September 2016 Archives
September 30
Just like a hairy black potato with wings
Let's close out Happy Fun September with the heretofore unknown parts of the creation story.
Oh, those Russians.
The story of The Red Shoes, by way of '70s disco phenom Boney M. And also sarcastic animators.
The water reached higher than the Sears Tower
Lituya Bay is a narrow fjord on the southeast coast of Alaska. In the early 1950s, a geologist found evidence that seemed to indicate tsunamis had occurred there in the past, but of seemingly impossible size. Then in 1958, an earthquake showed what a mega-tsunami was really like....
Start to move slowly, very slowly
Enigma - MCMXC a.D.. I don't know what the producers of this album were thinking, but obviously one should never put this album on during sex. [more inside]
"When it comes to left feet, I've got ZERO!"
Josh Sundquist is a Paralympian, a bestselling author and motivational speaker. He lost his left leg to Ewing's sarcoma at age nine and later became a Paralympic ski racer. He also has basketball skills: Scorpion Shot, Alley Oop, Trampoline Shot, Toe Flick.
He has rap ambitions, too. And he finally found his sole mate. [more inside]
He has rap ambitions, too. And he finally found his sole mate. [more inside]
Magas: squelchy, noisy electronics and a sly sense of humor
May I Meet My Accuser (AllMusic review by Thom Jurek) ~~ Magas has been hanging out making mischief on the fringes of noise and electronic music since the early 1990s, whether it was playing in Couch with Aaron Dilloway, being a member of Lake of Dracula, remixing [Bobby] Conn tracks, or just generally being gleefully obnoxious and participating in things that kept him amused. Then comes this slab. It's big-bottom beats, wild pitch-warped synths, distorted vocals, hammered loops, and wonk and whir come off as a new, (yes, new) electro-swamp music for the dawn of this final century... [more inside]
Its not eazy being a pedent
We'd rather go out now in true rock'n'roll style
The Rosetta Space Probe ended its mission at 11:19 UTC September 30, with a controlled touch down on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko at low speed. After a 10 year journey, Rosetta spent 25 months in orbit of the comet, sending a large amount of images and scientific data. [more inside]
law and order in the philippines
On June 30, Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines. Duterte had served as mayor of Davao city for over 20 years, during which death squads killed an estimated 1400 people, including 132 children.
Today marks exactly three months since Duterte took the reins over the twelfth-largest country in the world. In that time, an estimated 3100 Filipinos have been summarily executed. In remarks earlier today, Duterte compared himself to Adolf Hitler and noted, "there's three million drug addicts [in the Philippines]. I'd be happy to slaughter them." [more inside]
Thoughts & Prayers - The App
Wait, my favorite skater is gay?
Vice Sports talks to the legendary Brian Anderson about Being a Gay Professional Skateboarder.
How does it feel? "Like a hundred pounds has been lifted off of my body." [more inside]
How does it feel? "Like a hundred pounds has been lifted off of my body." [more inside]
Constrained Synthesis
Bitmap & tilemap generation from a single example with the help of ideas from quantum mechanics. [more inside]
Hey, you got water in my fuel mixture. Hey, you got fuel in my water.
New York Times: "For decades, automakers have relied on turbocharging, which uses energy captured from exhaust gases to force additional air into the cylinders, to increase the power and efficiency of some gasoline engines." "[Now] a prominent automotive supplier has developed a counterintuitive technology that could enhance turbocharged engines for passenger cars by improving fuel economy with no reduction in power. How? By spraying water into the cylinders as the engine is operating." Warning: Some marketing speak in quotes.
Babi Yar at 75: Filling in the Blanks in Ukrainian History
Long before Auschwitz, long before Treblinka and Sobibor, there was Babi Yar—the sprawling ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv where the Nazis, with support from the locals, murdered 33,771 Jews in a two-day killing spree on September 29 and 30, 1941. The Holocaust as the “final solution” began here, in Ukraine and other Soviet territories. Over the fall of 1941 the number of victims at Babi Yar grew to 100,000, to include, beside the Jews, the mentally ill, Roma, Ukrainian nationalists, Communists, and other undesirables.
Biggy Pop
Iggy Pop has a pet cockatoo named Biggy Pop. Biggy Pop is on Instagram. They have sweet adventures together, like today's.
Roll up for the murderous mystery tour
Dark Tourism On her great blog, historian Donna Seger discusses the phenomenon of Dark Tourism - a cultural trend responsible for the proliferation of ghost tours, vampire tours, and graveyard tours as well as interest in more historically serious places such as Holocaust sites, Civil War Battlefields, and even contemporary war zones. Also known in academia as thanatourism, its subcategories include fright tourism[PDF], disaster tourism, morbid tourism, and grief tourism. [more inside]
September 29
The World Passes 400 PPM Threshold. Permanently.
2016 will be the year that carbon dioxide officially passed the symbolic 400 ppm mark, never to return below it in our lifetimes. In the centuries to come, history books will likely look back on September 2016 as a major milestone for the world’s climate. [more inside]
What A Horrible Year To Have A Curse
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Konami's iconic horror series Castlevania, USGamer has put together a retrospective of the series' history and influence and the AV Club has picked it's favorite songs from the soundtrack (YouTube link). If you want a trip down memory lane, VG Junk has a loving review of the first game, Dracula X, and a collection of Symphony of the Night ephemera. Or refresh yourself on what made the series so mechanically great with Tim Rogers essay In Praise of Sticky Friction.
Meerkats - the most murderous mammal!
Cute but deadly
Which mammal is most likely to be murdered by its own kind? It’s certainly not humans—not even close. Nor is it a top predator like the grey wolf or lion, although those at least are #11 and #9 in the league table of murdery mammals. No, according to a study led by José María Gómez from the University of Granada, the top spot goes to… the meerkat.[more inside]
The Evolution of Pepe
In light of the Clinton campaign calling Pepe the Frog "a symbol associated with white supremacy" (which the ADL has now added to its online hate symbols database), The Atlantic interviews Matt Furie, the creator of Pepe: "My feelings are pretty neutral, this isn’t the first time that Pepe has been used in a negative, weird context. I think it’s just a reflection of the world at large. The internet is basically encompassing some kind of mass consciousness, and Pepe, with his face, he’s got these large, expressive eyes with puffy eyelids and big rounded lips, I just think that people reinvent him in all these different ways, it’s kind of a blank slate. It’s just out of my control, what people are doing with it, and my thoughts on it, are more of amusement."
Inside the Chicago Police Department’s secret budget
Through numerous Freedom of Information Act requests, the Chicago Reader, working with the Chicago-based transparency nonprofit Lucy Parsons Labs and the public records website MuckRock, obtained more than 1,000 pages of Chicago Police Department documents—including the department's deposit and expenditure ledgers, internal e-mails, and purchasing records—that offer an unprecedented look into how Chicago police and the Cook County state's attorney's office make lucrative use of civil asset forfeiture. [more inside]
“...Mr. Obama’s strongest allies on Capitol Hill turned against him.”
Congress Votes to Override Obama Veto on 9/11 Victims Bill [The New York Times] “Congress on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to override a veto by President Obama for the first time, passing into law a bill that would allow the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for any role in the plot. Democrats in large numbers joined with Republicans to deliver a remarkable rebuke to the president. The 97-to-1 vote in the Senate and the 348-to-77 vote in the House displayed the enduring power of the Sept. 11 families in Washington and the diminishing influence here of the Saudi government. The new law, enacted over the fierce objections of the White House, immediately alters the legal landscape. American courts could seize Saudi assets to pay for any judgment obtained by the Sept. 11 families, while Saudi officials have warned they might need to sell off hundreds of billions of dollars in holdings in the United States to avoid such an outcome.” [more inside]
The Haunting of Netflix House 4: The Netflix Master
Comics writer Benito Cereno gives his now traditional guide to "good, notable, or at least interesting horror and horror-adjacent movies available to stream on Netflix" in October *, the spookiest of months. [more inside]
No more vagina pillows (at that location)
Back in 2015, Portlandia was renewed for a sixth and seventh season, and season 7 is almost upon us.
One of the many recurring sketches on the program features Toni and Candace, the owners of the Women and Women First bookstore. While the name is a play on Chicago’s Women and Children First, episodes are filmed at Porland’s In Other Words.
On Monday, after a particularly intrusive shooting session, the staff at In Other Words have put a “Fuck Portlandia!” sign in the window, written a blog post about their issues why, and cut off their relationship with the program. Additional coverage/reposting at Splitsider, Jezebel and The A.V. Club
One of the many recurring sketches on the program features Toni and Candace, the owners of the Women and Women First bookstore. While the name is a play on Chicago’s Women and Children First, episodes are filmed at Porland’s In Other Words.
On Monday, after a particularly intrusive shooting session, the staff at In Other Words have put a “Fuck Portlandia!” sign in the window, written a blog post about their issues why, and cut off their relationship with the program. Additional coverage/reposting at Splitsider, Jezebel and The A.V. Club
French might be the language of love but German is the language of anger
"It belongs in a museum!"
And, if you're frightened, you can be frightened, you can be, it's ok.
I guess Chinese men don't have tears
Lovey Banh is a figure I became completely transfixed by during a period of really unstable emotional health. She has mild notoriety as an amazon oddity author for her irreverent book titles (“An Ant See A Lion Marry A Butterfly: I Am Sleeping In My Car B/C I Am Not The Next RJ Rowling”, “30 Years I Do Not Brush My Teeth”, “One Kid Two Lungs To Harvest”), book covers prominently featuring what is presumably the author in swimwear, book pricing (most sitting at around $2,000), and the incomparable sum of books written and available to purchase: currently equaling 265...
...It’s all very easy to quickly dismiss as funny and weird and move on from. But upon closer inspection and some pouring through of “look inside” offerings of her books, there was something namelessly too human and that connected too much within itself to convince me there wasn’t intelligence behind the books.
The Case of Lovey Banh.
...It’s all very easy to quickly dismiss as funny and weird and move on from. But upon closer inspection and some pouring through of “look inside” offerings of her books, there was something namelessly too human and that connected too much within itself to convince me there wasn’t intelligence behind the books.
The Case of Lovey Banh.
Mary Cavendish: 17th century duchess, author, scientist, philosopher
Browse through the history of science fiction and you don't see many women named. One of the first is Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, who published a proto-SF novel in 1666, 152 years before Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Also notable, Mary Cavendish published her book, titled The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World (Internet Archive), under her own name. The book is a curious mixture of themes and styles: part science fiction, part fantasy, part scientific musing, part political tract, part social commentary and satire, and part autobiography. This diversity of topics reflected the amazing life and interests of its "Happy Creatoress," a woman of means but without formal education of her male peers. [more inside]
History of urban nightlife in America
Here are 12 interesting facts about urban nightlife from Peter C. Baldwin’s article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, which shows how times have greatly changed and, remarkably, how some things have remained the same.
[Election 2016] If you stand for nothing, what’ll you fall for?
In the wake of the first presidential debate Monday night, which was widely recognized as a Clinton win even by the Republicans, polls in swing states have begun to swing back toward Clinton and even Nate Silver is calming down a bit. [more inside]
At 12-9, the US military has a journeyman baseball pitcher's W/L record
"If, in SOCOM’s accounting, the United States has engaged in relatively few actual wars, don’t credit “deterrence.” Instead, the command has done its best to simply redefine war out of existence, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, in favor of those “gray zone challenges.”
If one accepts that quasi-wars are actually war, then the Defense Department has done little to deter conflict. The United States has, in fact, been involved in some kind of military action — by SOCOM’s definition — in every year since 1980."
How's successful has the US been in achieving those aims, reducing conflict, and actually succeeding in it's objectives? Face it, America doesn't win a lot of wars. [more inside]
Who Tells Their Story?
"For Asian-American actors, there is a persistent fear of being left out of the conversation entirely, since “diversity” has often been conflated with black representation only. As Hamilton star Leslie Odom Jr. put it, “In America, things get boiled down into a black and white issue, but I want to see stories about Asian people, I want to see stories about trans people — diversity is not just a black and white issue. … We’ve still got some work to do when you talk about real diversity.” (Buzzfeed longform)
I hated that necktie anyway
Some genius superimposed John Williams' Superman score on the season preview for Supergirl. (SLYT)
Galactic Tick Day
September 29, 2016 is Galactic Tick Day, a celebration of our progress around the milky way.
Our planet Earth, along with the rest of the Solar System travels around the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy every 225 million Earth years. One centi-arcsecond of this rotation is called a Galactic Tick. A Galactic Tick happens every 633.7 days, or 1.7361 years.
Galactic Tick Day is set aside to acknowledge our Sun's motion, our progress around the home galaxy, and to celebrate humanity's knowledge of this motion.
Note: No spoons were harmed in the creation of this FPP. [more inside]
Our planet Earth, along with the rest of the Solar System travels around the galactic center of the Milky Way Galaxy every 225 million Earth years. One centi-arcsecond of this rotation is called a Galactic Tick. A Galactic Tick happens every 633.7 days, or 1.7361 years.
Galactic Tick Day is set aside to acknowledge our Sun's motion, our progress around the home galaxy, and to celebrate humanity's knowledge of this motion.
Note: No spoons were harmed in the creation of this FPP. [more inside]
The Sausage King of Northeast
Beards, beer and flannel: 11 guys compete for the title of Mr. Northeast Minneapolis "...the men of Northeast compete before a panel of celebrity judges in such distinguished categories as “Fashion,” “Talent,” and "Question and Answer" to capture the crown, the title and fabulous prizes." [more inside]
Gears, Glorious Gears
The Fast & Furious movies are, of course, cinema's crowning achievement. But what is the very best part of cinema's crowning achievement? Amazingly, it is not The Rock -- it's that sexy, sexy, gear shifting. So if you think you can stand two and a half minutes of pure, undiluted awesomeness, go ahead and watch all 236 shifts from all seven movies.
The Great Bear, The Living Statue & The Monster In The Cave
"In recent years a promising scientific approach to comparative mythology has emerged in which researchers apply conceptual tools that biologists use to decipher the evolution of living species. In the hands of those who analyze myths, the method, known as phylogenetic analysis, consists of connecting successive versions of a mythical story and constructing a family tree that traces the evolution of the myth over time." On using biological ideas to trace the paths of evolving myths across the world.
Can we call it a "Jewish accent" rather than, say, a "New York accent"?
Why Linguists are Fascinated by the American Jewish Accent
Intonation, pitch, phrasing, cadence, conversational style and behavor patterns, use of non-English words and locally-specific references (and so much more) all combine to produce what we call the American Jewish Accent. [more inside]
Intonation, pitch, phrasing, cadence, conversational style and behavor patterns, use of non-English words and locally-specific references (and so much more) all combine to produce what we call the American Jewish Accent. [more inside]
8 Hours To Cross The Mountains (... and that's just the first day)
The Camino de Santiago is a long walk. This is the story of one man walking a pilgrim's way to the bones of Saint James the Great in Northwest Spain. SandyRoe tells his story to an online community of cruciverbalists. [more inside]
That's No Moon -- Okay No Wait That's a Moon
There are 182 moons (and counting) in the solar system orbiting planets; there are a bunch more orbiting planetoids. Read on for all your moon facts. [more inside]
September 28
High Hitler
German novelist Norman Ohler has written his first non-fiction work, Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany. Drug abuse permeated all levels of the Third Reich, with Hitler himself, enabled by his personal physician Theodor Morell, being one of the most addicted, primarily to Eukadol (Oxycodone) and cocaine. Ohler also argues methamphetamines made the western Blitzkrieg through the Ardennes possible.
The Clean
RIP Agnes Nixon TV Soap Opera Writer, Creator, Legend
Agnes Nixon creator of 'All My Children,' 'One Life to Live,' dies at 93 Ms. Nixon was a dominant force in daytime TV. The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences called her "the grand dame of daytime serial drama" when she won lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmy Awards in 2010 for her serials. [more inside]
Mario cover art through the years
“A word can be reclaimed, or reconstituted...”
On Carefree Black Boys: Understanding the Appeal of the 'Carefree' Aesthetic to Black Male Musicians From Young Thug to Chance the Rapper [MTV] “Chance has found a slogan to represent what is irrepressible in him: #BlackBoyJoy. Following his appearance at the 2016 VMAs, he started sharing photos of himself at the event, preening, dancing, and posing, with the hashtag. He was a natural spokesman. Others followed suit, posting photos of boys and men frolicking and grinning. The #BlackBoyJoy hashtag preceded Chance’s use of it, and its origins are in the broader, voguish idea of “carefree blackness.” Like the loose digital community that bore it, this carefreeness has an ambient quality, a collection of aesthetics and identities that many laud as a generalized form of activism.”
Why do we dance?
Dance is a language, and social dance is an expression that emerges from a community. A social dance isn't choreographed by any one person. It can't be traced to any one moment. They are as old as our remembered history. In African-American social dances, we see over 200 years of how African and African-American traditions influenced our history. The present always contains the past. And the past shapes who we are and who we will be.
The Queer Poor Aesthetic
There’s a viral and ironic trend that i’ve been lately noticing in and beyond my TQPOC community: my wealthier friends own everything but their class privilege. I couldn’t “be myself” in a space built for people like me. I couldn’t identify with people I shared identities with. The identity that significantly affects my daily life was erased in a culture that consumes identity politics. The only times my anti-capitalist housemates mentioned class was when it was theoretical and not about them personally, as if being marginalized makes you entitled to know how every kind of oppression feels. It’s easy to hide behind your oppression.
I sing the city
The City Born Great, short fiction by Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin.
like The Rock in Fast & Furious 7, only with much more crying
"Summer is the time for sunshine, sudsy brews and sandwiches of the hot dog variety. And of course, that classic game. The sport of kings. Baseball. What better way to celebrate America’s pastime than that classic sportswriter trope of visiting all 30 MLB parks in 30 days. Crossing the country, seeing the sights and catching a ballgame or two along the way. My trusty editor set up an itinerary and sent me on my way. What wonders will I encounter and valuable lessons will I learn along the way? Let’s find out as I embark on this adventure into America’s pastime!" -- A tribute to the great parks by the inimitable Ethan Booker
You’ve been drinking SQUASH FREAKING SPICE LATTES this entire time
I just found out canned pumpkin isn't actually pumpkin at all, and my whole life is basically a lie. By Emma Crist at Food & Wine.
The hills are alive with the sound of pinballs...
Jollyball is a rolling ball sculpture by Charles Morgan. (site is in French, but a short film on Morgan is in English.)
It debuted at the Expo 86 Switzerland Pavilion in Vancouver, Canada, and is seen briefly in this Expo 86 promotional video.
It is now located at the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago, which means we can now see videos of the pinball's entire 5 minute adventure through Swiss life.
Don't look back—something might be rolling on you.
The Best Sport Of The Early 1900s Involved Pushing Around An Elephant-Sized Ball (Atlas Obscura) [more inside]
Because ≤ and ← are better than <= and <-
Some monospaced fonts with ligatures for common mathematical and programming symbols: Hasklig, Fira Code, Monoid (a small “why” from the creator), Iosevka, DejaVu Sans Code, and Fixedsys Excelsior. Take them (and a bunch of no-ligature monospaced fonts) for a spin at app.programmingfonts.org!
Useful Guide For Living A Self-Sustatining Lifestyle
Shershnyov's royalty report showed that itemized revenues from the 11 master accounts generated $2.44 million since June 2015, which is when Amazon changed the terms in which authors were paid based on the number of books loaned. (It's not known what was made during the six months prior to that, which was when the scam began.)Revealed: How one Amazon Kindle scam made millions of dollars
BUCKAROO PARTY is not being represented tonight
After a must-read Presidential Debate Live Tweet, Internet Saint Chuck Tingle has brought forth trumpdebatefacts.com, blowing open the lies of the man crab from the Void, along with some brand new Tinglers (last two links are NSFW).
Mini Lasagna!
Still solvent after all these years
Wisconsin's unique pension system was "designed like a Swiss watch that winds itself," adjusting payouts based on how well the fund is doing, so as to automatically stay solvent. The architect? Gary Gates, a man so thrifty he would cut out and reverse the collars on his dress shirts when they got too worn.
Colombia's half-century civil war ends
With the signing of a peace deal between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army (better known as FARC), the Western Hemisphere has no active wars for the first time in six decades. [more inside]
Battery is a really, really bad sport anime.
This is not bait. This is not subtle. This is there to be recognized by people who know what they're looking for. A deliberate hand put this together, and it's all part of the much bigger overall theme. Battery is about self-discovery and societal oppression by way of growing up gay in Japan.Redditor TheHaruWhoCanRead shows why the recently concluded baseball anime Battery might be more than meets the eye. Note: spoilers. [more inside]
"Ophiuchus," means "Snake Bearer"
NASASpacePlace : "When the Babylonians first invented the 12 signs of zodiac, a birthday between about July 23 and August 22 meant being born under the constellation Leo. Now, 3,000 years later, the sky has shifted because Earth's axis (North Pole) doesn't point in quite the same direction.
Now Mimi's August 4 birthday would mean she was born "under the sign" of Cancer (one constellation "earlier"), not Leo. " The new 13-sign calendar plays out like this.
If you think these events sound far-fetched, I agree
Ted's Caving Page Due to the overwhelming number of requests I have received to tell about my discoveries and bizarre experiences in a cave not far from my home, I have created this web page. I will outline the events that happened to me during the past few months. Beginning with my journey into a familiar cave in December 2000 and ending... well, it hasn't actually ended yet. I will use my caving journal as the text to tell about my recent experience. I will give them to you as I experienced them, in chronological order. [in case of popup weirdness, alt link to archive.org with various options to view, including a PDF]
September 27
My sign name is Emma, I love to dance
Emma Watkins, best known as the current Yellow Wiggle, dances Justin Timberlake's Can't stop the Feeling for World Deaf Day (September 24.) (SLYT)
(Emma is Australian and I believe she is using Auslan.)
Famous and Infamous Census Records
Famous and Infamous Census Records — Find out where they lived from 1790 to 1940: presidents; celebrities; authors; human rights activists and social reformers; industrialists and inventors; politicians and public servants (including U.S. Census Bureau luminaries); American Indians, Alaska natives, and native Hawaiians; military personnel; scientists; artists, cartoonists, and animators; adventurers; musicians; other notable Americans; sports stars; and of course, the truly infamous.
Shimon Peres dies at 93
PM Peres, "one of the last surviving pillars of Israel’s founding generation", passed away in a Tel Aviv-area hospital on Wednesday.
Peres was hospitalized after a stroke recently. He served as prime minister and president of Israel, as well as a minister of defense, foreign affairs, finance, and transportation. He was jointly awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994, a champion of strong Israeli defense and peace in the region.
Coverage from The Jerusalem Post, Haaretz, BBC. Live reactions compiled by The Guardian.
Nightsatan and the Loops of Doom
Nightsatan and the Loops of Doom. The ultimate post-apocalyptic synthesizer short film. [NSFW]
Abe was just a kid who loved clothes.
His clothes were not on the outside of his body; they were—for now—the outside of his body. They were the visible form taken by the way he chose to define himself. None of the gawky young models, standing around flat-footed and hunch-shouldered with their assigned coats and jackets and baggy shorts hanging off them like drop cloths thrown over a dining room set, could say that.
My Son, The Prince Of Fashion
My Son, The Prince Of Fashion
Heavy flow
After One Match And 67 Days It's All Over For Big Sam
BBC: "Sam Allardyce has left his post as England manager by mutual agreement with the Football Association after one match and 67 days in charge.
It follows a newspaper investigation claiming he offered advice on how to "get around" rules on player transfers.
Allardyce, 61, is also alleged to have used his role to negotiate a deal worth £400,000 to represent a Far East firm." Alan Shearer: "England a Laughing Stock."
"Let me ‘splain… no, there is too much. let me sum up."
it is better to speak / remembering / we were never meant to survive
The final week of September comprises the fourth week of the latest iteration of Black Lives Matter: Race, Resistance, and Populist Protest, a 14-week interdisciplinary seminar taught by NYU Professor Frank Leon Roberts. Texts, videos, and reflective writing prompts for each class are being made available online. Next week's readings are Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond by Marc Lamont Hill and the U.S. Department of Justice Report on the Ferguson, MO Police Department (previously); this week's reading is A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for Black Power, Freedom, and Justice (previously). [more inside]
"It's about more than pho and sombreros"
"Cultural appropriation: It's about more than pho and sombreros." Viet Thanh Nguyen, recent winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Sympathizer, presents the 101 basics of Cultural Appropriation for a general audience and then addresses how to move forward.
Too interesting to not attempt a landing there
Europa, the moon of Jupiter made famous by the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact, appears to have plumes of water at its south pole. This will make it easier to figure out what's in the ocean underneath all that ice. [more inside]
"Crocodilians are the most vocal of the reptiles."
Alligators hiss and bellow, and crocodiles, same thing. If you can hear them, they're around... [more inside]
C.R.E.A.M. (Class Rules Everything Around Me)
"No, it was urine. It was mine."
David Wartinger is a urologist, a professor emeritus, and a guy who is willing to ride Big Thunder Mountain with a backpack full of urine and kidney stones... for SCIENCE. The upshot is, roller coasters might help you pass kidney stones. [more inside]
“What we need now is more information, more voices, and more speech.”
Banned Books Week Launches With Call to Read Books the 'Closed-Minded' Want Shut [The Guardian] ““But librarians would argue that the best way to guide your children’s reading is to read with them, and talk about what you read. For every parent convinced that a book is evil, there are two other parents who think it’s wonderful. So you have the right to guide your own children’s reading – but not to dictate or suppress someone else’s,” said LaRue. “The truth is, [these] issues are already a part of many children’s lives, and suppressing books about them doesn’t help anyone. In fact, these books may tell children that they are not alone, that what’s happening to them is not unique, and it can be survived. The world can be a dangerous place, but reading about it makes it less so.”” [more inside]
Dubstep's great-great-grandad
More famous for helping to crack the Enigma code during World War 2, Alan Turing also created the first ever computer-generated musical notes in 1948. In 1951, a recording - the first ever of computer-generated music - was made at the BBC. The recording was restored this year at the University of Canterbury in new Zealand and can be heard here [mp3].
via @v21
September 26
Bad Science
The Inevitable Evolution of Bad Science "Now, imagine you’re a researcher who wants to game this system. Here’s what you do. Run many small and statistically weak studies. Tweak your methods on the fly to ensure positive results. If you get negative results, sweep them under the rug. Never try to check old results; only pursue new and exciting ones. These are not just flights of fancy. We know that such practices abound."
Scientific Breakthroughs 10 Years On
Where are some of the celebrity molecules featured in past scientific breakthroughs? Science takes the time to follow up. [more inside]
Boots (borrowed directly from our cowboy friend)
A week ago GQ published a fashion shoot featuring rock climbers (warning: autoplaying video with sound). Outdoor Research offered its own take.
we are the virus of the new world disorder
CyberFeminism in the 90s and An Oral History of the First Cyberfeminists chronicle a wave of multimedia art that spun out of Australia's VNS Matrix, creators of the CyberFeminist Manifesto and All New Gen, a CD ROM game where "Female ‹cybersluts› and ‹guerrillas,› ‹anarcho cyber-terrorists› infiltrate cyberspace and hack into the controls and databanks of Big Daddy Mainframe, the Oedipal man". (Most links NSFW).
you can't just smash a bunch of protons together and hope it sticks.
Iron Man and the Island of Stability -
Tony Stark found the Holy Grail of nuclear physics and nobody noticed [more inside]
Bored? Nothing on TV? Want some happy fun in what's left of September?
Ask him a question: it glances off, he obfuscates, he dances.
Tonight at 9PM Eastern Time, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off at Hofstra University for the first 2016 Presidential Debate. Print out your Bingo cards and tune in to any of the major networks. Alternately, YouTube is partnering with NBC, PBS, the Washington Post, Newsmax, Fox News, Telemundo, and Univision to stream coverage. Twitter is offering Bloomberg coverage and Facebook is streaming ABC and PBS. You can even watch on your Samsung Gear VR or Oculus Rift via Altspace VR. [more inside]
In a battle between a Bald Eagle and a chicken...
something like a cloud of sound
#GoodMuslimBadMuslim with Taz & Zahra
If you put a silk dress on a goat he is a goat still.
Photographer Kevin Horan took portrait photos of goats. Who could say "No" to that face? [more inside]
What does chameleon really mean?
The word chameleon is often broken down to mean "lion on the ground," which is quite odd for what are generally tree-dwelling lizards. But if you look further at the etymology of its name, it indicates it could also mean "small lion," potentially because some have head-crests that could resemble a lion's mane. Oh, and people in Shakespeare's time thought chameleons ate only air, an idea that can be traced back to Pliny the Elder's description in Natural History. This notion of eating air, or surviving for long periods with no food, also fostered the notion that chameleons represented strength to survive, as possibly referenced in the Bible, so it could be that chameleon really meant "small lion" for its strength, not its appearance. [more inside]
next year's most expensive Hosaka computer
How It's Made: Toxic Masculinity
"American Male, a short film [~6 min] from MTV’s Look Different Creator Competition, is a gritty look at how gender norms make it hard for us to be who we really are." [content warning: some violence]
This garbage of demolishing a record has turned into a fiasco!
As useful as round-ups, retrospectives, and anniversary pieces can be for making sense of historical events, there’s no substitute for going back to primary documents. And an exceptional primary document quietly appeared on YouTube Sunday: the WSNS Channel 44 Chicago broadcast of the July 12, 1979 double-header between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Those baseball games, only one of which was ultimately played, lived on in infamy under a different name: Disco Demolition Night.[more inside]
Happy Birthday, Ms. Andrea
Today, Andrea Dworkin, "radical feminist" would have turned 70 years old.
(Trigger Warning: written depictions of rape, assault) [more inside]
Calligraphy ・Fashion ・Travel
Arnie's Army Left Leaderless :(
Arnold Palmer has died at the age of 87. One of the all-time golfing greats, a world-class philanthropist, and an advertiser's dream was awaiting heart surgery when he passed away on Sunday, 25 September 2016. [more inside]
September 25
✒️🍍 🍎 ✒️
12 hours of light, 24 hours of dark
Ghana has one of the highest rates of access to electricity in Africa - and yet experienced 159 days of rolling blackouts last year. For Ghanaians, this causes all sorts of problems. Al-Jazeera English explores the dumsors: the electricity outages leaving Ghana in the dark. [more inside]
"Our secret’s out"
VanMoof had a logistics problem: too many of their bikes, beloved of hipsters and retro-fans, were being mangled during shipment.
Their solution? It may surprise you.
That's some Hot Shit....
Dust - A Short Film
Dust - by Ember Lab & Mike Grier A Sci-Fi fantasy inspired by anime and classic horror, Dust is set in a harsh and unpredictable natural environment where people have isolated themselves in an ancient city behind a massive wall. A socially marginalized tracker teams up with a black-market merchant to save the society that has rejected his way of life.
Can’t stop what the Black Plot Design has done
The Black Plot (trigger warning for lyrics), the new song by stoner metal masters High On Fire, boasts a trippy, Heavy Metal-esque animated video by Skinner, the artist behind many Mastodon album covers and their cat-filled video for Asleep In The Deep.
Cute is one of the most dangerous words...
“The game only had a small taste of what Fernández could do.”
MLB Miami Marlins Pitcher José Fernández Killed in Boating Accident at Age of 24 [The Guardian] “Authorities in Florida are investigating the death of one of baseball’s best young players, the Miami Marlins pitcher José Fernández [wiki], who was killed in a boating accident in Miami Beach early Sunday. Divers from the Miami-Dade fire rescue department recovered the bodies of Fernández, 24, and two friends from the water after the crew of a coastguard patrol boat spotted their upturned vessel at about 3.15am, it was announced at a Sunday morning press conference.” [more inside]
WINGARDIUM LEVILOSER
How Introverted!
Am I Introverted or Just Rude KJ Dell'Antonia asks in the NY Times, if the current, um, popularity, with introversion is just a way to excuse fundamental rudeness - caring more about what you want than what others want.
toxin, poison, venom
Tetrodotoxin-producing bacteria and their many hosts. Tetrodotoxin, an ancient alkaloid sodium-channel inhibitor, named from the pufferfish it was first isolated from, produced by several strains of bacteria with possible theraputic uses. Why 'Toxic' is Complicated [more inside]
“a rancid, corrupt way to report about science”
"Without the ability to contact independent sources, 'journalists become stenographers'". Scientific American accuses the FDA of manipulating and deceiving the press, the close-hold embargo being a major method, despite the FDA's disavowing the practice in 2011. [more inside]
Danish "House of Memories" for people with dementia
House of Memories is a Danish living history museum created to stimulate the memories of people with dementia through sight, sound, smell and touch. A living history museum usually conjures up images of butter churns and anvils. At Den Gamle By (The Old Town) Museum in Aarhus, Denmark, you'll find all that. But tucked away in one corner of this museum, there's also something different — an entire apartment straight out of the 1950s. The "House of Memories" is not usually open to the public, and it's not aimed at schoolchildren sent to learn about a distant and exotic past. Rather, this exhibit is intended for visitors living with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. And the history they've come to experience is their own. [more inside]
"But the eyes are blind. One must look with the heart.”
Mumble the Chicken was born without eyes. A year later, Mumble — who lives with the dogs, cats, rabbits, humans and other chickens of the Cummings family in North Somerset, U.K. — has become an ambassador for disabled creatures everywhere. [more inside]
The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial
"...Adding to the tragedy, is that this disaster went almost completely unnoticed by the public as later that day another, more “newsworthy” tragedy would befall the nation when beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Museum hopes to correct this oversight by preserving the memory of those lost in this tragedy and educating the public about the truth behind the only known giant octopus-ferry attack in the tri-state area."
September 24
Detained German physicists hear about atomic bomb (transcript)
Transcript of Surreptitiously Taped Conversations among German Nuclear Physicists at Farm Hall (August 6-7, 1945) (.pdf) (via @timhwang) [more inside]
The hermit crab is a peculiar animal.
Herman was lying in the tide
afraid of everything,
until I took him to the safety of the city,
where he now hides
in drugs, religion, money and lust.
afraid of everything,
until I took him to the safety of the city,
where he now hides
in drugs, religion, money and lust.
"I know where I’m sleeping tonight. I’m sleeping at a Marriott."
Completely effin serious
Swearing has been clinically proven to reduce pain. It also is known to be processed by a different part of the brain than other kinds of language. [more inside]
Summer is coming, or going; embrace your Beach Body with Parentz
Parentz invite you say hello or goodbye to summer with Beach Body, the music video for their vapory electro-pop + r & b single. It's warmer than their prior ice-pop/ moving-on-with-your-life-pop/ now-pop/ otter-pop/ whatever-pop EP FP&B<3Z1:FLY (music video: Fly) from 2013. They also have a future-pop EP, titled Big (music video: Back It Up), that they released in 2011.
Oye, you. Yes, tú. ¿Have you ever alguna vez mordido your lengua?
“The power of the office is unique and it is a humbling privilege.”
Barack Obama and Doris Kearns Goodwin: The Ultimate Exit Interview [Vanity Fair] As his two-term presidency draws to a close, Barack Obama is looking back—at the legacies of his predecessors, as well as his own—and forward, to the freedom of life after the White House. In a wide-ranging conversation with one of the nation’s foremost presidential historians, he talks about his ambitions, frustrations, and the decisions that still haunt him.
Daily life for kids in Japan.
Why Japanese bathrooms are the best.
What a Japanese apartment is like.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I should have just eaten the 18 pounds of Red Leicester.
Deccan Chronicle: "In a study that has been widely welcomed, researchers from the University of Copenhagen found that eating cheese is good for our hearts." More from [askmen] [delish] [allure] [Telegraph - mentions other studies]. The actual research article conclusion: "A high daily intake of regular-fat cheese for 12 weeks did not alter LDL cholesterol or MetS risk factors differently than an equal intake of reduced-fat cheese or an isocaloric amount of carbohydrate-rich foods."
September 23
Dogs vs. Crocs
No, not the scary kind of crocs. Spencer the Irish Bulldog gets stylish prosthetics—you won't BELIEVE what happens at the end! [more inside]
Big Lonely Doug
On a sunny morning in the winter of 2011, Dennis Cronin parked his truck by the side of a dirt logging road, laced up his spike-soled cork boots, put on his red cargo vest and orange hard hat, and stepped into the trees. As he waded through the thigh-high undergrowth, something caught his attention: a Douglas fir, poking up through the forest’s canopy and with a trunk wider than his truck. It was one of the tallest trees he had ever come across in his four decades in the logging industry. Cronin reached into his vest pocket for a ribbon he rarely used, tore off a strip, and tied it to a thin root protruding from the base of the trunk. The tape wasn’t pink or orange but green, and along its length were the words “Leave Tree.”[more inside]
Weekend means filesearch comparisons and a drink (drink not provided)
From grep, ag, git grep, ucg, pt, sift comes a New Challenger: ripgrep In this article I will introduce a new command line search tool, ripgrep, that combines the usability of The Silver Searcher (an ack clone) with the raw performance of GNU grep. ripgrep is fast, cross platform (with binaries available for Linux, Mac and Windows) and written in Rust.
We will attempt to do the impossible: a fair benchmark comparison between several popular code search tools. Specifically, we will dive into a series of 25 benchmarks
We will attempt to do the impossible: a fair benchmark comparison between several popular code search tools. Specifically, we will dive into a series of 25 benchmarks
Fleabag
TV needs far more seething, devastating women like Fleabag - The creation of Phoebe Waller-Bridge (interview), Fleabag started as a finely tuned one woman play and made the jump to television, becoming "a precision black-humor mechanism" in the process.
A comic (but not funny) guide to intervening in harassment
Ghosts!
Raina Telgemeier's new book Ghosts came out recently to great reviews, so with five separate entries she is dominating the Times' graphic novels bestseller lists (again). [more inside]
Inviting the Darkness Home
Sarah Marshall explores Why America Will Never Stop Trying To Solve JonBenét Ramsey’s Murder:
In her CNN appearance, even Patsy Ramsey described JonBenét’s death not just as a personal loss, but as part of an overarching sense that Americans had lost something larger . . . . In this case, ["justice"] does not mean that JonBenét Ramsey will come back to life, that she will grow up, that she will experience the childhood she had barely begun. It means, instead, that her death will finally be part of a story that makes sense, and that gives the public the sense of comfort that only such a story can provide.
The laundry, for me, is like the frosting on the cake
This dedicated community of middle-aged men LOVES washing clothes. "Founded in 1984, the group now has 3,000 members from around the world. Members gather several times a year for what they call "wash-ins." Some even travel from as far away as Russia or Canada."
September In the Rain
The leaves of brown came tumbling down
Remember, in September, in the rain
The sun went out just like a dying ember
That September in the rain
DO NOT OPEN - PUPPIES INSIDE
Here's a video of Husky pups swarming through a door vent, which seems upbeat and fun thanks to the indie-pop instrumental score. See a video (.MP4, 7.4mb) closer (Daily Mail) to the source, and it seems a bit more menacing without any audio. Let's amp up the terror and set the scene to The Walking Dead's theme song. If you need a come-down, enjoy Wrigley at the movies, a man and his boss's dog re-enacting romantic movie moments.
'A welcome rebuke to dead white men'
A century in the making, and now completed by Britain’s David Adjaye, the Smithsonian’s gleeful, gleaming upturned pagoda more than holds its own against the sombre Goliaths of America’s monument heartland.Preparations are in full swing for a historic opening on 24th September 2016 when America's first president of African heritage will ring an equally historic bell. Related.
"I'm Brian and So's My Wife!"
Rest in peace, Terence Bayler - groundbreaking NZ actor, Monty Python alum, and so much more. [more inside]
Arthropods now possibly able to employ Archimedes Death Ray
After 40 Years, It’s Time To End The Dark Legacy Of The Hyde Amendment
"The Hyde Amendment was first authored by the late Representative Henry Hyde (a devout Roman Catholic) in 1976. He expressed the desire to outlaw all abortions, but Hyde knew that he could only effectively target women in poor communities." 35 States + D.C. deny a woman’s coverage just because she is poor. #BeBoldEndHyde [more inside]
The Brussels Business - Who Runs the EU ? - 2012 HD
CEO Documentary: "THE BRUSSELS BUSINESS is a docu-thriller that dives into the grey zone underneath European democracy. An expedition into the world of the 15,000 lobbyists in the EU-capital, of the PR-conglomerates, think tanks and their all embracing networks of power and their close ties to the political elites." Spoiler: "2500 Lobby Structures are based in Brussels, 15,000 lobbyists, the 2nd biggest lobby industry in the world, only Washington DC is bigger..." [slyt - Warning - it starts slowly, but is worth sticking with.]
Knockout rock bouncer racing
KNOCKOUT ROCK BOUNCER RACING IS INSANE (20 min youtube video, but 5 minutes will give an good understanding of the sport as a whole). A rock bouncer is a vehicle designed for driving up and over difficult terrain and obstacles. Races are normally run as time trials with the biggest cheers coming not from finishing but for any vehicle that rolls and lands back on its tires. Racing head to head up a section of bolder strewn mountain ... pretty much what it says on the dented tin.
Justice is Blonde
The United States vs Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier is called to account for his crimes. He needs a miracle. He needs a decent lawyer. He needs Elle Woods.
He just doesn't know it yet.
The Nobelity of the Igs
The Australian mosque
The Australian mosque. On Australia's contribution to Islamic architecture.
And color my world Black Gold
Violist and impresario Ashleigh Gordon talks to the Boston Globe about the problem she and her multimedia project Castle of our Skins had when they set out to perform works by black composers: “we could list on maybe one hand, between us, black composers that we knew of.” [more inside]
Good As Hell
Minneapolis alt-hip-hop artist Lizzo won [Luke Burbank's and Andrew Walsh's podcast] TBTL's "Song Of The Summer" bracket battle with her single Good As Hell (beating out competition from JT and Sia and Avett Brothers and many others). It's easily MY song of the summer, but Lizzo is awesome way beyond this one song. [more inside]
Vroom, vroom
Daniel Jovanov does car engine sound impressions. Impressions good enough to impress a trio of professional race drivers. (He was also on Australia's got Talent a few years ago)
September 22
"Are you my mother?"
Meg, an 11-year-old yellow Lab and her human, David Jackson, found a tiny baby bunny in the back yard—and two ravens looming overhead. Because Jackson was raised near the woods and knew the birds were a threat, he decided to hang around with Meg and watch the bunny until the ravens were gone. While they waited, Meg and the bunny began to play. [more inside]
Nicking Caves
Vice has posted a treasure trove of photos and interviews from The Cave Clan, Melbourne's legendary group of storm drain loving urban explorers (complete with a secret headquarters, The Chamber).
Everything is fine, until that exact moment when it’s obviously not.
Abaddon
Abaddon is a "poem of love and destruction" expressed in the medium of dance. Director Rogerio Silva also provides a breakdown of the visual effects used in the video. [more inside]
Blame the Banks for All Those Boring Chain Stores Ruining Your City
"The reason your neighborhood increasingly resembles a hometown mall is because somebody’s banker prefers it that way," writes Patrick Clark at Bloomberg.com. [more inside]
Nanoparticle Tattoo Therapy
"Scientists are investigating a way to use temporary tattoos that deliver nanoparticles to treat autoimmune diseases like multiple sclerosis." [more inside]
Roger Ailes: Decline and Fall
A quite detailed look at the last days of Ailes at Fox News: Interesting look from several points of view, with interesting sidelights (Gretchen Carlson was gathering evidence for a year, recording some phone conversations with Ailes). It explains in part why Gretchen Carlson sued Ailes but not Fox News (it prevented him from using the huge apparatus he constructed). Also, Rudi Giuliani and Trump stick their nose in.
The other Sanders is running for office
Bernie Sanders has a brother, Larry. Larry emigrated to the UK in the late 1960s. He's a member of the Green Party, and has been selected to challenge the upcoming by-election in Witney. This is the seat vacated by David Cameron, up until a few months ago the Prime Minister of the UK. In February this year, Larry was appointed Health Spokesperson of the Green Party; in May he was elected as a pledged delegate for Bernie Sanders to the 2016 Democratic National Convention at the Democrats Abroad Global Convention in Berlin. Previous confusion on MetaFilter.
100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time
Cheat sheet
In a multi-part series, Reuters looks inside the business of standardized testing and college admissions. The parts so far: [more inside]
"I regret we weren’t able to do more with the monkeys."
They Called Her Cinderella
After 42 died, 21 spent two days off by himself, howling. Seasoned observers reported it was more howling than they had ever heard the wolf do in his entire life.
"Do wolves mourn?" I asked Smith.
"I’ll leave that up to you," he replied.
Our differences are in arbitrary boundary lines only.
Even before Pearl Harbor Day, thousands of young American men had taken to the skies, resolved to thwart Hitler’s goals. But to the United States, these men weren’t yet heroes — they were, arguably, dissidents. To join the war, they first chose to defect — to Canada.
Dahlias as art
On the first Sunday of September every year since 1936, Zundert—a small town in the Netherlands that is the birthplace of Vincent van Gogh—puts on the world’s largest volunteer-run flower parade, with a raft of over-the-top floats made from local dahlias. This year's floats did not disappoint. [more inside]
"Men have pockets to keep things in, women for decoration."
"[P]ockets are more than sexist: they’re political." Chelsea G. Summers reflects on the history of pockets in women's clothing, and how the French Revolution begat a radical change in women's every day carry practices, for Racked.
Chewable Coffee
Coffee in your pocket "Instead of putting your coffee in a cup, you can put it in your pocket, for performance on the go. Combine the kick of coffee with the relaxation of green tea. And instead of putting your coffee in a cup, you can put it in your pocket, for performance on the go. [product name] packs half a cup of coffee (50 mg caffeine) into a single cube." [more inside]
singing fish will wake you in the morning
Scientists have discovered that fish off the coast of Australia sing a dawn chorus just like the birds. They also sing a dusk chorus.
A brief look at North Korea's 28 websites
Two days ago, while automatically maintaining and updating TLDR - A Continuously Updated Historical TLD Records Archive, a "new" country unexpectedly provided public access, when North Korea misconfigured its nameserver. In other words, its limited intranet was opened to the internet, and North Korea's DNS "leak" was archived, recording 9 top-level domains with 28 websites, significantly lower than the previously estimated 1,000 to 5,500 websites in 2014. The internet, as accessed by those North Koreans who have or can use computers, is very small. [more inside]
Do not click, do not view, do not remember
The twitter account @cursedimages posts nothing but images that are cursed. Many are NSFW, all are cursed. Avoid.
EXPECTO PATRONUM!
JK Rowling is pleased to announce that as of today you can officially discover your patronus by taking a special quiz* on the official Harry Potter website, Pottermore! For many fans, this experience is a dream come true, but for others, the potential symbolism behind the animal they've conjured isn't quite the right fit.
What will your happiest thought produce?
*As with the other sorting ceremonies on Pottermore, you will need an account to acquire yourhighly scientific results.
What will your happiest thought produce?
*As with the other sorting ceremonies on Pottermore, you will need an account to acquire your
Microblocks
"That business, more or less, stinks."
There are 24,000 restaurants in New York City. Gary Sernovitz invested in one, wrote about why he did, and came to the conclusion that investing in a Manhattan restaurant brings with it only "The Thrill of Losing Money". [more inside]
Add it up with JK Rowling
It wasn’t Gordon Gano who was the problem: it was me. I was listening with a ghostly eighteen year old ex-boyfriend at my shoulder, and behind him, a chorus of snarling early eighties NME journalists, all ready to jeer, because even if I like the Violent Femmes, I’ll like them in the wrong way.
JK Rowling takes up ramalbumclub's challenge of listening to a well known album for the the first time and then writing about it: Violent Femmes from 1983. [more inside]
Because Everything Thrives in the Free Market!
The ruling that state laws trump FCC efforts to expand broadband access means that Pinetops' current service ends October 28, 2016. The city of Wilson, fearing jeopardizing the service they can currently legally offer, won't appeal. Meanwhile, AT&T has something classy to say about a competitor.
“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
ARTS MacArthur Foundation Announces 2016 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners [The New York Times] This year’s winners of the MacArthur fellowships, awarded for exceptional “originality, insight and potential,” and publicly announced on Thursday, include writers, visual artists, scientists, nonprofit organization leaders and others, who are chosen at a moment when the recognition and money — a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000 distributed over five years — will make a difference. [more inside]
Changes For Addy
In 1993, American Girl set out to introduce its first black character. All she had to do was represent the entire history of black America. [more inside]
The Atlas of Living Australia
The Atlas of Living Australia contains information on all the known species (animals, plants and more) in Australia, aggregated from a wide range of data providers: museums, herbaria, community groups, government departments, individuals and universities. It contains more than 50 million occurrence records, based on specimens, field observations and surveys. These records are enriched by additional information including molecular data, photographs, maps, sound recordings and literature. Explore your area! [more inside]
Don’t Judge By Them
The Brothers Karamazov: Illustrated Platinum Edition
Other “illustrated platinum editions” courtesy of illustrator “Pablo” and author “Read Monkey” include Jane Eyre, Dracula, Hamlet, The Time Machine, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Flatland, Persuasion, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Tale of Two Cities, Kim, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Women, Little Men, The Illiad, Northanger Abbey, The Red Badge of Courage, and many, many more.
Other “illustrated platinum editions” courtesy of illustrator “Pablo” and author “Read Monkey” include Jane Eyre, Dracula, Hamlet, The Time Machine, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Flatland, Persuasion, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Tale of Two Cities, Kim, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Little Women, Little Men, The Illiad, Northanger Abbey, The Red Badge of Courage, and many, many more.
September 21
Meow.
Batman: Bad Kitty (SLYT)
Bishop Backs Squatters
The Golden Age of Squatting, a history of London's squats and what squatting looks like in the present day.
The squat movement flowered in London in the 1970s, when an estimated 30,000 people lived in squats in Greater London, and the movement provided the base for many London subcultures over several decades. In 2012, the scene took a legal body blow when squatting in residential (rather than commercial) properties was made a criminal offense
Yogi Berra in space
I'm not a scientist but an experimenter
You Want It Darker by Leonard Cohen
Sir Derek Jacoby vs Dame Helen Mirren was my undoing.
It seems simple enough. You are presented with two celebrities, and you must choose. Which. One. Vapes.
The best thing for the inside of a (person) is the outside of a horse
Hidden Desires is a project of The Care Group, a Green Cross member organization. Here they grant the wish of Mrs. Jacobs to ride one last time. Watch to the end. It gets really dusty! No translation needed.
Coming soon to a state fair near you
What do you get when you literally cross a hamburger with a hotdog? Hamdog!
So he hid it in one place he knew he could hide something
An employee of the Royal Canadian Mint allegedly smuggled about $180,000 in gold from the fortress-like facility, possibly evading multiple levels of detection with a time-honoured prison trick....
"My God, that's Kimberly!"
Lori Erica Ruff has been identified. The case of the woman who stole a deceased Fife, Washington 2 year old's identity has been solved, much to the surprise of the internet.
A new rap game has started right here, in your Wi-Fi menu
The Museum of Wi-Fi: While most of us keep the standard NETGEAR-15, linksys_8A or UPC27458 as it is, some true gangsta 2.0s have decided to stand out on their Wi-Fi lists by dropping their best punchlines.... The Museum of Wi-Fi exists to preserve these vestiges of our neighbourhood battlefields.
Don't read the comments
"Comments on Times stories are moderated by a team of 14 people known as the community desk. Together, they review around 11,000 comments each day for the approximately 10 percent of Times articles that are open to reader comment.
To help illustrate how our moderation works and how a new system might help, we have arranged for you to take a Times moderation test."
Curtis Hanson 1945 - 2016
The writer, director of such films as LA Confidential, Wonder Boys and The River Wild has passed away at the age of 71. A tribute from Jessica Ritchey of RogerEbert.com, The Guardian and and Salon.
Repression and the free market “two sides of the same coin."
40 Years Ago, This Chilean Exile Warned Us About the Shock Doctrine. Then He Was Assassinated.
The ‘Chicago Boys’ in Chile: Economic Freedom’s Awful Toll; By Orlando Letelier.
How can this inequality be maintained if not through jolts of electric shock.
See previously.
The ‘Chicago Boys’ in Chile: Economic Freedom’s Awful Toll; By Orlando Letelier.
How can this inequality be maintained if not through jolts of electric shock.
See previously.
I'm not a hero I'm just a coffee shop.
"The Battle For Cable Street's Mural"
Eighty years on from the day anti-fascists clashed with Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts in the Jewish East End of London, David Rosenberg tells the story of the long struggle to protect the giant mural. Link to the Brick Lane Bookshop's article, and to more info about the founding of Tower Hamlet's Art Project, which still seems to be going in some form in the middle of our current 'austerity'.
The story of the mural touches on world history*, community involvement, political activism, shared values*, spirit of place, and continuity. It's a fine example of the interaction between local and global; and perhaps of the legacy of Britain's now threatened, always contested, post-war socialist idealism. [more inside]
Glue smudges, ebony dust and all.
“I just want to get this guitar to where it’s used to being a guitar. Because right now it still thinks it’s a tree.”
Spend an hour of zen watching master luthier Michael Greenfield build a hand-crafted acoustic guitar.
Every Monday along the way / With courage I will face
Garfield. Pokemon. Garfemon.
primitive pic
Pictures recreated with simple geometric shapes Source code and more discussion here (with cool gifs!).
Phantasm Returns
1979 film Phantasm has been a bit of a cult masterpiece [original trailer] for nearly 40 years. JJ Abrams is a fan and has collaborated with the writer/director Don Coscarelli to do a 4K remaster of the film. It will appear in theaters and VOD in theaters on Oct 7, along with apparently the 5th and final film in the series, Phantasm: Ravager, written by Coscarelli. [more inside]
birds do it, bees do it, even australopithecines do it
LoL I got one
Sabrina Gonzalez joked to her dad, who works at Costco, that he should get one of their giant teddy bears for his five-month-old granddaughter Madeline Jane. Never joke to a new grandpa.
Symbols matter
What I Pledge Allegiance To. "I am a black Mississippian. I am a black American. I pledge to never be passive, patriotic, or grateful in the face of American abuse. I pledge to always thoughtfully bite the self-righteous American hand that thinks it’s feeding us. I pledge to perpetually reckon with the possibility that there will never be any liberty, peace, and justice for all unless we accept that America, like Mississippi, is not clean. Nor is it great. Nor is it innocent." -- Author Kiese Laymon, Professor of English and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi [more inside]
Will Smith Was a Gangsta Rapper
The bots of (edit) war
Over a 10-year period, humans on average revert other human's edits on Wikipedia three times. Bots are more energetic: on English Wikipedia, they revert each other an average of 105 times. [more inside]
September 20
The Great Fall of Chyna
Natural Friends
She just wanted her mother to love her a little bit less
Ursula Vernon (Hugo Winner and Nebula Winner) has started posting a serial novel, Summer in Orcus. [more inside]
You Ought’er watch
The largest refugee camp in the world, Dadaab in Kenya, 25 years old
While the International Court of Justice in The Hague takes up a dispute between Kenya and Somalia over maritime oil and gas reserves this week, Human Rights Watch alleges that Kenya's plan to close the Dadaab refugee camp complex, amidst protest from Somalia, violates the UN's 1951 Refugee Convention, which requires that repatriation of refugees must be voluntary. Earlier this year Kenya's Interior Ministry announced that the camp, covering 50 km² (20 mi²) and home to nearly 300,000 people, would be closed by November. Ground was broken to construct the earliest portions of Dadaab in October 1991 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a temporary measure to aid Somalis fleeing from their country's civil war, but as the years passed the site became home to refugees from other conflicts and to refugees from drought and famine, at its height holding more than half a million people. [more inside]
“That looks like a bad dude, too,” the second officer said.
The Shooting of an Unarmed Black Man in Oklahoma [The New York Times] The Police Department in Tulsa, Okla., released video [YouTube] [Graphic Content] on Monday of an encounter during which, the authorities said, a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black man who could be seen raising his hands above his head. The department opened a criminal investigation into the shooting and said the Tulsa County district attorney, Steve Kunzweiler, would review its findings. The federal Justice Department opened a separate civil rights investigation. [more inside]
six hundred petrified dragon eggs
I’m from New York. I once paid two thousand dollars a month to live in the freight elevator of the former Filene’s Basement, in Union Square. Then I paid five thousand dollars a month to live in the garbage chute of a postwar luxury condominium on First Avenue. It’s important to live in terrible places when you’re young.
A short video on humility
Subway Doodles
We got too many runaways eating up the night
That album, for me, was musical hell. I joined the band in '74, and gradually the music had become vacuous, sterilized, escapist. It was an embarrassment. We had band meetings with big arguments. I probably should've tried harder to oppose it. I had a family. -- An oral history of Starship's "We Built This City."
Control Not Justice
Every year, the vast majority of murders in Chicago go unsolved. The city's homicide-clearance rate of 26% (a case is cleared as soon as someone is charged) is less than half the national average. The rate for non-fatal shootings is 10%. Meaning, if you shoot someone in Chicago, you have a pretty good chance of getting away with it. Alex Kotlowitz writes here about how Chicago law enforcement's abysmal homicide-clearance rate may be contributing to violence in the city. (previously)
How Shelton Johnson became the Buffalo Soldiers’ champion
God's Own Country: the nation of Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a county in t'north of England. It has a distinct range of dialects; for example 'nowt' means 'nothing', 'who?' means 'what?' and 'how are you?' is asked ... differently, with further variations across the county.
Yorkshire is famous for its pudding, caustic cricket commentary, rhubarb, having its own day, one of the earliest surviving film fragments, the chocolate bar, poetry, tea, and ferret legging (alternative explanation).
The anthem of Yorkshire, On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at, is about hats, death and cannibalism.
Like other English regions, such as Cornwall and Wessex, Yorkshire has movements towards devolution, greater autonomy and ultimately independence. But what is the essence of Yorkshire? [more inside]
"Do you guys ever think about when we were just pets?"
Dogtor is a short, sweet animated film by Rhea Dadoo about friendship and reflecting on personal journeys--also dogs!
Silencing Kurdish Voices
An on-the-ground report from post-coup Turkey, where the Kurdish press is facing stepped-up repression.
“If we were doing this kind of journalism in another part of the world, we would get international awards, but here, our reward is punishment.”
“If we were doing this kind of journalism in another part of the world, we would get international awards, but here, our reward is punishment.”
poing poing poing
"If I can do this many paintings of it, it's a problem."
Artist Patrick Martinez memorializes victims of police violence by way of vintage school supplies. [more inside]
Poor Willard
The concept is simple: rat birth control The rat’s primary survival skill, as a species, is its unnerving rate of reproduction. Female rats ovulate every four days, copulate dozens of times a day and remain fertile until they die. (Like humans, they have sex for pleasure as well as for procreation.) This is how you go from two to 15,000 in a single year. When poison or traps thin out a population, they mate faster until their numbers regenerate. Conversely, if you can keep them from mating, colonies collapse in weeks and do not rebound.
Girlhood Gone: Notes from the New Nashville
El Día Nacional de la Lucha Libre
By unanimous proclamation of the Senate of Mexico, tomorrow is El Día Nacional de la Lucha Libre, or the National Day of Lucha Libre, Mexico's variety of professional wrestling. [more inside]
You're going to hear some serious @#$%...
Audiobooks for the Damned (main site, previously) have been forging ahead in their quest to audiobook-ify film novelizations, and have finally released one of their holy grails - a seven-hour audiobook of George Gipe's legendarily insane novelization of Back to the Future Part I, as chronicled in Ryan North's B to the F (read it chronologically here, also previously). [more inside]
25 years of Belle
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of Beauty and the Beast, Angela Lansbury Sings the title song at Lincoln Center [more inside]
Only Disconnect
"If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out. Years later, the joke was running thin. In the last year of my blogging life, my health began to give out....My doctor, dispensing one more course of antibiotics, finally laid it on the line: “Did you really survive HIV to die of the web?” On the costs of the always-connected life: Andrew Sullivan, "I Used to Be a Human Being" (nymag.com).
Conservative, Brutal, and Anonymous ... Often Monotonous
Today, our flesh comes to us from the Internet, and not only what we consume but how we consume has changed since the porn wars. Porn is abundantly more, in every way: there are more people, more acts, more clips, more categories. It has permeated everyday life, to the point where we talk easily of food porn, disaster porn, war porn, real-estate porn—not because culture has been sexualized, or sex pornified, but because porn’s patterns of excess, fantasy, desire, and shame are so familiar. Making Sense of Modern Pornography by Katrina Forrester in The New Yorker
The mysteries of the least known Brontë sister
September 19
Umbasa!
Duckfeed.tv is a frighteningly prolific videogame and pop culture podcast network founded by Gary Butterfield and Kole Ross. Though best known for the Dark Souls/Bloodborne podcast Bonefireside Chat and the 'video game bookclub' Watch Out For Fireballs, the network also includes shows about bad games, D&D monsters and 90s music videos. Duckfeed has so many ideas for podcasts they even have a podcast devoted to podcast ideas. The network also hosts sites like Hex Crank (Kole's survival horror blog) and the inevitable Youtube and Twitch channels.
The Catkeeper of Aleppo
When hundreds of cats started to hang out in front of one man's apartment building in Aleppo, Syria, Mohammad Alaa Ajaleel decided it was his lot to take care of the cats of war. So the electrician-turned-ambulance driver built a cat sanctuary-slash-children's-playground amongst the rubble. “My role as a rescuer is not to differentiate between those who need help,” Aljaleel said. “To love the small, weak cats is to love everything.” Alaa's love is energetic: in the last months he's built a well to help his neighbors access clean water, saved a girl in his volunteer ambulance(content warning: graphic), and had multiple children's parties, inside when necessary, outside in the sanctuary when a cease-fire permitted it. [more inside]
'I wish the flippin' idiot had paced it right'
Alistair Brownlee helping his brother Jonny over the line after he was close to collapse on the final stretch of the World Triathlon Series in Cozumel, Mexico. Afterwards, Alistair said he would have helped anyone in that position, it's the right thing to do, but added “I wish the flippin' idiot had just paced it right and won the race. He could have jogged the last 2km.” [more inside]
Musical Passage
We invite you to listen in on a musical gathering that took place in Jamaica in 1688. These three songs, 'Angola', 'Papa' and 'Koromanti', performed at a festival by enslaved African musicians and copied in musical notation by a Mr Baptiste, are the first transcription of African music in the Caribbean, and, indeed, probably in the Americas. Thanks to this remarkable artifact, we can listen to traces of music performed long ago and begin to imagine what it meant for the people who created it.
The day the bleep bloops died
Fabric night club was founded in 1999. (An oral history for the 10th anniversary, a VICE article for the 15th.) For those outside the UK, Fabric might be better known for its long-running mix series. (A few best-ofs from Red Bull Music Academy, Thump, Blisspop, The Quietus, and Fabric’s staff.)
After two drug-related deaths, the club closed temporarily in August. On September 7, the Islington Council permanently revoked Fabric’s license. Eulogies and concerns about the policing of club culture (and one threatened MBE melting) have rolled in: Resident Advisor, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian (drugs), The Guardian (club culture), Billboard, Fader. [more inside]
After two drug-related deaths, the club closed temporarily in August. On September 7, the Islington Council permanently revoked Fabric’s license. Eulogies and concerns about the policing of club culture (and one threatened MBE melting) have rolled in: Resident Advisor, NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian (drugs), The Guardian (club culture), Billboard, Fader. [more inside]
'Praying is not enough'
“Ooooh, floor pie!”
‘Five-Second Rule’ for Food on Floor Is Untrue, Study Finds [The New York Times] “You may think your floors are so clean you can eat off them, but a new study debunking the so-called five-second rule would suggest otherwise. Professor Donald W. Schaffner, a food microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, said a two-year study he led concluded that no matter how fast you pick up food that falls on the floor, you will pick up bacteria with it. The findings in the report — “Is the Five-Second Rule Real?” — appeared online this month in the American Society for Microbiology’s journal, Applied and Environmental Microbiology.”
Helicoprion, the buzz-saw shark, one of the truly unique ancient animals
The fossil remains of Helicoprion are limited to some crushed cartilage and its teeth, which aren't unusual for fossil remains of sharks and shark-like fish. But those teeth are unique: formed in a spiral saw-type formation, known as a spiral dentition or toothwhorl, with the older teeth pushed into the center of the spiral by the newer teeth. Since a whorl was first discovered in 1899, there have been a number of theories about how the teeth were used, leading to numerous creative but largely untested reconstructions, until 2013, when a new CT scan enabled the researchers to make a new, improved reconstruction of Helicoprion. That scientific article is not so visually exciting, so let's enjoy Ray Troll's illustrations, and Mary Parrish's updated illustration. [more inside]
Denied
How Texas keeps tens of thousands of children out of special education.
"Walker knew the law was on her side. Since 1975, Congress has required public schools in the United States to provide specialized education services to all eligible children with any type of disability. But what she didn't know is that in Texas, unelected state officials have quietly devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids like Roanin out of special education." [more inside]
"Walker knew the law was on her side. Since 1975, Congress has required public schools in the United States to provide specialized education services to all eligible children with any type of disability. But what she didn't know is that in Texas, unelected state officials have quietly devised a system that has kept thousands of disabled kids like Roanin out of special education." [more inside]
Sex Ed Without the Sex
Baclofen: the controversial pill that could 'cure' alcoholism
France is ground zero for clinical research on Baclofen, a drug said to eliminate alcohol cravings. The medication will soon be more accessible than ever – but not everyone thinks that’s a good thing. (slTheGrauniad)
Real estate agencies are very bad at prize-level pacing.
Shea Serrano of The Ringer is fact-checking famous movie speeches. He started with Alec Baldwin's Glengarry Glen Ross "Third prize is you're fired" speech, and has now applied his keen eye to Joe Pesci's Goodfellas "I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?" speech. Serrano brings the rigor and precision that only a former middle-school science teacher can bring to this important work.
September 18
I can't keep all these cervids straight
I feel like people need to know the Great Moose Truths. [non-tumblr-logged in readers can view here]
The Opposite of a Muse
In the course of two decades, a medical secretary in Paris persuaded scores of renowned photographers to take her picture.
A clip from the short art film “I (comme Isabelle)” about Mège’s work. [Nudity]
a tumblr post beginning "As a rodent biologist…"
A Neil Gaiman tweet prompts debate on Tumblr: what is the species of the hyperintelligent rodent publicist running Lin-Manuel Miranda's Twitter feed?
The Wisdom of Children
Guy asks his daughter about how to overcome fearful things through the use of "Fear Doors".
It's the principle of the thing.
Galactic Socialism at 50
Nicole Colson, writing at the Socialist Worker, takes a look at Star Trek at 50. Compiling secondary-source quotes, she notes Trek's problematic usage of the word and concept of race but on the whole finds the series, at least in the TOS and TNG incarnations, to be powerful visualizations of a future suffused with brotherhood resulting from essential economic security. [more inside]
"All I know is American Airlines loves me."
"Just over halfway through the year, a man named John Weigel spotted a Buller’s shearwater in California on July 16, making him the holder of the record for most bird species seen in North America in a calendar year: 750. But two days later, Olaf Danielson [world record nude birder] of South Dakota saw his 750th bird of 2016, a red-faced cormorant in Alaska. Now the men are in a fierce competition...." (previous bigyears)
A tiny vestibule of literary happiness
Build your very own house for books to plant in your front yard, and become your neighbourhood’s Street Librarian.
Generating social details in games
Mark Johnson is the developer of Ultima Ratio Regum (previously), a roguelike heavily slanted towards social interaction and rich procedurally-generated game-world background and history. He's recently finished a four-part look at procedural generation with Rock, Paper, Shotgun: [more inside]
Oy with the poodles already!
In anticipation of the November Gilmore Girls revival, and assuming you've completed your preparatory rewatch (FanFare), here's a list of all 339 books referenced by the show so you can find a few to add to your reading list and keep you busy until November, or check it out it in check-off list form to see how you stack up.
Dance, Mantis! Dance for Michael's pleasure!
Voice actor and animator C. Martin Croker has died. Known best for his work at Cartoon Network's Williams Street, Croker voiced such classic characters as Zorak, Moltar, Dr. Weird and Steve. [more inside]
A newspaper fit for burning.
Washington Post Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of its own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer).
It slowly sank below the surface.
Is this the most convincing picture of the Loch Ness monster ever taken? There have been five other reported sightings of the monster in 2016 which, including Ian’s latest, is the highest number since 2002.
Nonstop Higher Michael Jackson
It's been a few years since we've seen "nonstop" (Marquese Scott, on YouTube as WHZGUD2) and his incredible dubstep dancing on the blue. Happy fun September! [more inside]
What right has he to speak about things which concern us alone
A large part of our attitude toward things is conditioned by opinions and emotions which we unconsciously absorb as children from our environment. In other words, it is tradition—besides inherited aptitudes and qualities—which makes us what we are. We but rarely reflect how relatively small as compared with the powerful influence of tradition is the influence of our conscious thought upon our conduct and convictions.Albert Einstein, 1946
Elements of humour, intrigue, and parody can be found
Cartoon Abstracts Academic papers summarised in cartoon form.
September 17
the plague
Mirror, Mirror in the Bush
Anne-Marie and Xavier Michel Hubert Brierre with Michel Guiss Djomou set a large mirror up in the forest of Gabon and recorded animal's encounter with it [SLYT]
Humans are monsters
WIN THESE SWELL PRIZES (59 years later)
Daniel Day collected baseball cards when he was a kid in the 1950s. Some of those cards offered prizes if you filled in actual scores and mailed them back to Topps, the company that made the cards. The rules didn't include a year that the offer ended, so Day sent a card in as a lark. And Topps, knowing good PR when it sees it, sent the 70-year-old a genuine Louisville Slugger baseball glove as his prize. The story keeps getting cuter.
“I dream of things that never were,”
W.P. Kinsella, author of ‘Shoeless Joe,’ dead at 81 [Maclean's Magazine] W.P. Kinsella, the B.C.-based author of “Shoeless Joe,” the award-winning novel that became the film “Field of Dreams,” has died at 81. His literary agency confirms the writer had a doctor-assisted death on Friday in Hope, B.C. The agency did not provide details about Kinsella’s health. [more inside]
“This is what love looks like.”
Charlie Bear, a 15-year-old black lab mix with a brain tumor, lived to see his person happily married. (SL Washington Post) [more inside]
Nintendo Game Counselor Guide
Mndsgn: distilled cosmic soul funk from the early part of the decade
Mndsgn is pronounced mind design. The law calls him Ringgo Ancheta. He says his music has dirty, dirty soul vibes, but after checking out his video for Eggs (2014) and Cosmic Perspective (2016), you might agree with this interviewer and think that he might be a mystic jazz player who traveled to earth with Sun Ra. Any way it shakes out, enjoy Mndsgn's music on Bandcamp, and his new concept album*, Body Wash (YT playlist), or just hang out and have some breakfast with Ringgo, Knxwledge and The Koreatown Oddity, the first of five such breakfasts, via Boiler Room. [more inside]
Dolly Parton + Pentatonix
Jolene- 2016 - And, as a frame of reference, Dolly singing Jolene in 1973 (I'll do the math for you, that 43 years ago)
Brick Sketches
Chris McVeigh (previously) is well known in the LEGO community for both his builds and his new book. What he's perhaps best known for are his Brick Sketches, a series he began three years ago of pop culture faces "sketched" in brick (complete with colored pencils). Full gallery here.
this country had become their one and only true home
About This Computer
September 16
Rule 409 - Advance Clear to Stop
If you've ever wondered what railroad signals mean, you're in luck. Of course, Wikipedia and the resident railfan editors there have you covered, but there's so much more to it than a wall of text. [more inside]
“Almost everything he made was unprecedented.”
Rest in peace, Don Buchla. The synthesizer pioneer is perhaps best known for the Buchla 200 and the Buchla Music Easel, both of which are still in use today. A thorough obit is in The Guardian, with smaller ones at FACT, Pitchfork, Thump, Resident Advisor, and FADER. The offical corporate history at Buchla and Associates also provides some useful background. [more inside]
At least we know she knows where France is.
With 52 days to go until the U.S. presidential election, the polls are tightening and some Democrats and Republicans are freaking out that Clinton might not win "this easy-ass election." (Nate Silver says we can wait a week before surrendering to panic.) [more inside]
End of a Friendship
Edward Albee : "Creativity is magic. Don't examine it too closely."
Edward Albee has died at the age of 88. Albee's first play The Zoo Story, debuted in 1960 in Berlin, and was followed two years later by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Albee received three Pulitzer Prizes for drama—for A Delicate Balance (1967), Seascape (1975), and Three Tall Women (1994). [more inside]
“Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?”
2016 National Book Awards Longlists: The National Book Award Finalists will be revealed on 10/13 and the Winners announced on 11/16. [more inside]
"It's a skate! It's a lionfish! No, it's…"
The mimic octopus (Thaumoctopus mimicus) is an Indo-Pacific species of octopus capable of impersonating other local species…The mimic octopus is the only currently known marine animal to be able to mimic such a wide variety of animals. Many animals can imitate a different species to avoid or intimidate predators, but the mimic octopus is the only one that can imitate as diverse a range of forms in order to elude predators. [more inside]
Marty Feldman: "I am too old to die young and too young to grow up"
In 1969 Marty Feldman was quite successful, in the second year of his own hit skit comedy show, so BBC gave him an hour of prime time television for a reality-based show. The result was One Pair of Eyes, a personal look at comedy and writing, with guests including Barry Took, Peter Sellers, and Dudley Moore. In 2011, almost 30 years after Feldman's death, BBC looked back at the forgotten legend and "missing link" between the golden age of BBC Radio comedy, the hothouse of 1960s television comedy, and finally Hollywood in the documentary Marty Feldman: Six Degrees of Separation. For more, there's The Official Marty Feldman (fan)site, which has a ton of great content, and has been posting television clips and movies from Marty's career on Vimeo for almost a year. [more inside]
Potatoes and cheese are friends!
Aligot? It's a legendary blend of mashed potatoes, cheese, butter, cream, and garlic from the Aubrac region in France. Aligot en français. Aligot!
The Lenny Interview: Margaret Wertheim
An interview with science journalist and educator Margaret Wertheim. The majority of readers of science magazines are well-off white men over 40. That's a fact. I think it's an oversight on the part of the science communication world, and I'm trying to do something about it. [more inside]
New idea: bring work to the homeless
The new Republican mayor of Albuquerque has taken a different approach to panhandlers, and it seems to be working. "Throughout his administration, as part of a push to connect the homeless population to services, [Mayor Richard] Berry had taken to driving through the city to talk to panhandlers about their lives. His city’s poorest residents told him they didn’t want to be on the streets begging for money, but they didn’t know where else to go. Seeing that sign gave Berry an idea. Instead of asking them, many of whom feel dispirited, to go out looking for work, the city could bring the work to them."
The article mentions how this is in such stark contrast to the overall trend in America to criminalize homelessness, which you can read more about in this report by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Also: Infographic from PBS as well.
Updating the Voyager spacecraft Golden Record idea for 2016
Nearly 40 years ago, the two Voyager spacecraft left Earth. Aboard each was a time capsule of humanity for extraterrestrials: a golden record containing sounds and images portraying the diversity of life and culture on Earth, including a diagram of DNA, greetings in 55 languages, a map of our solar system's position relative to stellar landmarks, the sound of a kiss, Louis Armstrong's "Melancholy Blues" and "Dark Was the Night -- Cold Was The Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson. Since culture and technology don’t stand still, Science Friday asks: "If humanity were to send another Golden Record to the stars, what would it contain?" An expert panel will review submissions from the public, and a new Golden Record will be unveiled on October 7. [more inside]
Yes, that's why I came to Bruges.
"A beer pipeline has been constructed in the Belgian city of Bruges, to replace the traditional method of transporting beer by tanker." "Four years in planning and five months in construction, the Halve Maan (Half Moon) brewery will officially open a pipe that will rid the historic city center and its tight cobbled lanes of beer-laden trucks weighing more than 40 tonnes." [more inside]
100 Objects That Shaped Public Health
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has compiled a list of 100 objects that shaped public health, from the obvious (vaccines) to the less-so (horseshoe crab). Click the three parallel lines at the top right of the pictures to see the list in word form. (via Kottke)
The judges will handle your plums to check their size and consistency
In Sutton Bonington you can milk a cow or toss a sheaf, in Stoke Hammond admire tomatoes of a substantive nature, while Kelsale cum Carlton (real place) likes your rude vegetables (page 8) and Axmouth gives you the option of trimming your onions or not. Meanwhile, Barlaston has a vegimal category, Broomhill asks 'Are your buns even better than
Nigella’s?' while in free-spirited Radcliffe on Trent, the Homemade Scones Bake Off has 'no rules'. At one extreme, Lambley Village have a Victoria Sponge category requiring three eggs, jam filling and caster sugar, while at the other Stretham simply wants 'Cake'. And Grimsargh? The inevitable category for 'An Unusual Shape Fruit or Vegetable!'. [more inside]
High Maintenance Returns... Again
Tonight on HBO we find the premiere continuance of High Maintenance [previously, also previously]. IndieWire has a review, and is pretty impressed.
Finding the 694
There, visible on a video screen aboard their 24-foot boat, was the wreckage not of some long-lost schooner or ill-fated freighter, but rather a railroad locomotive. Canadian Pacific Railway Locomotive 694, to be exact, which crashed into the lake from the cliffs above in a violent collision of metal and rock before sunrise on the morning of June 10, 1910.
Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks
How to Tell If You’re a Jerk
Paging Doctor Invincible, Doctor Sweet Flow, Doctor Golden Mouth
"It was customary in the European Middle Ages, more precisely in the period of scholasticism which extended into early modern times, to designate the more celebrated among the doctors of theology and law by epithets or surnames which were supposed to express their characteristic excellence or dignity. The following list exhibits the principal surnames with the dates of death."
“I’m happy because it’s not on a pedestal, it’s not in a gallery...”
[A] fully functional, solid 18-karat-gold copy of a Kohler toilet [titled "America"] ... was installed in the humble restroom on the fifth-floor ramp of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum late last week and will be open for business to anyone with the urge on Friday.
3,536 exhibitions online
The Museum of Modern Art has digitized a HUGE amount of material from past exhibitions. The history goes all the way back to the founding of MOMA in 1929. Exhibition catalogs are available for download as pdfs!
When you play the game of thrones, you swipe or you die.
Reigns (for iOS, Android, and Steam): Called "Tinder for ruling a kingdom", make decisions as a king by swiping left or swiping right, while being careful to keep the church, the people, the army, and the treasury from getting either too weak or too powerful. You'll also romance courtesans, get lost in dungeons, die (often), and, if you're lucky, figure out why your family has been cursed by the devil.
What is it like to see at bat?
“I see spin. I don’t see color. I don’t see red,” he said before a game with the Blue Jays. He thought for a second, though. “Maybe I do and I don’t think I do.” What can hitters actually see out of a pitcher's hand?
King Tides and Exodus in the Marshall Islands
With a global mean temperature rise of 1.5℃ (video, direct .mp4 link) the Marshall Islands, site of the US's Bikini Atoll nuclear weapons tests, may disappear completely. With most islands just six feet above sea level and less than a mile wide the ring of atolls is already severely affected by climate change. ⅓ of all Marshall Islanders are believed to live in the US, although they may face deportation. In recent months the residents of the Pacific island nation have been advised to cease eating fish after elevated levels of PCBs were found in the waters around the US missile base on Kwajalein Atoll. Recently, very previously, previously, previously, personal anecdotes.
September 15
Both sides do it!
To anyone who has avoided the debate over “false balance,” apologies for disturbing your bliss. But it’s necessary, because those who haven’t heard this phrase are missing out on one of the more consequential debates to engage the media in years. [more inside]
To acknowledge the meaning of justice is always to be judged
What ‘SJW’ really means - Fred Clark This “SJW” business doesn’t involve an argument contrasting opposing views of the nature and meaning of social justice. It doesn’t involve some ideological dispute between competing visions of the proper role of the state, or of law, or markets, civil society, neighborliness, etc. It’s a wholesale rejection of the idea that social justice — in any form — is worthwhile. [more inside]
The Battle of Palmdale
“There were classic signs that should have been detected...”
Drama at an Elite High School by Suzy Khimm [New York Magazine] A beloved theater teacher, sexual-assault allegations, and the scandal that has rattled Chappaqua. A longtime Chappaqua theater teacher is accused of abusing students for years, until one told the police.
MMO Snake + Qix
splix is a game where you capture territory and avoid being touched by other players.
Moving The Window of Acceptability
How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language. Studies show that the way we think about moral questions is subtly influenced by the language we're using at the time. People using a non-native language tend to be more cerebral and less emotional. What does this say about the concept of the moral center, or "just knowing" what's right and what's wrong?
I love my dog.
Typecast as Terrorist
To begin with, auditions taught me to get through airports. In the end, it was the other way around. [more inside]
Jay Z: The War on Drugs Is an Epic Fail
"Why are white men poised to get rich doing the same thing African-Americans have been going to prison for?" An essay by Shawn Carter, AKA Jay Z, on racism and the War on Drugs. Illustrated by Molly Crabapple. [more inside]
Attacks continued to become more frequent, persistent, and complex
Who is trying to see what it would take to shatter the internet's backbone? "Someone is extensively testing the core defensive capabilities of the companies that provide critical Internet services... [T]his is happening. And people should know. " (SLSchneier)
Previously.
Other Schneier on the blue in the past.
Previously.
Other Schneier on the blue in the past.
Skating, surfing, shredding Sky Brown, youngest pro skater
8 year old Sky and her 4 year old brother Ocean skate, surf, slide and shred, as seen on Instagram and YouTube. Even more impressive, Sky is the youngest girl on the Vans US Open Pro Series. One word to she uses to describe herself: funny. Grind TV has links to other young lady boarders who are under 10 year old.
Xhurches
like Bruce Springsteen wearing a cape and plastic vampire teeth
The 13th Meat Loaf studio album comes out this weekend. The good news is that all the songs are by Jim Steinman, who wrote pretty much all of Meat Loaf's songs anyone likes, so Braver Than We Are sounds like it'll be exactly the kind of bombastic operatic rock that Meat Loaf and Steinman have struck gold with in the past, with the singer saying that he wanted to make it one super-long performance, but "iTunes wanted tracks."
[more inside]
"using a rubric that views a whole population itself as problematic"
The Deadliness of an Atomized, Fragmented Society
In his new book, Tribe, uses PTSD rates among American veterans to illustrate how psychologically unhealthy modern American society is due to how distant it is from our evolutionary past: "In Canada and Britain, close to 10 percent of combat soldiers are diagnosed with PTSD. In Israel, a country in which military service is mandatory, the rates are roughly 1 percent. Among American troops, the rates are as high as 25 percent. This is especially remarkable in light of the fact that only 10 percent experience combat... On Junger’s view, life in America is hollow and atomized. Humans, he argues, evolved to live in small groups in which inter-reliance and cooperation were essential. In combat, soldiers function much like our tribal predecessors. They live, eat, sleep, and fight together. When they come home, that sense of solidarity disappears. The civilian world feels alien. It’s 'anti-human,' Junger told me."
Living in the future of the past
There are about 60 remaining Futuro ("Flying Saucer") houses left in the world. Sometimes helicoptered into place, and with a groovy interior, these 1960s prefab homes were originally built for skiing (apparently you can still rent one in the Russian Caucus) and vacations. Now, some are abandoned, though one was recently restored and put on display.
I prefer the ketchup-flavoured Doritos myself
You don't punch a gift horse in the mouth
The University of New Hampshire has sparked criticism with the announcement of plans to spend $1 million from a $4 million bequest from an alumnus and long-time library employee on a scoreboard for the new football stadium that the school has already spent $25 million to construct.. [more inside]
First, be smart from the very beginning
The most helpful career advice article ever posted on LinkedIn: "So you think you can fake your own death?" by Elizabeth Greenwood, author of the new book Playing Dead.
Quiet Pine Trees Microfiction
Quiet Pine Trees is a twitter based stream of haunting and provocative micro-fiction by T.R. Darling.
"Being brief isn’t enough. You can boil down a story to a sentence or two, but often you need context. If you need to convey a setting, like a fascist dystopia, or characterization, like a reluctant soldier, suddenly one or two sentences won’t fit. I often must resist the temptation to omit punctuation or fall back on abbreviation, like some kind of barbarian."
Full Interview. [more inside]
At whatever the cost
"It's impossible, says the Pride / It's risky, says the Experience / It's useless, says the Reason / Let's try, whispers the Heart." The short film, "L'heure du thé" (Tea Time), by Guillaume Blanchet. previously.
Baptism of fire, fear and blood
"Rushed into battle by desperate generals with barely any testing, its debut was a messy experiment with questionable results. A select group of young men were the first to feel its terrible influence and have their lives changed by it." The Tank (Specifically, the British Mark I) made its battlefield debut 100 years ago this month.
September 14
#DreamJournal
Artist Jon Rafman (previously), who works primarily with digital art and the Internet as his medium, has been keeping a dream journal. He's been illustrating those dreams with low-fidelity 3D animations, and posting them to Facebook. Despite the amateurish quality, they capture the disconcerting, shifting, surreal nature of dreaming very well. 13 June 2016, 12 May 2016, 6 April 2016. Content Warning: violence, some risque themes, unsettling imagery.
Intimidate, obfuscate, deny, litigate
Science silenced by subpoena "If scientific results conflict with right-wing ideas, the scientists must be lying."
Phoenix rises from the ashes
Did the Canadian government break the law? Known as the Phoenix fiasco, the Canadian government's efforts to modernize its payroll system has caused further stress on a public service already transitioning to a newly elected government while undergoing collective bargaining. The minister responsible reported 80,000 cases of payroll errors, including employees being underpaid, overpaid, or not paid at all. Privacy breaches have been reported. The CBC has been providing stories from some of the affected public servants. [more inside]
Ellen's Stardust Diner
Two weeks ago, workers announced the highly publicized formation of Stardust Family United under the Industrial Workers of the World, which is supported by over 70 employees of Ellen's Stardust Diner, a restaurant in midtown Manhattan recently profiled for by the New York Times. Ken Sturm, owner, then fired six long-time employees in retaliation for their efforts to form a union to protect and improve their working conditions. Ellen's, a diner which primarily employs Broadway and off-Broadway singers, has been a mainstay source of income for many since 1995.
Pawpaw season
Guru of Peace: An Introduction to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Broadcast on BBC Radio 6, and now available online, composer "Nitin Sawhney presents an introduction to his vocal hero, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who was once dubbed the "Elvis of the East". ... He died at the age of 48 leaving a legacy of over 125 albums. ... His life and legacy is charted here with contributions from Peter Gabriel, his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Gaudi, actor Michael Sheen, singer Rumer, DJ's Andy Kershaw and Nihal, and producer Jonathan Elias amongst others." Part I and Part II. [more inside]
This Post is Nice
This Post Is Nice Are you tired of having to write a response to whatever you have to respond to? Just let Glove and Boots do it for you. [more inside]
Many times the tone just simply says, “I do not feel you belong here.”
And Do You Belong? I Do by Solange Knowles [Saint Heron] “It’s the same one that says to your friend, “BOY…. go on over there and hand me my bag” at the airport, assuming he’s a porter. It’s the same one that tells you, “m’am, go into that other line over there” when you are checking in at the airport at the first class counter before you even open up your mouth. It’s the same one that yells and screams at you and your mother in your sleep when you’re on the train from Milan to Basel “give me your passport NOW.” You look around to see if anyone else is being requested this same thing only to see a kind Italian woman actually confront the agents on your behalf and ask why you are being treated this way.” [more inside]
I make tiny dungeons meant to look like something out of Nethack
Groundbreaking Efforts to Solve Stunted Growth in Children
A new study suggests that the right gut microbes help infants grow and has profound implications for helping the one in four children globally who suffers from stunting due to chronic malnutrition and poor sanitation, an issue that is only this year finally getting serious attention from world leaders.
Welcome to the Analog Upside-Down
The synth sound of Stranger Things, on the Roland Juno-6, Roland Juno 106,
Sequential Circuits Prophet 5,
MiniMoog Model D
, and Ableton Live. Link via .
Wandertalk covers the Stranger Things theme.
"When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem."
Strange Breeds is a web comic by David Ostow. It has irony. It has pathos. It has truth (proof). It has not been updated in a while, sadly. [more inside]
The guy is drunk, but there he goes!
On Monday Night Football's late game between the San Francisco 49ers and the LA Rams, a teenager ran onto the field. Although television cameras were quickly turned away from his antics, Westwood Radio announcer Kevin Harlan provided a colorful play-by-play call until the runner was tackled by security at the 40-yard line. The 16-year-old boy who ran on-field wrote his phone number on his chest, so Deadspin called him for an interview.
Modern artsists informed by their Native American heritage
Jason Garcia, who also goes by Okuu Pin (Tewa for Turtle Mountain, the name for Sandia Mountain) is a traditional clay artist from Santa Clara Pueblo in New Mexico, except his art isn't strictly traditional. His work is his effort to document the ever-changing cultural landscape of Santa Clara (8 minute interview and overview of his art), as seen in his 'Tewa Tales,' clay tiles painted as silver-age covers, depicting the Pueblo Revolt and the colonization of New Mexico. For more, see Jason Garcia's short bio video for North American Native Museum (Nordamerika Native Museum) in Zurich, Switzerland, for a past exhibition titled "Native Art Now." Vimeo user Dylan McLaughlin/Invisible Laboratory has 10 more short bio videos from other artists in the exhibit. [more inside]
Sparkling Water
Rhiannon Giddens wins banjo prize named after some comedian
Since 2010, Steve Martin has endowed an eponymous prize "for excellence in banjo and bluegrass". The first six winners were white men, but the 2016 prize went to Rhiannon Giddens, a biracial woman who leads the Carolina Chocolate Drops. [more inside]
Bo Knows Tecmo, Kia Knows You Love That
A new Kia Sorento Tecmo Bowl ad has renewed interest in the 1991 NES game, Tecmo Super Bowl. [more inside]
I haven't actually played Majora's Mask, sorry
"Right over the edge. Like a stone."
Ellen DeGeneres and Michelle Obama go to CVS
Who knew that being a librarian would lead to all this?
Today at 12:00 PM EDT, Dr. Carla Hayden (previously) will be sworn in as the first woman and the first African-American to serve as the Librarian of Congress. She'll be tasked with pulling the Library of Congress out of internal turmoil following a scathing report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office last year. (previously) You can watch a live stream of the swearing in at the Library's YouTube channel.
"he can also be a loudmouth whose favourite subject is his own rights"
Court judgments are often long, dense and full of legal jargon. But in the English Family Court case of Lancashire County Council v A & B
Mr Justice Peter Jackson has given a judgment carefully written to so that the children involved, and their mother, can understand it. [more inside]
Because Scott Walker asked
One copy of the "John Doe files," Wisconsin's preliminary investigation into Scott Walker's campaign finances, survived destruction. [more inside]
How do you like your death tolls?
September 13
the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling
Understanding the Sublime architecture of Bloodborne situates the setting of From Software's PS4 game in art history, drawing on everyone from Michelangelo to Michael Graves to the Mannerists.
Why Print News Still Rules
Reading the news online pales compared to reading it in newsprint. Print—particularly the newspaper—is an amazingly sophisticated technology for showing you what’s important, and showing you a lot of it. The newspaper has refined its user interface for more than two centuries. Incorporated into your daily newspaper's architecture are the findings from field research conducted in thousands of newspapers over hundreds of millions of editions.
[more inside]
Inequality in the UK, It's coming sometime and maybe...
"The richest one per cent of the UK population now owns more than 20 times the total wealth of the poorest fifth, making the country one of the most unequal in the developed world, according to analysis by Oxfam.
The figures suggest that around 634,000 Britons are worth 20 times as much as the poorest 13 million and the charity urged Theresa May to take action to close the gap between the “haves” and the “have nots”." [SL-Indy]
"You don’t have to be a quilter – or own a barn!"
A barn quilt is a quilt block which is painted on a barn. Maybe you've seen one or two. A quilt trail is a driving route featuring a series of painted barn quilt blocks, often emphasizing architecture or landscapes and to attract tourism. There are quilt trails in 43 US states (large and small) and three Canadian provinces. Check to see if there is one near you.
I Just Met You / And This is Crazy / But Here is Gunhild / Carling Maybe
Gunhild Carling is a Swedish jazz musician.
Gunhild Carling plays bagpipe swing.
Gunhild Carling plays three trumpets simultaneously.
Gunhild Carling taps to an SM58 on the floor.
Gunhild Carling will never hurt you.
Gunhild Carling plays bagpipe swing.
Gunhild Carling plays three trumpets simultaneously.
Gunhild Carling taps to an SM58 on the floor.
Gunhild Carling will never hurt you.
It's a walk off!
The Great British Bake Off disaster: why the BBC got burned - thought with Mel and Sue leaving the show Channel 4 may have "just bought a tent."
an ecological catastrophe
Ctrl + Q to quit. Need I say more?
micro is a lightweight, terminal-based text editor inspired by the now-classic pico and GNU nano editors. Compared to its predecessors, micro offers modern conveniences like mouse support, undo, syntax highlighting, split panes, and clipboard integration. Unlike other very serious text-based editors, micro strives to provide a simple "out of the box" configuration and keyboard shortcuts that will be familiar to many desktop users. [more inside]The attention of readers is not, she says "a boiled egg" but "an omelet.
On Not Reading by Amy Hungerford [The Chronicle Review] “The activity of nonreading is something that scholars rarely discuss. When they — or others whose identities are bound up with books — do so, the discussions tend to have a shamefaced quality. Blame "cultural capital" — the sense of superiority associated with laying claim to books that mark one’s high social status. More entertainingly, blame Humiliation, the delicious game that a diabolical English professor invents in David Lodge’s 1975 academic satire, Changing Places. ”
Mmm, planets
RISE OF THE FRESH HOP!
Fresh Hop 2016 is upon us. Hop harvest started a couple of weeks ago. I was lucky and was able to go handpick some Citra hops off a farm on Labor Day for a local brewery here in Woodinville. Who is your favorite fresh hop ale from? Also, while this year may be hard if you can go get to the Yakima Fresh Hop Ale Festival. One of the best beer festivals in the world and right in the middle of where most of the hops come from.
Ants!
Every Bruce Springsteen Song, Ranked from 1-314
What's it say?!? I can't read!
In the U.S., bacon comes in packages that make the slices look lean from the front, but fatty from the back. But why?
From Paul Lukas of Uni Watch
From Paul Lukas of Uni Watch
We don't serve string here
Artist Windy Chien spent a year learning a different nautical knot a day. See all (most?) of the knots here.
Once you learn of the OF/UF pattern, it’s hard to avoid seeing it
"in your relationships with other people, you’re almost certainly an overfunctioner or an underfunctioner. Faced with a challenge, you either switch into fixing mode, taking control, attacking the to-do list, and offering supposedly helpful advice; or you pull back, pleading for assistance, hoping others will take responsibility, and zone out. Put that way, it sounds like OFs are the productive (if slightly irritating) ones, while UFs are freeloading losers. But the true situation’s much murkier, and more interesting, than that." [more inside]
Big Sugar Shenanigans
The Sugar Industry Hid Shocking Documents for 40 Years required reading for anyone who wants to understand how corporate funding shapes scientific research and ultimately public health policy
(Sorry grey, I like you now! But you scared me back then)
When I was a kid, I was legally blind due to the improper development of neurological connections as well as underdeveloped muscles. After a great doctor and a lot of work, I can see just fine now but for a while in my childhood, after a period of nothing, all I had was light and dark - this is how I remember family/friends describing colors to me.
Clapham Cat is watching you commute
The Citizens Advertising Takeover Service (get it?) has replaced 68 advertisements in the Clapham Common Tube station with pictures of cats. Many of the featured models are adoptable cats from Cats Protection or Battersea Dogs & Cats Home. More photos and video here.
I, too, will gush about my cats at length
Kate McKinnon Talking About Her Cat. (slYouTube)
"Imperio!"
Watch This Tiny Rainbow Peacock Spider Dance the Performance of His Life — Peacock Spider 9 (Maratus amabilis) shows the little dandies doing their best to hook up with the ladies (via Atlas Obscura). [more inside]
"A poisoned package wrapped up in arrogance"
Lionel Shriver delivered the keynote address for the 54th edition of the Brisbane Writers Festival titled Fiction and Identity Politics addressing cultural appropriation in fiction writing. [more inside]
September 12
Current Condition
Current Condition provides soothing vaporwave, folk music, and weather updates to smooth out your workday.
Second Franklin Expedition ship finally located
The HMS Terror, the second ship of Franklin's doomed expedition to find the Northwest Passage, has been located. Today the Arctic Research Foundation announced that it has located what it believes to be the HMS Terror, one of two ships belonging to the 1845 expedition. Official confirmation will come from Parks Canada. [more inside]
Alan Jefferson's one man, self-made space opera, Galactic Nightmare
Alan Jefferson was inspired: he had heard War of the Worlds and wanted to make his own space epic, and he did, between 1979-1984, in his shed ("AJ Studios") in Hull. He wrote and played the music, wrote the story, narrates the story, sings the songs, made all the artwork, the poster, the storyfile etc. He started selling cassette copies of Galactic Nightmare in 1986 in the back of magazines such as C U Amiga and Future Music, but faded from view, with a few copies being traded by friends. Then a recording made its way to Trunk Records, who have now re-released the album, which you can now hear in full on YouTube.
A Timeline of Earth's Average Temperature Since the Last Ice Age
When people say "the climate has changed before," these are the kinds of changes they're talking about. A handy (and terrifying) infographic by Randall Munroe.
The Marvel Symphonic Universe...
... or why all movie scores sound the same. Every Frame a Painting on the usage of temp music. Check out the supplementary video illustrating temp music usage.
Big businesses want to be taxed as if they weren't open
Marquette Township, a small community adjacent to the larger city of Marquette, is in the unique position of having a handful of big-box chain stores. But recently, the township suffered a dramatic drop in its property tax revenue. It had to cut back on spending, trim employee benefits and reduce library hours. The impact has reached up to surrounding Marquette County, which earlier this year closed a youth home to save money. The reason for the lost revenue isn’t declining consumer demand. It’s a series of rulings by the Michigan Tax Tribunal that have allowed large retailers to reduce their property tax assessments, in many cases by as much as half. [more inside]
Akinwale Arobieke
The man who squeezes muscles - "Across the North West, Akinwale Arobieke has become a modern-day bogeyman and an internet sensation, and now a court order that curtailed his activities has been lifted ... For years, stories about this bogeyman swirled around Merseyside.
The tales varied, but they agreed on certain key details - that he was huge and that he liked to feel young men’s muscles. Sometimes he would measure them too.
Parents would tell their children not to stay out after dark or Aki would get them. " [BBC - Apologies for the format, I know some people on here don't like it - if so, complain to the BBC!]
“Work is so never-ending, Rihanna had to repeat it five times in a row”
Ten members of the staff at Pitchfork have put together a list of “The Music That Helps Them Get Shit Done” (NB: Rihanna is not on the list.) [more inside]
"Evils like this are why the world needs a nuclear-armed Britain"
No More Tea Bags is a product that wants to revolutionize tea. With an aerosol squirt bottle. The website copy insists "it's normal tea," but the internet has formed its own opinions.
The desired academy, nine years hence
“What change would you like to see in universities or in your academic field by 2025?” That's the question Heterodox Academy members answer, in honor of their initiative's first year anniversary.
(Previously)
(Previously)
Singing in the Shadow of Pulse
James Croft, a member of the Gateway Men’s Chorus, writes about singing at the GALA Choruses festival, three weeks after the massacre at the Pulse nightclub. Here is their performance. [more inside]
Crisis on Multiple (Duck-Based) Earths
Last week was the 25th anniversary of the premiere of Darkwing Duck, a superhero-themed spinoff of the popular cartoon DuckTales. Except, according to the creator, the two shows were in different universes. Tad Stones told The Hollywood Reporter that "We work in the alternate Duckiverse". James Silvani, artist of the Darkwing comic book, has extended this interpretation into the comics as well, saying "[Darkwing/DuckTales crossover] Dangerous Currency never happened". [more inside]
512K required.
Psygnosis Amiga Game Generator by Boing Boing's Rob Beschizza. Using an assortment of paintings by Roger Dean and a few exotic typefaces, now you can generate the cover of your own technical marvel for the Amiga 500. Hit generate, or tweak your own using the direct link. (via).
Why Flying is so Expensive [SYTL 10 min 31 sec]
Ever wondered what the break down of an (average) airline ticket cost is? "Flying is expensive, really expensive, but only kinda, and it's only partially the airlines' fault." [more inside]
Honestly, it's kind of draining
Coming off Labor Day weekend, the POTUS candidates answered questions in the first Commander in Chief Forum, the clear loser of which was Matt Lauer. Hillary managed to move attention to Trump's "basket of deplorables" for a day, but then drew it back to herself by stumbling or collapsing while leaving a 9/11 memorial. Her camp blamed dehydration, then revealed she was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday. [more inside]
No, not those Italians
When you woke up this morning, I'm confident your first thought was: "What is the most ridiculous antelope?" Well, obviously it's the Dik Dik. Whether they are squeaking, fighting, or just being beautiful weirdos, Dik Diks have few competitors. But what do researchers find strangest about the Dik Dik? Well, it's monogamous. [more inside]
Why you cry?
Wings Of A Dove
(contains possibly unrealistic air travel scenes, and a stuffed vulture) Wings Of A Dove, by the group Madness, was a hit single (lyrics) in 1983 in the UK and Ireland. The group, known for their fun and low-budget (dog runs across stage at 2:56) videos, used footage from a French TV van ad. Carl Smyth allegedly had the idea for "Wings of a Dove" while watching the Inspirational Choir of the Pentecostal First Born Church of the Living God on late night television. Smyth claimed, in later album notes, that "a voice spoke to me and said 'Boy, write a song for these good people.'" [more inside]
September 11
Xenia Rubinos
Xenia Rubinos is a songwriter and performer fom Hartford, CT, trained in jazz composition at Berklee, now living in Brooklyn, New York. Her music is an amalgam of R&B, noise, hip-hop and punk. It is often political, often danceable, and often both. She is currently on tour. More Rubinos music below the fold. [more inside]
Good life, good life
Roland, the Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, has announced faithful remakes of the iconic TB-303 bassline synthesizer, TR-909 drum machine, and VP-330 vocoder. The 303 and 909 in particular are revered in the worlds of house, acid, and techno, and are used on hundreds of records you know and love. Each have a distinct sound you can identify in a mix immediately. They're priced at $350-400, comparable to the low prices back when the gear was first released that made them attractive to unknown bedroom producers - while the originals go for thousands on the second-hand market today, affordable only for wealthy collectors and professionals. Peter Kirn dives in with impressions and offers a roundup of early comparisons and reviews. [more inside]
“I want a hot pocket so bad and it's all I'm thinking about.”
Son of Zorn [YouTube] [Trailer] An animated warrior from a faraway island in the Pacific Ocean returns to Orange County, CA, to win back his live-action ex-wife and teenage son. [more inside]
I sense something, a presence I've not felt since...
Star Wars Saxophone. [slyt]
"My god, it's full of pigment!"
Colors In Macro is a beautiful video of paints and milk and oil, guaranteed to provoke a "whoa." For an "eewww but I can't look away" response, check out Pills Dissolving In Macro. [more inside]
Live Broadcast of Midsummer Night's Dream from London's Globe Theatre
Live Broadcast of Midsummer Night's Dream. Right now! "First ever production to be live streamed around the world from The Globe.
Sunday's sold-out show is the final Dream performance in the Wonder Season.
The Globe says to expect naughtiness of a sexual nature!" The production has gotten some fine reviews: "a glittering, unnerving comic triumph."
Opinion Size Age Shape Colour Origin Material Purpose Noun
Matthew Anderson of the BBC tweeted a paragraph from the 2013 book The Elements of Eloquence detailing the order of adjectives in English and calling it a thing "English speakers know, but don't know we know". It went viral, with outlets from NPR to Good Housekeeping covering the story and the rule, while Quartz pointed out that this is a meticulously taught rule for non-native English speakers. [more inside]
Grief and empathy
"In the past several weeks I, like countless other New Yorkers and Americans, have found solace in the epic acts of heroism displayed by the firefighters, police officers, and rescue workers who have risked their lives to save "others. My aunt's neighbors displayed a quieter, more quotidian heroism in her final weeks, setting up a cooking schedule so that a fresh dinner would always be delivered, taking turns watching the kids, and even lending my uncle a new coffee pot when his broke." -- Chris Hayes, in an unpublished article from the fall of 2001.
Gotta catch'em all!
The latest Pokemon GO update is slowly becoming available, so go grab yourself a buddy (check the distance charts first)and then sit back ('cause you're totally a passenger) and admire all the great in-game photos. [more inside]
Not just Phobos and Deimos
Turn that frown upside down :(
Animated math
Essence of linear algebra - "[Grant Sanderson of 3Blue1Brown (now at Khan Academy) animates] the geometric intuitions underlying linear algebra, making the many matrix and vector operations feel less arbitrary." [more inside]
September 10
About Ratboy Genius
Domino Spiral
This is a pretty good domino spiral. It took 25 hours to build over 8 days with 15,000 dominoes.
"the naive approach is often to use a Gaussian blur"
Have you ever wondered what your graphics card is doing every time it displays one frame of a game? Turns out quite a lot. [more inside]
Britain's Secret Wars
For more than 100 years, Britain has been perpetually at war. Some conflicts, such as the Falklands, have become central to our national narrative, but others, including the brutal suppression of rebels in Oman, have been deliberately hidden.
What Asian American Kids Bring for Lunch
Have You Ever Had a ‘Lunch Box Moment’? NBC Asian America has a video project called Jubilee Project: Voices in which Asian Americans are asked a single question about the Asian American experience.
In the first video, Asian American adults recall what it was like to bring their family's tradition foods to the school lunchroom when everyone else had packed peanut butter and jelly.
Björk's eclectic musical beginnings (disco, flute and Beatles)
When Björk was ten, a teacher submitted her recording of Tina Charles’s disco hit “I Love to Love” to Iceland's radio station RÚV. This eventually led to her first album, Björk, released when she was all of eleven years old. Dangerous Minds takes a look at the history behind Björk's first album, including excerpts from an interview with her mother, who did the cover art. You can listen to mp3s of the songs on WFMU's Beware of the Blog, including Björk's original flute instrumental, "Johannes Kjarval" (a tribute to the Icelandic painter) and her Icelandic-language cover of the Beatles' "Fool on the Hill". [more inside]
If we're not in pain, we're not alive
Do we really want to fuse our brains together? Mefi fave Peter Watts writes on research into merging minds in Aeon.
The most diverse school system we have ever had?
The UK's new Prime Minister, Theresa May, wants an increase in the number of selective state schools. [more inside]
Greta Friedman
Greta Zimmer Friedman, 92, has died. According to the New York Daily News, Mrs. Friedman led a long, eventful life. As a girl, she fled from the Nazis in Europe, and settled in New York, where she later studied theater and costuming at the New School. But her place in history is marked by a single snapshot. She was ambivalent, at times, about that place in history, which can well be characterized as sexual assault. Nonetheless, many years later, she became friendly with the man in the photograph, who had been, at the time, a stranger. (Previously, if incorrectly)
Eleven days
The Evolution of Bacteria on a “MEGA-Plate” Petri Dish - a cinematic approach to visualizing drug resistance
The Failed Coverup of the CIA Torture Report
Inside the fight to reveal the CIA's torture secrets. "The first part of the inside story of the Senate investigation into torture, the crisis with the CIA it spurred and the man whose life would never be the same." [more inside]
"What is UP with that CAT?!"
The View from Medina
My mother begins a slow, thorny grieving. Time wrinkles around her periodically heaving body. In May, she decides we will make umrah, pilgrimage, in my grandmother’s memory. My immediate family doesn’t do field trips. I can’t remember the last time that we, all seven strong, went anywhere together—we are always too busy or too dispersed.
By month’s end, we are flying to Saudi Arabia for the first time in fifteen years.
they should have sent a poet (of chickens)
Fancy chickens were all the rage in the late 19th century, so Lewis Wright's Illustrated Book of Poultry was a big hit. With hundreds of pages of high density chicken information and dozens of beautiful chromolithographs by ornithological artist J.W. Ludlow, the book stayed in print for more than 40 years. Harvard University just digitized the book for public viewing. Here's their blog post about it. [more inside]
Gewgaws, Knickknacks, Tchotchkes, etc.
Found & Chosen is a blog from a collector of small toys, trinkets, charms, junk, baubles, whatnots, curios (and so on). Often arranged and presented as visually pleasing displays.
Airline workers living in trailers on a parking lot near LAX
Vimes Short documentary on an airport parking lot in Los Angeles, where pilots, mechanics and flight attendant live in trailers. Feels like a J. G. Ballard novel.
All Black Everything
Daveed Diggs, recent Tony Award Winner of “Hamilton” fame, just released an Afrofuturistic space opera-themed noise-rap concept album, Splendor & Misery, as part of his experimental rap collective, Clipping. [more inside]
September 9
@smubgobs
The Burke-Gaffney Observatory at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia will take your astronomical observation requests via Twitter. [more inside]
When darkness falls and pain is all around.
Sail on, Silver Girl: Playa Elvis delivers Bridge Over Troubled Waters. (SLYT)
What if Star Trek never existed?
Star Trek first aired on NBC on September 8, 1966. But what if Star Trek never existed?
"What if NBC hadn’t wanted another pilot? Or if Roddenberry had been too busy producing the first season of Police Story to make one? In that mirror universe, the next 50 years of sci-fi TV and movies look much different. So does the cultural breadth of television casts. So does your yearly pilgrimage to Comic-Con International. Our lives would be very different without Trek—and we almost didn’t get it."
And now that it does exist, over six (almost seven) different TV shows and thirteen movies, here's The Hollywood Reporter's list of 100 Best Star Trek episodes.
"What if NBC hadn’t wanted another pilot? Or if Roddenberry had been too busy producing the first season of Police Story to make one? In that mirror universe, the next 50 years of sci-fi TV and movies look much different. So does the cultural breadth of television casts. So does your yearly pilgrimage to Comic-Con International. Our lives would be very different without Trek—and we almost didn’t get it."
And now that it does exist, over six (almost seven) different TV shows and thirteen movies, here's The Hollywood Reporter's list of 100 Best Star Trek episodes.
See, cats DO get stuck in things besides scanners!
Adorable kitties getting caught in pretty much everything but scanners. (SL BuzzFeed)
“Mrs. Simpson, the express line is the fastest line not always.” ~ Apu
How to Pick the Fastest Line at the Supermarket [The New York Times] “You dash into the supermarket for a few necessities. You figure it will be 10 minutes — tops — before you are done and on your way home. Then you get to the checkout lanes and they are brimming with shoppers. Your plan for a quick exit begins to evaporate. But all is not lost. For anyone who has ever had to stand in line (or if you are a New Yorker, you stand on line) at a supermarket, retailer, bank or anywhere else, here are some tips from experts for picking the line that will move the fastest.” [more inside]
The King of Ska
Most Tricks By A Cat In One Minute
Didga the Australian skateboarding cat and her owner Robert performed a total of 20 tricks in one minute to earn themselves a place in the Guinness World Records 2017 book.
"We are not the country we thought we were."
Secret Path, a project by Gord Downie, includes a new album and a graphic novel illustrated by Jeff Lemire. It tells the story of Chanie (Charlie) Wenjack, a 12 year old Ojibwe boy who died in 1966 while trying to make his way home from the residential school he had been sent to, located 400 miles away. [more inside]
• author totally misunderstands Internet in way that sounds profound
Here is a list of things that I am including in this book. Please send me my seven-figure advance.
- affluent family lives in suburb. The husband (who is a professor but also a novelist) is cheating on his wife, but he thinks it falls into a moral gray area because he is a Great Man
A trip to the mythical Isle of Tiki, Polynesian Pop and A/C Eden
The bizarre rise and fall and resurgence of tiki bars and cocktails is an interesting history that starts with two men, Donn Beach and Victor Bergeron, who traveled to the South Pacific and brought back some "island culture" to the United States with them in the 1930s, continuing on with the craze really booming after WWII vets returned from tours overseas. With the ebbs and flows of popularity, the cultural appropriation in "Tiki culture" has often been overlooked, as to the Māori mythology and meaning behind Tiki carvings and imagery and Hawiian culture of leis and luaus. Let's talk Tiki bars: harmless fun or exploitation. [Soundtrack: Les Baxter's Ritual Of The Savage ( 1951) and Martin Denny's Exotica (1957)] [more inside]
Seriously, they do a lot of cleaning
Goats + yoga
Thus explaining Mitch McConnell's unceasing opposition
Barack Obama is officially now a parasite (again). It's an honor. A new genus of blood fluke was discovered in 2015 in Malaysian freshwater turtles (PDF). After discovering that he shared a common ancestor with President Obama, lead researcher Thomas R. Platt bestowed the name Baracktrema obamai on the new species. [more inside]
Dogs are the doggiest
Keep your pikachus out of our parks!
Milwaukee's beautiful Lake Park is "one of the most popular and concentrated Pokemon Go destinations in the country." There have been concerns about increased litter, parking, vandalism and bathroom availability due to the numbers of people using the park. This led to the county parks department asking Niantic, the game's creator, to obtain a permit. The area's Neighborhood Association allotted some time during its regularly scheduled meeting to discuss the matter. It did not go well.
i love my butt and i won't shut up
Doctor Who Fan Orchestra
New energy transitions: Tipping point for self-organized criticality?
Electric vehicles – It's not just about the car - "One of the key characteristics of complex systems, such as the world's energy and transport sectors, is that when they change it tends not to be a linear process. They flip from one state to another in a way strongly analogous to a phase change in material science... A second important characteristic of this type of economic phase change is that when one major sector flips, the results rip through the whole economy and can have impacts on the societal scale." (via) [more inside]
"We’re the Only Plane in the Sky"
"We’re the Only Plane in the Sky"
Where was the president in the eight hours after the Sept. 11 attacks? The strange, harrowing journey of Air Force One, as told by the people who were on board.
Wolfshäger Hexenbrut says, shake your fat!
Colors and Scrapes
The Apocalypse Now of television gameshows
Let’s have another round tonight
Video games, of course, are lousy with taverns, and in taverns you will invariably encounter bards. Some are kind of lousy, some are really quite good, some won't stop singing about you, and a few might even be trying to kill you.
If there's no bard around, you can make some music yourself! Grab a guitar (or a lute I guess) and a few of your friends. Sure, a few murder ballads might be nice while you drain a pint, but don't forget you can also sing while you work!
taking DDR to the next level
taro4012 makes Stepmania/DDR games that really push the limits of the rhythm-game genre. The UK Sight Reading Tournament series (the latest being Version 8) incorporates mini games and an overarching plot, while HBT experiments with the step-game hardware, such as pressure-sensitive game pads. A major highlight of taro4012's work is adapting Undertale to the Stepmania format - which for spoiler reasons and due to the lack of an established playlist will be placed [more inside]
Let's Go Shopping!
The Intercept have just published an expose on the 2014 catalog of British spy tech maker Cobham, who sell their gear to “clients and partners in over 100 countries” including US police forces. Among the equipment is an array of cellphone-intercepting IMSI catchers, better known as Stingrays (previously); handheld or car-mounted direction finding devices to pinpoint a cellphone's location; and surveillance cameras hidden inside everything from street lights to bug zappers and trashcans along with receivers, recorders and viewing devices. A full copy of the 120 page catalog itself is available as well.
September 8
Monuments remember history we cannot and should not forget
In Montgomery, Alabama, where dozens of markers commemorate the history of confederacy... We plan to build a national memorial to the victims of lynching The Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based racial justice group, announced that it will build the first-ever national memorial to lynching victims in Montgomery, Alabama. [more inside]
Let's just push the button/We'd be better off dead
Catching up With Star Trek IV's True Hero: The Unkind Punk on the Bus. “It’s nice to be remembered,” says Thatcher. “I could win the Nobel Peace Prize, and my gravestone would still stay, ‘Star Trek IV: Punk on the Bus.'”
Bright Lights, Big Space
DEEP WEB - kinetic audiovisual installation The generative, luminous architectural structure weaves 175 motorized spheres and 12 high power laser systems into a 25 meter wide and 10 meter high super-structure, bringing to life a luminous analogy to the nodes and connections of digital networks. Moving up and down, and choreographed and synchronized to an original multi-channel musical score by Robert Henke, the spheres are illuminated by blasts of colourful laser beams resulting in three-dimensional sculptural light drawings and arrangements in cavernous darkness.
Storytelling explained visually
Jeff VanderMeer, best known for his SF Southern Reach triology (previously, previously), wrote a guide for writing fiction: Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction (previously). An Illustrated Guide to Writing Scenes and Stories summarizes key points of the book and is a great resource for highly visual thinkers.
Unsound, THE sound.
Unsound magazine was published from 1983-1987. Unsound created a forum for musicians and artists to connect and network. The Sonic-Youth interview is in Vol1. #4, Swans interview is in Vol.1 #5, Karen Finley & Negativeland Vol.2 #2, Nick Cave (just post Birthday Party) interview is in Vol.1 #1. Etc. And don't miss the audio interview archive.
Gi Ra Ff Es
If you ever found yourself thinking That giraffe looks different from that other giraffe, congratulations: a genetic study has found that giraffes are four different species (plus a subspecies), which are roughly as different from each other as the brown bear and the polar bear. Previously, all giraffes were classified as the single species Giraffa camelopardalis.
Judge sentencing affected by football results
Emotional Judges and Unlucky Juveniles is the title of an NBER research paper recently published, which showed that unexpected losses by the LSU football team resulted in harsher penalties for juvenile defendants. Reported in the Atlantic, and a .pdf of the draft paper.
Dear Mark.
“Very often I am writing about writing,” he says.
No, Alan Moore Isn't a Recluse [Publishers Weekly] “Speaking in intimidatingly long and thoughtful sentences, Moore is affable, relaxed, and eager to talk about his new novel, Jerusalem [Amazon], to be published in September by Norton’s Liveright imprint in the U.S. and Knockabout in the U.K. It’s a 600,000-word opus that has been lurking, Cthulhu-like, behind his last decade of work. Remixing the most-reader-challenging tricks of writers such as James Joyce, Roland Barthes, and Mark Z. Danielewski, Jerusalem is an astonishing collection of words and ideas that weaves a hypnotic spell.” [Previously] [Previously] [more inside]
These are the voyages of the warship Zumwalt
Massive, futuristic Zumwalt-class stealth destroyer sets sail to join U.S. Navy fleet under command of Captain James Kirk.
A pint of fear and home by teatime
Fundamentalist punk rock art collective The Mekons present their "hymn for Brexit," Fear & Beer. This track, like the rest of their new album Existentialism, was recorded on a single microphone in a single evening in front of a paying audience. The 75 attendees, dubbed the Mekoristers and credited by their names in the liner notes of the album, sang backing vocals in the style of Phil Minton's famous feral choirs. They become almost another instrument or sound effect — a distant, disconcerting drone or howl that permeates songs of political unrest and social chaos. Plus, you can dance to them (or simply shout along). [more inside]
Just don't play the samples backwards
WaveNet: text to speech using a generative deep learning model. Existing text-to-speech systems use parametric generation or a concatenative approach where tiny samples of a recorded voice are strung together to create synthesized speech. Using a deep learning technique WaveNet generates synthetic speech a single sample at a time. Especially interesting: "If we train the network without the text sequence, it still generates speech, but now it has to make up what to say. As you can hear from the samples below, this results in a kind of babbling, where real words are interspersed with made-up word-like sounds" The academic paper.
“My Moby-Dick has been Zhongwang”
Two years ago, a California aluminum executive commissioned a pilot to fly over the Mexican town of San José Iturbide, at the foot of the Sierra Gorda mountains, and snap aerial photos of a remote desert factory. He made a startling discovery. Nearly one million metric tons of aluminum sat neatly stacked behind a fortress of barbed-wire fences. The stockpile, worth some $2 billion and representing roughly 6% of the world’s total inventory—enough to churn out 2.2 million Ford F-150s or 77 billion beer cans—quickly became an obsession for the U.S. aluminum industry. Now it is a new source of tension in U.S.-Chinese trade relations. U.S. executives contend that the mysterious cache was part of a brazen scheme by one of China’s richest men to game the global trade system. The Wall Street Journal reports [more inside]
The Great Recession: American Movie Acting Today
Film acting is built from the very stuff of social life: norms of behavior, standards of interaction and communication, communally legible gestures, and personality tropes and dynamics. But if this poses a challenge for the critic, it’s also the reason acting styles, taken in the aggregate, are such unusually good barometers of cultural modes, themes, and ideas, whether they respond to prevalent motifs or are generated themselves.
Salem the glitter cat
THIS IS WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS WHEN YOU FORGET TO RINSE THE TUB OUT AFTER USING A LUSH INTERGALATIC BATHBOMB! [more inside]
"This isn’t some smug tirade against a widely beloved populist icon."
The 24-Year-Old Coca-Cola Virgin , Jamie Lauren Keiles
xEuclidx
Compass-and-straightedge construction (aka Euclidean construction) is a method of drawing precise geometric figures using only a compass and a straightedge (like a ruler without the markings). MathOpenRef maintains a catalog of many common constructions, each with an explanatory animation and a proof. This YouTube video demonstrates how to construct almost every polygon that can be constructed using these methods. [more inside]
A serious, well-behaved, young black cat
Airbnb’s Work to Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion
In a new 32-page report, Airbnb says that it would institute a new nondiscrimination policy that goes beyond what is outlined in several anti-discrimination laws and that it would ask all users to agree to a “community commitment” starting on Nov. 1. [more inside]
How to extract the game data (the hard way)
"When we decided to remake The Dragon’s Trap, one of the primary goals we set for ourselves was to make a game that is faithful and respectful to the original in terms of gameplay [...] We want the timings, physics, and reactions to feel just right and not like a cheap remake [...] We don’t want to replicate all of it by guesswork and lose some the original magic due to translation. So I went and started digging into the original code…
"
You 360 Degrees Turn and Try to Look Away
360 degree video in the middle of kittens playing. That is all.
TERRY 2016
Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads
Elephants Are Okay Too
Washington’s largest pair of Tevas are on an elephant at the National Zoo (Washington Post) [more inside]
The Bible Went Down With The Birdie Jean
"At twelve, my grandfather climbed into his Prayer Tower and said he’d die if he didn’t get $8 million; I was a gay kid living on a Pentecostal compound with an autographed photo of Ronald Reagan on my desk. At eighteen I left most of that behind, rarely looking back."
Randy Roberts Potts, the grandson of Oral Roberts, is publishing a memoir on instagram
"Everything Is A Target"
The bombing and blockade of the Middle East's poorest country, done with US weaponry, accelerates. Tens of thousands have died directly from Saudi bombings, and half of Yemen is malnourished, with the air war and blockade cutting access to 90% of the nation's food supplies and much of its clean water. [more inside]
September 7
Dataism: Getting out of the 'job loop' and into the 'knowledge loop'
From deities to data - "For thousands of years humans believed that authority came from the gods. Then, during the modern era, humanism gradually shifted authority from deities to people... Now, a fresh shift is taking place. Just as divine authority was legitimised by religious mythologies, and human authority was legitimised by humanist ideologies, so high-tech gurus and Silicon Valley prophets are creating a new universal narrative that legitimises the authority of algorithms and Big Data." [more inside]
BLACK CLASSICAL - HISTORY OF SPIRITUAL JAZZ
"Person" from the Latin personare "to sound through"
"It's as though we are imagining the sound of our voice as physical stuff we are manipulating." Listen to Jeremy Fisher, Gillyanne Kayes, and Steven Connor demonstrate and discuss the prosody of a laugh, the distinction between healthy and unhealthy vocal creaking (fry), and the dynamics—and difficulties—of Hillary Clinton's oratory. And if you're so inclined, try out a series of voice training exercises from Fisher's and Kayes' new book, This is a Voice.
Violent fighting to come again!
Now is a great time to get into 2D fighting games, with major recent releases like Street Fighter V and The King of Fighters XIV. It's not immediately obvious that, at their heart, they're about controlling space, so it's easy for beginners to not even understand even the basic gameplan. This series of tutorial videos for Street Fighter will teach you the fundamentals of how the genre works. Feeling a little more ambitious? Want something a little faster, looser, and more exciting than Street Fighter? Why not check out DandyJ's Beginner's Incomplete Guide to KOF (and part 2) and learn the fundamentals of King of Fighters, a series that, by the video's own admission, you probably aren't familiar with if you're from an English-speaking country.
Ian Curtis rides a rollercoaster
Do we tow or push the boats? Neither
The Henley on Todd Regatta is the only boat race in the world that was cancelled because the river actually had water in it, back in 1993. How do the boats move on a waterless river-are they towed or pushed?. In the words of its founder, Reg Smith, we cut the bottoms out and carry them!. [more inside]
Don't give up, I won't give up
Sia (singer, songwriter) and Maddie Ziegler (dancer) continue their collaboration with The Greatest, an homage to the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting. [more inside]
Sum of the parts
A while back, Google's Head of HR Laszlo Bock wanted to know what makes a team successful or not? Was it being composed of highly selective stars? Was it having an efficient and serious work ethic? Turns out, once they turned their attention to group norms, that the most important indicator of an effective group was pretty simple: equality. [more inside]
"He thinks the wheelchair is ridiculous."
The Gradual Atlantis
When Will New York Sink? Even locals who believe climate change is real have a hard time grasping that their city will almost certainly be flooded beyond recognition: The deluge will begin slowly, and irregularly, and so it will confound human perceptions of change. Areas that never had flash floods will start to experience them, in part because global warming will also increase precipitation. High tides will spill over old bulkheads when there is a full moon. People will start carrying galoshes to work. All the commercial skyscrapers, housing, cultural institutions that currently sit near the waterline will be forced to contend with routine inundation. And cataclysmic floods will become more common, because, to put it simply, if the baseline water level is higher, every storm surge will be that much stronger. {...} Like a stumbling boxer, the city will try to keep its guard up, but the sea will only gain strength. [more inside]
You can has a pretty either way, IMO
The hippest internet café of 1995
Take a trip down memory lane to the hippest internet café of 1995 (SLYT).
Obscure horror from the bowels of THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS!
The Library of Congress needs some help IDing film stills from their collection: LOC's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center recently started posting mystery images from their collection for followers to help identify via their Now See Hear! blog. This week's entry focuses on 20th c. horror and suspense movies. [more inside]
Copycat Clown Killers?
North Carolina is facing an invasion of clowns. And that is not a euphemism for anything political. There have been about a half dozen nefarious clown sightings since late summer.
Slow TV and the sea
A sunset with oranges and reds ... a palm tree on a shore ... a reef in the Red Sea ... some rocks ... and some seal pups ... a waterfall on a beach ... the Devil's Punch Bowl ... some waves crashing onto rocks ... and some more ... and back to the Red Sea ... and finishing with another sunset.
Inspired By Baby Island
Ann M. Martin on the Enduring Appeal of The Baby-Sitters Club and Rebooting Another Children’s Series. "It’s hard to overstate the ravenousness with which young girls would devour these $3.99 tomes. At the time, a Baby-sitters Club book was about as close as we could get to a Snapchat-style look into the life of an early-’90s 13-year-old. The books were where a lot of young women first learned what it was like to experience divorce, the death of a grandparent, a first boyfriend, or a lost kitten." [more inside]
What effect has the Girl Effect had on Nike’s own supply chain?
The Burning Desire for Hot Chicken
"The pleasure and pain of hot chicken comes in layers — in waves. It is a simple dish, but what it inspires in the body is as multivalent as a designer drug." A paean to a dish that is emerging from the predominantly black East Nashville neighborhoods to the national spotlight.
Mashers versus Suffragettes with hatpins, umbrellas and Jiu Jitsu
Prized by antique collectors today, hatpins were commonplace, and for a time even controversial. They ranged in size between 6 and 12 inches long depending on the size of the hat they needed to secure to a woman’s head. And in 1903, they became the primary defense against mashers, men who made unwanted advances on women in public. By 1909, the hatpin was considered an international threat (previously), as hatpins were used by women in a wide range of disputes and fights, including women strikers who used"old-fashioned hat pins" to attack non-strikers. Hat pins were often preferred masher deterrents, but not the only tool utilized by women in the early 1900s. [more inside]
everything comes down to SA vs. 4chan
now, you can look back at that and cringe, or (if you were around back then) look back and that and go “man, how the hell is neil cicierega still an internet celebrity?”, tho you could ask the same thing about dril, who back in those days was a newgrounds superstar who i will not reference or link out of courtesy / a sense of shared guilt – christ, some of my old shit is on youtube too, apparently i was an ~indie animator~ worthy of archiving when i was 12 – but imo the interesting thing here is how the transition from paleozoic (specifically, permian) to mesozoic (the current era) internet culture occurred alongside a total shift in aesthetics. if you’re old enough to remember the permian internet, you look back on it and cringe – you can’t help it. why?[more inside]
This has the makings of a vast conspiracy.
Welfare Reform: The Anti-Basic Income
Money spent on welfare hasn't declined since reform, it's just that much less of it goes to poor people. In 1998 some 60% of welfare spending was cash benefits for the poor, now it's less than 10% in many states. Instead much of the money is used for programs meant to "promote job preparation, prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies or promote two-parent families." [more inside]
Labour and work
Does the Left have a future? (SLGuardian) A longish article on how globalisation, nationalism and changing work has put parties of the left (and particularly Labour in the UK) in crisis.
September 6
The Antithesis of Instagram, or its Essence? Yes.
"Most photography books talk about depth of field and depth of focus, but few of them give a formula for it. Here it is. N is the F-number, f is focal length, C is pixel size, and U is distance to the scene. We'll study this formula in lecture, and you'll be invited to experiment with depth of field in weekly photographic assignments."Lectures on Digital Photography: How Cameras Work, and How to Take Good Pictures Using Them. A free 18-lecture course taught by Marc Levoy, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford, and Principal Engineer at Google. Via. [more inside]
Not The Nine Inch Nails One, Though
Llama llama red pajama feels alone without his mama
"Children’s author, illustrator, and educator Anna Dewdney, whose toddler-centric picture books starring wildly expressive Baby Llama are multi-million-copy bestsellers, died at her home in Vermont on Saturday, September 3, after a 15-month battle with brain cancer. She was 50." — Publisher's Weekly [more inside]
An endemic tradition of Australian meat-kooky
As a country that rode on the sheep’s back Australis has no beef with lamb advertising. And the ad companies are neither chicken nor do they mince words when it comes to spruiking lamb as the national meal. But what is a national meal in a multicultural country? Way back last century, some clever duck in meat marketing promoted lamb as a multicultural meat, albeit clumsily. This century, in the lead-up to National BBQ Day (26 Jan, aka ‘Australia’ Day aka Invasion Day), Meat and Livestock Australia have run a series of modest unassuming advertisements. OK, only kidding. This year’s was an entertaining in-joke that caused some controversy. [more inside]
Archaeology is my activism
“These people performed a critique of a brutal capitalistic enslavement system, and they rejected it completely. They risked everything to live in a more just and equitable way, and they were successful for ten generations."The Great Dismal Swamp straddles the Virginia-North Carolina border. From the 1600s to about the American Civil War it was a place of refuge, largely for escaped African and African-American slaves, and an important link in the underground railway. [more inside]
Dam, you go
The return of beautiful music
KNXR broadcast Beautiful Music from 1965 to December 31, 2015 when the station based out of Rochester Minnesota switched over from its beautiful music format to classic hits. One of the last remaining stations in the format, its passing was missed. Now it's back in streaming form! Chill out to old mellow tunes, bizarre moog beatles covers, and the surreal anecdotes of John Doremus' Patterns in Music.
“I don't want to spend a ton of money on a game that's bad...”
The State of PC Piracy in 2016 [PC Gamer] “Piracy seems like it should be so simple, right? Stealing games is wrong. The end. But piracy is one of the most charged, complex, and divisive debates in gaming. Follow a piracy discussion long enough and it will spiral through issues as complicated as international economic policy, the concept of 'ownership' for digital property, game preservation, and the principle of the PC as an unrestricted technology platform. Piracy in 2016, the age of digital distribution, indie gaming, and Steam’s dominance, is a different animal from the PC piracy of 1990 or 2000 or 2010. Unlicensed software distribution is just as illegal as it was when Don’t Copy That Floppy was a meaningful anti-piracy strategy, but our own understanding of the crime and its motivations haven’t kept pace with technology.” [more inside]
The Sandy Hook Hoax
Lenny Pozner used to believe in conspiracy theories, until his son’s death became one. [Some graphic descriptions.]
Sisyphus at 67
“One of the points I’m making in the book is that, whoever you’ve been and wherever you’ve been, it never leaves you,” he said, expanding upon this thought with the most Springsteen-esque metaphor possible: “I always picture it as a car. All your selves are in it. And a new self can get in, but the old selves can’t ever get out. The important thing is, who’s got their hands on the wheel at any given moment?” Bruce Springsteen in Vanity Fair, on his new memoir.
New Year's Avant Day
What do Laurie Anderson, Yves Montand, George Plimpton, John Cage, fireworks, Peter Gabriel, Merce Cunningham, Allen Ginsberg, Joseph Beuys, Philip Glass, Oingo Boingo, and Nam June Paik have in common? Good Morning, Mr. Orwell, a one hour show broadcast on New Year's Day, 1984. [more inside]
Pocket Devils
Drained of meaning
The premise of Jack Hamilton’s deep new study Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination seems like something that’s been on rock history’s tongue for a long time without ever quite leaving it. Chuck Berry, a black man with a guitar, had been a rock and roll archetype in 1960, but by the end of the decade Jimi Hendrix would be seen as rock’s odd man out for being... a black man with a guitar. How did that occur? "Tracing the Rock and Roll Race Problem" an interview in Pitchfork.
lol @ theranos
Intersectionality or GTFO
All of a sudden you hear the other moves and you’re like, 'Holy (Bleep)'
Sure, there were rumours. But no one predicted the full extent of the NHL shake-up that began at 2:34 p.m. ET on June 29: The 23 Minutes That Shook The Hockey World.
"So be it."
Danny Chew, who's been working nearly his whole life toward bicycling a million miles, has suffered an injury that may have left him paralyzed from the waist down after drifting off the road during a dizzy spell in Ohio. [more inside]
Auditing Algorithms and Algorithmic Auditing
How big data increases inequality and threatens democracy - "A former academic mathematician and ex-hedge fund quant exposes flaws in how information is used to assess everything from creditworthiness to policing tactics, with results that cause damage both financially and to the fabric of society. Programmed biases and a lack of feedback are among the concerns behind the clever and apt title of Cathy O'Neil's book: Weapons of Math Destruction." [more inside]
September 5
"Truth is, we’ve been here all along"
Amid a potential financial disaster and accessibility problems, on Wednesday, September 7, the 15th Summer Paralympic Games will begin in Rio de Janeiro. The Rome 1960 Paralympic Games included only eight events. At Rio 2016, athletes will compete in 23 scheduled sports. A list of broadcasters by country is available here. Some sports only have one classification, while others have several... [more inside]
You agree not to alter or infucate any part of the Curatrix.
The PT Spermoblast is a tool to mess with (english language) web pages. You order a specific page (form lankly), and the Polymerism serves it to you, with a few minor changes. I used a public domain English word list to seriatim pick words to disendow and put in. The Glenlivat doesn't read any effervescence, it only looks for words on the webpage that appear in its word list. [more inside]
Haves vs the Have way too much-ers at Burning Man
And so the revolution has begun. Taking Burning Man back from the parasite class, back from the electronic dance music tourists. Taking Burning Man back for the people. This wasn't much but it's a great start. [more inside]
Stone making _Snowden_
He didn’t recall pretending to strangle Poitras. How Oliver Stone's Edward Snowden movie came about, a shambling story of egos, deception, and geopolitics.
(SLNYT) [more inside]
She achieved "a new era of harmony between women and men"
Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution and founder of the conservative political group Eagle Forum, has died at 92 from cancer.
Knives Out
Ian Parker writes about The New York Times' restaurant reviewer: Pete Wells Has His Knives Out
Previously, previously, previously.
Previously, previously, previously.
Lean wit it, rock wit it
Once you've tried all the usual poses with the Leaning Tower of Pisa, you can use other posing tourists as your props.
You're openly campaigning? Sure!
As the polls (slightly) tightened, Donald Trump surprised everyone by visiting the President of Mexico. While this appeared to signal a long-awaited pivot, Trump pivoted right back with a scathing immigration speech hours later. Trump's surrogates have followed suit, tweeting cartoons of Hillary in blackface and warning of taco trucks on every corner. Later in the week, Trump appealed to to the black community by visiting an African-American church. [more inside]
What's that got to do with the price of paper in China?
Two years ago, the Atlantic's James Fallows visited the Easternmost City in the US to report on its attempts to keep its economy -- traditionally built around a sardine cannery that closed in the 80s and a still-operating deep water port -- afloat in the 21st century. Recently, he went back to catch up on Eastport's progress only to find the city's fate has become intertwined with events in the Middle East, EU politics, Chinese consumerism, and -- inevitably -- climate change.
“I think we’ve reached peak iPhone,”
Will the New Apple iPhone Have a Headphone Jack? Rumormongers Say It Won’t [The New York Times] “When the latest iPhone is unveiled here on Wednesday in a 7,000-seat auditorium, it probably will instead be more like Christmas for a sneaky 10-year-old who long ago peeked at his present. Thanks. That’s it? Anyone who cares enough about the iPhone to know that a new model is being released this month already knows what it is supposed to be like: a little thinner, a little faster and equipped with superior cameras on the Plus model. By far the most controversial feature, however, is the one that will be missing: a headphone jack. A standard element of technology that can be traced back to 1878 and the invention of the manual telephone exchange, the jack is apparently going the way of the floppy disk and the folding map. The future will be wireless.” [more inside]
Single life is hard
But anyway, the part I actually find hard about being single is that I never get touched, and this is always overlooked and undervalued. This is where the myth of self sufficiency breaks down. -- being single is hard, says Emma Lindsay.
Barbara and her Rhubarb Pie and....
In German, you create new descriptive nouns by stringing other nouns together into longer and longer words. You don't need to speak German to understand this little story about Barbara and her rhubarb pie [2m9s]. I'm pretty sure you will enjoy it.
Beautiful/Anonymous
Have you ever wished you could find out more about the people who post anonymous questions on AskMe? Would you find it fascinating to listen to them talk? Beautiful Stories from Anonymous People, a podcast by Chris Gethard (previously), totally scratches that itch. The show's premise: Chris lets people know via twitter and instagram that he's got the line open, and he talks to whoever calls in. The only rule is that Chris can't be the one to hang up first.
Painting the Race to Space
Norman Rockwell, Walt Disney, Wernher von Braun, space habitats and moon landings - the improbable, bold history of space concept art.
I Just Want to be Popular
Mob Psycho 100 (preview trailer) is an anime series that debuted this year from ONE, the creator of One Punch Man (previously). Adapted from ONE's webcomic, Psycho Mob 100 tells the story of an adolescent named Shigeo, nicknamed "Mob", who has powerful psychic abilities, but lives an otherwise ordinary life as he tries to suppress these talents in favor of being a normal student. As it has been picked up by the Anime streaming site Crunchyroll, their staff has a number of articles about the show's use of animation and color to depict the supernatural, the show's use of the messy "heta-uma" style for its visuals, the way that the story explores the existential dread of adolescence, and the way that angst motivates the central conflict of the story. [more inside]
Not in the pig family, nor do they originate from Guinea
Guinea Pigs: not just symbols of science. Loyal friends to other species! Adorable eaters of watermelon! Talented actors! If your lifestyle is compatible with their needs, they make wonderful pets, and are available at numerous rescues. [previously]
Andy Kershaw’s Appalachian Journey
Earlier this year, BBC radio’s Andy Kershaw recreated Cecil Sharp’s 1916 song-collecting trip through Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Tennessee. Kershaw interviewed local musicians and made field recordings of their performances as he went along – just as Sharp had done 100 years before. You can hear the full programme here and extended sessions/interviews with Gillian Welch, Sheila Kay Adams and Elizabeth LaPrelle here. And don’t forget his web-only discussion of Sharp with Brian Peters and Martin Carthy here. [more inside]
Colonialism’s long shadow over Southeast Asia today
How did Southeast Asian identities originate? The legacy of the 19th century continues to shape us more than we think 'We also wanted to show how many of the things that we may accept and take as ‘normal’ and ever-present in our part of the world were, in fact, fairly recent innovations introduced to Southeast Asia during the colonial era'. Political scientist and historian Dr Farish Noor hosts a three-part series examining the legacy Western colonialism has left upon a region now known as Southeast Asia. The first episode, 'Conquerors & Merchants', is now available for viewing online. [more inside]
September 4
Braconid scores big in Scrabble
Braconid (a parasitic wasp) scored 176 plus a 5 point failed challenge penalty; this helped Brett Smitheram win the world Scrabble championship, with the finalists both connected with the UK TV words and numbers gameshow Countdown. Brett takes home around £5,800 from the event at the Grand Palais in Lille. The board in the final match.
They say it's the biggest gathering of Native Americans in 100 years.
Last week, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota emerged as climate change heroes when, with little political clout or media spotlight, they halted construction of the $3.7 billion Dakota Access oil pipeline. The defiance, based on a desire to protect both Sioux burial grounds and the waters of the Missouri River, evoked America’s ugly racial past—and present. “It feels like 1875 because Natives are still fighting for our land,” tweeted Native American writer Sherman Alexie, about a week before the pipeline security loosed attack dogs on the protesters, causing the internet to compare images of the ensuing chaos to images of Selma in 1965. A delegation from Black Lives Matter has visited the resistance camp, as have Amnesty International and MSNBC. But it's not the non-Native visitors who are the most interesting: what may be most important about the Standing Rock camps is that they have brought about the greatest gathering of Native Americans in more than a century. "Not since Little Big Horn have we stood together in this way," wrote one camp organizer. "The heart of the aboriginal world has been reawakened." [more inside]
I see. There's only one thing to do then.
Imitation Lobster is a new webcomic that answers such questions as: Can Emily sleep over tonight? What to do with half a wish from a genie? What is your cat thinking? and What is God's creative process like?
"Persuasion is often more effectual than force.” — Aesop
Enjoy this video of a cat giving his dog buddy a massage and some hypnotherapy. Perhaps he's working his way up to enlisting the dog's aid against the parrots. [more inside]
The whole assignment really set me up for failure
My mission was that I was to make a meme or two a day for a week - Sam Rolfes is an artist with a glitchy digital aesthetic. Meme art often looks glitchy and lo-fi, so why not assume this is a natural pairing? [more inside]
Faculty locked out at Long Island University's Brooklyn campus
At midnight on Friday, Long Island University Brooklyn's campus locked out 400 fulltime and adjunct faculty. [more inside]
Steve Buscemi and Elliott Sharp ... If you know the right spells
Steve Buscemi began his career in, and continues to support experimental theater, writing and performance. Elliott Sharp is a central figure in the avant-garde music scene in New York City of over thirty years. The two have collaborated a few times in recent years, for example on Sharps' The Yahoos Trilogy, and more recently in celebration of the legacy of William S. Burroughs during the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth in 1914. Partnering with musician Elliott Sharp, the two have set to work staging poems of famed American Beat poet William S. Burroughs. They recorded their efforts, and have titled the album Rub Out The World (Bandcamp, some NSFW language, natch). [more inside]
Tor’s Branding Pivot is Going to Get Someone Killed
Recently The Tor Project changed their mission statement and social contract, including language about explicitly supporting human rights. Virgil Griffith argues that this is dangerous for exactly those users whose human rights are threatened: “the ‘Human Rights Watch for Nerds’ branding gives decidedly-unfriendly-and-opportunistic-authorities full license to do as they please with Tor operators or anyone who uses Tor.” [more inside]
Goats And Rhinos
♫ We're drinking male tears/we're bathing in their fears ♫
The Misandry Hour is a monthly feminist podcast hosted by Australian writer Clementine Ford (@clementine_ford).
“I love writing on the hoof, in notebooks on walks, in trains and cafés”
le Carré on le Carré [The Guardian] The many lives of John le Carré, in his own words. An exclusive extract from his new memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel. Portraits by Nadav Kander. [Previously.] [more inside]
Shut up Jean-Marc
Le Projet Crocodiles (in French ; English version here) collects from Belgian and French readers true stories of (mostly) sexism, sexual harassment and sexual violence directed at women and turns them into comics where men are depicted as crocodiles. There is also a Brazilian version and a book. NSFW et TW for nearly everything. [more inside]
Shanksville, Pennsylvania
Robert Franz is a ranger for the United States National Park Service, working as “interpretive park ranger." His job is to tell the story of what happened to United Airlines, Flight 93. (SL NYTimes)
Throwing the book at them
The director of the Athens-Limestone Public Library in Athens, Alabama has announced that the library intends to enforce a 1993 ordinance that allows patrons to be sentenced to up to a month in jail for failing to return overdue library books. [more inside]
welcome homeowowow
Moo the cat greets her owner loudly. She does this a lot. But is it specific to one person? Maybe it's about food? Something supernatural, perhaps?
Well you work to earn a living, but on weekends comes the time
Next year, the Australian Football League will debut its first women's league, with eight clubs fielding teams over eight weeks of televised competition in February and March. On Saturday night, an all-star women's exhibition game was shown live in prime time, drawing more than a million viewers at its peak (yes that's a lot in Australia). In footy-mad Melbourne, it had more viewers than any men’s AFL game in that slot so far this year. And yet the league wants to pay many of the female players just $5,000 for the inaugural season. [more inside]
September 3
Ramsophone
The Ramsophone gives you a new, shiny music box with buttons and dials to play with every time you refresh the page. Made by Robert Vinluan and inspired by the Stranger Things theme.
"Aw, yeah! This is happenin'!"
The Secret Life Of Hedgehogs — Elena Eremina is an up-and-coming photographer based in St Petersburg, Russia, whose portfolio comprises cute critters including hamsters and hedgehogs. [more inside]
The Secret Jews of the Hobbit
There is one tribe that offers a perfect real-world parallel to Tolkien’s dwarves... "We have, then, a bunch of short, bearded beings exiled from their homeland, who have dreamed forever of returning. They are linked to a place they lost long ago, dwell in other realms throughout the earth, and yet are so profoundly connected to their own kingdom that it remains vivid to them while for others it is a fading memory."
AEUHHH????
AEUHHH????: Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor Doom
Cookie Art
Amber Spiegel is a cookie artist. Using the nomnomnom de plume "sweetambs " she offers short video lessons in royal icing artistry on Instagram and longer lessons on YouTube, Facebook, and her own blog. [Note: videos have (soothing) background music.]
"I believe it because we’re living it."
New York Times: Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun — Scientists’ warnings that the rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline are no longer theoretical. [more inside]
Avalanches rock it on BBC's Essential Mix, and so much more
Last week, BBC 1 broadcast the first Essential Mix from The Avalanches (tracklist, BBC iPlayer / Mixcloud / Global Sets), which they made in support of their new album, Wildflower (YouTube playlist; previously). This is their first broadcasted mix since 2002, according to MixesDB, where you can find 13 more mixes, to expand the band's limited discography. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. [more inside]
What mineral are you looking at?
Penny Sartori and Near Death Experience
Penny Sartori has a PhD in Near Death Experience. Her website. Her book on Amazon. A short article in the South Wales Evening Post. An interview with Gordon White on the Rune Soup blog-podcast.
Rest in peace, invisible woman
Rest in peace, invisible woman
There is a patriarchal narrative that runs through this entire story, from the act itself to the reporting of it, and we need to allow ourselves to see it if we are to find a way to prevent similar events from happening again.Linnea Dunne writes about the media coverage of a murder-suicide in Cavan, Ireland. The hashtag #HerNameWasClodagh has a lot more reaction and thoughts.
"Open all the cages in the zoo" kind of stupid
To celebrate her (and musical director/arranger Alex Lacamoire's) last week with Hamilton, Renée Elise Goldsberry performed a rousing version of the song "Congratulations," (performance starts around 2:40) which was cut from the final show. Other songs that didn't make the final cut, and remixes of the songs that did, will be featured on the star-studded Hamilton Mixtape, out this fall. [more inside]
Welcome to the ant farm
Workers trapped for years in "a hostile environment in total darkness." - Bizarre ant colony discovered in an abandoned Polish nuclear weapons bunker.
“...a history riddled with racial tensions and prejudiced policies.”
Discrimination by Design: The Many Ways Design Decisions Treat People Unequally. by Lena Groeger [Pro Publica] “Discriminatory design and decision-making affects all aspects of our lives: from the quality of our health care and education to where we live to what scientific questions we choose to ask. It would be impossible to cover them all, so we’ll focus on the more tangible and visual design that humans interact with every day.”
[Previously.] [Previously.] [more inside]
Jacob Wetterling's remains may have been found.
Finding Jacob: Authorities recovered unidentified remains this week after Danny Heinrich, a suspect in the disappearance of Jacob Wetterling, agreed to cooperate and provide information, according to authorities.
Why Dressing Your Age Is Bullshit (& Other Fashion Myths Debunked!)
At Refinery29, Stacy London (formerly of What Not to Wear) writes about what it means to dress your age as a middle-aged woman when you don't quite fit the conventional image of a middle-aged woman.
Ghosts of Biloela
Developed by Que Minh Luu and Jesse Cox, the app Ghosts of Biloela (available free for Android and iPhone), takes you into the classrooms and dorms of Sydney's notorious Biloela reform school. [more inside]
Things That Happened On My First Day At Target
September 2
all my choices are lifestyle choices
Meow? Meowl!
"I won’t let you eat this man. He’s a good dog.”
Today I learned that a fellow named Calvin Kasulke has crafted a five-part radio play around the beloved character of Banjo, the Man-Faced dog. First appearing in the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the big-hearted rascal returned in the heartwarming 1979 spin-off “Make Way for Banjo." [more inside]
The Shortest Article in the NYT?
Sunrise Earth
Sunrise Earth was a TV series which focused, for nearly an hour, on a specific location at sunrise. As with Slow TV, there was no narration obscuring the sounds of nature. Locations included New Zealand, Everglades National Park, a waterfall in Scandinavia, Ninagiak Island, Cape Cod, and Venice. [more inside]
left twitter + weird twitter = chapo trap house
On the Chapo Trap House Podcast (@ChapoTrapHouse), Felix Biederman (@ByYourLogic), Matt Christman (@cushbomb), Will Menaker (@willmenaker), and producer Brendan James (@deep_beige) talk politics and the internet, and are extremely vulgar.
All four are members of “weird Twitter” Eleven previouslies, and the podcast reflects those sensibilities. (Biederman is also notable as one of the two authors behind CAFE.com’s fake-yet-weirdly-accurate pundit Carl Diggler.) In a laudatory and thorough July interview with Jason Rhode at Paste, the foursome talk about bringing back the “Dirtbag Left” and mocking the punditocracy. (Additional adulation from Sam Reisman at Mediaite.) [more inside]
All four are members of “weird Twitter” Eleven previouslies, and the podcast reflects those sensibilities. (Biederman is also notable as one of the two authors behind CAFE.com’s fake-yet-weirdly-accurate pundit Carl Diggler.) In a laudatory and thorough July interview with Jason Rhode at Paste, the foursome talk about bringing back the “Dirtbag Left” and mocking the punditocracy. (Additional adulation from Sam Reisman at Mediaite.) [more inside]
Spencer Hall's Annual Mulling on College Football
Spencer Hall's Annual Mulling on College Football On the eve of the true first Saturday of NCAA football, Spencer Hall of Every Day Should Be Saturday publishes a slightly deeper essay than the rest of the season's football japery. This year touches on Americanism, violence, race, and bison. Yeah, bison.
"You's fancy pants, all o' yuz."
Prolific actor Jon Polito, who worked with the Coen Brothers many times and will be forever known to film geeks as Johnny Caspar, has passed away at the age of 65.
Your stare was holding
A mashup of the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders and men of the U.S. military lip-syncing and dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe .
The original videos.
The original videos.
Living on the Borderline
When insolent kids and women are the only ones pathologized for throwing temper tantrums as opposed to violent behavior, then the discourse is suspect. [more inside]
A u m f m t v.
These products will no longer be sold under misleading marketing.
The FDA has banned antibacterial soaps. Manufacturers have one year to pull products containing any of 19 chemicals, including the common triclosan and triclocarbon, found in many liquid and bar antibacterial soaps. Recent studies have suggested that soap containing these chemicals is no better at getting you clean, and might actually be harmful to the environment and your body.
Who Works for the Workers?
Who Works for the Workers? — Gabriel Winant on the future of the American labor movement [more inside]
Présenté en direct du stade de Saint Ouen—que...non, Saint Étienne!
Black market morels
We had cursing in our movies and we were OK.
From E.T. to Stranger Things, an Oral History of Kids Cursing On Screen What made 80s movies so accepting of children swearing? What does it say about character construction and realism? And why is it no longer accepted today?
"As long as you stick together and save the day, if you say ‘shit’ a couple of times, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world, you know?”
Inside the Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns
(SLGQ) “There's no telling how many guns we have in America—and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated. On purpose. Thing is, the geniuses who work there are quietly inventing ways to do the impossible.”
This Vote Is Legally Binding
Someone always says it, whenever it comes up: "I guess I'm just not allowed to talk to anyone any more!" Well. Yes. It is my duty to inform you we took a vote...This week's Twitter discussion about how to approach a woman wearing headphones (protip: don't) has now inspired poetry from noted writer and illustrator Ursula Vernon (previously, previously).
"Our moral agency must be channeled to undo this damage."
A year ago, Georgetown University convened a panel to examine its role in America's slave trade. This week, university president John J. DeGioia announced the results, which include a planned apology, preferential admission status for descendants of slaves whose labor benefited the school (similar to legacy admissions for children of alumni), and the renaming of two buildings that until last year had borne the names of former university presidents who arranged a sale of 272 slaves in 1838.
The fall of Roger Ailes
For 20 years Roger Ailes ruled the $1 billion a year Fox News empire, expecting a culture of fear to stop widespread sexual harassment from being exposed. Then, beginning with the Gretchen Carlson lawsuit against him, it was all exposed. How Fox News women took down the most powerful, and predatory, man in media.
But that's up to you!
September 1
Pooch Pool Party
The last day of the summer swim season in Idaho isn't a day for people; the parks department in Nampa turns their waterpark over to dogs only, giving them a chance to splash and play. Thanks in part to the funds raised here, the parks department recently opened a pond in their oldest dog park. Nearby Boise has followed suit with a day at one of their outdoor pools. But that's not the only place a dog can play in an aquatic environment... [more inside]
Top Ten Words I am Sick Of Seeing On Artist Statements
Andrea Liu seeks to problematize this continually deferred relationship in her essay entitled, the Top Ten Words I Am Sick Of Seeing On Artist Statements.
"Mascots don't die, they just hang in a closet."
First there was regional theatre, dog shows, and folk music. Now, filmmaker Christopher Guest tackles sports mascots in his latest film, Mascots. The first trailer has been released and the film, which stars the full stable of regulars chasing a Golden Fluffy Award, will premiere on Netflix on October 13th.
Wordplay
One of the Most Important Crosswords in New York Times History - the story behind a very special puzzle
A Minute and a Half of Tim Curry Laughing
"It’s time-released food"
Scientists think cockroach milk could be the superfood of the future. Although most cockroaches don’t actually produce milk, Diploptera punctate, which is the only known cockroach to give birth to live young, has been shown to pump out a type of ‘milk’ containing protein crystals to feed its babies…Who needs kale and quinoa when you have cockroach milk supplements? [more inside]
“I’m not paranoid, I’m really not. But we’re prepared...”
A Fortress Against Fear: In the Rural Pacific Northwest, Prepping for the Day It Hits the Fan [The Washington Post] “The Bradways fled California, a state they said is run by “leftists and non-Constitutionalists and anti-freedom people,” and settled on several wooded acres of north Idaho five years ago. They live among like-minded conservative neighbors, host Monday night Bible study around their fire pit, hike in the mountains and fish from their boat. They melt lead to make their own bullets for sport shooting and hunting — or to defend themselves against marauders in a world-ending cataclysm.”
I guess I didn't realize how dark this series got
The cheesy sci-fi Animorphs books heightened the strangeness of adolescence
Animorphs: Why the Series Rocked and Why You Should Still Care
Throwback Thursdays: You Mattered, Animorphs [more inside]
Animorphs: Why the Series Rocked and Why You Should Still Care
Throwback Thursdays: You Mattered, Animorphs [more inside]
Bob Comis and The Last Pig
In early 2014, Bob Comis, a longtime pig farmer and owner-operator of Stony Brook Farm, wrote a "Farm Confessional" for Modern Farmer: I Raise Livestock and I Think It May Be Wrong (previously). Within a year, Comis had closed down Stony Brook, moved the last of his pigs to animal sanctuaries, adopted a vegan lifestyle, and re-opened his business as In Line Farm, a certified veganic vegetable farm. Comis' change of mind, heart, and career will be profiled in an upcoming documentary, The Last Pig. Trailers for The Last Pig are now available on YouTube and Vimeo. [more inside]
True Facts about the Octopus
Enhance 224 to 176. Move in. Stop. Pull out, track right. Stop.
You know that thing cops do in movies and TV to enlarge small images that's impossible? Well now, with Python + Tensorflow, it's (sort of) possible to enhance image. It still won't recover information that's not there, but it'll make a pretty good guess.
Men In Hats
The mesa is a little darker today. Roger Tsien 1952-2016.
UCSD Chemistry Nobel laureate Roger Tsien dies. Amongst many other achievements, he is most well known as co-discoverer of Green Fluorescent Protein, which, as well as making headlines with glow-in-the dark rats, initiated a field that revolutionized biology and our understanding of the molecular and genetic basis of disease and life itself. More reaction and links from In The Pipeline. [more inside]
Some lanes are more equal than others.
These charts clearly show how some Olympic swimmers may have gotten an unfair advantage. A data heavy analysis of the swimming in Rio that shows that some lanes were faster than others. On the Washington Post Wonk Blog.
Freedom of flight, eagle videos promoting wildlife conservation
Back in March 2015, conservation movement Freedom Conservation has set a new world record by successfully flying ‘Darshan the Eagle’, equipped with a camera, from the top of the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, in Dubai (via Presurfer). Freedom's YouTube channel has more videos, including preparation of the flight, and a music video for Fritz Kalkbrenner's Void, shot on the borders of Lake Geneva with a guest role for Freedom’s Victor the Eagle.
Now that's using the old melon
Melon-dramatic: check out Azerbaijan’s thrilling watermelon smashing competition (SLYT - volume warning) [more inside]
How do you want to do this?
"Hello everyone , and welcome to tonight's episode of Critical Role, where a bunch of us nerdy-ass voice actors sit around and play Dungeons and Dragons." [more inside]