March 15, 2015
"In a sense, there is no such thing as healing."
Partying on Bikes in the Bay Area
You live in the Bay Area, it's a Friday evening and you have nothing to do...why not try Bike Party? It's like a less angry, more laid-back Critical Mass. There's one in San Francisco every First Friday of the month, another in the East Bay every Second Friday, an even bigger one in San Jose every Third Friday (which had a special guest rider last March), and a Peninsula ride every Fourth Friday. These rides change their route (and their theme) every month to keep it fresh. Not everyone is a fan, however, as evidenced by the comments on this local news article about the Sep. 2014 East Bay Bike Party.
It's a bit like handkerchief code for online clothing geeks
Today I washed my jeans. It’s the first time I’ve done so since I bought them in July, and yes, I’ve worn them every day. It’s fair to say that I have an unhealthy relationship with my trousers—but I’m not alone. There’s an online community dedicated to freeing the world from the tyranny of washed denim. It was these people who I turned to last year when I embarked on a hunt for the perfect pair of jeans and subsequently found myself being sucked into the world of raw denim fandom.
'Roly-Poly Goat Heads' doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
Why Do Severed Goat Heads Keep Turning Up in Brooklyn? (Some may find the pictures at this link disturbing.) [more inside]
Jetsons, 2017
The Disturbing Puzzle Game That Nobody Can Solve
"If they work together, and only then … they will find the answer and complete the whole riddle someday next year." Do Not Believe His Lies is an iOS puzzle game that was released 8 months ago. No one has solved it yet, despite crowd solving efforts.
Take me to church, TED
The Church of TED "I never imagined that the Baptists I knew in my youth would come to seem mellow, almost slackers by comparison. Of course they promoted Jesus as a once-and-done, plug-and-play solver of problems — another questionable approach."
Do You Want to Play Some Puzzles?
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection "I wrote this collection because I thought there should be more small desktop toys available: little games you can pop up in a window and play for two or three minutes while you take a break from whatever else you were doing. And I was also annoyed that every time I found a good game on (say) Unix, it wasn't available the next time I was sitting at a Windows machine, or vice versa; so I arranged that everything in my personal puzzle collection will happily run on both those platforms and more." In addition to the desktop implementations available at the website, the collection is also available on Android and iOS.
"In the end all writing is about adding to life, not diminishing it."
The Final Rhapsody of Charles Bowden by Scott Carrier [Mother Jones] [warning, descriptions of graphic violence] [more inside]
Our most personal device yet.
Apple Watch
Hands on - Are You a Snob or Idiot? - won’t change your life… unless you want it to - Not the right time - risks alienating female buyers - Who's afraid - The digital crown - a spike in Pebble Kickstarter backers
Previously:The End Of An Era
Hands on - Are You a Snob or Idiot? - won’t change your life… unless you want it to - Not the right time - risks alienating female buyers - Who's afraid - The digital crown - a spike in Pebble Kickstarter backers
Previously:The End Of An Era
If you can read this sentence, you can talk with a scientist.
Science once communicated in a polyglot of tongues, but now English rules alone. How did this happen – and at what cost?
The World's First Successful Penis Transplant
The world's first successful penis transplant has been performed in South Africa.
Bad Maps
Maps can illuminate our world; they can enlighten us and make us see things differently; they can show how demographics, history, or countless other factors interact with human and physical geography. But, sometimes, maps can be utter disasters, either because they're wrong or simply very dumb. Here are a collection of maps so hilariously bad that you may never trust the form again. [more inside]
To Take Something Recognizably Bad
The Revolution Will Probably Wear Mom Jeans (Eugenia Williamson, on normcore (previously), for The Baffler)
"Because girls are nerds, guys, and they want to buy your stuff"
For a 12-year-old girl, playing games on an iPhone is pretty regular behavior. Almost all of my friends have game apps on their phones, and we’ll spend sleepovers playing side by side. One day I noticed that my friend was playing a game as a boy character and asked why she wasn’t a girl. She said you couldn’t be a girl; a boy character was the only option.Madeleine Messer is a sixth grade student who went looking for why her mobile games rarely feature girls. [more inside]
A Dramatic Reading
Of Nicki Minaj's Anaconda. In Irish. (SLYT)
The Case Against Credentialism
The connection between education and occupation is now so firmly ingrained as to seem almost a fact of nature. To get a good job, you get a diploma: at once time a high school diploma stuffed, and then a B.A., but now you're better off with a J.D. or an M.B.A...Yet this familiar system, far from evolving “naturally” or “unconsciously,” is the product of distinct cultural changes in American history. The process that left it in our landscape is less like the slow raising of a mountain range or the growth of oxbows on the Mississippi, and more like the construction of a dam. Three changes, which took place in the past hundred years, produced the system that is now producing M.B.A.s. They were the conversion of jobs into “professions,” the scientific measurement of intelligence, and the use of government power to “channel” people toward certain occupations. James Fallows explains in a 1985 article in The Atlantic. (See also William James 80 years prior on The Ph.D. Octopus).
Bending in delightful and vulgar ways
A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince: The Endlessly Evolving Cinderella - Linda Holmes, NPR's Monkey See:
"The idea that animates the classic Cinderella is that the prince would not be free to consider Cinderella a desirable mate if he first saw her as she is, but he can meet her under false pretenses and fall in love with her. And, most importantly, once achieved, that love will be durable enough to survive her reversion to her real identity. Getting him to literally recognize her — getting him to look at a woman in rags and realize she's the woman he wants to marry — seems to function as sort of a stand-in for him proving that he can overlook her low status and choose her as a partner. Whether that's more a fantasy of romantic love or a fantasy of economic security, power and rescue from a lifetime of washing floors may depend on who's telling it and who's hearing it and when."[more inside]
It's a Fanmade World
Vulture examines past and present trends in the world of fanfiction and searches for the answer to a mystery that has plagued fandom for years: Who is responsible for the best worst fanfiction of them all, "My Immortal"? [more inside]
Firefighters need more than boxer shorts for surf rescues
Wetsuit donation to SFFD honors man who dreamed of firefighting
The San Francisco firefighters who pull struggling swimmers from the Pacific Ocean were feeling quite toasty Thursday in their brand-new fire-engine-red wetsuits. "This is great," said firefighter Harry Higgins. "I can move my arms. And it’s really well insulated. I don’t have to wear any undies." Like other members of the water rescue unit, Higgins has been obliged to provide his own wetsuit, a cumbersome model designed for surfing and not swimming. On Thursday, the department received 40 hand-sewn, flexible swimmer’s wetsuits — a gift from the family of an aspiring firefighter who wanted to wear one and never did.[more inside]
Elia W. Peattie: Collecting the work of a 19th Century Author
The Nonpareil of Council Bluffs has a new editor who says uncomplimentary and fairly humorous things about the 'new woman' — which show him to be an 'old man.’Elia Wilkinson Peattie (1862-1935) was an incredibly prolific journalist, novelist, playwright, poet, and short story writer during a time of great American change. Dr. Susanne George Bloomfield of the University of Nebraska (supported by the The Plains Humanities Alliance) has gathered a wide sampling of her work in this digital archive, adding context and historical reference to the original works. [more inside]
Hypnotic
Your pals Angela, Perry and Mario
Because Rickie Lee Jones is wonderful. Here's one good start to a Sunday: Rickie Lee and her good band live in Paris in 1983.
"This isn't funny anymore."
Putin Has Vanished, but Rumors Are Popping Up Everywhere.
“I have enough trouble keeping track of the whereabouts of one world leader,” said Eric Schultz, a White House spokesman. “I would refer you to the Russians for questions on theirs. I’m sure they’ll be very responsive.”This is, in large part, a crisis of the Kremlin’s making. (Previously)
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