May 25, 2019
"You can’t just look for bees with their eyes closed"
Dr. Universe tells you about sleeping bees. Photographer Joe Neely took an adorable picture of some.
the most common violent crime for which police officers are arrested
If domestic abuse is one of the most underreported crimes, domestic abuse by police officers is virtually an invisible one. It is frighteningly difficult to track or prevent—and it has escaped America’s most recent awakening to the many ways in which some police misuse their considerable powers. Very few people in the United States understand what really happens when an officer is accused of harassing, stalking, or assaulting a partner.
A Poisoner's Book
For all your sneaky poisoning needs: "A curious late 19th century concoction, using an inconspicuous mid-17th-century volume of theology in a slightly later binding to conceal a miniature chest of drawers with space for four bottles measuring up to ca. 10 cms. The German-language drawer labels bear the names of poisonous plants: banewort, Devil's snare, hemlock, wormwood, henbane and foxglove, among others. The pastedown bears a large memento-mori illustration with a Latin quote from the Epistle to the Hebrews (9:27): "Statutum est hominibus semel mori" ("All men are destined to die once")."
like the nucleus of a cell, it grows, the colors are clustered around it
On Chance in Artistic Creation - an 1894 essay by August Strindberg paired with paintings by Strindberg. [more inside]
blue_beetle was right.
Fortnite is basically a giant, endless advertisement now [Polygon] “Last year, playing Fortnite largely meant hopping onto a make-believe island in the hope of surviving against 99 other players. This year, Fortnite isn’t as divorced from the real world — there are constant tie-ins that encourage people to buy, or at least engage with brands and products. To play Fortnite in 2019 is to be enmeshed in advertisements.” [more inside]
Shields made of bark
According to Julius Caeser, the Gauls had "shields made of bark or interwoven wickers, which they hastily covered over with skins." But no bark shields from the period have ever been found--until now. [more inside]
Goat. LARP.
The Jibe-iT goat farm in Redding, CT, USA, is hosting what may be the world's first GOAT LARP this June. Not a Live Action Role Playing game (LARP) where you play a goat, but a LARP for the goats: "Goat Larp is a 1 day live action roleplaying event at a goat farm in southern Connecticut. Attend in-costume as any character you want and help run live adventures for the goats."
Discards, dumping, downsizing, and the afterlife of our stuff
"I slowly began to understand that people in consumption-based societies assemble their identities via stuff, and become very emotional when those identities – and that stuff- is discarded in ways that don’t match their values. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that consumers actually care more about how their stuff is discarded, than how it is manufactured." Adam Minter discusses where stuff comes from, and how we feel about where it goes, in an interview with Discard Studies.
The Songs Of The Summer
In which NPR examines the concept of "The Song Of The Summer" and provides a Spotify playlist of their 100 songs of the summer since 1962, plus a list of the top songs (2-6 per year) they they've defined as one of that year's Songs Of The Summer. [more inside]
Includes Venger
rrrrrrr.ru?
Russian website features weekly long-form profiles of pets (so far two cats and a dog), along with quality photos and videos of the subjects going about their activities. There are sidebars on topics like proper veterinary care, adopting from shelters, and leash-walking cats. [more inside]
No Moon and Flat Calm
A new short story about panic in space by Elizabeth Bear. Each month, Future Tense Fiction—a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives—publishes a story on a theme. The theme for April–June 2019: space settlement. [more inside]
history type things, quite cool
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