April 15, 2021
How Green is My Valley
Sentinel Playground - a massive resource for anyone interested in Earth’s changing surface, natural or manmade
"I am not a real celebrity!"
A few weeks ago, Lindsay Ellis got canceled for making a tweet comparing two similar movies. Here's her very long response to pissing people off on this level. Brief recaps of the topics covered in it (after I watched the whole thing) are below. There's also a discussion of the video over here. [more inside]
Every aspect of human existence is running on semiconductors
Big Lurch - Normal Lurch - The Marriage Obliterator
Horn Honk Depot: these honks will change your life.
One of 21 absurd comedy sketches by Joe Kwaczala, formerly of Clickhole and the Onion, posted to Youtube in a single day to raise money for East Hollywood Mutual Aid. (general strong-language cw for the sketches) [more inside]
One of 21 absurd comedy sketches by Joe Kwaczala, formerly of Clickhole and the Onion, posted to Youtube in a single day to raise money for East Hollywood Mutual Aid. (general strong-language cw for the sketches) [more inside]
The "Dark Triad" of Personality
The 2002 publication of The Dark Triad of Personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy introduced a new, definitive taxonomy of "socially aversive" or "dark" personality traits common to all people. The idea of a "Dark Triad" was well-met and provocative, spawning hundreds of research papers in the ensuing decade, as summarized in The Dark Triad of Personality: A 10 Year Review. See for yourself how you measure up when it comes to narcissism, machiavellianism, and psychopathy via the Dark Triad Personality Test as well as The Dirty Dozen: A Concise Measure of the Dark Triad
Big Tech’s guide to talking about AI ethics
[Original post removed at poster's request. Topic was: How language shapes public perception of corporate AI ethics]
Atop Transylvanian peaks a lone synth lets cry...
Thank you for your cooperation in this matter
A Forgotten Chapter in U.S. History: When Women Had To Choose Between Mortgages and Motherhood By Clare Trapasso for Realtor.com
Before The Beginning Was The End There Was Devo
On April 23rd, 1974, DEVO performed their second ever concert at the 2nd Kent State Creative Arts festival. DEVO Co-Founder Bob Lewis has uploaded the (almost) complete audio recording to YouTube. [more inside]
Fix the lead pipes
Fix the lead pipes. Matthew Yglesias on Biden's $45 billion plan to replace all the lead pipes in the United States.
Cannonball Vaccine Run
Tarik Khan has 10 vials of leftover COVID vaccine and six hours before they expire. Can he get them all to his list of homebound residents while crisscrossing Philadelphia, dodging rush hour traffic, and observing them for 15 minutes each before returning home to his cat Theodore? Text, photo, and video from the Philadelphia Inquirer.
It's Hard to Argue the Other Side and Not Sound Like You're Stealing
This body of songwriters will not give publishing or songwriting credit to anyone who did not create or change the lyric or melody or otherwise contribute to the composition without a reasonably equivalent/meaningful exchange for all the writers on the song. Meet the songwriters who told pop stars: 'Don't steal from us' [BBC] [more inside]
White Nationalists Gleefully Embrace Tucker Carlson
White nationalists sure don't think Tucker Carlson's "replacement" segment is about voting rights. Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and popular media personality among young white extremists, responded to Carlson’s Monday night segment by tweeting, “This week Tucker redpilled 4 million people and there is nothing liberals can do about it.” He then listed the white nationalist talking points he believes Carlson got right: “Demographic replacement, ADL, Israel, it’s all there... a full redpill. On primetime Fox News for 4 million mainstream conservatives,” he wrote. “Can you feel it? We are inevitable.”
CW: ugly hate speech, anti-semitism, stupidity [more inside]
teams that feel like bands
Hisham H. Muhammad writes "A love letter to bands, in music and code", reminiscing on the feeling of being in a team that is, or feels like, a band: "work done in a collective yields results of a different nature....When I’m in a collective environment — and by that I mean any setting where my work is presented to and discussed by others as it is developed — even when I’m doing work completely on my own, even before I’ve had my first piece of feedback, I feel a sort of mind game playing in my head where I 'play the part' of my peers and imagine what their feedback would be, be it consciously or subconsciously. I’m doing the work not only for myself, but for others too, whose opinions I care about."
Spooky dick jokes
Spaghetti Sucks
It started with a dream and ended with a brand new pasta shape. Follow Dan Pashman of The Sporkful on his three-year journey documented in a five-part series, "Mission: ImPASTAble", as he tries to develop the perfect pasta. [more inside]
Great lockdown art
Jonathan Jones reviews artist Rachel Whiteread's show Internal Objects in The Guardian. "This has been the strangest year for art. We have been physically closed off from it – and now have the ludicrous situation of such commercial galleries as the Gagosian reopening, while public museums must wait until at least 17 May. In the absence of art, we have argued about it, over public statues and what museums were left by previous generations. But what’s got lost is any sense of art as mystery, as poetry, as the inexplicable. Here it is. ...This, finally, is great lockdown art." [more inside]
The Universal Translator (Star Trek Explained)
An true and accurate analysis of one of Star Trek's most important pieces of technology.
"A live experiment gone fantastically awry"
Oh, the Lindy Hoppery: Vernacular Jazz Dance
Best known of late by its TikTok remix -- upon further examination, research and algorithms lead to 2015 Jazz Roots - the Teachers Battle outro -- and thence to Vernacular Jazz Dance. Which was a wonder: who knew the span of the art form's complexity or the amount of scholarship devoted to its technique? Or that it has become so international a phenomenom? Not me. [more inside]
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