July 5, 2017
Birdhouse in Her Soul
Beautifully Designed Tiny Houses... For Birds. The houses all started a couple of years ago, when illustrator and wildlife artist Jada Fitch -- also an avid birder -- decided to make a new bird feeder that could provide a more interesting backdrop for her photos. For the first house, "She carved out a door and windows, and attached a little porch on the front of the structure to act as a perch. She then added the interior décor: painted throw rugs, framed ‘portraits’ of bird family members, and cardboard couches and armchairs, creating a whimsical living room in the process. Lastly and most importantly, she scattered seed across the furniture and floor and Duct taped the house to her window." Her sense of humor is evident in a post of her latest bird feeder: Agent Cooper's Hawk at Twin Beaks' Black Lodge. [more inside]
Me, I'm from Pretzelvania
The Foodnited States of America. Execution by Foodiggity, original concept by Mr. Foodiggity's son. Puns of arguable but mostly winsome deliciousness. Taste the absurd levity.
Stevie Ryan, 1984-2017
Stevie Ryan, YouTube and online comedian, died Saturday of an apparent suicide. See also appreciation on Comic's Comic (which includes link to her Intervention parody). YouTube channel.
Quiz: See How Well You Can Draw All 50 States
It is addicting. To come: gifs of many attempts to draw the same state
Spirits in the Medicinal World
"Remote Presence" by Susan Palwick (Lightspeed, April 2017) is an SF/F novelette that draws heavily on the author's experience as a spiritual-care volunteer in an ER: "Every three years, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations conducted a weeklong on-site accreditation survey of each hospital in the country. The survey was thorough, merciless, and struck apocalyptic terror into hospital administrators ... Roxanne blew out a sharp breath. 'We can't have revenants in the building. That's one of the requirements.'" Spiritual Care Volunteers: A Training Resource [PDF] is a manual produced by NHS Wales that offers more practical insight into healthcare chaplaincy.
Who's a good graduate? You are!
As the school year is almost up, seniors are finally receiving their yearbooks. And when the 18-year-old Diana Bloom from Stafford High School in Falmouth, Virginia, has received hers, she noticed that among all the students, there was another graduate – Alpha the dog!Alpha was just one among many service dogs who have appeared in their humans' yearbooks.
Chicago to make post-graduation plans a requirement for high schoolers
“Students will soon have to show that they've secured a job or received a letter of acceptance to college, a trade apprenticeship, a gap year program or the military in order to graduate”
- Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago: “We are going to help kids have a plan, because they're going to need it to succeed. You cannot have kids think that 12th grade is done.”
- Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union: “It sounds good on paper, but the problem is that when you've cut the number of counselors in schools, when you've cut the kind of services that kids need, who is going to do this work? If you've done the work to earn a diploma, then you should get a diploma. Because if you don't, you are forcing kids into more poverty.”
Centuries of Sound
"Centuries of Sound is an attempt to produce a set of mixes for every year of recorded sound. Starting in 1860, a mix will be posted every month until we catch up with the present day. So far we are still in the very early days, where a very limited selection of recordings are available, but as we get into the 20th century I hope to include the widest possible spread, both in terms of geography and genre. This will mean that experts will be required. If you are interested in putting yourself forward as an expert on Rembetika, early microtonal recordings, French political speeches, Tagore songs or anything else, then please do drop me a line..." [more inside]
“We want to share this book with people all over the world,” he said.
TODAY: United States Files Civil Action To Forfeit Thousands Of Ancient Iraqi Artifacts Imported By Hobby Lobby [justice.gov] [more inside]
"I love what I do and I love the Sea."
Alexander Semenov (previously) is a marine biologist, specialising in invertebrate animals, and the Head of the Divers’ team at Moscow State University’s White Sea Biological Station. "My personal goal is to study underwater life through camera lenses and to boost people’s interest in marine biology by sharing all my finding through social media and in real life through public lectures, movies, exhibitions and media events." View hundreds of his stunning underwater photos on Flickr. [via]
Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub
Antisocial Coding: My Year at GitHub — Coraline Ada Ehmke recounts her experiences as part of GitHub's Community and Safety team (previously). "GitHub touts its values, but has consistently failed to live up to them. Values that are expressed but that don't change behavior are not really values, they are lies that you tell yourself."
Our faces give us away
A study by social psychologists shows that people can reliably tell if someone is richer or poorer than average just by looking at a neutral face without any expression. Their conclusion is that emotions mask life-long habits of expression that become etched on a person's face even by their late teens or early adulthood, such as frequent happiness, which is stereotypically associated with being wealthy and satisfied.
"Over time, your face comes to permanently reflect and reveal your experiences," says Rule. "Even when we think we're not expressing something, relics of those emotions are still there." [more inside]
What football will look like in the future
Something is terribly wrong. Jon Bois (previously) starts a new series on the future, football and the future of football.
The Rec Center
The Rec Center is a weekly email newsletter about fandom that comes out every Friday, with links and discussion of fandom news, fanart, and fanfiction recs. [more inside]
Galt's Goof
Usually, libertarians trying to organize don't do very well: The Libertarian Utopia That’s Just a Bunch of White Guys on a Tiny Island
But sometimes they succeed. And that's when things really go bad: The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise
But sometimes they succeed. And that's when things really go bad: The Short, Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise
We can clearly see craters on the Moon.
2bit Astrophotography with the Game Boy Camera Alexander Pietrow, an astronomy and instrumentation student of Leiden University in the Netherlands, recently used a Game Boy Camera combined with a telescope to capture images of the Moon and infinities beyond.
The House of Lee
Once upon a time, there lived a king in his castle, with his wife and three children: Dragon, Ram and Jade. He ruled with iron grip and firm hand, and under his ever-watchful eye the kingdom grew prosperous and his House grew fat. When he grew old of age, he handed his sceptre to the eldest Dragon, who ruled in his stead, and his honour. The day came when the old king died, and his subjects mourned him, weeping, lining the streets in the rain to pay their last respects. It was a moment of many passions, but little did the people know what trouble was sown that torrentuous day. [more inside]
"I will get my revenge!"
The Best and Worst of '80s Ninja Video Games [Den of Geek] “Saboteur? BMX Ninja? Ninja Golf? Shadow Warriors? The Last Ninja? We dissect the ninja videogames of the 1980s. As with the movies, not every game with 'Ninja' in the title could guarantee actual quality ninja content but I was willing to take the risks. I saved my pocket money and slavishly bought everything I could. It was tough at times but, if enduring the highs and the lows of ninja gaming served any practical purpose at all, it at least laid the groundwork for me to write this article. So let’s take a look, starting from the bottom, at the best and worst of '80s ninja games...”
You know it’s a racket, but you click anyway.
"The effortlessly chic French woman is one of the most persistent tropes in our lifestyle landscape. Sixty years after a young, unapologetically sexual Brigitte Bardot danced her way into the pop culture canon in the film ...And God Created Woman, publications like Vogue, Into the Gloss, and Who What Wear now publish a steady stream of articles on the supposedly superior and increasingly specific ways that French women dress, do their hair, eat, exercise, and fall in love." How to Sell A Billion Dollar Myth Like A French Girl (from Eliza Brooke at Racked).
Lawmakers taped up signs declaring their offices a "Dental Free Zone"
Q: What group did one Maine legislator describe as having "power right up there with the NRA", saying they "do everything they can to protect their interests — and they have money"?
A: Dentists. [more inside]
A: Dentists. [more inside]
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