April 17, 2015
Ladies and Gentlemen and all 68 other genders... Royal Blood!
If The White Stripes and Queens of The Stone Age had a baby... Millennials, congratulations. You made something I love.
The bludgeoning opener to Royal Blood's self-titled debut, Out of the Black is a riff-fueled onslaught that belies their two-piece status; with just a heavily processed bass guitar and a drum set between them, they make some four-piece rock bands look inconsequential.
You're welcome.
The Intercept's new blog gets its stories from unofficial sources
Ghanaian Hustle by Yepoka Yeebo
This is Suame Magazine. A vast, open-air industrial district in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city. Here, 200,000 skilled workers manufacture everything from bolts to tanker trucks by hand. A million dollars passes through the factories and workshops here every day, and it’s the place where most of the country’s laborers learn their trades: the heart of Ghana’s informal economy.Photos and Story
How did you find out about my vibrations!?
Remember when Captain America had a district attorney alter-ego named Grant Gardner? And he fought The Purple Death Scarab? No? Then you might need to rewatch the original 1944 Captain American Republic Serials! Bonus: The (deservedly) short lived Captain America Cartoon 1966
“But Tibetan mastiffs are so 2013.”
Once-Prized Tibetan Mastiffs Are Discarded as Fad Ends in China [New York Times]
“Then there is the Tibetan mastiff, a lumbering shepherding dog native to the Himalayan highlands that was once the must-have accouterment for status-conscious Chinese. Four years ago, a reddish-brown purebred named Big Splash sold for $1.6 million, according to news reports, though cynics said the price was probably exaggerated for marketing purposes. No reasonable buyer, self-anointed experts said at the time, would pay more than $250,000 for a premium specimen.”
Isaiah 11:6
"More than sixty years have passed since Israel started its nuclear venture and almost half a century has elapsed since it crossed the nuclear weapons threshold. Yet Israel's nuclear history still lacks a voice of its own: Israel has never issued an authorized and official nuclear history; no insiders have ever been authorized to tell the story from within. Unlike all seven other nuclear weapons states, Israel's nuclear policy is essentially one of non-acknowledgement. Israel believes that nuclear silence is golden, referring to its nuclear code of conduct as the policy of amimut ("opacity" in Hebrew)." A special collection of declassified documents was published by the National Security Archive this Wednesday, that sheds some light on How Israel Hid Its Secret Nuclear Weapons Program.
A new wrinkle in "A Wrinkle in Time"
A previously unknown 3-page passage, cut from "A Wrinkle in Time", has been found by Madeline L'Engle's granddaughter, and published by the Wall Street Journal. It provides strong insight into the political thought regarding conformity and security in the book.
“I’ve come to the conclusion,” Mr. Murry said slowly, "that it’s the greatest evil there is. Suppose your great great grandmother, and all those like her, had worried about security? They’d never have gone across the land in flimsy covered wagons. Our country has been greatest when it has been most insecure. This sick longing for security is a dangerous thing, Meg, as insidious as the strontium 90 from our nuclear explosions . . .”
The cockpit…what is it?
I present to you the top-three mind-blowing concepts...
"Come As You Are" an illustrated book review at The Nib and mirrored at Oh Joy Sex Toy [previously] by Erika Moen & Matthew Nolan.
Where Shmaltz and Soul Food Meet
Michael Twitty, Black Jewish Foodie, Talks 'Culinary Justice'.
John has graciously allowed our cameras into his home
The true crime film Foxcatcher (Trailer, FanFare) starred Steve Carell in an Oscar-nominated role as the self-aggrandizing, eccentric millionaire John du Pont. The plot features a video du Pont commissions to tout the Foxcatcher Farm wrestling team and himself as coach. Here is the real video.
Leaning Out
Love is the only motivating force, and while love can motivate some pretty awful things, it’s nonetheless impossible to do any good without it. I have no love left for my job or career. Tim Chevalier on tech as a coping mechanism and a place of toxicity and moral stagnation.
how many people in rock & roll can sing? Ringo can deliver a song.
"I don't want to bring in the violins, but we all came from hardship," says McCartney. "All of us except for George lost someone. I lost my mum when I was 14. John lost his mum. But Ringo had it worst. His father was gone; he was so sick they told his mum he wasn't going to live. Imagine making up your life from that, in that environment. No family, no school. He had to invent himself. We all had to come up with a shield, but Ringo came up with the strongest shield."In anticipation of the inimitable Mr. Starkey's imminent (and long-awaited) induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Rolling Stone presents Being Ringo: A Beatle's All-Starr Life.
Part of that shield was playing the fool; part of that shield was booze. It led to a lost decade of L.A./London/Monte Carlo partying where Ringo woke up many mornings wondering, "Why are the birds coughing so loudly?" But he's been sober for 26 years, and there's one essential thing that keeps Ringo young: the sticks and the drum kit.
"Whenever you dig a hole [in Lecce], centuries of history come out"
In 2000, Luciano Faggiano wanted to open a trattoria in Lecce, in the "boot-heel" of Italy. He bought what looked to be a modern building, but he had to open the floors in 2001 to find a leaking sewer pipes that were causing continuous humidity problems. He didn't find pipes, but a subterranean world tracing back before the birth of Jesus: a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar. Instead of opening a restaurant, his family has a museum, which is also available to virtually tour on Google Maps.
Duel in the sun
We Are Here For You, and We Welcome You
The Real Purpose of Libraries, by Ferguson Library Director Scott Bonner (SLReading Rainbow)
The least favorite Avenger
Comic-Book Writer Nick Spencer talks about writing the print version of Ant-Man as Marvel releases a second trailer for the movie and Vulture looks at the film's long production history.
Utility to Glorious Extravagance
Adrift in a sea of digital apps for every imaginable function, we often feel our needs are met better today than in any previous era. But consider the chatelaine, a device popularized in the 18th century that attached to the waist of a woman’s dress, bearing tiny useful accessories, from notebooks to knives.--Chatelaines: The Killer Mobile Device for Victorian Women [more inside]
HBO's Static Intro
"Everybody kind of gravitated towards this idea of a TV turning on, and out of this static comes this resolved HBO logo that lifts itself out of normal television series.” (via Playboy) [more inside]
Why can't I speak German???????
What happens when an English reporter live blogs from a German press conference. The Telegraph newspaper sends reporter Ben Bloom to Germany to live blog the resignation of Jurgen Klopp as the manager of Borussia Dortmund football club.
Reading from the bottom of the page upwards, at 12:37 it dawns on Bloom that the press conference is in German, which he doesn't understand.
Panic and embarrassment levels rise rapidly. Luckily, he becomes an internet phenomenon.
How Super Angel Chris Sacca Made Billions, Burned Bridges...
...And Crafted The Best Seed Portfolio Ever
But his track record is also flecked with broken friendships and hard feelings. While he keeps a relatively low media profile–this story marks the first time he’s cooperating for a major story–his big mouth, incessant name-dropping and blunt elbows cause eyes to roll. “He’s got a bit of a hero complex,” says a peer who knows him well. “He’s an amazing investor, but that’s not enough–he has to do this heroic stuff.” At Google he crashed every meeting he could and then wouldn’t shut up. Twitter eventually had to pass a rule, driven in part by Sacca, barring nonemployees from showing up at all-staff meetings. He and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, once close friends, now barely speak, despite Sacca’s major stake in the company.
All the Noms
FoodGawker is basically a food-based search engine, complete with pretty pictures of really good lookin' foods and the links to their recipes. [more inside]
Getting What You Paid For
An Ecomodernist Manifesto
To say that the Earth is a human planet becomes truer every day. Humans are made from the Earth, and the Earth is remade by human hands. Many earth scientists express this by stating that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans.
As scholars, scientists, campaigners, and citizens, we write with the conviction that knowledge and technology, applied with wisdom, might allow for a good, or even great, Anthropocene. A good Anthropocene demands that humans use their growing social, economic, and technological powers to make life better for people, stabilize the climate, and protect the natural world.
How to keep gamers happy losing to Pay to Win players
Paying to Win: Battlefield Heroes, Virtual Goods and Paying For Gameplay Advantages -- Ben Cousins, then general manager of Easy, EA's free to play development studio, looks at the controversy surrounding Battlefield Heroes and its "pay to win" model and how the game was (re)designed to deal with those complaints while still getting people to spent money on it. -- More presentations are available from his website.
When is Revenge Most Satisfying?
Vengeance is a goal-driven act, sought out to restore a sense of justice to the universe. But what happens when retaliation is targeted at someone other than the original transgressor? [more inside]
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