January 30, 2020
Tracked everywhere? Yes. Tracked everywhere.
It might be your doorbell (Ring Doorbell App Packed with Third-Party Trackers, EFF). It might be your grocery store rewards program (Customer Tracking at Ralphs Grocery Store, Schneier On Security). It might even be your computer anti-virus program (Leaked Documents Expose the Secretive Market for Your Web Browsing Data, Motherboard/Vice). 2020 is an electronic panopticon.
The Little-Known History of Palestine's First Rock Band
pears, the grunting fruit
ÖBST, or, how fruit would move if fruit moved
But they didn't say goodbye.........
Moonshine is a party for everyone...like the music you like, and be free
For Pierre Kwenders (personal site), Bonbon Kojak (Soundcloud) and the rest of the Moonshine collective (official site), a full moon means it's time for another underground rave in a secret location. Moonshine Brings Diversity and Inclusiveness to Montreal's Underground Party Scene -- "It’s not a black party or a queer party or African party" (Complex). The collective celebrates its celebrates 5th anniversary (Fact Magazine) with SMS for Location, Vol. 3. In proper underground rave style (updated a bit), you can text them or join their Whatsapp group to download the compilation for free, or pick it up from Bandcamp. [more inside]
Introducing The Unnamed Temporary Sports Blog Dot Com (From Dashlane)
Sports (and other things) website Deadspin may be dead, the victim of private equity fuckery, but it's spirit (as well as the work of its writers) will live on temporarily for Super Bowl weekend thanks to a pop up blog. [more inside]
They created a goose for your desktop.
What if the Untitled Goose Game was your entire computer [YouTube] “There’s a pixelated goose dragging my cursor all over my computer screen and every time I try to close the program that unleashed it more just pop up, threatening me with bad jokes and a chorus of honks. This is the unnerving magic of game designer Sam Chiet’s Goose Desktop, a riff on last year’s popular animal mischief simulator Untitled Goose Game. Released yesterday on the indie storefront itch.io, the game dumps a goose onto your computer to mess with you until you just can’t take it anymore.” [via: Kotaku] [Previously.]
27,000 pounds of gear
In 2017, The Boston Symphony Orchestra toured Japan. WBUR reporter Andrea Shea embedded with the group to report on the effort involved in moving over 100 people and their gear across the globe, including how to move 27,000 pounds of gear, how to handle performer wellness, and what happens while on tour (start at the bottom, mixed text and audio entries). [more inside]
Making a Seat at the Table
Making a Seat at the Table: Women Transform Woodworking was a recent exhibit at the Center for Art in Wood featuring works by 43 women, women-identifying, and gender non-conforming woodworkers. Guest curators Laura Mays and Deirdre Visser discuss the exhibit in this short video. Links to the websites of many of the participants can be found here.
A Very Stable Genius: A Conversation with Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker
SLYoutube featuring the authors of the new Trump profile This doesn't fit into any of the current Trump posts, but it is worth viewing. Maybe not so much for new insights into the Trump administration (though there are a few small ones), as for how and why the reporting is always behind the facts and why some Trump staff go along with the madness. Also, what happened with the Mueller Report.
Prepping for a pandemic
In case you need to be indoors for a while, and possibly while sick. Civilization won't fall, but supply chains could be in bad shape. Advice on what to store (with acknowledgement that it's not feasible for everyone) and what to get done sooner rather than later.
"an argument that goes all the way back to the founding itself."
The Hidden Stakes of the 1619 Controversy, David Waldstreicher - "Seeking to discredit those who wish to explain the persistence of racism, critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project [previously] insist the facts don’t support its proslavery reading of the American Revolution. But they obscure a longstanding debate within the field of U.S. history over that very issue—distorting the full case that can be made for it." [more inside]
Pythagoras Punches Proverb
Math proves that Round Peg can Fit into a Square Hole. "If that still leaves you scratching your head, be sure to watch how [Stanford mathematician] Tokieda folds the paper. He does so in a specific manner that transforms the sheet from two to three dimensions. In doing that, he brings two sides of a square together and forms a larger opening for which the coaster can pass through without a problem."
Joanna Russ, the Science-Fiction Writer Who Said No
B.D. McClay on a new biography of Russ and her complicated relationship to science fictiona and feminism. Science fiction, Russ once wrote, was poised to “provide myths for dealing with kinds of experiences we are actually having now, instead of the literary myths we have inherited, which only tell us about the kinds of experiences we think we ought to be having.” The form aspired not to fantasy but to reality.
The Biggest Loser Isn't About Wellness
It's About the Spectacle of Fat People's Pain and Tears The Biggest Loser is back. But it’s been given a makeover from its origins in the openly, cheerfully exploitative reality TV environment of the early 2000s. Now it’s about wellness, about lifestyle changes. Or at least, that’s what the producers want you to think, even as the show retains all its original premises. They can wrap this reboot in all the wellness language they want, but it’s the same old shit. [more inside]
Fifteen Minutes of Frame
"Unlike Fifty Shades of Grey, the topic of tilting picture frames is not discussed a lot on the web."Over three blog posts, Craig Collins nerds out using geometry, calculus, and physics to figure out why hanging picture frames lean forward from the wall, and how to prevent them from doing so. Helpful diagrams and calculators included … [more inside]
After this yelling disaster, they gave us iPod Nanos
Apple Computer released Aperture 1.0 in late 2005. The $499 photo management tool pioneered a nondestructive, RAW-based workflow for Macs. But reviews noted the program’s shortcomings. The “clusterfuck” led to Apple’s development team breaking up. “The short version is that a tremendous amount of shit hit the fan. One of the best projects ever quickly turned into a nightmare.” [more inside]
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