January 26, 2015
Take THAT, evil-doers!
Islamophobic Bus Ads In San Francisco Are Being Defaced With Kamala Khan. From the article: "Well, this is just brilliant. Racist adverts promoting hatred against Muslims are currently being run on buses in San Francisco - but someone has started covering them up with anti-hatred messages from Marvel's première Muslim superhero, Ms. Marvel." [more inside]
These old photographs are in color. The world was black and white then.
Animated stories that parents tell their children: How milkshakes are made (really bouncy grass) and why you have to be quiet on trains (beware of bears, they're unstoppable). But if you're grown up now and want to really know if your parents were full of ... molasses, let Ken Jennings share the truth behind 17 things parents tell their kids, and five more excerpts from his collection of such because-I-said-so-isms.
How the price of paint is set in the hearts of dying stars
The Smithsonian Magazine reminds us that "Barns are painted red because of the physics of dying stars", summing up a more detailed post by Google employee Yonatan Zunger on the nature of stars, the atmosphere, and cheap paint found on barns.
It also means "unboil" is now a word.
Scientists unboil an egg, and it may be a big deal. "This method … could transform industrial and research production of proteins," Such as new, and much faster ways of producing anti-bodies to fight cancer and cheese-makers who could use recombinant-proteins to improve their products.
"What kind of life is this?"
Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, flew teenage fashion bloggers, Anniken Jørgensen, Frida Ottesen and Ludvig Hambro, to the Southeast Asian country’s capital of Phnom Penh, where they experienced a modicum of a Cambodian textile worker’s life for a month in 2014. Their experience is the subject of a five-part reality show available online, titled "Sweatshop - Deadly Fashion." [more inside]
Of course I’m a classics teacher. There’s a Parthenon behind my head.
The Jennifer Lopez vehicle "The Boy Next Door" opened this past weekend and earned a paltry 12% on the Tomatometer. There's nothing terribly unique about this number deep in the cinematic dumping ground that is January, but people are quickly taking notice on how absolutely bonkers the film really is. This starts with the trailer and then moves on to the film itself, which is that rare beast in this era of boring SyFy Channel schlock: A bad movie that never stops being fun. If you need further convincing, witness one moment from the film that was recently singled out by Slate. It's a thing of beauty.
Let it Plow, Let it Plow, Let it Plow
Find yourself elsewhere than in the grips of Juno, the Blizzard of 2015? Want to play the home game? Track the plows of NYC using the PlowNYC map. Want something faster than 15 minute update intervals, or less NYC-centric? Twitter's got you covered.
Carles is back bb!!!
Albums That Never Were
A new way to tackle ultra-poverty
A new approach to assisting the "ultra-poor" – the poorest people on the planet – is showing promising results. In up to 95% of cases, the approach has been shown to help people exit the category of ultra-poverty, defined as living on less than 50 cents per day. [more inside]
“Let’s ask, in the 21st century, are there limits to free speech?”
UK should consider ban on Mein Kampf, says Scottish Labour MP [The Guardian]
Ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, Scottish Labour MP Thomas Docherty has written to culture secretary urging a ‘sensitive debate’ on allowing its sale.
don't forget your empathy at home
On Running and Street Harassment
This past Saturday, eight different men verbally harassed me. Two stepped into my path and said they wouldn’t move unless I gave them a high five. The murmurs, the coos and looks, all serve as reminders that I am not a person to them.[more inside]
By the seventh man, I was tired. He told me he could look at that ass all day. I told him to shut up. He said to me, “Don’t worry, baby, I still love you,” and my skin went clammy with defeat. And there was something about hearing the word “love” come out of his mouth that made me want to push him into traffic.
Whistling at Your Mom
Oh my God, I'm ashamed that your are my son. The Peruvian show Sílbale a tu Madre (Whistling at your Mom) takes a...creatively confrontational approach to fighting street harassment. They enlist the mothers of chronic catcallers to catch their offspring in the act, a process involving makeovers, hidden cameras and very public shaming. [more inside]
Beautiful People Get What They Want
I need another outlet. And there follows my return to art. 📚 🎨
PhDs: Creative Writing - from the PhD research blog Deathsplanation:
"I almost went to college to study art. I even interviewed for a place. I had a portfolio and everything. That was more than a decade ago and honestly, I can’t even remember if I got in. But I didn’t go. Things changed, life took a drastic turn, and I wanted to leave everything behind. And so I did. I ended up at university, pursuing another passion of mine: archaeology; history, anthropology. [more inside]
"I have never strayed that far from art. It’s always been there, in my life. But recently, it’s been a lot more… present."
Try to make you angles as non-euclidean as possible
Yoga Fhtagn A holistic workout were we tone our bodies while slowly losing our minds (SLYT 3d6 SAN loss)
Arithmeticfilter
Nothing but an endless supply of mental arithmetic problems. Five levels of difficulty, from "10 - 6" to "√370881." [more inside]
100 milligrams twice a day of "shut up and deal with it"
"But here's the facts: Like most other psychiatric disorders, we are really unlikely to hurt another person. Even when we're really upset at someone, we're still convinced that it's entirely our fault, so we mostly take it out on ourselves. That's a big reason why we self-injure -- it's punishment as much as relief -- and why suicide attempts are as routine as daylight saving time for many of us."5 Realities of Life for People With Borderline Personalities
Are You Ready For Some Football?
GOOD EMAIL
The youth of Greece are revolting
In a functional market economy, the classic couple in a posh restaurant are young and close in age. In my travels through the eurocrisis – from Dublin to Athens – I have noticed that the classic couple in a dysfunctional economy is a grey-haired man with a twentysomething woman. It becomes a story of old men with oligarchic power flaunting their wealth and influence without opprobrium. [more inside]
Why you should stop relying on your phone, and buy a nice camera
Like beer and pop music, it was easy to make do with what’s cheap and available, only to look back on a life of Dave Matthews and Bud Light and wonder why I’d gotten by on “good enough.” Because I am aging, and because I have the memory of the original Tamagotchi, I am profoundly grateful to have these clear, high-resolution photos of the people I loved and love. [more inside]
B is for Bevan and his Bogan Mates
Adam Curtis's Bitter Lake.
Bitter Lake "is a new, adventurous and epic film by Adam Curtis that explains why the big stories that politicians tell us have become so simplified that we can’t really see the world any longer." [available on the UK BBC iplayer for a month] [trailer with Curtis's preview]
« Previous day | Next day »