May 8, 2019
Manners live in vain
Remember mayochup? The culinary monstersminds at Kraft Heinz have come up with three new condiment combos: Mayomust (mayo + mustard), Mayocue (mayo + barbecue sauce) and the best-named one yet: Kranch (ketchup + ranch dressing). [more inside]
Woman, 88, waved to students from her window for years.
They gathered outside her home for one final goodbye. Tinney Davidson gave her neighborhood 12 years of warm hellos. And now that she is moving to an assisted living facility, they got together to give her the sweetest surprise goodbye. [Watch the short video for an even better "this is great" level boost!]
Oh, No, Not Knotweed!
It grows rapidly. It’s nearly impossible to kill. It’s terrorized England. And now it’s all over American backyards. Knotweed can grow through cracks in cement, between floorboards, and out from the joints in a stone wall. “You can see it everywhere, along the roadside, in every city,” said Jatinder Aulakh, an assistant weed scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. In the landscapes it has infested, it is impossible to imagine what was there before—and harder still to foresee a future without it. “There is no insect, pest, or disease in the United States,” Aulakh said, “that can keep it in check.”
[more inside]
One Film One Shot
ONE FILM / ONE SHOT is a series in which every Friday I post a different shot that amply represents the film it's from - mashed up with "Canis Lupus" from Alexandre Desplat's Fantastic Mr. Fox score
census, eugenics, computers
"A racial category for Chinese was added after railroad companies began importing cheap, exploitable laborers from China. Categories for “mulatto” came after the abolition of slavery caused a panic about the dangers of racial mixing. Questions about mental health and race were first added at the behest of a Southern senator right before the outbreak of Civil War. The results seemed to show that free blacks living in Northern states were on average 11 times more likely to be insane than Southern blacks living in slavery. Such questionable statistics were taken up by Southern politicians to bolster racist theories and argue against abolition." [A longread on Hollerith, eugenics in the US, Nazi Germany and more]
Riding into the sunset.
RIP David Gordon Wilson, 91, known as the father of modern recumbent bicycles. He wrote the bestselling "Bicycling Science" in 1974, now in its third edition. MIT obituary. Boston Globe (limited articles): obituary, feature story on the unsung inventor of the carbon tax.
“Onwards and upwards. Ka-ching.”
Shakedown: Hawaii [YouTube][Game Trailer] “Designer Brian Provinciano’s spiritual successor to 2012’s Retro City Rampage, Shakedown: Hawaii is out today on PS4, Switch, and Vita, and it’s bigger and prettier than its predecessor in almost every way. Its 16-bit sprites flutter in the pixelated winds that blow across its sprawling island, which is several times the size of Rampage’s map. The faded backgrounds and grimy streets of the original have been replaced with electric pinks and balmy palm trees, making the carnage you still leave in your wake feel more like the residue of a gonzo vacation than a Bonnie and Clyde death pact.” [via: Kotaku] [more inside]
We Are Still The 99%
“Occupy was in many, many ways a shit show,” Nicole Carty, a Brooklyn activist who was a facilitator at Occupy, told me. “But it deserves props, it really does, for unleashing this energy.” Occupy Wall Street was seen as a failure when it ended in 2011. But it’s helped transform the American left.
Warning: Linked story contains the word "moist"
Yes, Buying Alcohol Is Still Illegal in Parts of the U.S.: For an estimated 18 million Americans across the country, Prohibition never ended and they’re still prohibited from buying a drink.
“When you show leadership, people will recognize you very fast.”
"At first, Meng hadn’t wanted to get involved in the Resistance. But she made an ideal agent, which is why they recruited her. She traveled a lot for work, and made enough money that she could travel extensively outside of it. ... In 2016, some friends convinced her to start doing them small favors on her travels, little side-trips that wouldn’t take her too far out of her way. Within a year, 25-year-old Meng was planning and executing some of the group’s most ambitious operations while working another job full-time."
How an Augmented Reality Game Escalated into Real-World Spy Warfare
An Indigenous Community Deepens its Roots in San Xavier Farm
After securing much-needed water rights, the co-op farm on the Tohono O’odham reservation is honoring thousands of years of the tribe's farming history. [more inside]
Hire a cleaning co-op? There's an app for that, and they built it
Between 2006 and Aug. 2018, the Center for Family Life helped start fifteen co-ops—ranging from childcare to home repair services—with a total of 534 workers and $11 million in revenue, according to the organization (via Vice | Free Money), with funding from places like the Robin Hood Foundation. In 2016, CFL worked with co-ops to develop their own booking app, to make it easier for customers to engage the service, and it would allow workers to market themselves more easily on social networks. And they would own their own code, with no Silicon Valley “disrupter” skimming profits off the top. When Workers Control the Code (Wired) [more inside]
That's Meta-Country, Bro
Toby Keith (and lots of other Country artists) have recently released songs that, rather being about traditional country music subjects, explain to the listener just how "country" the singer is. Because nothing is cooler than authenticity police with a hectoring tone and a checklist.
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