May 27, 2014
Quitting Opium Song 戒煙歌 and other classics
Antique Shanghai Pop Music 1930-1949 Downloadable mp3 episodes chock full of wonderful music with delightful commentary from Ling. [more inside]
The Dennis Miller Ratio
Frank Rich takes a look at conservative comedians and the late-night comedy landscape.
The war to end...what?
A century ago, mankind fought a war "To End all Wars". The scars and reliquaries from that time still endure today.
It skips around, but don't expect Žižek any time soon
In Theory is a column in Ceasefire Magazine that introduces and reflects on major figures in cultural/political/literary theory (Agamben 1 2; Althusser 1 2; Amin 1 2; Appadurai 1; Aristotle 1 2; Badiou 1 2; Bakhtin 1 2; Bakunin 1 2 3; Barthes 1 2 3 4 5 6; Baudrillard 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14; Benjamin 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8; Deleuze 1; and Marcuse 1) in addition to discussing general topics such as anarchism, asymmetrical war, autonomism, commodity fetishism, global cities, local knowledge, peacekeeping, and precarity.
Google unveils a self-driving car
Today Google unveiled their purpose-built self-driving car prototype, complete with no steering wheel, brake, or gas pedals. You just jump in, and go. The demo video is pretty impressive, and even the funnier Kara Swisher video of her first ride makes it look kind of fun. [more inside]
He eats spiders so that you don't have to.
"'average person eats 3 spiders a year' factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted". Spiders Georg provides statistical explanation for one of the most commonly mis-represented scientific 'facts' promulgated for years. Although the math may be a little off and Georg may in fact be consuming many more spiders. You can read more from the man himself if you want to know more about the spider eating life.
Meet Scott Boras, the superagent who scored the Nats their top talent
I said, ‘I will not! And, don’t you dare touch me.'
Stormé DeLarverie, drag king, activist and veteran of the Stonewall rebellion, has died at the age of 93. [more inside]
Fordite, the colorful faux-stone of the Detroit Motor Age
Fordite, also known as Motor Agate or Detroit Agate, is a relic from the old technique for painting cars: spray enamel paint and bake it on, layer after layer, car after car. The resulting overspray on the tracks and skids that carried the cars and parts would build up over time, and eventually need to be removed to allow everything to move smoothly. That enamel waste product is now valued to make colorful jewelry, seen here, here and here. This spray enamel process is outdated, with electro coating (or more formally, electrophoretic deposition) prevailing as a much more efficient process. Sure, it looks modern, but where's the fun in it?
Popular musicians somewhat embarassing pre-fame Heavy Metal bands.
Before there was Weezer, there was Zoom (nee-Avant Garde), Rivers Cuomo's poodle haired progressive metal band.
Before there was Mr. Bungle performing at the 1986 Eureka High School Talent Show [previously], there was Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn in the glammy Gemini performing at the 1984 Eureka High School Talent Night.
And perhaps most legendarily, before there was Pantera. There was Pantera.
Before there was Mr. Bungle performing at the 1986 Eureka High School Talent Show [previously], there was Mike Patton and Trevor Dunn in the glammy Gemini performing at the 1984 Eureka High School Talent Night.
And perhaps most legendarily, before there was Pantera. There was Pantera.
Don't be satisfied with s*** that is less inventive than Vine.
...for everyone who contributed too much to MeFi and ran out of money
Poorcraft is on the Web. The acclaimed comic book guide to "living well on less", written by C. Spike "Templar, Arizona" Trotman* and drawn by Diana "Intrepid Girlbot" Nook, after two years in print, is getting a second life as a free webcomic**, publishing a page a day for the next five months. So don't declare insolvency until you've gotten all the moneysaving tips! Recommended by notable MeFites. [more inside]
Paleo-pedantry
Dimetrodon is not a dinosaur! Sorry to ruin your childhood yet again, but it's not even a reptile. It's a synapsid, which makes it one of our cousins. [more inside]
Chinese Lianhuanhua: A Century of Pirated Movies
Before bootleg DVDs, western movies were adapted into Lianhuanhua: linked picture books that could be bought or rented. While many stories were told, and many movies were "pirated" in this way, one of particular interest is Star Wars. [more inside]
Peanut Butter
Peanut Butter, home made. Alton Brown shows you how to make peanut butter. All you need is a wok and a food processor (and, of course some peanuts, and some peanut oil, and a little salt).
You KNOW you're going to try this.
Massimo Vignelli 1931-2014
"on the lands recently abandoned by rebel leaders"
To enforce his orders—and to make Arlington uninhabitable for the Lees—Meigs evicted officers from the mansion, installed a military chaplain and a loyal lieutenant to oversee cemetery operations, and proceeded with new burials, encircling Mrs. Lee's garden with the tombstones of prominent Union officers. The first of these was Capt. Albert H. Packard of the 31st Maine Infantry. Shot in the head during the Battle of the Second Wilderness, Packard had miraculously survived his journey from the Virginia front to Washington's Columbian College Hospital, only to die there. On May 17, 1864, he was laid to rest where Mary Lee had enjoyed reading in warm weather, surrounded by the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine. By the end of 1864, some 40 officers' graves had joined his.So what's more fitting after Memorial Weekend to read about than how the US government took over Robert E. Lee's very own mansion and turned it into the nation's foremost military cemetery to honour the Union's war death?
Harder than pressing ↓↘→ + Punch.
Street Fighter: Assassin's Fist is a live-action web series in 13 episodes about the origins of Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Gōken. Official site. [more inside]
The Bronze Buckaroo Rides Into the Sunset (probably)
Herb Jeffries, 'The Bronze Buckaroo' and cowboy crooner, has died. So it totally depends on the source, but he was somewhere between 100-111 years old; he was born in Detroit, or maybe Chicago. He was African-American, Sicilian-American, Irish-Sicilian, 'part Ethiopian' or something else. He grew up with both parents and a younger brother, or his father died before he was born and he was raised in the boardinghouse his mother owned --- or was it a bordello? He was married either four or five times, including once to exotic dancer Tempest Storm. He is survived by at least three daughters and two sons.
Herb Jeffries was a jazz singer with both Duke Ellington's and Earl "Fatha" Hines' bands, the first black 'cowboy crooner' on so-called 'Negro Circuit' films (including starring with Mantan Moreland in Harlem on the Prairie), a 'luscious' tenor and/or a 'smooth, warm' baritone, and the owner of jazz nightclubs in Paris and the south of France.
We might as well start with gay sex
How Children What?
"John Holt and Paul Tough are a half-century apart. Both were interested in children and how they learned. One wrote a book called How Children Learn, the other a book called How Children Succeed. Their juxtaposition has a lot to tell us about how we think about and treat our young people."
Alternate Visions
Some Musings on Diversity in SF by Vandana Singh: "The best speculative fiction, like travel, does that to you – it takes you to strange places, from which vantage point you can no longer take your home for granted. It renders the familiar strange, and the strange becomes, for the duration of the story, the norm. The reversal of the gaze, the journey in the shoes of the Other, is one of the great promises of speculative fiction. " (Previously)
"Je suis très, très fier"
Portrait of a Young Man with Down Syndrome. A father reflects on his son's search for employment.
Greetz
My team worked for months on this post.
Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become increasingly crowded with branded accounts seeking their attention. Every few seconds, your favorite brands are tweeting at you. But what most people don't know is how much time and effort goes into curating these accounts, writing tweets, and filling your news feed with content people actually want to see. For instance, it can take a team of 13 social media and advertising specialists up to 45 days to plan, create, approve, and publish a corporate social media post. The story of Huge Inc. and President Cheese.
“To Harold. For The Ashes. From a Grateful Skipper.”
Jardine told me to stand at short cover-point and just stare at Bradman Charming interview with Harold Larwood, a name synonymous with life-threatening fast bowling, from 1993. Ey oop!
Renaissance Man
Judge William “Banana Bill” Sheffield has never shied away from his ambitions. After graduating from Cal State–Long Beach with a degree in philosophy, he worked with former classmate Steven Spielberg on a yearlong film project, but just didn’t see promise in Hollywood. As a law student at UC–Berkeley, Sheffield successfully sued Pope Paul VI over a St. Bernard puppy that was never delivered to him from a monastery in Switzerland. At one point he even served as legal counsel for embattled Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. But none of this would compare to an invention he created in hopes of truly changing the world: the banana slicer.
BBC Assessment of World Cup Groups
The BBC assesses the World Cup Groups: Group A/ Group B/Group C/Group D/Group E/Group F/Group G/Group H. [more inside]
Infused with the personality of the neighborhood
Designer Adam Chang rode New York's trains for 20 hours, using 9 swipes to visit 118 stations, to bring you the NY Train Project.
The Woman Who Put the Soul in "Sanctified"
When you first hear the opening seconds of the song “Sanctified,” by Rick Ross, your instinct might be to give credit to Kanye West, who co-produced it, for finding one of the most breathtaking vocal samples in hip-hop history. Even if you’ve never really listened to old gospel music, the melody seems like a recovered treasure, recorded by a woman with a voice weathered by air that no longer circulates on this earth. None of that is true, though: “Sanctified,” the best track on Ross’s new album, “Mastermind,” and probably the best rap song of the year so far, is not built around a rediscovered sample. Instead, the song owes its existence to a last-minute favor called in to the soul singer Betty Wright, late one night in February, just as Wright was drifting off to sleep in her chair after a long day of vocal coaching. - This piece takes a look at Betty Wright, legendary singer, and coach/mentor to many of today's rappers [more inside]
190lbs of Mustache
From Ianyan Magazine and elsewhere comes: The Legend of Ali Baba: The Incredible True Story of Armenian Genocide Survivor and World Wrestling Champ Harry Ekizian [more inside]
More like the Internet of Surveillance
The more the Internet of Things knows about you, the more that insurance companies are able to slurp that data and incentivize you to walk the straight and narrow. [more inside]
The Internet With a Human Face
"These big collections of personal data are like radioactive waste. It's easy to generate, easy to store in the short term, incredibly toxic, and almost impossible to dispose of. Just when you think you've buried it forever, it comes leaching out somewhere unexpected." A talk by Maciej Ceglowski, founder of Pinboard, about why we have Big Data and why it's frightening. [more inside]
Na na na na nah-na, na na na na na
Former Journey vocalist Steve Perry hasn't performed publicly since 1995. Until yesterday. [more inside]
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