July 1, 2017
Koshare Indian Museum, appropriation and engineering
La Junta, Colorado is home to the Koshare Kiva, a unique structure that was imagined in 1939 and built over a decade later, where Boy Scout Troop 232 of La Junta and an affiliated co-ed venturing crew can work to be part of the Koshare Indian Dancers, who learn and perform their version of Hopi, Lakota, Kiowa, Ojibwe, Blackfoot, Diné and Comanche religious ceremonies. Beyond this appropriation or theft from native people, the kiva itself is impressive as it is the largest self-supported log roof in the world. In fact, it's a reciprocal frame roof of 620 or 647 repurposed telephone poles. If you're interested in how such a roof is built, here's a Tony Wrench in a video and written form describing how to build one. [more inside]
Film Crit Theory via Transformers
Lindsay Ellis delivers a film theory course via the Transformers movies in The Whole Plate:
1) Film Studies;
2) Auteur Theory
3) Why is it so hard to remember what happens in Transformers?
4) Genre
5) Feminist Theory ...
More to come!
I think we're making history
Louis C.K. presents a trailer for the documentary Check It, about a group of LGBTQ kids in DC who, in response to trans- and homophobic violence, have formed a street gang to protect themselves and each other. (There's a Louis-free version of the trailer at the link as well.) (Content warning: Violence.)
Nucular Negligence
Repeated safety lapses hobble Los Alamos National Laboratory’s work on the cores of U.S. nuclear warheads is the first in a five-part series from Science Magazine and the Center for Public Integrity [more inside]
Whether Tokyo residents can choose another destination remains unknown
"The X Prize Is Now Backing Sci-Fi Like It Backs IRL Science" [Wired]: "Starting [6/28/2017], 22 new science fiction stories go live on the Seat14C website, courtesy of genre luminaries like Margaret Atwood and Charlie Jane Anders. Each story details the future from the perspective of a different passenger on a plane that traveled through a wormhole 20 years into the future." [more inside]
"Every woman in Hollywood was reading for this movie"
Twenty-five years ago today, a sports movie premiered. Everyone expected it to be something a hit, with its crowd of high-powered actors (and even a pop star), immaculate Hollywood pedigree behind the cameras, and perfectly nostalgia-y and Bechdel-Test-passing cred. But not many people probably thought that A League of Their Own would go on to be the highest-grossing baseball movie of all time, nor that it would make the National Baseball Hall of Fame's "Diamond Dreams" exhibit about women in baseball one of the Hall's most popular areas. And yet, it doesn't get its due in discussions about The Greatest Sports Movies Of All Time; allow Katie Baker of The Ringer to explain why that is some hot garbage.
what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing
how to do nothing, a talk given at EYEO 2017 by artist Jenny Odell.
Professor Caveman
Why Bill Schindler is teaching college students to live like early humans Fewer people have mastered basic survival skills today than at any other time in human history.
Schindler is keen to correct the popular conception of our ancestors as ignorant cavemen. People today have “thoroughly domesticated themselves,” he told me. Early humans, by contrast, had to be much more inventive, adept at problem-solving, and subtly attuned to changes in the natural environment. Their need to cooperate made them socially connected, as people nowadays are desperate to be
1,153 results for Board Games : Monopoly
Monopoly (and clones) is available in many editions, such as Bacon-Opoly, Heinz, Brew-Opoly, Cocktail-Opoly, Wine-Opoly, Klingon, Cheerleading, Redneckopoly, Offshore Engineer, Cat Lover's Monopoly, Pug-opoly, Frenchie-Opoly, Yorkie-opoly, Dog-Opoly, Horse Lover's Monopoly, Homeschoolopoly, Anti-Monopoly. [more inside]
Tonight's Episode: More Pricks Than Kicks
Samuel Beckett: avant-garde dramatist, brooding Nobel Prize winner, poet, and…gritty television detective? Sadly, no, but he had the makings of a great one, at least as cut together by playwright Danny Thompson, cofounder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck. Some twenty five years after Beckett’s death, Thompson repurposed Rosa Veim and Daniel Schmid’s footage of the moody genius wandering around 1969 Berlin into the opening credits of a nonexistent, 70s era Quinn Martin police procedural. [via Ayun Halliday, openculture.com] [SLYT]
Hot Dogs, again? Deviled Eggs, meh. Burgers, well. how 'bout..
Easier done than said. Like the origins of most recipes that came from Old Countries to enrich the dinner tables of the Americas, the exact origin of baklava is also something hard to put the finger on because every ethnic group whose ancestry goes back to the Middle East has a claim of their own on this scrumptious pastry. [more inside]
Please Update Your Account to Enable 3rd Party Hosting
Photobucket rolled out a new update to its TOS on June 26th with just a small, innocuous blog post as an announcement. Users have been finding out about it as their embedded images on other sites have turned into placeholders telling them to update their accounts, and as Photobucket has rolled out email notifications telling them that if they want to keep embedding images, they have to pay $399/year. [more inside]
Garlic Analecta
Tide for First Place
Think the Colossus was the first computer? Think again! Taking data from tide gauges, complex mechanical tide prediction devices came into use in the early 1800s. The Doodson-Légé Tide Predicting Machine could calculate tide times and heights simultaneously, and is currently on display at the National Oceanographic Centre in Liverpool
Unsettling Canada 150
Chief Dan George's Lament for Confederation is still relevant 50 years later.
As the official celebrations of Canada's 150th begin, many are (even more than usual) expressing discomfort at flag waving, and choosing instead to discuss the challenges issued by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Canada's failure to address the ongoing violence and injustice of colonialism. [more inside]
Illinois: Another budget deadline passes
Illinois started its third straight fiscal year without a state budget on Saturday, territory that could mean some universities won't be able to offer federal financial aid, road construction and Powerball ticket sales will halt, and the state's credit rating will be downgraded to "junk." (Sarah Burnett/AP) [more inside]
Thank you kindly.
For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, Canada's Sesquicentennial is as good an excuse as any to discover what is arguably* that country's greatest cultural achievment: the television series due South.
Watching due South was my first experience of rulebreaking television—of that strange sense of being inside one person's idiosyncratic vision. A Canadian production, it wasn't a cop show (although there were cops), it wasn't a drama (although there was drama), it wasn't a comedy (although there were jokes). It had morsels of everything and yet was different from them all.*FIGHT ME [more inside]
It's no longer the women who are resigned
Two years ago, Ellen Pao lost her discrimination lawsuit against VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Many women in the startup world became discouraged about speaking out about their experiences, but that has changed radically. In February former Uber engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post detailing harassment at Uber(previously). This inspired an investigation, and others began to share stories of other horrible practices at Uber, eventually leading to founder Travis Kalanick resigning last week (and the resignation of a board member who couldn't help making a sexist joke during a meeting to discuss the allegations). Binary Capital partner Justin Caldbeck resigned shortly thereafter following several women coming forward to report inappropriate behavior toward them while fundraising; Binary has since announced it is shutting down its most recent fund, and two other partners have resigned. On Thursday, VC and Shark Tank investor Chris Sacca published a Medium post about his realization that he has "more work to do". Less than 24 hours later, the New York Times published a report of multiple women coming forward on the record with corroborating documentation to name Chris Sacca and a number of other high-profile VCs in further allegations of sexism, harassment, and inappropriate behavior. [more inside]
When it's lost it's gone.
Train leaves the city, high on the tracks Holocaust central howling at my back..
While lives are lost every day, it is destruction of cities and monuments that drives home the vicious nature of conflict throughout history.
Culturecide also is a word coined in Indian country.
(Credit: Primal Scream).
"235 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal": Sputnik Monroe
Appalachian wrestling's greatest villain, 'The Progressive Liberal,' may be making waves these days with his liberal agenda moves, but let's look back to the man, the myth, the legend: Sputnik Monroe, “235 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal," the most hated wrestler in Memphis, and a champion of integration in the Jim Crow South. [more inside]
"You'll never think about drug addiction the same way again"
What Happens Before Showtime at the New York Met
That Time the TSA Found a Scientist’s 3-D-Printed Mouse Penis
Germany passes marriage equality
On Friday, the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag, passed a bill giving same-sex couples equal marriage rights. Merkel voted no but allowed the vote to happen by freeing the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) from their obligation as a coalition partner not to put the bill forward. [more inside]
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