May 6, 2023
Golden orb spider captured eating microbat
Golden orb spider captured eating microbat in Far North Queensland. Megan Wright has a healthy respect for the spiders that live around her home north of Cairns, but admits being very excited — and horrified when she noticed a big golden orb spider eating a bat caught in its web.
American Football buys The American Football House
In 1999, the band American Football released their eponymous debut album (which would later come to be known as LP1 after they also named their next two albums American Football). Its cover was a picture of a nondescript white house at 704 W. High Street in Urbana, Illinois, which has since become an emo pilgrimage site. And now, the band and their label own the American Football House.
I was afraid you were gonna get all public-domained for a while there
After a seven-year hiatus, Chris Onstad is writing Achewood again. Achewood—once Time Magazine's top graphic novel of 2007, despite being a webcomic—has also revamped its web site for the first time in approximately twenty years, to include convenient chronological links to its many character blogs (example). (While the webcomic portion of Achewood is its heart and soul, the bulk of its writing consists of stories which take place across and between eleven different blogs; until now, there has been no convenient way to follow the blogs in lockstep with the comics, or even combine the blogs and tie their various arcs together.) [more inside]
Ten Minute Nostalgia Hits
YouTuber @TheManInMeOfficial has created a series of videos summarizing "Iconic Albums" released each month during different decades. I don't know what the criteria are, but I have to say, the selections are indeed iconic. Each video runs 11m. Most Iconic Album Released Every Month Of The '60s. The 70s. The 80s. The 90s.
Don't say cheese
Documentary Family Photography is a recent movement in family photography that eschews the posed portrait in favor of capturing moments of real life in passing. As images we make of ourselves become more and more polished, people are wanting to recreate some of the "spontaneous and unexpected" moments of the analog-camera era in photo sessions where "shit gets real" and "perfect is boring." The Documentary Family Photographers association has educational resources and a directory; the Family Photojournalistic Association does similarly; the Documentary Family Awards gives prizes.
Here's your 'very online conversation'
Christopher Cantwell talks about a meeting with a trans fan, and how his conversation with her opened up and changed his views of his own work:
In January 2020, I went to Long Beach Comic-Con, did a panel, sold some Doctor Doom issues and copies of my books She Could Fly and Everything. Sitting at the small table, a young woman approached me.
She had come all the way down to Long Beach and bought a pass to the Con just to find me and tell me how much Halt and Catch Fire had meant to her, particularly in some more difficult times for her recently, especially when she was transitioning.(This FPP title is a reference to the infamous soundbite from a recent Rowling interview re: - what else? - her transphobia and how it affects her Harry Potter brand, that the HBO boss tried to downplay the Discourse as "That’s a very online conversation, very nuanced and complicated and not something we’re going to get into." Cantwell's thread quote tweets a Variety tweet about the fallout) (Full thread in extended description below) [more inside]
they're almost entirely absent from video games' depictions of reality
Why There's No Room for Suburbs in Open-World Games [Waypoint] [Games by Vice] “The other day I was replaying The Crew 2, driving from Texas to San Francisco in my silver 1955 Mercedes-Benz SLR. After passing through the epic canyons and peaks, I finally arrived at the glistening Pacific. Looking at my GPS, now barely 3 miles away from downtown San Francisco, I was shocked to still be seeing dense redwood forests and not, say, suburban Millbrae. Then in a flash, I was finally amidst skyscrapers. But when I looked in my rearview, there were the redwoods I barely left behind. Booting up GTA V, GTA San Andreas, Saints Row, and Watch Dogs 2, I noticed a similar pattern. We are transported to major cities and vast countrysides, but nothing that really speaks to the in between — to the suburbs. Where is New York’s mighty Westchester County, once ground zero for COVID in those early days? What about Chicago’s burbs where Ferris Bueller went ham?”
Scroll to Continue
When you sign up for digital service, sometimes they make it difficult to unsubscribe. by Caroline Sinders
« Previous day | Next day »