March 22, 2015
In A League Of Their Own
In honour of Women's History Month*, Vibe has been doing brief interviews with "a woman who has made her living by doing exactly what she wants." [more inside]
The Seinfeld Situation
A very Indian reply about ... nothing, after Jerry Seinfeld cancelled a show in Mumbai because of parking issues.
Fear of a Muslim Planet
The micro-genre of “Islamophobic futurism” in fiction unites Western liberals and conservatives. [more inside]
Oh, Lord, won't you buy me..?
"Sheer Political Retribution"
David Dow is an attorney and law professor in Texas who has represented over 100 death row clients. He has been suspended by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for missing an appeals filing deadline...or did he? [more inside]
We study words so they can become tools instead of unwitting weapons.
Conscious Style Guide is a simple and accessible community resource for anyone curious or serious about conscious language. [more inside]
An American's part in the farewell to an English King
Richard III of England was interred today at Leicester Cathedral (official site for the burial). A New York woman was responsible for creating the traditional altar linens used in today's service. Richard III previously.
Gay and Mennonite
How do Mennonites handle gay people in their congregation? Depends on the church. This is the story of the Allegheny Mennonite Conference, as they debated what to do about Hyattsville Mennonite Church--let them back into the conference, remove them from it, or dissolve the conference altogether. Hyattsville had been previously disciplined for accepting gay and lesbian members, which they have been doing for decades. [more inside]
Follow the Geeks Chapter 3
Gina Trapani described that weekend as a slow boil. There wasn't a tangible concept yet. But there was something there—a problem she needed to solve.
It was early 2009, and an idea had been nagging her for more than a year. She left Lifehacker in large part because she was ready to stop writing about all the apps other people were making and start creating some of her own. Just weeks after she stepped down as the editor, she had a phone conversation with her former boss, Gawker chief Nick Denton.
"There's a Twitter app I want to build," she had told him.
They're emulating our beer culture now, and it's kind of awkward. 🍺
How the West Coast-Style IPA Conquered the World - by Erin Mosbaugh, First We Feast:
"While many notable beers emerged from this scene—Ballast Point Sculpin, Alesmith IPA—few had the influence of Green Flash's flagship West Coast IPA. By trademarking the term in 2011 and emblazoning it across bottles in giant letters, the brewery effectively codified the regionality of the style and made it instantly recognizable to drinkers across the country (and beyond). Eagle Rock Brewery's Jeremy Raub explains, 'Green Flash West Coast IPA was a really over-the-top double IPA, which was the brewery's way to say, 'This is how we do it on the West Coast.' It was just over 8% ABV, resinous, and hoppy. It had more malt body, and it was 'dank,' as people like to call it."[more inside]
On your mark, get set.... GO!
"Following 9 months of computation and 4 petabyte of disk IO on a Dell PowerEdge R820 server, generously provided by Piet Hut, and administered by Lee Colbert, at the IAS School of Natural Sciences in Princeton, we determined..." (the number of legal moves on an 18x18 Go board). [more inside]
Inherent vice, memory, and glass bead disease
Twenty One Dresses for the early Twentieth Century. The New Yorker looks at a recently discovered cache of dresses from Callot Soeurs, a woman-owned French Haute Couture house.
Try, try again? Study says no
Neuroscientists find that trying harder makes it more difficult to learn some aspects of language.
In a new study, a team of neuroscientists and psychologists led by Amy Finn, a postdoc at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, has found evidence for another factor that contributes to adults’ language difficulties: When learning certain elements of language, adults’ more highly developed cognitive skills actually get in the way. The researchers discovered that the harder adults tried to learn an artificial language, the worse they were at deciphering the language’s morphology — the structure and deployment of linguistic units such as root words, suffixes, and prefixes.[more inside]
We had no choice but to disappoint him.
As doctors, we are taught to do no harm. It may be time to redefine what we really mean by harm. Two surgeons from the University of Wisconsin’s transplant program explore whether we should allow terminal patients to donate their organs.
Second-Class Languages
I told them all at the very first meeting it was illegal
An estimated billion pounds worth of HSBC fraud in Britain. According to whistleblower Nicholas Wilson, HSBC has been involved in a fraudulent scheme to illegally overcharge British shoppers in arrears for debt on store cards at leading British high-street retailers.
The credit agreements did not allow consumers to be charged debt collection fees. The chain of lenders involved in HSBC's debt recovery includes retailers up and down the UK, but most often those in the poorest areas. Wilson estimates that as many as 600,000 people have been defrauded, mostly those on a low-income.
This fraud has (allegedly) been systematically covered-up by regulators, police, law firms, the government and much of the UK media. The full list of media organisations that have investigated, then spiked, Wilson’s story, despite its unprecedented importance and public interest value, includes BBC Panorama, BBC Newsnight, BBC Moneybox, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Private Eye, and The Sunday Times.
The credit agreements did not allow consumers to be charged debt collection fees. The chain of lenders involved in HSBC's debt recovery includes retailers up and down the UK, but most often those in the poorest areas. Wilson estimates that as many as 600,000 people have been defrauded, mostly those on a low-income.
This fraud has (allegedly) been systematically covered-up by regulators, police, law firms, the government and much of the UK media. The full list of media organisations that have investigated, then spiked, Wilson’s story, despite its unprecedented importance and public interest value, includes BBC Panorama, BBC Newsnight, BBC Moneybox, BBC Radio 5 Live, The Telegraph, The Guardian, Private Eye, and The Sunday Times.
Faux Shows
Stock footage company Dissolve presents Faux Shows, a fake fall line-up guaranteed to get green-lit. (SLVimeo) Created entirely with Dissolve stock footage.
The Future is here
Profile of a tunnel-builder
Maclean's magazine has an extended profile of Elton McDonald, Toronto tunnel builder, a sweet kid in a rough neighbourhood who "'was getting away from regular things, away from life,' he says. 'Nothing in particular. Just life itself.'".
It was his fifth try at building underground, and it would take toil, determination and the better part of two years to get it done. It took pursuing a kid’s dream into adulthood. And in the end, even Elton’s father, a farmer in Black River, Jamaica, whom Elton has not seen in many years, had heard of that tunnel. "He didn’t know it was me," Elton says. "He’s proud. He thinks it’s cool."
"It makes me want to punch someone in the face."
Typographica reviews its favorite typefaces of 2014.
The Sigh Guy
New documentary Tab Hunter Confidential is the story of the squeaky-clean 1950s teen idol whose career was nearly wrecked by gay rumours broken by the notorious Confidential magazine. Rumours that happened to be true. [more inside]
The Food Porn Superstars of South Korea
In Korea, people can tune in on their laptops and cell phones any time, any day and watch people eat—and talk about eating. These "online eaters" are neither chefs nor restaurateurs, but the stars of the South Korean digital food phenomenon: Mukbang.[SLYT] [more inside]
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