June 10, 2016
3 heads of the Black Dog, decades of post-techno and futuristic exotica
Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner were mates back in the day, digging into b-boy stuff as it came into England, mixing in sounds from Chicago and Detroit, acid and techno, and making it their own. They released three EPs on their own, and joined Warp Records in 1993 with the iconic album, Bytes, which already showed a fractured nature to the group, with eight different entities attributed for the album and individual tracks, but they wouldn't formally fracture for a few more years. Ken Downie kept The Black Dog, which he named in part for his battle with depression, while Ed and Andy became Plaid. With Plaid's newest album, The Digging Remedy, each now with 11 albums to their names. Read on for more history and tunes. [more inside]
Stop dithering and start dithering
Are you a Sim?
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The Buffalo Hunt
The American bison once faced extinction – now they’re being culled. Native American photographer Joe Whittle attends a hunt held by tribal members [more inside]
"Oh, you go to Hell, Sean."
Actors have to go through a lot of repetitive interviews when they're out promoting a film. So you would imagine they would welcome something totally unique. At least, that's the theory when Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key stopped by the First We Feast YouTube channel several months ago to promote their movie Keanu, discuss their careers... and consume the spiciest chicken wings known to man.
TALES of APPLE ][ GAME CRACKING
The Apple II game Gumball is fairly obscure. Copies are very hard to find in the wild, and cracks are uncommon because of devious copy protection. The brilliant Apple II cracker 4am works at the Internet Archive (previously), and recently broke its copy protection and made it playable online. Along the way he found an easter egg that no one had discovered in 33 years, which was confirmed by the game's developer. [more inside]
Because you catch more flies with honey than vinegar
“The closer you adhere to the most exacting standards of human rights and treatment of prisoners -- what Scharff did -- you will be more effective. Here is a guy who was caught up in a horrible situation he couldn’t walk away from, and his moral standards still allowed him to be successful, perhaps among the most successful interrogators in history.”
Meet Hanns Joachim Scharff, an interrogator for the German Luftwaffe who pioneered interrogation techniques that were intelligent, humane, and also produced significantly better results than the other, much more widely used Nazi interrogation method, physical torture. [more inside]
They're not making any more of it.
100 people/families own approximately 30,000,000 acres of land in the U.S. That's roughly 50,000 sq. miles or the size of New York State. Cable billionaire John Malone comes in at #1 with 2,200,000 acres "because he loves land and his wife loves horses." A close second is Ted Turner with 2,000,000 acres: "His purchase of the Sierra Grande Lodge and Spa brings tourists closer to two of his landmark properties and, ya know, space. Richard Branson’s spaceport is just a quick drive away."
Lifting Bricks
The Liebherr LTM 11200-9.1 is the most powerful mobile crane in the world. Here is a 1:16 scale radio-controlled scale model, with 21 motors, weighing 25 kg - built entirely from Lego.
When the world of the grotesque is known and appreciated
William Mortensen was The Photographer Who Ansel Adams Called the Anti-Christ
He was a trained artist who had initially wanted to be a painter, but who ultimately fell under photography’s spell.
He arrived in Hollywood in 1921 accompanied by 14-year-old Fay Wray, and there started by painting and designing backdrops before moving on to Photography.
His subject matter – which veered towards the savage, indecorous, gothic and grotesque made him a pariah among the puritanical new guard in photography.
A biography in two parts.
He was a trained artist who had initially wanted to be a painter, but who ultimately fell under photography’s spell.
He arrived in Hollywood in 1921 accompanied by 14-year-old Fay Wray, and there started by painting and designing backdrops before moving on to Photography.
His subject matter – which veered towards the savage, indecorous, gothic and grotesque made him a pariah among the puritanical new guard in photography.
A biography in two parts.
Some kind of self made TLA releases hell
Are meat raffles the juciest bar trend?
Natalie Zarrelli at Atlas Obscura considers the question. The Minneapolis Star Tribune takes you inside the juicy world of the meat raffle. John M. Glionna visits a meat raffle in Northern Minnesota for the LA Times and blogger Aaron Brown from Minnesota's Iron Range reacts. From 2006, Elizabeth Gilbert recounts her meat raffle experience while visiting relatives in Brainerd, Minnesota.
Gawker files for bankruptcy
Gawker Media has filed for bankruptcy and will be put up for sale: "Gawker Media filed for bankruptcy on Friday, after saying in Florida court that it cannot pay the $140.1 million awarded to actor Hulk Hogan in a case bankrolled by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel." [more inside]
Storks in the Netherlands
The Stork is a bird that is closely linked to the Netherlands and the traditional Dutch landscape. But it very nearly died out in the Netherlands in the first half of the twentieth century. Many volunteers and the Dutch bird protection society Vogelbescherming Nederland have worked hard for the last forty years to get the stork to come back to the Netherlands to breed. At present, things seem to be going well. The number of breeding pairs has increased, more young birds survive, and the breeding areas are expanding. [more inside]
The current state of CG and motion capture
AICP - 2016 Reel - Dir Cut : a video created using motion capture, procedural animation and dynamic simulations.
Korra 2.0 - Space Lions
Voltron: Legendary Defender returns! From Dreamworks Animation and Studio Mir (of Legend of Korra fame), the 1980s amalgamated hit returns on Netflix in an 11 episode season. Trailer here! [more inside]
Renting in the panopticon
A British startup has created a system for offering landlords continuous surveillance of their tenants' online activity to determine whether they are likely to be asset risks. The system, named Tenant Assured, connects to the tenants' social media accounts and mines their status updates, photos and private messages, feeding them to an algorithmic model, which is claimed to find potential signs of financial stress (which include posts with keywords like “loan” or “staying in”) or crime. The landlord gets an online dashboard, showing the tenant's social connections, and a histogram of their online activity times, as well as flagging up any potential danger signs, as well as a five-factor psychometric profile of the tenant, annotated with what a landlord should look for.
Tony Awards That Let Everyone In on the Joke
This year, Mr. Corden said he hoped to open the Tonys with “a song for, like, the theater kid who lives in Michigan or Nebraska, who just dreams of being on a stage. For them,” he continued, “this night being on TV is everything, and I wonder if we can open our show for them." [more inside]
Mr. Hockey (1928-2016)
Hockey legend Gordie Howe has died. In Gordie's 5 decade career he set records for most seasons and games played as well as #2 for all time career goals.
Fandom Explained
Why We're Terrified of Fanfiction. A response to the assertion that fandom is broken.
All week, Vox has been exploring the world of fandom. [more inside]
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