often by showing what didn’t happen as opposed to what did. But for all these maps don’t show, they do illustrate one thing: the sobering fact that no one map—or even set of maps—can ever explain the region’s complex history and politics.
Doctor, Doctor
In the early 2000s four people in the UK answered their phones to hear the unmistakable voice of Doctor Who, specifically the Fourth Doctor, asking for their help with an urgent problem. Only one thing linked these four individuals: they were all actors who had played Doctor Who. Peter Davison (the Fifth Doctor); Colin Baker (the Sixth Doctor); Sylvester McCoy (the Seventh Doctor); and gloriously, Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor. [more inside]
"Marceline, is it just you and me in the wreckage of the world?"
Remember You (ukulele cover) (YT) Click Finn and Jake if you want to try the chords yourself. | (• ◡•)| (❍ᴥ❍ʋ)
MetaFolkloreFilter
Ring Around the Rosie: Metafolklore, Rhyme and Reason "After all, the story [of Ring Around the Rosie's plague origins] is itself folklore: a tale that was passed on by word of mouth first, then in writing and online media. And because it is also about folklore, folklorists classify it as 'metafolklore': folklore about folklore."
Feminism & Country Music--A Primer
The internet and Metafilter are abuzz over Maddie & Tae, the teenage country duo whose first single strikes back against the pervasive and much-maligned trend of "bro country" sweeping the country charts. But Maddie & Tae are hardly the first female country singers to bring a decidedly feminist message to the genre. Here are some highlights, in chronological order, for your listening pleasure. [more inside]
This Has Never Ever Worked
Another Buzzword Bites the Dust
FiveThirtyEight's Ben Casselman has crunched the economic numbers and determined: Corporate America Has NOT Been Disrupted. "By a wide range of measures, the advantages of incumbency in corporate America have never been greater." There are fewer startups hiring fewer people and failing more often. Considering that "entrepreneurship is a critical source of jobs in the economy (and) a major driver of productivity growth", a more accurate 'd-word' may be Derangement.
"My philosophy? Keep calm, and get fired up!"
Fresh off his 6 1/2 hour stint as head coach of the Tottenham Hotspurs (previously), Ted Lasso returns to Premier League television as a pundit and to the world of soccer football as coach of the St. Catherine Fighting Owls (WHOO?). Guest starring Tim Howard and Mini Bradley Cooper.
"Whoever heard of anybody being interested in a river?"
Danube Revisited: Starting in 1958, Inge Morath dedicated years of her career to photographing daily life along the Danube River, which flows from Southern Germany to the edge of the Black Sea in Eastern Romania.... In early July, eight female photographers set out to follow Morath’s path along the Danube for five weeks.
Night at the Museum
Photographer Vivienne Gucwa attended the first ever adult sleepover at New York's American Museum of Natural History. (Photo set)
Come for the Hyack - Stay for the Firedman
Economist Robert Solow reviews Angus Burgin's history of laissez-faire thought The Great Persuasion [Amazon], and discusses the differing views and goals of the movement's two saints Hayek and Friedman. [more inside]
"I've gone to therapy for 40 years to try to explain this to myself"
The Brazilian Bus Magnate Who's Buying Up All the World's Vinyl Records. By age 30, he had about 30,000 records. About 10 years later, his bus company expanded, making him rich. Not long after that, he split up with his wife, and the pace of his buying exploded. "Maybe it’s because I was alone," Freitas said. "I don't know." He soon had a collection in the six figures; his best guess at a current total is several million albums.
> implying I can't even
The Last Summer
"An awfully classy hook"
Abortion Crisis in New Brunswick
On July 18, the only Morgentaler Clinic in New Brunswick closed. Its closure has an interesting backstory and has sparked a fight. [more inside]
Jessica Fletcher Eternal
"Deep, deep, deep down I know that dream was never mine"
No Wawa in the Hood
No Wawa in the Hood by Donuts n' Puddin', a new online variety show. A short, catchy song about the superiority of Wawa over corner stores and 7-11.
"I Went to the Zoo With Roy Halladay"
"
After more than four years, 1,800+ bolg posts, and countless silly indulgences surrendered to in the name of "being ZWR" … I’m incredibly proud to say that at approximately 10:00 a.m. this morning I went to the zoo with Roy Halladay!" [more inside]
Six feet, three inches of quality and fun
Welcome the future, where your phone never dies
Catalogs of the Old Republic
Abandoned Republic: Before its current incarnation as the Gap's dressier cousin, Banana Republic sold military surplus and safari-style clothing. [more inside]
Do Not Run With This Post
Some days, you just want to gaze at pictures of scissors, from ancient Korea to a pair that was used on the Moon.
A Fish is Playing Pokemon
"Friday?" "Friday afternoon, yeah." "Ah... that is *usually* clown work"
The Actors School is a (fake) docu-soap about an acting school, featuring an interesting interpretation of a scene from Friends.
An essay on the biology of pregnancy
"The mammal mother works hard to stop her children from taking more than she is willing to give. The children fight back with manipulation, blackmail and violence. Their ferocity is nowhere more evident than in the womb [...] Pregnancy is a lot more like war than we might care to admit."
Rose of Jericho keep on blooming.
Armoring Up: Surviving Sexism As A Female Founder
Editor’s note: We don’t publish many anonymous pieces on Forbes.com, but this compelling first-person account of sexism in the startup world merits an exception. I met the author several months ago and was floored by the stories she had to tell about her dealings with mostly male investors. Like many men (as she writes), I knew women in tech faced a certain degree of chauvinism and harassment, but I’d had no idea it was so barefaced and routine, in an industry that thinks of itself as egalitarian and forward-looking. After much persuading, she agreed to write about her experiences but asked that I omit her name, for several reasons. First (again, as she writes), the startup community is a small one, and founders rely heavily on social capital and goodwill to navigate it. Speaking up carries big risks. But fear of retribution wasn’t her only concern. While putting an individual human face on an issue, it can also be a way for critics to short circuit the discussion by engaging in ad hominem attacks. ”I don’t want it to be about me, but about the issue at hand,” the author says. “When we get into a witch hunt around particular personalities, we lose sight of the problem we should be tackling.”
Read on to learn more about that problem.
Iron Sky
August 7
Armed animals don’t invent themselves; they're nicked from Beatles songs
And, if a lot of people make a lot of money and there are a lot of accolades being thrown about, then a lot of credit is going to go to a lot of people, from whoever cut those winning trailers to the designers and animators who got Rocket's fur to look just so to Gunn himself. If comic book people get any credit, chances are it's going to be as a collective (i.e. "Marvel") or under a "Special Thanks" near the end of the end-credit scrawl (IMDb has comics writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lannning receiving writing credit; if that's on the screen near the "written by" credit, then that's awesome).Just before going to see the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, J. Caleb Mozzocco put together a small guide to the featured characters and their creators. [more inside]
808state:psychoecstatictranceenducinggrooveridingtechnofunkalogicalsound
808 State is an English electronic group that formed in 1987, and take their name from the Roland TR-808 drum machine and their shared state of mind. As a trio, they produced their iconic track, Pacific, which fused influences of house music, jazz fusion and exotica. The group changed membership a bit over the years, but one way or another 808 State have released six albums* to date, and a number of singles, EPs, and promotional discs. 808state.com has a ton of information, including an extensive visual discography, a list of other productions and remixes, and over a gig of demos, live tracks, and other non-album audio to download. Given the group's 27 year-long history, there's a lot more to see and hear. [more inside]
GSSSACPM
"Though red big barns and big red barns are semantically identical, the second kind pleases our ears more." The Secret Rules of Adjective Order. [more inside]
"Offender-funded" Justice
"These probationers aren’t just paying a court-ordered fine; they’re typically paying an ever-growing share of the court’s administrative expenses, as well as a separate fee to the for-profit company that supervises their probation and enforces a payment schedule—a consolidated weekly or monthly set of charges divided between the court and the company. The system is known as 'offender-funded' justice. But legal challenges to it are mounting, amid concerns about abuse, corruption, and the use of state penalties to collect private profits. In a wide range of cases, offender-funded justice may not result in justice at all."
Get Out of Jail, Inc.
Bill of Mights
“Republicans always saw libertarians as nice to have around in case they wanted to score some weed, and we always knew where there was a party. And for a while it made sense to bunk up with them. But after a while, it would be like, ‘So if we agree on limited government, how about opening the borders?’ No, that’s crazy. ‘How about legalizing drugs? How about giving gays equal rights?’ No, come on, be serious. And so I thought, There’s nothing in this for me.”
From Silicon Valley technologists to NYU postgrads, the ‘Libertarian Moment’ may have finally arrived.
From Silicon Valley technologists to NYU postgrads, the ‘Libertarian Moment’ may have finally arrived.
Scientific-Marvelous
On the Scientific-Marvelous Novel and Its Influence on the Understanding of Progress, written by Maurice Renard in 1909. Via.
100 American Craft Beers Every Beer-Lover Should Drink (Paste Magazine)
"Is this a definitive list of beers everyone should try? Dear Lord, no. If you truly love beer, you should try them all. Even the bad ones. At least once. But this list will get you started."
Don't wait for the movie
On 28 June, Santa Cruz typographer Adam Lewis Greene submitted his Bible-as-literature project Bibliotheca to Kickstarter for one month of crowdfunding. Within 27 hours, the project had attained its $37,000 funding goal. People kept pledging support. By 26 July, following publication of a Verge article about the project, backing passed the $1 million mark. Two days later, when the fundraising period closed, the project had raised $1,440,345 from 14,884 backers. "No notes, no chapter numbers, no scripture verses. Just the text." What the Success of Bibliotheca Tells Us About the Future of Publishing. [more inside]
The SURREYS play the game.
The history of soccer in the First World War — which began in earnest 100 years ago this month — is a history of two worlds in unresolvable tension. It’s the story of a failed metaphor. Soccer in Oblivion.
where the poor people are is where the amputations are
The Voith Schneider Propeller
The Voith Schneider propeller is a unique marine propulsion system that uses vertical rotating blades to allow for high maneuverability. If you can't stomach the full promotional video (skip to here to see how it works), watch it in action underwater, or give it a test drive with an interactive VSP simulator.
WAC Sergeant Johnnie Phelps vs Eisenhower
"Johnnie Phelps, a woman sergeant in the army, thought, “There was a tolerance for lesbianism if they needed you. The battalion I was in was probably about ninety-seven percent lesbian.”
Sergeant Phelps worked for General Eisenhower. Four decades after Eisenhower had defeated the Axis powers, Phelps recalled an extraordinary event. One day, the general told her, “I’m giving you an order to ferret those lesbians out. We’re going to get rid of them.”" [via (via TheWhelk)] [more inside]
yodelling in the canyon (of love)
Timelines for sexual slang: oral sex and beyond + orgasm, bodily fluids and contraception. Previously.
Two Danish visitors in car-centric Canada
Two tourists from Denmark spent five weeks travelling around Canada and, disappointed by the car-centric lifestyle, urban sprawl, lack of human-scale infrastructure and related obesity and unfulfilment, wrote an open letter to the powers that be, lamenting this and urging them to take radical steps to make Canada healthy, happy and sustainable. [more inside]
Justine Tunney
Just who IS Justine Tunney?
Is she a "far-left socialist" or a "far-right monarchist"?
Or is she just a very talented troll?
India's data portal
data.gov.in : the Indian counterpart of the US data.gov, features 10280 resources in 3215 catalogs for public perusal. There's a visualization gallery charting developments like village electrification or domestic air traffic or sales of automobiles. And also a community section featuring apps offering mobile access to some of the data.
HelmetCams
"ROUND 2. FIGHT!"
Have you seen those shows?
A.V. Club compiles a list of 30 foreign series that need immediate legal import to the U.S.
"If you lose, it doesn’t matter because you still tried."
"There's something different about being told you’re dying when you’re 10 years old: You’re not a grown-up, but you’ve thought about what you’ll be like when you’re 30, when you’re old. You’re not a baby anymore — you know what cancer is. People start feeding you pills and poking you with needles. You make a bucket list your mother worries she won’t be able to help you complete. You want to get your ear pierced, but you can’t risk the infection. You know what sex is, but you’re told you’re not ready. You want to try new things, but you need permission first. You never lose hope for a miracle, because you’re still a kid, and kids aren’t supposed to die." Ethan Alexander Arbelo-Maldonado: Little Man and the Pursuit of Happiness [more inside]
Living Colour is Not Their Favorite Black Metal Band
Confronting Dragonforce about their racist, homophobic past. An interview by 'Grim' Kim Kelly. Prior to being famous for having the most difficult song on Guitar Hero, Dragonforce were members of a band called Demoniac, whose lyrics were often racist, homophobic, and generally bigoted. Kelly's confronts the band about their past.
Go Ahead, read my stuff.
Go Ahead, read my stuff.
I suppose, that if someone had predicted to me, in the directionless, drifting ennui right after my graduation from high school, that within two years, I would be trekking across Thailand by oxcart and having run-ins with groups of armed guerrillas, I’d have scoffed and asked for a bowl of whatever it was they were smoking.[via mefi projects]
Who is Spooky Black?
Spooky Black is (probably) a white 15-year-old from St. Paul, Minnesota conspicuously rocking a variety of gold chains, du-rags and FUBU and who on first sight may come off as a joke (or worse). Listen to his music, however, and you'll see why he's been referred to as "a motherfucking Internet monster with the voice of an angel." You can listen to his first album (released as "Lil Spook") Black Silk and a second release, Leaving, is dropping on 8.11.14.
The singularity of academic geek clickers
You are a particle physics researcher. Particle Clicker is a resource accumulation game in the same mould as Cookie Clicker - but this time with particle physics research, academics, and funding. Click repeatedly on the Collider to generate data. Turn data into research to gain funding and increase your reputation. Spend your funding on Human Resources and Upgrades - don't forget to buy beer to keep your research students happy, and coffee to keep them awake! [more inside]
Snowden granted 3-year stay in Russia.
After several days in legal limbo, the world's most notorious whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has been granted a three-year stay in Russia. This is amid breaking news of Russia's issuing of a menu of its own sanctions against U.S./E.U. countries, et al. The former NSA employee has been stranded in Russia for more than a year. Recently, new leaks by other, as yet unknown whistle-blower(s) other than Snowden have surfaced, according to U.S. authorities. The leaks detail certain "rules" for targeting of people for surveillance (including merely searching for privacy software), as well as details on the kind of activity or relationships which may put innocent people on terrorist watch lists.
Fruit cocktail
Cambodia and the Western Fabrication of History
Andrev Vltchek offers a different perspective on Cambodia's Khmer Rouge period There is actually only one thing that I want to know: how Communist was the Khmer Rouge, and was it the ideology, the Marxist ideology, that drew farmers to the ranks of the movement?
San Reoung thinks for a while, then replies, weighing each word:
“It was really not about the ideology… We did not know much about it. I was, for instance, very angry with the Americans. I became a soldier at the age of 17. And my friends were very angry, too. They joined Khmer Rouge to fight Americans, and especially the corruption of their puppet dictator Lon Nol, in Phnom Penh.”
August 6
Dialect isn’t just people talking funny
My project today is replacing all the dialogue spoken by Antiguan characters in Of Noble Family with dialogue rewritten by Antiguan and Barbudan author Joanne Hillhouse.Mary Robinette Kowal talks about why she hired somebody else to help her with the Caribbean dialects for her next novel.
Let me explain why I’m doing this.
Last Call
A Buddhist monk confronts Japan’s suicide culture. A profile of a monk who provides therapy to suicidal and depressed people in Japan, but is not himself suicidal.
"...this is a charity that's supposed to be helping the troops."
ProPublica reports: Pro-Troop Charity Misleads Donors While Lining Political Consultants' Pockets. [more inside]
fact-checking as conversation
[T]his is what we were dealing with: We were located in two places, and between us there were three laptops and one stenography machine. We were working in two languages (English and American Sign Language, or ASL) and across three communication channels (voice, sign, and text). They were sitting at a rectangular table, all on the same side: first Hilaria, then Kate, then Lynn, then Rabin´. That made five of us, four of whom brought constraints to the situation, ranging from the permanent to the temporary: Lynn is deaf, Hilaria is a non-native speaker of English, Rabin´ is supposed to be silent and invisible, and I couldn’t see, because I had no video on my Skype.A factchecking session for "young sign languages" turns into an exploration on communication across barriers and needs of accessibility, language, and technology.
Helsinki's Heavy Metal Hillbillies
A Finnish band named Steve 'N' Seagulls (site in Finnish) plays bluegrass covers (in English) of Iron Maiden's 'The Trooper', DIO's 'Holy Diver' and AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck'. Because... why not? [more inside]
Women have always been healers.
Changing the Face of Medicine is an online exhibition from the National Library of Medicine, first published in 2003 but continuously updated, that honors the lives and achievements of American women in medicine. It is divided into sections (see the "more inside"), but you can also browse the biographies of the physicians alphabetically or by other criteria. [more inside]
Life and Death
On July 2, 2014, Hannah Richell's husband Matt was killed in a surfing accident at Bronte beach. [more inside]
"You can sort your life out anytime, the pub closes in five hours."
"Surprisingly, Black Books has no affliction with the BBC whatsoever; created by Dylan Moran (who also plays the lead) and Graham Linehan, the show was filmed at Teddington Studios and broadcast on Channel 4. It centers around Bernard Black (Dylan Moran), the careless, grumpy, wine-inhaling owner of Black Books, his friend Fran (Tamsin Greig) and his assistant shop keeper Manny (Bill Bailey). Specked with a few fun cameos by people not yet famous at the time, this show is a hilarious roller coaster ride that will make you laugh until you cry." Black Books: 4 Reasons the British Sitcom Remains a Classic [more inside]
Empty Houses in Spain
The Spanish housing boom goes bust. "Some 65km from Madrid, in the quintessentially Spanish heart of a country riven by competing regional identities, Valdeluz – the notorious ciudad fantasma (ghost town) of the crisis – was conceived at the height of what is sometimes called Spain’s economic miracle. In a Catholic nation, whose faith has declined substantially during its three decades of democracy, there is an increasing reluctance to believe in miracles of any kind."
Too Clever To Be Legal
For the past several months, Allergan has been fighting a take over by its competitor Valeant. While mergers and acquisitions are far from unusual in the pharma world, this may be the first time that a public corporation has combined efforts with an activist investor (Bill Ackman of Herbalife fame) in a bid to buy another company. Last week, Allergan sued both Valeant and Ackman, claiming their actions go beyond regulatory arbitrage and enter the realm of insider trading. At risk is Allergan's R&D operation- while Allergan spends roughly 17% or revenues on research (in line with the industry), Valeant, run by McKinsey alum Mike Pearson, spends under 3%. [more inside]
A beacon of conscience in Australia's capital
Featured in the Australian literary journal Meanjin, Restless Indigenous Remains is a Paul Daley essay on how the Australian government's National Museum handles the remains of Indigenous people accumulated during Australia's colonial period. An engaging, thoughtful and sobering piece, it covers the history of 'remains collection' in Australia, as well as the current debate concerning whether the Indigenous defenders against colonial expansion should be recognized by the Australian War Memorial.
Nina Simone's raised voice
Because they are cute little assholes. That's why.
dos & don'ts to combat sexism
Robot Hugs: a comic on harassment
Leigh Alexander: But what can be done? to combat online sexism [more inside]
Whispers in the Gallery
Self-described collector of sounds and artist John Kannenberg records the sounds that echo through museums (usually thought of as spaces where silence is enforced) and creating works that "investigate the psychogeography of museums and archives, the processes of making and observing art, the psychology of collection, and the human experience of time." [more inside]
"Older respondents reported hopping on railway cars and stealing gin"
The shortening leash on American children: We heard a lot about sneaking out, petty theft, amateur arson, drugs, and sexual experimentation from our older respondents. But as time passes, the picture of childhood looks a lot less wild and reckless and a lot more monitored. We asked parents how they would react if they caught their kids doing what they had done as kids. A typical response: "I'd probably freak out and turn my home into a prison."
"It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious." -- Obama
The Lives that are US Immigration Talking Points
"What You Don't Know About Migrant Children May Kill Them." You may be aware of the overwhelming numbers of underage migrants from Central America now in the U.S. immigration system. You may not know so much about why they've arrived, why they've left, nor how they actually got here. [more inside]
A Boy and His Dog
A young boy named Owen who has a very rare muscle condition called Schwartz Jampel Syndrome, as well as agoraphobia, had his life changed when his parents rescued a young Anatolian Shepherd named Haatchi who lost a leg after being deliberately tied to a railroad line in North London and hit by a train.
L'École des Facteurs
The School for Postmen is a 16 minute short film from 1947 by French director and physical comedian Jacques Tati. It's being shown on The Guardian's website and is introduced by their film critic Peter Bradshaw. The film is about a postman in rural southern France trying to finish his round on time.
Rendezvous with a comet
Today at approximately 08:45am GMT, the Rosetta spacecraft entered orbit of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko after a 10 year journey. Now in orbit 100km above the surface, Rosetta is already sending back amazing images of a rocky, rough rubber duck shaped comet. [more inside]
Save The Sounds!
Monkey business
Photographer David Slater is currently in a dispute with Wikipedia over this photo, taken in Indonesia in 2011. Wikipedia, Slater claims, has used his photo without permission. Wikipedia has so far refused, "claiming that because a monkey pressed the shutter button it should own the copyright." via
This Woman Just Shattered One of Pro Sports’ Most Enduring Glass Ceiling
It's Been A Long, Long Time.
Are you trying to write a period-correct Captain America story or just have questions about NYC in the 1930s-40s in general? The tumblr Steve Rogers Is Historically Accurate is here to help.
There is nothing quite as beautiful as cash
Wikipedia and state censorship
Under the new “right to be forgotten” law Google is forced to remove search results for certain pages. Of the 328,000 links that Google has so far been coerced into removing, more than 50 were to Wikipedia (*nyt). The Wiki Media Foundation has created a dedicated page where they will be posting notices about attempts to remove links to Wikimedia. They include Gerry Hutch, Tom Carstairs in concert (image) and the rest Italian and Dutch articles. A new front in the Wikipedia deletion wars has opened. Wikipedia swears to fight 'censorship', and Wales calls the law 'deeply immoral'. [more inside]
Unsolved Mysteries for your browser
Sexy Keepers of Death is a blog which curates the paranormal and creepy whether it's fictional, debatable or real. Unsolved mysteries, antiquities, strange creatures, unbelievable events, historical hoaxes, urban legends, unnerving art and more!
A new language of love.
The Love App. Digital life and couples culture in South Korea.
Why so many shipowners find Panama's flag convenient
"Panama, a small nation of just three million, has the largest shipping fleet in the world, greater than those of the US and China combined. Aliyya Swaby investigates how this tiny Central American country came to rule the waves."
You're a gay man. You drew a vagina. It goes here.
Gay Men Draw Vaginas! But why? "It's neat to tease out all this convoluted psycho-sexual-cultural stuff through drawing," plus "Sometimes they turn into heated arguments about gay men's disrespect for women's bodies and gay male social power blah blah blah. Awesome."
(In case you couldn't tell, this is in no way work-safe.)
August 5
Squeeze those pips
“Hey,” I said to my boyfriend. “So I need to do something weird to your dick later.” I thought for a second and then added, “It’s for work,” as if that somehow made it better. My boyfriend nodded curiously. “It’s a grapefruit. I need to put a grapefruit on your dick. I’m sorry.”Gabrielle Moss tries the grapefruit blowjob technique as recommended by Auntie Angel. NSFW. [more inside]
Would you like to choose Bellsprout as your starter?
Pokémon Zeta & Omicron are not ROM hacks. They are standalone fan-made Pokémon clones created with RPG Maker XP, featuring around 80 hours of gameplay, 2 regions with 12 gyms, a coherent storyline, "tons" of endgame content, Shadow Pokémon, Delta Pokémon, all 649 Pokémon through gen V, secret bases, mega evolutions, challenge modes (previously), and sometimes quirky dialogue. Though still in beta, it's a playable game [YT], patches to which have slowed. Each new version is posted to the sub-Reddit /r/pokemonzetaomicron.
password12345
Less than a year after 40 million credit and debit card records were stolen from Target's point of sale systems, the New York Times is reporting that "a Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses." (Ars Technica, too)
Beautifully creepy X-ray embroidery
Matthew Cox is a Philadelphia- based artist who embraces and joins a variety of media to produce several thematic series of work. Medical x-rays and embroidery, couture and crime, rubber stamps, short -story prose and paint all layer toward a darkly comic and anachronistic impression of the human condition in the twenty-first century. [more inside]
Gentle people with flowers in their hair
Flower Beards. Fuck Yeah Flower Beards! Street Test: "I’m getting a lot more eye contact than I usually do." Will It Beard?
The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
How Ronald Reagan Used An 'Invisible Bridge' To Win Over Americans - "Rick Perlstein's new book describes how Reagan emerged as the leader of a potent political movement during the turbulent mid-'70s. He says the soul of Reagan's appeal was how he made people feel good." [more inside]
You'll pourover these instructions, and be hard pressed for better ones!
Coffee Science: How to Make the Best Pourover Coffee at Home
"Most of the roasted coffee bean, about two thirds of the bean's mass, is insoluble cellulose. The other third is dissolvable in water. Of that soluble third, most of it is the good stuff, particularly various organic acids and sugars. The rest are longer-chain molecules that we associate with astringent and bitter tastes. Where we find the happy balance is at the 19-20% point, that is, if you extract the first 19-20% of the mass of the coffee, we tend to find the best flavor balance. More than that and you'll find those astringent and bitter flavors start to dominate. Less than that and you'll find the resulting flavors thin and unbalanced, and with lighter roasted coffees, unusually sour. Timing really is what makes or breaks your coffee brew."[more inside]
Helen DeWitt recounts dealing with her stalker
Read DeWitt's account here. "E’s landlord: ‘You’re a very attractive woman. He can’t help himself. I’m sorry you can’t live on your property.’" [more inside]
"Even Jay Silverheels knew it."
Paris Is Burning
Full Doc - 1:16:27 - slyt: "Paris Is Burning is a 1990 documentary film directed by Jennie Livingston. Filmed in the mid-to-late 1980s, it chronicles the ball culture of New York City and the African American, Latino, gay and transgender communities involved in it. Many members of the ball culture community consider Paris Is Burning to be an invaluable documentary of the end of the "Golden Age" of New York City drag balls, as well as a thoughtful exploration of race, class, and gender in America."
Elkhart, Indiana's payday, and the man behind it
neither hipster, nor corporate shill... its the Dishevelled Trivago Guy
New York Girl Wins Kangaroo, Her First
Long before Mad Men, Forrest Gump, and coast-to-coast classic rock FM stations completed the transubstantiation of the 1960s from reality to legend, something stranger than fiction was burning the midnight oil in an old firehouse: The Socrates of San Francisco, Howard Luck Gossage, would change advertising--and the way we think about communication--forever. [more inside]
how can she possibly buy apples with her limited food stamp budget?
there's nothing that is scientifically proven
I'll do something else … Probably, I'm thinking, carpentry.
British comedian and actor James Corden, probably best known as co-creator and co-star of the sitcom "Gavin & Stacey," is taking the seat vacated by Craig Ferguson on "The Late Late Show" at the end of this year. [more inside]
Was there a control group?
For an entire school year Hillsborough, New Jersey, educators undertook an experiment, asking: Is the iPad really the best device for interactive learning?
support, salvation, transformation, life
Recently I overheard a man say at a yoga class, "Yeah, well, you get two women together and it's like bitch central." I could have told him he only needed one, in fact, and that would be me, but it also made me realize how much people diminish and poo-poo the real power and strength of female friendship, especially between women, which is either supposed to descend into some kind of male lesbian love scene porn fantasy or be dismissed as meaningless or be re-written as a story of competition.Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship, an essay by Emily Rapp (previously).
Here's the truth: friendships between women are often the deepest and most profound love stories, but they are often discussed as if they are ancillary, "bonus" relationships to the truly important ones. Women's friendships outlast jobs, parents, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and sometimes children.
Do not drive into smoke
The Worst Highways in America. "There are bad, bad roads in America. None have I-40's ability to warp time itself, and turn what should be a three-hour drive with traffic into a creeping space-time anomaly broken only by the words "hey, there's the exit for Bucksnort." I am convinced a person could extend their lifespan near infinitely and live to biblical ages provided they drove only on this stretch of I-40. No one will ever prove this, because no one would subject themselves to this even in the name of near-immortality. They would rather die, and wisely so."
The Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App
The DMMapp (Digitized Medieval Manuscripts App) is a website that links to more than 300 libraries in the world. Each one of these contains medieval manuscripts that can be browsed for free. The DMMapp is a product of Sexy Codicology, an independent project focused on medieval illuminated manuscripts and social media. It maintains a great blog about medieval manuscripts, especially those that are available online.
Consider, first, their absurd sartorial appurtenances
GOOD morrow. ’Tis I, Aelfric the Elder, with a piece of calligraphic parchment containing statements that I think — a “think piece,” let us call it — to be posted with a nail on our village’s biggest log, concerning youthful denizens born around A.D. 1000. These “millennials” are, without a doubt, the most narcissistic and hopeless cohort I have witnessed in my 35 long years on this stationary planet.
A Thing That Exists
"Neoliberal is the new hipster: everybody's it except you, and nobody can explain what it means"
I think that’s well-put, and that the similarity between the terms is no accident; hipsterism is an especially salient iteration of neoliberal subjectivity, one that gains currency by being slippery and inarticulable. These concepts become normalized by becoming boring and frustrating to talk about. The apparent vagueness in the terms seems to make them unalterable. The struggle to define them reflects the stakes of keeping them amorphous, capable of absorbing more and more behavior, making the way of thinking they describe feel inescapable, natural.[more inside]
A new restaurant.
Signs (YT) is a new restaurant in Toronto. Most of the servers are Deaf. It is the first restaurant of its kind in Canada, though not the world (YT). Their Facebook page contains reviews from patrons. Here's how to order. If you're interested in ASL, the National Association of the Deaf has a great primer for you, or you can go through the glossary and lessons here at ASL University.
DO YOU CUT OFF YOUR ARM OR EAT A BABY?
"When I saw Snowpiercer, I thought, they’re working. I’ve never seen a movie be more like a video game and work. Everyone I knew called it "BioShock on a train", which is good shorthand, because it means you know you can expect an apocalyptic dystopia, with class struggles drawn grotesque, confined to a failing industrial space. Boom! Video games' language is useful!" [more inside]
The million-dollar headliners, the Outkast reunions, the Ferris wheels
Poking the Jazz Hive
On July 31st the New Yorker posted on Shouts and Murmurs: "Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words
BY DJANGO GOLD". Plenty of people were not pleased. Including, yes, Sonny Rollins himself.
(The editor's note on Shouts and Murmurs was added afterwards and was not part of the initial publishing of the piece)
Vulnerable to coercion or undue influence
A two-part series on problems in the clinical trials industry, from Medium.com:
The Best-Selling, Billion-Dollar Pills Tested on Homeless People
How the destitute and the mentally ill are being used as human lab rats
and
Why Are Dope-Addicted, Disgraced Doctors Running Our Drug Trials?
The Best-Selling, Billion-Dollar Pills Tested on Homeless People
How the destitute and the mentally ill are being used as human lab rats
and
Why Are Dope-Addicted, Disgraced Doctors Running Our Drug Trials?
My Life After Manson
Olivia Klaus's Op-Doc (9 minutes) on Patricia Krenwinkel, who was one of Charles Manson's Family members, convicted of seven counts of first-degree murder, and currently the longest-serving woman in California's prisons: "I would now have to be fully responsible for the damage, the wreckage and the horror."
Poland, 2011: DVD, title: "Best of the Witcher 2"
Countries like to give President Barack Obama gifts. The Washington Post catalogued and ranked them for us:
It's really a funny collection of presents, for which, were you asked To what sort of person was this gift given?, you'd likely have a wide variety of responses. Argentina gave Obama a silver dagger in a display box in 2012, perhaps confusing the president with their 13-year-old nephew. Britain gave the family a shawl and some kids clothes in 2009, playing the role of America's eccentric aunt.
August 4
The Streisand effect is alive and well
To date, Mr. Queen is the only artist who has taken this kind of action - other artists and publishers seem to understand Escher Girls & other similar sites are fair use and criticism, and that fan discussion, positive or negative, is important and helpful to their business. (In fact, the creators I’ve interacted with are either fans of EG, or expressed disagreement but know that it’s fan criticism.)Escher Girls is a blog that exists to criticise and point out the more egregious examples of bad anatomy and sexy contortions to be found in American comics. It was subjected to DMCA takedown notices by cartoonist Randy Queen, perhaps best known for nineties Image Comics classic Darkchylde. Once the news spread, he doubled down by threatening legal action for defamation. As an attempt to stifle criticism, it failed miserably.
The study of human thought & behavior without direct contact with either
The British Museum has published on its frequently informative blog a call for citizen archaeologists to help digitize its Bronze Age Index via a crowd-sourcing site called MicroPasts, which uses the open source PyBossa crowd-sourcing framework that also powers Crowdcrafting. The results will eventually be integrated with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (previously), which features a gigantic image database of finds categorized by period (e.g. Bronze Age or Medieval) and object type (e.g. coins or brooches).
Baseball, Football, COBOL
Looking for a great technical skill to develop to make you all the more marketable in today’s increasingly fast-paced industry? Have you considered COBOL?
The cost of journalism
True Plagiarism
How UCLA flooded on a sunny day
Last Tuesday afternoon, a 30-inch water main burst beneath Sunset Boulevard on the northern edge of the UCLA campus, creating a geyser dozens of feet high. It took more than three hours to shut off the flow of water; by then, eight to ten million gallons of water had been released. The water flooded the UCLA campus, damaging the newly renovated Pauley Pavilion and trapping hundreds of cars in underground parking structures. [more inside]
Four weeks later, you move to Florida.
Your wardrobe should always revolve around you, not the latest trend
Dressing your age: 20s, 30s (part 1), 30s (part 2), 40s, 50s, 60-plus. All links men's fashion. [more inside]
"We lost our deposit."
Robot vs. Shark (not a made for SyFy movie)
My hat is beautiful! SPLENDID!
YuMex - Yugoslav Mexico is a 45-minute documentary by Miho Mazzini about Yu-Mex, the genre of music comprising Yugoslav interpretations of Mexican music.
The Rise Of Europe’s Religious Right
“A bomb with a long fuse has been lit,” said Sylvie Guillaume, a French MEP supportive of abortion rights and LGBT rights, who recently stepped down as vice chair of the largest center-left bloc in the European Union’s parliament. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.” [more inside]
Your godmother was Elizabeth Zimmermann?
Channeling Elizabeth: Recreating a Family Heirloom: The sweater was threadbare and holey, but it had clearly been much loved - and, as it turned out, it had been knit by one of the greatest knitters of all time. Elizabeth Zimmermann (1999 NY Times Obituary) popularized knitting in the round, re-introduced the continental method of knitting to the US, and was dedicated to greater clarity in knitting instructions. She also came up with a much-used formula for sizing proportions (EPS), the I-cord, and encouraged knitters to experiment and be creative. [more inside]
"Shh..."
The Year of Outrage
"It is a spellbinding narrative, a multilayered tale of murder, insanity, and mystery replete with shocking twists and turns. It is a startling pastiche of late-nineteenth-century characters, from the most elite figures of Austin society to the poorest African Americans. Yet amazingly, it is almost entirely absent from the annals of history." Before London had its Ripper, before H.H. Holmes had his Murder Castle, Austin, Texas had its very own Servant Girl Annihilator... [more inside]
Just some music for Monday (It's the "this")
[LuckyMe's Claude Speeed] may have labeled this his Summer mix, but it isn’t all sunshine and good times – instead, it’s somewhere between Kanye’s Cruel Summer and Fennesz’s Endless one. 90+ minutes in length, it hypnotizes you with a succession of beatless music by CFCF, Sevendeaths, Richard Skelton Tim Hecker and Speeed himself… then, at the mix’s climax, the world comes crashing in on you.
"Good ale, raw onions, and no ladies”
"When anything had to be changed or repaired, it appeared to pain him physically. For twenty years the bar sagged in the middle like a plough mule’s back. A carpenter warned him repeatedly that it was about to collapse; finally, in 1933, he told the carpenter to go ahead and prop it up. While the work was in progress he sat at a table in the back room with his head in his hands and got so upset he could not eat for several days." A history of McSorley's Old Ale House from the 1940 issue of The New Yorker.
The three Chicken Wars, and their (less than) lasting impacts
In the records of human conflicts, there are at least three Chicken Wars. Two left little mark on the world at large, and the third resulted in some strange work-arounds for heavy tariffs. The first was Wojna kokosza, the Chicken or Hen War of 1537, when an anti-royalist and anti-absolutist rokosz (rebellion) by the Polish nobility resulted in near-extinction of local "kokosz" (an egg laying hen), but little else. The second was an odd spin-off of the more serious War of the Quarduple Alliance that lasted from 1717 to 1720. Though most of the activity happened in Europe, there were some battles in North America. The Texas manifestation was the capture of some chickens by French forces from a Spanish mission, and a costly overreaction by Spanish religious and military men. The third Chicken War was a duel of tariffs during the Cold War, with the only lasting casualty being the availability of foreign-made light trucks in the United States. [more inside]
Charles Darwin's Beagle library
Charles Darwin's Beagle library "As a research vessel HMS Beagle may not have had the internet, but she did have an impressive state-of-the-art library of about 400 volumes. " (via)
In a not-so-quiet corner of Graves County...
Now in its 134th year, the Fancy Farm Picnic is the biggest event in Kentucky's political calendar. Held on the first Saturday of August, the gathering includes bingo, raffles and tons and tons of barbeque. And then, of course, there are the political speeches. This year, Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell squared off against Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes. PBS has video of the stump speeches and, given that the candidates have yet to agree upon any debate locations or times, this may be their only meeting in a public forum before the November election. The Washington Post provides a explainer of the event.
to end all wars
First world war – a century on, time to hail the peacemakers
"On the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War, we should remember those who tried to stop a catastrophe" [more inside]
Surprise lap dances are not cool.
Stephanie Woodward is a 26 year-old Floridian woman who blogs about dating. Ms Woodward is an attorney who happens to have spina bifida. [more inside]
Sometimes you gotta say...
LA Weekly Film Critic Amy Nicholson offers a contrarian take on Tom
Cruise's famous couch-jumping moment in How YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise, Our Last
Real Movie Star — arguing that the events of 2005
irrevocably changed our relationship with celebrity, and that Cruise's
career as a serious actor was a major casualty. You've seen it, too. You can probably picture it in your head: Tom Cruise, dressed in head-to-toe black, looming over a cowering Oprah as he jumps up and down on the buttermilk-colored couch like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Cruise bouncing on that couch is one of the touchstones of the last decade, the punchline every time someone writes about his career.
There's just one catch: It never happened.
"a story about how Steam, Twitter and the App Store came to exist"
Consider the Holy Bible as a product in a marketplace. It has several attractive qualities, foremost among them the tantalizing possibility that it contains the true word of a being who created the universe. But it has several worrisome drawbacks as well. Like most written anthologies it has poor replay value when compared to something like Spelunky; after you read it once you know more or less how it goes. It features a relatively weak Physical Rights Management scheme; for example, you don't need to purchase one for your household if you can simply borrow it from a friend or read it in a local church. Even its branding as a 'perfect document' becomes something of a double-edged sword; the first, purportedly perfect edition might seem very desirable indeed, but who is going to buy Holy Bible: Religious Text Of The Year Edition when the original is supposed to be immaculate? How are you going to make corrections, utilize analytics data or market additional 'content'? Where will your fine sponsors place all their full-page advertisements: After the crucifixion or before?—Form and its Usurpers is a long essay by Brendan Vance [previously] about videogames, Hegel, form, content, what "free" means, how capitalism ruins everything and what to do about it.
Google detects child porn images in user's gmail, leading to arrest
Google's updated Terms of Service state explicitly that the company automatically analyzes all email content to create targeted advertising. This case, in which Google identified child porn images in a user's email message, leading to his arrest, seems to be one of the first known instances of Google monitoring personal gmail accounts for illegal activity. The arrest raises questions over the privacy of personal email and Google's role in policing the web. [more inside]
Crude Translation: "Happy Heartbeat"
Those robotic dancers of J-pop, World Order (previously-ly-ly-ly) have a new short video titled "Jungle Wakudoki" in which they encounter a guy in a gorilla suit (as well as some oddly Caucasian jungle folk). It's part of a promotion for Toyota Asia Pacific which includes a contest to win a trip to Tokyo by uploading a video of you "doing the Wakudoki".
Slug Solos
Riding the rails, safely
Railbikes are pretty self-explanatory. You take a bike, attach an extra wheel sidecar-style, jump on some railroad tracks, and ride. There's no need to steer, so you can look around as you pedal. You stick to abandoned railroad tracks so there's no surprises either. It's not a new idea, dating back well over 100 years to the first bikes, and recently even custom bike builders have devised their own versions. More at Flickr on the railbike tag and in the railbike group. There's even a book about it .
Union Street Guest House woes
A NY hotel fines guests $500 for negative reviews. The press notices. Yelpers take revenge -- a dozen or so reviews this morning have turned into more than 200 at the moment, warning of, among other things, a "MAJOR SPIDER INFESTATION."
Why the Comcast guy is always late
The Verge talks with current and former Comcast employees about life as a Comcast repair/install technician. [more inside]
RIP Jim Frederick
Journalist and author Jim Frederick has passed away in San Francisco. Frederick was the author of Black Hearts, an account of the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings in Iraq by U.S. Army soldiers. He was 42.
The Visual Microphone: Passive Recovery of Sound from Video
Researchers at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Microsoft Research, and Adobe Research have presented a technique for reconstructing an audio signal by analyzing minute vibrations of objects depicted in video. For example, the method can be used to extract intelligible speech from video of a bag of potato chips filmed from 15 feet away through soundproof glass. [more inside]
terrible consequences . . . the execution of an innocent man
Fresh doubts over Cameron Todd Willingham's execution (Previously)
For more than 20 years, the prosecutor who convicted Cameron Todd Willingham of murdering his three young daughters has insisted that the authorities made no deals to secure the testimony of the jailhouse informer who told jurors that Willingham confessed the crime to him.
Since Willingham was executed in 2004, officials have continued to defend the account of the informer, Johnny E. Webb, even as a series of scientific experts have discredited the forensic evidence that Willingham might have deliberately set the house fire in which his toddlers were killed.
But now new evidence has revived questions about Willingham’s guilt: In taped interviews, Webb, who has previously both recanted and affirmed his testimony, gives his first detailed account of how he lied on the witness stand in return for efforts by the former prosecutor, John H. Jackson, to reduce Webb’s prison sentence for robbery and to arrange thousands of dollars in support from a wealthy Corsicana rancher. Newly uncovered letters and court files show that Jackson worked diligently to intercede for Webb after his testimony and to coordinate with the rancher, Charles S. Pearce Jr., to keep the mercurial informer in line.
Ass and You Shall Receive
Lights Out
August 3
Phase transitions are an unnecessary expense
Q: What happens when you leave a Wal-Mart store brand "Great Value" ice cream sandwich in the sun for 75 minutes?
A: Not what you'd think! [more inside]
A: Not what you'd think! [more inside]
Strip The City
Click and win!
Information wants to be… good.
Ask A Grown Man: Stephen Colbert
Stephen Colbert steps out of character and offers up some earnest advice to young women [more inside]
Kilts, Sex, and Violence
The first episode of the TV series Outlander -- brought to us by Star Trek writer and Battlestar Galactica producer Ronald D. Moore -- has been made available by Starz online, with the official premiere set for next Saturday. Outlander, based on a series of historical fiction/romance books by author Diana Gabaldon, has built up a massive fanbase over the last 20 years, due in large part to its well-developed main character Claire, the explicit but emotional (and occasionally entertaining) sex scenes, extensive historical research and detail, and romantic chemistry between the two main characters. Between the devoted fans and the historical/quasi-scifi/fantasy components to the story, many are already comparing it to the Game of Thrones TV phenomenon. But will it be as successful (some spoilers), given that the current fanbase is predominantly female? Is Starz making books that used to be filed under "Romance" in bookstores into something too Fifty Shades of Grey for a wider audience to enjoy? Is the marketing of the show and the GoT-like recipe for success at odds with the author's stance on fanfiction based on her work? And most importantly, should fans of the books just STFU so everyone else can enjoy it? [Note that fans of the books may not want to STFU in this thread, so book and first episode spoilers may abound] [more inside]
Minimally Minimal
Studio Ghibli Boards the Cat Bus
Toshio Suzuki, a Studio Ghibli producer and general manager, has announced on Japanese television that Studio Ghibli will be closing its animation studio. The announcement comes not long after the retirement of legendary Studio Ghibli director and animator, Hayao Miyazaki. The studio is well known for its masterpieces such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away, and many, many others.
Iron square = :| but Iron fish = (ツ)
The Good-Luck Charm That Solved a Public-Health Problem ¸.·´¯`·.´¯`·.¸¸.·´¯`·.¸><(((º> [more inside]
He actually looks as if he expects to win a case.
DA Hamilton Burger may be the best-known loser of early TV, but his portrayer William Talman's life (content excerpted from the Perry Mason TV show book) was far more interesting. At the height of his fame in 1960, Talman arrested at a nude pot party, and was fired and blacklisted as a result. It took Raymond Burr, the cast, and the fans to eventually get him his job back. At the end of his life, on the verge of dying, he made a powerful anti-smoking PSA (the PSA itself)
The itch nobody can scratch
“It’s just like something from science fiction. It’s something that you’d see in a movie or in a book on aliens from another planet. It’s out of this world.” [closeup images of human skin that may be disturbing] Morgellon's disease [no images] is the topic of this week's Stuff You Should Know podcast. [no transcript] A CDC study could not identify a cause, and the medical community's consensus is that it is a form of delusional parasitosis, but conspiracy theories abound [images]. (previously)
Next: Lasersabers
Remember the floating training remote in Star Wars? Some people have done DIY versions of the remote that can levitate on your desktop. However, leave it to NASA to create the real thing and call it SPHERES: Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites: robotic bowling balls (OK, 18-sided polyhedron satellites) with autonomous propulsion, power, avionics, software, communications, and metrology subsystems, that fly freely in the ISS. First tested in 2006, they have been upgraded with Android smartphones, which makes them (for now) the less terrifying item in Google's growing robotic arsenal.
A dozen gazpachos from Mark Bittman
The simple chilled soup is perfect for steamy August days.
Gazpacho is so easy that children old enough to manage a food processor or a blender can make it themselves. But whether or not you have pint-size sous chefs at your disposal, a recipe that requires minimal effort and in most instances no heat is always a good thing this time of year. So, here is that ubiquitous summer standby done a few ways that you’re probably familiar with and a bunch more that you’re probably not. (If Thai melon gazpacho is already in your rotation, good for you, and I surrender.) The “recipes” here amount to little more than lists of ingredients and quantities, because the method doesn’t bear repeating 12 times: Combine everything in a blender or food processor, process to your desired texture, chill in the refrigerator if you like, garnish and eat.[more inside]
Mack
Bad day? This may help.
Flocking Art
Strangely mesmerising geese herding on horseback to Mongolian throat singing. From French equestrian theatre impresario Bartabas, who staged a horse version of Rite of Spring (video starts at prettiest part). Follow up with sheep herding with horse and dog as terribly French art video.
"Am relieved to find their Cordelia's integrity unconvincing."
Performances of Shakespeare are common enough that various reimaginings are often deemed necessary. One of the latest? King Lear With Sheep.
Behold, I plunge my hands in fire! I feel no heat!
Forty years ago, a vast molten cavity known as the Darvaza crater – nicknamed the "door to hell" – opened up in the desert of north Turkmenistan, and has been burning ever since.
Last year, George Kourounis became the first person to descend to the bottom of the crater. [more inside]
Cube Dudes
Back in 2009, Pixar animator (and LEGO enthusiast) Angus MacLane posted over one hundred pictures of his own personal LEGO creations he called Cube Dudes. The builds were pop culture characters that had squared off heads with one corner where the nose would be. It was a unique concept that immediately caught fire within the LEGO online community. Other builders emulated the style with builds of their own. The LEGO corporation even produced a pair of special LEGO Star Wars Cube Dude sets that were sold only at conventions. But if missed out on these sets and you'd like to build your own Cube Dude Boba Fett, there are instructions available online.
Recycled Funny Papers
Since the merger of the Universal and United Media newspaper syndicates, GoComics.com has been the place to find 80%+ of all newspaper comics online*. And it has been noticed that two of the most popular comics, both in papers and onsite, haven't had new content in decades: Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. As a result, GoComics is giving many other defunct funnies a second online run, including Bloom County, Kliban cartoons alternating with Kliban's Cats, and, most notably among recent syndication casualties, CulDeSac (as well as Richard Thompson's Poor Almanac). With the artists of FoxTrot and Doonesbury cutting back to Sunday only, the site (as well as some papers) is filling in the other 6 days with reruns. While Dilbert is exclusive to its own website, Dilbert Classics from the early 1990s are now rerun on GoComics. Even Luann, who just graduated high school (finally!) has a parallel run of Luann Againn (sic) showing her as 13 years old back in 1986.
But the most interesting example of recycling old comics comes from the current custodians of the 80-year-old Nancy, who, after observing "the Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn" become a meme, now offer a daily feature of a single non-sequitur panel from a classic Ernie Bushmiller strip in Random Acts of Nancy**. And they ARE random. [more inside]
But the most interesting example of recycling old comics comes from the current custodians of the 80-year-old Nancy, who, after observing "the Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn" become a meme, now offer a daily feature of a single non-sequitur panel from a classic Ernie Bushmiller strip in Random Acts of Nancy**. And they ARE random. [more inside]
August 2
Narrated 18 minute speedrun of Ocarina of Time
Cosmo Wright narrates an 18 minute 10 second speedrun of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It includes descriptions and histories of many of the glitches and hacks required to complete the game. Behold.
Pocketknife and Cousin Cole - Tambourine Dreams and beyond
Six and a half years ago, the duo of Pocketknife (Skooby Laposky) and Cousin Cole (aka Cousin Culo) released handful of remixes, edits and re-works, compiled under the name Tambourine Dream (Discogs) on their joint Flagrant Fowl label. The label only lasted a few years, and it seems the duo are now operating alone. Cole/Culo is still solidly in remix/rework territory, with self-selected highlights including the moombahton "So Emotional" & volume 2 mixtape/EPs he made with Phi Unit, while Laposky has ventured into a few tributes to Arthur Russell (Russell, previously), in the form of a mix of Russell's tracks, and releasing a recently discovered track (which he remixed as Pocketknife) on his label, Wilde Calm Records, where he also released an album of "piano not piano" house music created solely with a prepared piano and raw drum programming, under the name Boonlorm.
one of the three great food cultures of the world.
The Imperial Kitchen
Among the kiosks, halls, reception chambers, and harem baths, I suspect that visitors today spend the least time of all in the palace kitchens—unless they have an interest in Chinese porcelain, which is displayed in there. Otherwise there’s nothing much to see, just a series of domed rooms. Outside you can count the ten pairs of massive chimneys, but there’s no smoke. It’s a pity that the building is so quiet, because it was in here, over four centuries, that one aspect of Istanbul’s imperial purpose was most vividly expressed.
Big Harvest
15 years ago, the enigmatic artist Indio released a single album, Big Harvest, which yielded a top 10 hit, created a legion of fans, and more questions than answers. [more inside]
Good and Cheap - Cooking on SNAP
The Salt, NPR's food blog, explains how Leanne Brown was inspired to develop a cookbook for people on SNAP. Leanne published Good and Cheap[PDF] as the capstone project for her MA in
Food Studies at New York University and released it online as a free ebook. She also ran a successful Kickstarter to produce a print version.
PickYourOwn.org
Find a pick-your-own farm near you! Then learn to can and freeze! On this charmingly Web 1.0 site, you can learn via rainbow-colored Comic Sans how to find a pick-your-own food farm near you (or add and correct listings), and how to pick and preserve just about anything you can imagine.
"the sound of a man whose deepest wish is to erase himself"
In 1983 a man who called himself Lewis recorded and self-released an album called L'amour. No one much noticed at the time but his album was rediscovered in 2007 and slowly became a cult classic. It was rereleased by Light in the Attic Records earlier this year and has been received very well by the music press. When the record label and other people went looking for the artist, a former stockbroker from Calgary whose real name is Randall Aldon Wulff, they drew a blank. Some think he is deceased but others are looking for him all over Canada. And now another Lewis album from 1985 has been found and rereleased, and apparently he recorded many more. The ethereal quality of the music and the attendant mystery compels people to search within the music for some kind of answer to this riddle of a man. [more inside]
“I have no idea. (pause) We have no idea.”
It's a truth universally recognized that you have no game
thousands of wolf spiders staring at me
More 'gripey and complaining' set for 2015.
"It's annoying to hear we told you so—but, we told you so. The New Republic's initial review, published July 16, 1951, perfectly anticipated all the gripes and complaints readers would ironically come to have about Catcher's gripey and complaining protagonist." 63 Years Ago, We Knew That 'The Catcher in the Rye' Was Insufferable and Overrated. [more inside]
How to Mount a Horse in Armor and Other Chivalric Problems
Just how heavy and cumbersome was medieval armor? Who wore it? What did it look like? To find out, watch How to Mount a Horse in Armor and Other Chivalric Problems, an entertaining, informative, and deliciously snarky presentation by Dirk H. Breiding, assistant curator of the Department of Arms and Armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. [more inside]
The other movie Jerry Lewis don't want you to see
Featuring Jerry Lewis, Gladiator's Connie Nielsen and a score by The Avengers' Alan Silvestri, Par où t'es rentré on t'as pas vu sortir (How did you get in? We didn't see you leave) - available with subtitles on YouTube in its blurry VHS glory (poster 1 2) - is one of the two movies starred by Lewis during his one-year (1984) French career (the other is Retenez-moi ou je fais un malheur also known as the The defective detective). In the early 1980s, after several failures, a bypass surgery and nothwithstanding Scorsese's King of Comedy, Lewis tried to revive his career in the country where he was supposedly beloved: France. Alas, he chose the two worst French directors of the time, Michel Gérard and Philippe Clair, the latter known for cinematic jewels such as the Nazi-themed comedy Le Führer en folie (The crazy Führer), a Warner production that can actually make clowns cry. (all links below potentially and blurrily NSFW) [more inside]
Semiotics and Art
"Vampire" is known to be haunting beautiful, making the viewer feel both love and uneasiness, comfort and despair. Art depends on the signs found within semiotics just as much as language does, because without these signs we would have no way of interpreting the meaning of visual art. [more inside]
We are disabled by the built environment
City resources are lavished on gentrification and bicycle infrastructure, but few are invested in our public transit system and structures that support working class people (whom are disproportionately people with disabilities and QTPOC). Fares have gone up, incentives to park and ride have phased out, and there are endless stories of transit cops harassing riders. Bus routes run infrequently enough to be standing room only in my part of town.While Portland, Oregon prides itself on its progressive bicycle policies Rory Judah Blank's experiences show it's far less progressive when it comes to helping people with disabilities.
The true measure of a society is how we treat our children
When the Bough Breaks. "Children often can’t tell detectives what happened to them. But their injuries always tell a story. The essence of a child abuse investigation is determining the plausibility of an adult’s story, given the child’s condition. Could the child have sustained the injuries by falling off a bed, tumbling down stairs, or any number of accidents that parents routinely describe? Or does the story fail to account for the injuries?" A profile of Sergeant Brenda Nichols, the head of the Dallas Police Department’s Child Abuse Squad, and one of her cases. (SFW, but the article contains graphic descriptions of child abuse that some readers may find disturbing.)
Oh no we didn't; Oh Yes you did.
It's about the lying.
“When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques – techniques that I believe, and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture – we crossed a line” .
If the president really believes that, will he take legally required actions to respond to it?
As Juan Cole points out; America is Torture Central: From Prisons to ''Black Sites''
The Bush Administration promoted torture. They expanded its use, but they did not invent it, or introduce it into US foreign policy.
“When we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques – techniques that I believe, and I think any fair-minded person would believe were torture – we crossed a line” .
If the president really believes that, will he take legally required actions to respond to it?
As Juan Cole points out; America is Torture Central: From Prisons to ''Black Sites''
The Bush Administration promoted torture. They expanded its use, but they did not invent it, or introduce it into US foreign policy.
"They Float... and when you're down here, with me... YOU FLOAT TOO!"
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Clowns: [buzzfeed/buzzreads] The red-nosed pros at the 2014 World Clown Association annual convention know you think they’re creepy. How does a maligned and misunderstood centuries-old art form survive bad PR and cultural decline?
Houston, we are go for liftoff!
Previously, on Metafilter, we met Jeff Highsmith, who designed and built a pseudo Apollo Mission Control panel play desk for his son. He's done it again, with a "spacecraft" for his other son.
This is literally the greatest thing that has ever happened.
On September 1st, Paul F. Tompkins officially checks in to the Superego Clinic For Analytical Pscience™ for the long-awaited fourth season of the group's comedy/improv podcast. Can't wait? There's good news! Throughout the month of August, Superego will be posting new unreleased material to hold you over, starting with part one of a new Behind The Bonus episode, featuring previously unreleased material ($1.99 download). There will also be new animated Superego Supershorts posted to their You Tube channel, and more. The Superego facebook page is also a flurry of activity, and you can even get a personalized post card. [more inside]
August 1
Social networking
Where's The Juice? Commercial Speech versus Truth in Advertising
In June of this year, POM Wonderful won "a round in a food fight with Coca-Cola" in the case about how a fruit juice blend is labeled. It's a case of commercial speech, to which John Oliver opined that "in Coke's defense, they only mislead us about what was in their juice. For years, POM Wonderful has mislead us about what is in pomegranates". Generally speaking, as long as the labeling isn't incorrect or harmful, it can make bold claims, to a point. For instance, you can't claim your cereal could improve kids' attentiveness and memory when it doesn't. Whatever you do, you shouldn't add new labeling to existing, even if it is to clarify that the product sucks less, or is asbestos-free. [more inside]
"We're both so happy! Say that we're happy."
"One of the most exhilarating cinematic works of the Czechoslovak New
Wave is Vera Chytilová's 1966 film, Daisies, the story of two young women
who declare the world is spoiled and rotten, and so make a pact that they
will be too." -- Katarina Soukup, "Banquet of Profanities." "In a 1966 interview, Chytilová described Daisies as a 'philosophical documentary in the form of a farce,' a 'bizarre comedy with strands of satire and sarcasm.'" -- Bliss Cua Lim, "Dolls in Fragments." [more inside]
Beyond "tea, Earl Grey, hot" and Soylent green
MIND MELD: Food in Science Fiction versus Fantasy
This week we asked about Food and Drink in SF. Food and Drink in science fiction sometimes seems limited to replicator requests for Earl Grey tea and Soylent green discs. Why doesn’t do as much food as Fantasy? Does Fantasy lend itself more to food than Science fiction? Why? This is what they had to say…[more inside]
The Putter
A putter is a 'putter together of scissors.' This short documentary by Shaun Bloodworth follows the work of Cliff Denton, who works at Ernest Wright & Sons of Sheffield, one of the last remaining hand manufacturers of scissors. More from the BBC, with Eric Stones, the other Master Puttertogetherer at the factory.
The Abortion Ministry of Dr. Willie Parker
A Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire
A Digital Atlas of the Roman Empire is an OpenLayers map that uses a new geographical dataset constructed from the award-winning Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World (previously), along with several other sources. You can search for sites by place name or zoom in and click sites to get more information about them. It includes tagged data from virtually every known location in the ancient world, and was implemented in 2012 by Johan Åhlfeldt. The geographical dataset can also be used as a background layer with other maps - for example, here is a basic Google Maps version. Åhlfeldt has made the data freely available under the CC-BY license.
story of your life
My Cousin is Not a Hero: "But it’s not fiction, it’s real life. It’s the night of his dad’s funeral and we’re standing there together, and neither of us is a hero. Neither of us is on an epic journey... Our plot points are weird ones, and our stories don’t add up to some amazing narrative of personal growth and enlightenment — but they do matter, because they’re ours." [more inside]
A tandem jump, an accident, and a bond that will last forever.
There are thousands of things that can go wrong during a sky dive. Usually, Dave Hartsock packed his own parachute. He could just about do it with his eyes shut: straighten the lines, roll the canopy, fold in the outside, press out the excess air, then crease it into a package and carefully place the fabric in the deployment bag. [more inside]
Visualizing contagion
Vax: Gamifying Epidemic Prevention "Players are tasked to prepare for an outbreak by vaccinating a network that resembles human social networks. After distributing vaccines, an infectious outbreak begins to spread and the player is tasked to quell the epidemic by quarantining individuals at risk of becoming infected." [more inside]
Nothing in this world cannot be taken from you
Worse than Walkin' On Sunshine
For an old North Sea hand, 40-foot waves, the kind that would terrify most of us, were nothing out of the ordinary. But the emergence from nowhere of a single wave that was more than twice as high as the others was exceptional. Warwick had encountered a rogue wave. When Good Waves Go Rogue
Fiction and reality intertwine in Russia and Ukraine.
The Sci-Fi Writers' War. "A pro-Western, NATO-backed Ukrainian government faces a stubborn insurgency in the pro-Russian East. Fighting rages around Donetsk, with civilians dying in artillery fire and airstrikes, while Russian troops mass on the Ukrainian border. The latest headlines? No, a two-novel series by Russian-Ukrainian science-fiction writer Fedor Berezin: War 2010: The Ukrainian Front and War 2011: Against NATO. In a startling plot twist, Berezin, a 54-year-old former Soviet Army officer and Donetsk native, is now living inside a real-life version of his own story: He is deputy defense minister of the embattled 'Donetsk People’s Republic.'"
New patch release
Musician Charles Cohen (previously) hosts a workshop at Berlin's Schneidersladen, demonstrating the use of the rare and recently re-released Buchla Music Easel
"It's an amazing feeling."
In recognition of his tireless devotion to picking up litter in the countryside, local man David "Pig Pen" Sedaris is honored by the Horsham District Council by having a garbage truck named after him. [more inside]
You want to go and slay all the false statements in the world
This Letter to a Young Haskell Enthusiast is mostly not about Haskell, or about programming, but about being a good person in an online community.
Mystery lake
Mysterious lake in Tunisian desert turns from turquoise to green sludge "The lake appeared in the Tunisian desert like a mirage; one minute there was nothing but scorching sand, the next a large expanse of turquoise water."
"When I sound real, I'm fake, and when I sound fake, I'm real."
"No wonder we react so viscerally to the 'ching-chong, ching-chong' schoolyard taunt. To attack our language, our ability to sound 'normal,' is to attack our ability to be normal. It's to attack everything we've worked for." An essay by Arthur Chu on feigning a Chinese accent for work and ridding oneself of an accent for life. [more inside]
I Will Be There
Graphical views of artificial neural networks
Two approachable visual presentations of simple neural networks: one showing how a soft activation function allows the successive layers of a neural network to distort the input until the different classes are separable, and the other showing how a hard step activation function can be represented as carving out polygons in the space of inputs. Don't be intimidated by the rather condensed summaries above- the actual articles are very readable.
NASA claims to have tested a "reactionless" space drive, and it works.
"An environment conducive to sexual harassment within the Marching Band"
On July 22, The Ohio State University fired Marching Band director Jon Waters because he was allegedly aware of (or should have known) about an "environment conducive to sexual harassment within the Marching Band".
The University's 23-page report details a wide range of incidents, including sexualized nicknames and staff supervision of an annual "Midnight Ramp" performed in underwear, and includes as exhibits a "rookie test" and a copy of the band's unofficial songbook. Perhaps most distressingly, during Waters' brief tenure as director, two band members were sexually assaulted.
The Title IX complaint that prompted Waters' firing was filed by the parent of one of the assaulted band members. (After reporting the assault, the victim declined to rejoin the band for her senior year out of fear that she would be ostracized by some of the other band members.) Waters was also initially unsympathetic to a victim of a different sexual assault which occurred during the Athletic Band's trip to the Big Ten basketball tournament in March 2013. Some legal analysts suggest that Title IX law gave the University no choice but to fire Waters, given his knowledge of the culture issues within the Band.
But Waters
claims he was doing his best to fix the Band's culture, and submitted
his own lengthy document listing the steps he's taken. [more inside]
Kenji in Asia
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, managing culinary director at food blog Serious Eats, recently took an extended trip to China and southeast Asia with his wife, Adri, after driving across the country during a move from New York to San Francisco. He documented his Asia trip on a personal blog set up to elude Chinese censors. [more inside]
Everything is upside down.
Advice on how to survive late capitalism: "Your life is sold to serve an economy that does not serve your life. You don’t seem to be entertained, Bank-robbin’; your white-hot rage festers. It probably doesn’t help that you live in Brooklyn—this place where in the last ten years rent has spiked 77 percent while real median income has dropped, where the rich (the top 10 percent of earners who, as is well known, control 80 percent of the wealth) and their children live right on top of some of the worst poverty known to this country, while 20 percent of Brooklynites survive somehow below the poverty level, such that the widening income and wealth gap becomes achingly visible here. I could advise you to leave Brooklyn. But I don’t want you to leave Brooklyn."
We call it a home.
The Wall Street Journal looks at Palna, an organization in Delhi that raises children who have been abandoned. Palna means "cradle"; most children who live there are left in a wicker basket outside the front door. Established in 1978, today, "these services reach over 2500 children daily and are provided virtually free of cost to them. ALL activities and policies of DCCW are colour / caste / community blind, and are based on secular principles." [more inside]
Too many brewers hopped on the craft bandwagon
The highway, however, is getting mighty crowded. Hundreds of different beers debut weekly, creating a scrum of session IPAs, spiced witbiers, and barrel-aged stouts scuffling for shelf space. For consumers, the situation is doubly confusing. How can you pick a pint on a 100-brew tap list? Moreover, beer shops are chockablock with pale this and imperial that, each one boasting a different hop pun.America has too many craft brewers.
Advice on how to be creative from people who are
Don’t just say, ‘Oh, I need to work on that.’ Say, ‘I need to work on this element of that.’ Absolutely eat dessert first. The thing that you want to do the most, do that. Fast Company interviews Joss Whedon on how to get things done, part of a round-up of creative advice from Guillermo del Toro, Ron Howard, Chris Hardwick, Josh Fox, Alex Kurtzman and Robert Orci, Robert Rodriguez, Matthew Weiner, and Ernest Greene aka Washed Out.
The Aesthetes
The Aesthetes - For the legendary expats of Tangier, a life devoted to beauty reaches full flower in this North African hothouse of history and hedonism.
Resistance is not futile? /Hugh
I come from the future , and I’m here to tell you: transcending the limits of the flesh can be downright dull. [more inside]
The Not So United States of Infographics
One of the more ubiquitous formats for "infographics" these days is the U.S.A. Map Comparing Individual States and promoting interstate rivalries. After all, wherever you live in the U.S. of A., you need bragging rights for something, right?
Recently, Business Insider featured "27 Maps That Explain America" including ones that compared each state's percentage of residents with passports, most overrepresented job in every state, percentage of each state's population with a 4-year degree, number of billionaires in each state, number of Starbucks locations in each state, states' stances on climate change (judged by Think Progress), fast food consumption and exercise frequency (detail in a weird format here and here), and cavities per capita.
But Business Insider is certainly not the only site 'mapping the states'... [more inside]
Recently, Business Insider featured "27 Maps That Explain America" including ones that compared each state's percentage of residents with passports, most overrepresented job in every state, percentage of each state's population with a 4-year degree, number of billionaires in each state, number of Starbucks locations in each state, states' stances on climate change (judged by Think Progress), fast food consumption and exercise frequency (detail in a weird format here and here), and cavities per capita.
But Business Insider is certainly not the only site 'mapping the states'... [more inside]