June 23, 2021
Turing Complete
Britain's spy agency honours codebreaker Turing in giant artwork - "Britain's GCHQ spy agency has installed a giant multicoloured artwork to celebrate codebreaker and mathemetician Alan Turing, who helped turn the tide of World War Two against Nazi Germany but was persecuted for being gay." (previously) [more inside]
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Teen Vogue Presents GLAAD's 20 Under 20 2021: The LGBTQ Youth Shaping the Future [Teen Vogue] Single page with photos and bios. Quite a group of young people!
The Summer of Sparks
Is 2021 the year that the world finally catches up with Sparks, the weirdly wonderful, inventive, cheeky, and genre-spanning pop band formed by brothers Ron and Russell Mael in 1967? All signs point to yes. The Sparks Brothers, a new documentary by Edgar Wright, has been released to strongly favorable reviews (NY Times; LA Times; Rotten Tomatoes). And the musical film Annette — starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, with songs and screenplay written by the Mael brothers — will debut at Cannes on July 6, with a U.S. release later this summer. [more inside]
How I Escaped The Alt-Right
One Youtuber's trip into, and then out of, Youtube's alt-right ecosystem. (SLYT)
The software has been successfully uninstalled.
John McAfee found dead in Spanish prison hours after his extradition to the US was approved. NPR story. (Warning, suicide references) [more inside]
What should we do with Canada Day?
On July 1, celebratory Canada Day events are typically held across the country. This year, after the discovery of the remains of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, BC, and the deadly attack on a Muslim family in Ontario, the Toronto Star asks Indigenous and Muslim community members, “Should Canada Day be a point of celebration? Or a day of mourning and sombre reflection?” This is not a new question; once again, Idle No More reminds us that “Canada remains a country that has built its foundation on the erasure and genocide of Indigenous nations.” Victoria, BC has already cancelled its planned Canada Day celebrations, as have a growing number of other cities and towns across Canada. [more inside]
Conan's Irish goodbye
for 28 years in late night, you talk to someone, you do six minutes, you break, music, then you come back, you do another seven or eight minutes, you’re looking for the funny line to get out Whatever the medium is, what’s the format where I get to still be a kid? If there’s one message you take away from this, it’s that late-night comedy has kept me childlike, but the trick to that is you have to keep changing it up and keep looking for the next iteration and keep looking for the next format and keep looking for the new outlet.
Highway to Hell
Electric Vehicles Won’t Save Us. "Cars, however they’re powered, are environmentally cataclysmic, break the tethers of community, and force an infrastructure of dependency that is as financially ruinous to our country as it is dangerous to us as people."
Primož Roglič and the Power of Second Chances
A profile of champion cyclist Primož Roglič who “used to be nobody—a failed ski jumper, a college dropout, a janitor, a dreamer,” written by former internet phenom and architecture critic Kate Wagner: “I’m in this process of changing careers. I write mostly about architecture and design, but I started to get tired of it. Once I discovered writing about cycling, I was like, ‘Whoa, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’ I guess I’m kind of in the process of quitting ski jumping of my own right now.”
I'll get to this soon.
Why You Procrastinate. It has nothing to do with self-control or time-management.
Jonathan's Space Report
Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Since 1989, he has self-published Jonathan's Space Report, a monthly free web-based newsletter that recaps launches of satellites, reentries and launches of manned spacecraft, and other recent spaceflight activity. [more inside]
"I hate to say I told you so."
India Walton claims upset in Buffalo mayoral race (from the Buffalo News): Speaking with reporters late Tuesday, Walton was asked if she considers herself to be a socialist. Her response: "Oh, absolutely. The entire intent of this campaign is to draw down power and resources to the ground level and into the hands of the people."
[more inside]
100 Visions of Parenthood
A collection of photographs and words celebrating the complexities of motherhood and fatherhood (via Kottke).
The sex was the easy part. Everything else kept getting in the way.
To the Last Man was a 2008 gay pornographic western (title taken from the 1921 novel by Zane Grey) with a budget of about US $200,000. Dan Cardone wrote about working as a grip on the production, which featured numerous action sequences, real guns and live ammunition, and the deaths of all but one of the characters (YT death montage, CW: one shirtless dude, many graphic and ridiculous murders, 144p -- does not contain any actual porn). [more inside]
Cultural Change ... and yoghurt
Story with a happier ending and a lot of hard-case humor on Radio NZ this morning, essentially two mates went off the rails big time and discovered yoghurt-making in jail while viewing a Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall show.
That's it really but well worth reading to the end about the yoghurt mafia.
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