January 22, 2018

Continuously Refreshing Television

How a TV Works in Slow Motion (SLYT; epilepsy warning) (h/t)
posted by Gyan at 9:34 PM PST - 18 comments

Disrupt the Street Tree, the Re-Oaking of Silicon Valley

"Three hundred years ago, to walk from the site of the modern-day Apple Campus in Cupertino to the bayshore site of the modern-day Google headquarters in Mountain View would take about four hours. You would start in an oak savanna at Calabazas Creek on the west edge of Tamien Ohlone tribal lands, walk west through oak woodland and chaparral to Stevens Creek, then turn north to follow the waterway through oak woodland and oak savanna, until the water fanned out into willow woodlands and the lazy water of the south Bay near the Ramaytush Ohlone village of Puichon." [more inside]
posted by Long Way To Go at 9:33 PM PST - 23 comments

Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us.

"It's Not My Dog" is a music video about all kinds of charming dogs. "Cats Stealing Stuff" shows us just how devious cats are—so different from dogs.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:25 PM PST - 25 comments

More Than a White Trash Cook

Ernest Matthew Mickler embodies a certain kind of Southerner, and we can all relate in some way. This is a fascinating story of serendipity and family and queerness and food. I couldn't get the photos to show up for me so there are big empty spots, but just keep scrolling. If the photos do show up for you, great.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:13 PM PST - 10 comments

Whatd'ya do if you're young and white and jewish?

It's actually difficult to describe Shel Silverstein's 1962 album Inside Folk Songs. But if you're inclined to have a very odd half-hour or so, you might enjoy it. [YT playlist] (The humor is darker than you might think if you only know his poetry.) Side A: Bury Me In My Shades, Have Another Espresso, Bananas, Liz, You're Always Welcome At Our House, Civil War Song, Boa Constrictor, 25 Minutes To Go [more inside]
posted by hippybear at 7:21 PM PST - 17 comments

“...get a little positivity and listen to good music.”

Curtis Harding's Psychedelic Soul [GQ] “A veteran singer who cut his teeth over a decade ago doing backing vocals for Cee-Lo, Harding seems to do everything with soul: The way he talks about his passion for film, style, and music, is soulful. The ease with which he rocks a Saint Laurent jacket is soulful. Most importantly though, his music has soul in every note, every guitar lick. If soul is an "experience," unable to be confined by descriptors, the title track from Harding's new album, Face Your Fear, is an excellent illustration of it. The groove is slinking and relaxed, Harding riding the beat just behind the drums, delivering every word with an unwavering confidence, but also a very human tenderness. His voice never raises above a whisper, but the quiet energy he packs into every syllable will have you hearing his melodies in the back of your mind for days. It's the rare song that could soundtrack a wedding or a funeral, at once celebratory, sad, groovy, and of course, very soulful.” [more inside]
posted by Fizz at 6:49 PM PST - 3 comments

An oral history of London warehouse parties pre-acid house

Before acid house dramatically transformed British nightlife at the tail end of the 80s, there was the warehouse party scene. Terry Farley, Jay Strongman, Norman Jay (MBE), Soul II Soul's Jazzie B, Paul Trouble Anderson and more talk about the parties, venues, music and lifestyle of the London party scene up until the music began to change. Plus: An oral history of one warehouse party on the cusp of the change, Hedonism, out in the terminally unfashionable London suburb of Alperton. Plus plus: Drum n bass pioneer Jumpin Jack Frost talks to Casper Melville about growing up in sound system culture in London in the 70s and 80s and what happened when the rave hit.
posted by criticalbill at 2:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Upstairs to the management floor, where it is still 1959

Last Saturday I visited the abandoned Coventry Evening Telegraph building. It’s an amazing place, vacated in 2012 but most of the interior untouched since the 1950s. Here are just a few of the photos I took. The site is being looked after by arts collective @CETpopup for the next few months ahead of the inevitable demolition / repurposing. Go & see it now, before it’s all lost. So let’s start the explore of a building that once had 600 people working on the evening daily. (SLTwitter photo thread)
posted by ambrosen at 2:04 PM PST - 14 comments

The Man Who Made Black Panther Cool

Christopher Priest broke the color barrier at Marvel and reinvented a classic character. Why was he nearly written out of comics history?
posted by Artw at 2:01 PM PST - 19 comments

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe [pdf] is a free book written to accompany a 2012 art exhibition of the same name at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. The exhibit and book focus on "Africans living in or visiting Europe in what has been called the long sixteenth century, from the 1480s to around 1610. The exhibition and essays seek to draw out not only their physical presence but their identity and participation in society, as well as the challenges, prejudices, and the opportunities they encountered."
posted by jedicus at 1:54 PM PST - 8 comments

"This is definitely the let’s-get-the-fuck-out-of-here section."

Keep Your Hands on the Wheel and Don't Look Down, an Outside Magazine writer rides with the snowplow drivers on Colorado's infamous Highway 550.
posted by jessamyn at 11:45 AM PST - 52 comments

To push the boundaries for wolf-kind

Pioneering female becomes first wolf in Belgium in a century "The first recorded wolf on Belgian soil for at least 100 years has made her bloody mark." So begins this article from the Guardian.
posted by readinghippo at 9:52 AM PST - 32 comments

Q: How many dimensions are there? A: ?

The History and Future of Dimensions. Science writer Margaret Wertheim has written a whirlwind essay on the idea of 'dimension' that encompasses Aristotle, Renaissance artists, Cartesian geometry, relativity, and the strange constructs of string theory.
posted by storybored at 9:05 AM PST - 20 comments

"Why? Just because it looks nice."

Bubbling Trains ~ Accessibility Fireworks ~ Roads of America ~ Gulf of Finland

Helsinki-based GIS enthusiast Topi Tjukanov makes lovely visualizations of e.g. road and traffic data.
posted by cortex at 9:04 AM PST - 7 comments

The sound of a frozen lake: other-worldly, and twangy

This is what a frozen lake sounds like (Facebook video) - exploring the acoustics of ice-capped water, which you can experience by skipping a stone across the surface (YT - skip to 3m 43s) | Playing on ice and frozen water, previously
posted by filthy light thief at 8:59 AM PST - 11 comments

The thin green line

"When you are having your morning cup of tea before taking a jeep “safari”, some of them would have left for the day’s job, often four or five kilometres away, walking along jungle roads, possibly seeing the steaming dung heaps of an elephant or the pugmarks of a tiger that has gone by a mere half hour ago. He will pause for a bit, ears alert for a crackle of branches as an elephant shifts weight from one leg to the other, or wait for the cackle of jungle fowl. If the forest holds its silence, he will walk on to the waterhole that has to be cleaned or bushes by the side of the road that have to be trimmed. If he is back when you are having your evening cup of tea, perhaps, you could treat him to a cup, too." [more inside]
posted by ChuraChura at 6:17 AM PST - 4 comments

Prescription for healthier population: spend more on social services

"Spending more on health care sounds like it should improve health," said Daniel Dutton, a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy. "But our study suggests that is not the case and social spending could be used to improve the health of everyone," said Dutton, lead author of a study published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
posted by clawsoon at 4:20 AM PST - 30 comments

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