May 1, 2023
Inside Music’s Nostalgia-Industrial Complex
How to get more women on bikes? Better biking infrastructure
How to get more women on bikes? Better biking infrastructure, designed by women. Men outnumber women by two-to-one on bikes in Australia. It’s time more women were involved in planning new bike paths and protected lanes to feel safer on the road.
The mind of neural networks
"Maybe we are now reaching a point where the language of psychology is starting to be appropriate to understand the behaviour of these neural networks." - llya Sutskever, Chief Scientist of Open AI. [more inside]
He dreamed of falling from the sky
He Bombed the Nazis. 75 Years Later, the Nightmares Began Trauma works in mysterious ways: "Like most of his generation, John Wenzel returned from World War II with no interest in sharing memories. Just shy of his 100th birthday, he found he could no longer ignore the past."
meet tami rose: the woman who sells mississippians their sex toys
“I do more $1 million a year in sales,” Rose said, “so someone here likes me.” Believe it or not, we have some folks who sit in the parking lot working up the courage to come in. They’re embarrassed, or ashamed, I guess.
A lot of people come in and do a lap, but then they go right to what they’re looking for, as if they didn’t want us to know that’s what they came here to get. That’s fine. We’re not judging. But if you do this every time you come in, who are you kidding?
There’s a lot of shame in this community when it comes to sex. Some of that is small towns. Some of that is religion. But a lot of it comes from the fact that we just don’t do sex education in this state. That’s a problem because sex is part of life, and so many people here don’t feel like they have a place to go with questions about their bodies and what gives them pleasure.
Neil Diamond Phil Donahue 1993
Neil Diamond had just released a new album in the second half of 1993 when he appeared on the Phil Donahue Show [46m]. I feel like this is peak early Nineties daytime television.
With friends like these, who needs anenomes?
Klimt recreated through photography
Golden Klimt In 2015, on the occasion of the 23rd edition of the Life Ball in Vienna, photographer Inge Prader took incredible shots in tribute to the Golden Cycle of the Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt using fashion models.
I tend to just see it, and I give it
Textile workers of the world unite!
Look for the union label. Online exhibit Union-Made: Fashioning America in the Twentieth Century
features the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). Today’s successor unions to these historical labor organizations are UNITE-HERE and Workers United. Vintage shoppers often look for the union labels in clothing as a clue to the age of the item: "The AFL and the CIO merged in 1955, therefore any ILGWU labels with AFL-CIO (look closely, as it is often very small) on them are post-1955." [more inside]
LXX
Free thread! (I was planning on being more creative and going to metatalk and trying to set up a schedule, but I'm a little hungover and the morning is getting away from me. So here we are)
SFWA’s Inaugural Infinity Award Honoree Is Octavia E. Butler
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) have announced the creation of the Infinity Award, with its inaugural presentation honoring the works and career of Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006) at the 58th Annual Nebula Awards Ceremony on May 14. [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »