April 19, 2015
That time when Toronto had Johnny Cash machines
Retrontario remembers Johnny Cash advertising for Canada Trust, along with several other advertisements from the 80s.
So Outrageous, Like we're Fam--📵
The music video for Charlie XCX's "Famous", directed by Eric Wareheim, for the YouTube Music Awards. Previously
We put a chip in it!
It was just a dumb thing. Then we put a chip in it. Now it's a smart thing.
How to fly a P51-C Mustang
Three YT's showing how to fly a P-51C Mustang.
Happy Bicycle Day!
On April 19, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman took a momentous bicycle ride home. His discovery influenced pop culture, psychotherapy and even the CIA..
“They were looking for a better life.”
Hundreds Feared Dead After Boat Filled With Migrants Capsizes in Mediterranean [New York Times]
"For the past several years, Europe has been confronted with hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving illegally from Africa and the Middle East, many of them fleeing war and poverty. Italy has been in the vanguard of rescue efforts, with its Navy and Coast Guard ships rescuing more than 130,000 people last year in a widely praised program known as Mare Nostrum."[more inside]
Opting out.
An estimated "40 percent of all Long Island [grade] 3-8 students refused to take last week’s ELA Common Core state tests. Numbers in some districts reached well over 70 percent, with at least one district exceeding 80 percent....It seems clear that the final 2015 tally will well exceed 200,000 students. New York State will likely not make the minimum 95 percent federal requirement for testing.... What will happen to New York schools then? " [more inside]
"Every instinct will persuade you that there should not be a Pakistan."
The Los Angeles Times in 1943 further declared that “Only an old-school Southerner who thinks Appomattox was a shocking bad show could go for Pakistan.”
The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India And Pakistan, the latest book by long-time Middle East observer Dilip Hiro, is a grim assessment of the current state of relations.
Poor internet for poor people
Pay what you're paid
Lessthan100 is a traveling pop-up shop that sells artwork. Customers are charged a price that corresponds to the local gender pay gap.
Automation is coming, but how will labor adapt?
The Machines Are Coming by Zeynep Tufekci
Machines are getting better than humans at figuring out who to hire, who’s in a mood to pay a little more for that sweater, and who needs a coupon to nudge them toward a sale. In applications around the world, software is being used to predict whether people are lying, how they feel and whom they’ll vote for. To crack these cognitive and emotional puzzles, computers needed not only sophisticated, efficient algorithms, but also vast amounts of human-generated data, which can now be easily harvested from our digitized world. The results are dazzling. Most of what we think of as expertise, knowledge and intuition is being deconstructed and recreated as an algorithmic competency, fueled by big data. But computers do not just replace humans in the workplace. They shift the balance of power even more in favor of employers. Our normal response to technological innovation that threatens jobs is to encourage workers to acquire more skills, or to trust that the nuances of the human mind or human attention will always be superior in crucial ways. But when machines of this capacity enter the equation, employers have even more leverage, and our standard response is not sufficient for the looming crisis.[more inside]
"You're so very special"
Radiohead's Creep covered in a wonderful mid-20th century style by Haley Reinhart and the band Postmodern Jukebox. [previously | via]
Slip, sliding along
The Town That Creep Built
In Hollister, Calif., fault creep shows that no matter what we create the earth will keep on doing what it wants. If we're lucky, our concrete will serve to mark the changes we cannot stop.
In Hollister, Calif., fault creep shows that no matter what we create the earth will keep on doing what it wants. If we're lucky, our concrete will serve to mark the changes we cannot stop.
Fashion Shouldn't Take Your Breath Away
The World's Future Megaprojects
A short documentary (30min) that introduces ten of the worlds most ambitious megaprojects currently under development and paints a picture of the astonishing scale and political landscape of ongoing globalisation (SLYT). [more inside]
The High Line's New Museum
A New Whitney It has been interesting to watch the High Line progress from nothing more than a dream to its current wonderful reality mixing green, gleam and grit. Jason's early unauthorized foray introduced many around these parts to the High Line. Now the Whitney moves in.
You’ve sold 17 million albums and you want to pay me nothing?
A professional photographer for more than 20 years, and published in Q, Melody Maker and Rolling Stone, Pat Pope has worked with many of the biggest names in pop and rock music, including Oasis, David Bowie and Radiohead. One act with whom he has worked several times are 90s indie titans Garbage.
Indeed, they admire Pope’s work so much that recently, as they put together a forthcoming self-published book, their management asked his permission to use one of his pictures of them. So far, so good...
Pat Pope’s row with Garbage.
Occupation... Baby
Retrogaming blog VGJunk has just turned 5, and celebrated with a post about the gonzo Capcom beat em up classic Captain Commando. Over the last half-decade, VG Junk has uncovered a hidden Treasure with McDonalds, helped NSync get to their show and imagined what Re-Animator would look like on the NES. He's also investigated the national stereotypes that hide in fighting games, with his probing look at the fighters of Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, and Spain. So put on some Queen, watch out for Jack the Ripper, and enjoy a stroll down memory lane.
A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature's Deep Design
Frank Wilczek: Physics in 100 Years [pdf] - "Here I indulge in wide-ranging speculations on the shape of physics, and technology closely related to physics, over the next one hundred years. Themes include the many faces of unification, the re-imagining of quantum theory, and new forms of engineering on small, intermediate, and large scales." [more inside]
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