March 7, 2019
She said she saw Gary’s spirit come to her
Gary Gygax died on March 4, 2008. That's when things really started getting complicated.
We are destroying chimpanzee cultures
Chimpanzees Are Going Through a Tragic Loss: By fragmenting forests and killing off individuals, humans are stopping the flow of ideas among our closest relatives. "Imagine that an alien species landed on Earth and, through their mere presence, those aliens caused our art to vanish, our music to homogenize, and our technological know-how to disappear. That is effectively what humans have been doing to our closest relatives—chimpanzees." [more inside]
"it’s always an advantage if an animal is highly charismatic"
In case you missed the news in the latest journal of the British Tarantula Society, a rather lovely new spider with iridescent, electric-blue legs has been discovered. The burrow-dwelling spider [Birupes simoroxigorum] has reportedly been “feted by experts as one of the most beautiful spiders ever documented”, prompting the question: what are the other most beautiful spiders ever documented?
Tragedy of the Tragedy of the Commons
As Mildenberger points out, this isn't a case where a terrible person had some great ideas that outlived them: Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons was a piece of intellectual fraud committed in service to his racist, eugenicist ideology.
600 words from Cory Doctorow indicating serious problems with Garret Hardin's work and reputation. [more inside]
Robert Crumb: 'I am no longer a slave to a raging libido'
The Guardian: The controversial artist talks about his latest exhibition, how his feelings on Trump have changed and why he has stopped drawing women.
Don’t miss his anti-Trump strip from 1989.
Mud Flood
A group of trackers on the flanks of Aconcagua in Argentina experienced a spectacular debris flow.
It starts slowly, but hang in there!
A Sterling Silver Model Fighter Jet and New Pearls for Pence to Clutch
The State Department has published its annual (for 2017) list of declared gifts to federal employees from foreign governments. [more inside]
Japanese Chicano
How My Southeast L.A. Culture Got to Japan, alt youtube link: Inside Japan’s Chicano Subculture. [more inside]
And he almost caught it
A little dog in Japan chased the Google Streetview car and ended up thoroughly documented on the map. Street View dogs previously on metafilter
Shitty Automation
Why Self-Checkout Is and Has Always Been the Worst For every automated appliance or system that actually makes performing a task easier—dishwashers, ATMs, robotic factory arms, say—there seems to be another one—self-checkout kiosks, automated phone menus, mass email marketing—that actively makes our lives worse. I’ve taken to calling this second category, simply, shitty automation. [more inside]
“Which filter does one use when one instagrams a picture of roast swan?”
In which 92 year old Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor uses an Ipad to post a picture to the fam Instagram account. The picture is of a letter written in 1843 to her great-great-grandfather. Her family use HTML, and are also active on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube; other European royals also use social media. One requests you interact with the House of Windsor in this manner, while Her Majesty has previously knighted a web designer. Meanwhile, the gang of four (the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex)(okay; William, Kate, Harry and Meghan) have their own twitter account, while Beatrice tweets and Eugenie Instagrams, and the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall also indulge. This is (possibly) not Her Majesty's twitter account.
Shake Hands With "Albany Beef"
"One day last June, two researchers were towing a special sonar system up and down the Hudson River near Hyde Park, New York, the site of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s home, when they saw something pleasantly shocking." They had spotted a 14-foot sturgeon via side-scan sonar imaging. Sturgeon were once so plentiful in the Hudson they were referred to as "Albany beef." The discovery of a 14-foot specimen in the river is an encouraging sign in what is otherwise a dire outlook for certain sturgeon populations.
Yo dawg
Simon Willison heard you like copies of dogs, so he commissioned a replica oil painting of a photo of Barbra Streisand's dogs looking at the grave of the dog from which they were both cloned.
[COVERS] AGAINST THE MACHINE
• “Bulls on Parade” • “Wake Up” • “Killing in the Name” • “Maggie's Farm” • “Testify” • “Guerilla Radio” • “Bullet in the Head” • “Know Your Enemy” • “Sleep Now in the Fire” • “Freedom” • “Bombtrack”
The yips are an exercise in loneliness. Until you overcome them. Maybe.
Luke Hagerty, standing 6-foot-7 and throwing left-handed, was unique, and he could throw a 94 mph fastball. The Chicago Cubs chose him with the 32nd pick in the first round of the 2002 draft and gave him more than $1 million to sign, in his junior year of college. Then he got the yips, and faded from baseball. Later, he trained other young pitchers, then he trained himself, and started working with Dr. Debbie Crews, who studied the brains of golfers (Golf Science Lab article + podcast), another sport where players might get the yips. It's all part of 37-year-old pitcher Luke Hagerty's improbable comeback story (Jeff Passan, ESPN).
That’s like climbing Mt. Everest
"29. We need you to understand that we don't intend to upset you with what seem like failures to you. We don't mean to let you down. When you have ADHD it's like seeing what you want in a glass case you don't have access to. We want to accomplish so much, we just need the keys."
Yashar Ali talks about what it's like to live with ADHD as an adult in a twitter thread (link to twitter moment).
Carolee Schneemann, Avant-Garde Artist & Feminist has passed
Be clean-cut, work in secret, appear reasonable, don’t use memes
“One person last February invited members to help build a national College Republicans Discord server, which would be run by Identity Evropa members, who were told not to use “overtly alt right usernames of profile pics.” Some members said they were either current lawyers or plan to attend law schools in an effort to provide legal support to the group, while at least a dozen people said they are currently or formerly in the military. One member asked, “What are our long range goals? Other than taking over the GOP and spreading white identity? What is the end goal for IE?”
Unicorn Riot is releasing more than 770,000 messages from chat servers associated with Identity Evropa. This is the first report in a series about this large US-based neo-Nazi organization. (CW: antisemitism Neo-Nazism, hate speech and images) Leaked Discord Chats Show Plan By Alt-Right To Infiltrate Local GOP (Splinter) Chats Outline Plot To Keep Steve King Elected (Washington Post)
Male privilege is a shield; you can choose what you use that shield for
From the realm of fanvid creations (previously: [1], [2], [3]), a meditation on men offering their help to women. I think of this vid as being about male privilege, and celebrating the moments in film/tv when we see cis men leveraging their privilege on behalf of women. I love all of these relationships because they seem largely bereft of toxic masculinity in a wonderful way.
When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire
A New Americanism: Why a Nation Needs a National Story - "The origin of the language we speak carries us to India; our religion is from Palestine; of the hymns sung in our churches, some were first heard in Italy, some in the deserts of Arabia, some on the banks of the Euphrates; our arts come from Greece; our jurisprudence from Rome." [more inside]
Breaking Point
With 22 days to go, Britain is unprepared for any kind of Brexit and unable to decide which way to turn, with May's government operating under a cloak of secrecy and considering prolonging the indecision if parliament's second vote on her Withdrawal Agreement fails next week. The endless Brexit lies have left us in an Orwellian nightmare, with some MPs receiving death threats every single day. Now new lies are doing the rounds of social media, as questionable money buys who knows what amount of under-the-radar campaigning in advance of a possible second referendum. Bookmakers, though, consider the odds of a second referendum to be worse than those of No Deal (5/1 versus 4/1 respectively), with the odds of the latter shortening. [more inside]
who's listening to this in 2019? <3 xx
'From the 16th century, a whole host of brilliant women practiced their music within the confines of [secluded convents in Lombardy]. Strong-willed abbess Chiara Margarita Cozzolani believed so much in her nuns' right to compose and make music that she defended them before the archbishop, while Isabella Leonarda wrote everything from motets and psalm settings to sacred concertos.' {radio program, 1hr. 7 pieces by 6 women composing classical music in Lombardy from 16th C to now} [more inside]
Discussing Poets and Their Poetry
Professors Seamus Perry and Mark Ford have an occasional series in the London Review of Books podcast where they go through the life and work of a single poet. So far they’ve discussed W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Hardy, A. E. Housman, Philip Larkin, Stevie Smith, and Wallace Stevens. In the latest episode they are joined by Joanna Biggs for a discussion of Sylvia Plath.
« Previous day | Next day »