January 13, 2018
Speaking of Norway ...
To Norway, home of giants (1979). John Cleese takes us on a journey through his ancestral Norway in this Python-esque travelogue which explores ski culture, Viking-era nostalgia and reenactment, a taste of Norwegian cuisine and literature, and even a visit with the Nobel committee.
Six more years until Steamboat Willie
C Me Feel Me Rick Me Roll Me
Never Gonna Give You Up but all the notes are C [SLYT] is exactly as described and weirdly compelling.
It’s never aliens, until it is
Everyone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not
Bitcoin is the hottest new investment trend and the New York Times style section is on it.
Butter me up!
The Promise Of Flatness
Fly like an.... well, you know
Camera 1 | The bald eagles at Codorus State Park (near Hanover, PA) have returned to their nest for the 2018 mating season, (Camera 2 w/ night vision) hopefully to raise another set of young as successfully as they did in 2017. The nest sustained a lot of damage and is currently about half its previous size, so the pair are in the midst of a rebuilding effort in time for egg-laying. (Last year, the first egg appeared on the evening of February 10 and the second on the evening of the 13th.) [more inside]
Drag has many forms - Dragula embraces the filth, horror and glamour
As the mysterious Boulet Brothers told James St. James, they came to Los Angeles and found the gay scene lacking the weird, filthy and outsider culture available in New York, so they created a scene there, later extending to Seattle. In a monstrous outgrowth of their LA parties of the same name, they host a competitive reality show called Dragula, which debuted on October 31, 2016. The show is now wrapping up its second season, so you can binge on their show that celebrates the dark, moody, campy horror portions of the greater drag community. [more inside]
“You can bring a bullet, bring a sword, bring a morgue”
“Black Panther soundtrack keeps getting better, adds Jay Rock, Future track. “King’s Dead” is the third track from the album released so far. Kendrick Lamar first premiered the first track, “All the Stars,” with labelmate, Sza. A tease of Lamar’s collaboration with Vince Staples debuted with the latest Black Panther teaser. Lamar, who is producing the album, hasn’t revealed the full list of tracks and contributing artists. The Black Panther soundtrack will be released on Feb. 9. Black Panther will follow one week later, hitting theaters on Feb. 16.” [via: Polygon]
Warning: Graphic Content
The Library of Congress has digitized its Popular Graphic Arts collection, nearly 14,000 19th century prints available in extremely high resolution public domain scans, searchable by subjects and browsable by thumbnails. You can read more about the work required to bring this collection to your computers on the library's blog. Below the fold, a few favorites to get you started. [more inside]
But could he hit a curveball?
The post-truth gospel. In 1894 Nicolas Notovitch's The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ was published and briefly became a huge, global story. The book claimed that during the 18 undocumented years of Jesus’s life – the gap in the Bible between his childhood and the beginning of his ministry in Palestine – he had visited India, Nepal and Tibet and trained with yogis as a Buddhist monk. When skeptics investigated, the story began to unravel. Today, Notovitch is virtually unknown. But is it possible that his claim that Jesus had trained as a Buddhist was a misdirection and the book had a more subtle ulterior motive? [more inside]
so...subway racing is apparently a thing
Adham Fisher does IRL speedruns of urban transit systems around the world. The goal of urban transit racing is to visit every stop or station of a system (like the Chicago "L" or the London Underground) in as little time as possible. Starting at age 14, Adham has been urban transit racing and setting records all around the world.
Language is a virus
Brain Cells Share Information With Virus-Like Capsules (slAtlantic) Turns out Burroughs was right. Language - and all long-term learning - really is a virus. Or rather, it depends on a strange, alien gene that now turns out to be co-opted from an ancient virus with striking similarities to HIV. It gets stranger: the same mechanism exists across vertebrates and insects, but was independently acquired. Genuinely mind-altering science that creates far more questions than it answers.
“I thought I’d come out and introduce myself and sing.”
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