April 18, 2019
They Got Magic and Flair
Critical Role, a 4 year old web series airing 7pm PDT Thursday nights in which a bunch of nerdy ass voice actors play Dungeons and Dragons, launched a Kickstarter on March 4th to fund an animated special. [more inside]
Tell me about a complicated man
Pour One Out For Ulysses S. Grant, Adam Gopnik inThe New Yorker:
Though he [Ron Chernow] does the usual justice to the military saga of the Civil War, and Grant’s decisive part in it, his book aims to rehabilitate Grant as a politician and as President. He makes a convincing case that Grant actually behaved nobly, even heroically, while in the White House. He pressed the cause of black equality under the law, and was consistently on the right side of Reconstruction-era issues—winning more heartfelt praise from Frederick Douglass than Lincoln ever did.[more inside]
"This is stressing me out!"
If you've ever tried a recipe and wondered why it wasn't as easy as the video made it seem, you may appreciate the Behind Tasty series on YouTube. [more inside]
In Kākāpō breeding season news…
Kākāpō (previously on MetaFilter) are having a record breeding season: more than 76 chicks have hatched from 49 out of the 50 breeding females. Since there are only 147 adult Kākāpō on the planet (so few that Wikipedia lists every one of them by name) this is a very big deal. And in breaking Kākāpō news, Solstice just laid another 3 eggs last night - her third nest this year!
Why I Take All My First Dates to Olive Garden
When I meet women on dating apps, I always want to know if I can take them to the Olive Garden, my treat. It’s a solid opener; a way to know if we’re compatible. If they’re the right kind of woman for me, they’ll respond with an enthusiastic yes.
The right kind of woman for me is someone who won’t give me a hard time about the things I like. The kind of woman who will let me pocket all the leftover breadsticks and doesn’t care if we only discuss our favorite sexual positions and what kind of appetizers look best off the limited-time-only menu. We’re at Olive Garden because it’s kitschy and cute. Nothing that happens needs to be a serious thing. It’s no big deal. [more inside]
The right kind of woman for me is someone who won’t give me a hard time about the things I like. The kind of woman who will let me pocket all the leftover breadsticks and doesn’t care if we only discuss our favorite sexual positions and what kind of appetizers look best off the limited-time-only menu. We’re at Olive Garden because it’s kitschy and cute. Nothing that happens needs to be a serious thing. It’s no big deal. [more inside]
What is a lot of money?
Last week, James Holzhauer absolutely crushed the single-day winnings record for Jeopardy! [more inside]
The Secret City and the Return of Heroes
On November 30, 2012, the MMORPG City of Heroes shut down after a three-month sunset period; its owner, NCSoft, refused to sell the IP to someone else to continue the game, or even keep legacy servers up. Rumors of sale of the IP since then haven't come to anything, and there's been some work on reverse-engineering of the servers with various projects. However, all such efforts were rocked recently at the revelation that the game was only mostly dead--a private server running a bootleg copy of the server code has been in operation for six years. [more inside]
A glimpse into the OTHER side of a true renaissance man; Greg Popovich
Michelin restaurants and fabulous wines: Inside the secret team dinners that have built the Spurs' dynasty [more inside]
Like a black cat sitting on top of her paws
A Perfectly Normal Interview with Carmen Maria Machado Where Everything Is Fine
The connection between narratives of vampires and narratives of women—especially queer women—are almost laughably obvious. Even without Carmilla, they would be linked. The hunger for blood, the presence of monthly blood, the influence and effects of the moon, the moon as a feminine celestial body, the moon as a source of madness, the mad woman, the mad lesbian—it goes on and on. It is somewhat surprising to me that we have ever imagined male vampires at all.
The Latin Typo That Gave Us the Temple of Ridicule; One Letter Matters
In the 1800s, French abbot-scholar Pierre Danet wrote a "complete dictionary of the Greek and Roman antiquities" that served as the basis for multiple dictionaries in European languages (Wikipedia). It included an entry on Aedicula Ridiculi (Google books; UMich text version), or a Little Temple of Ridicule, raised to the God of Joy and Laughter after the Romans laughed at the failure of Hannibal to lay siege to Rome. The building definitely exists (Google Streetview panorama), except it isn't a Temple of Ridicule. It's probably the tomb of Annia Regilla (Wikipedia), built nearly 400 years after Hannibal's invasion of Italy (Your Guide to Italy). The Latin Typo That Gave Us the Temple of Ridicule (Atlas Obscura)
The Radical Egalitarian Politics Of Weird Al’s "UHF"
There are days when I doubt that socialism will win. There are days when I think that running a print magazine on a shoestring budget with a group of oddballs is a doomed endeavor, that we will inevitably be crushed by the forces of rapacious capitalism. But then I think about UHF and I become more certain than ever that it can be done. Channel 8 will be driven off the air, and U-62 will emerge triumphant. Nathan J. Robinson (previously here, here, here, here, and here) of Current Affairs explains why 1989 cult classic UHF shows how collective enterprises succeed and why socialism produces superior culture. [more inside]
Teen vandals' sentence: to read and write about literature
"The community blew up. Understandably. But you know, some of the kids didn't even know what a swastika meant. So I saw a learning opportunity. With children you can either punish or you can rehabilitate and these were kids with no prior record and I thought back to what taught me when I was their age, what opened my eyes to other cultures and religions… and it was reading." Two years later, prosecutor Alejandra Rueda reflects on the "reading disposition" she assigned to teens who painted racist and anti-Semitic graffiti on the Ashburn Colored School, a historically significant building in Virginia (now undergoing restoration and turned into a museum). The linked BBC article includes excerpts from a final essay by one of the teens. [more inside]
Mapping Gothic France
Mapping Gothic France is a treasure trove of images of various types of Gothic structures (mostly churches) in France and England. There are other features, too. Narratives and historical tracking and comparison tools. It's a deeply textured website with a bit of an opaque interface. [more inside]
hanging on by a thread
"O.K. Well, my name’s Vivian Zwick, and I’m 101 years old. And I came to this issue quite a long time ago." Did you know about abortion? "No, I’d heard about it, but I really didn’t know much about it. I didn’t start really working for it until about the early ‘60s, just the time that Governor Rockefeller in New York signed the bill to have abortion available to everybody — not in Missouri, but in New York State. So we were just delighted that there was actually a place where you could get an abortion here in America." As a growing number of states are introducing, moving, or enacting 6-week abortion bans, the NY Times Daily Podcast visits the Last Clinic in Missouri (transcript) and explores the Illinois option. [more inside]
(Less Than, Approximately, Greater Than)
Why does Roman Mars' voice make some car stereos lock up and restart? In order to find out, Reply All creates the best lineup of podcasts in the business.
Less Than, Approximately, Greater Than, a cooking show with Samin Nosrat || 88% Parentheticals, hosted by Sara Koenig (it's about her mail (and her day)) || Carrot Space Carrot, a trek into the universe of carrots || 100% Related?, where Judge Goldman Sr. promulgates paternity pedantry || Blank + Blank = FUN, a very frank investigation into relationships with Kalila Holt[more inside]
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