July 5, 2018
Black Outsider Art
The law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges
Chris McGreal in The Guardian blames Amazon for Seattle's endemic homelessness problem (Is Bezos holding Seattle hostage?); Dae Shik Kim Hawkins in The Atlantic (An App for Ejecting the Homeless) examines the intersection of the issue with technology via the city's mobile reporting app; Charles Mudede at The Stranger has opinions about the city government's action and lack thereof (The City of Seattle Appears to Dislike The Atlantic Story on Our City's Homeless Crisis and Anti-Homeless App). [more inside]
Clothing on the dot
A new company is trying to make literally custom clothes for any body. Right now it's only jeans and T-shirts, but they use different size rivets to scale with the jeans. [more inside]
"We are chaos. We are the teeth of dragons, shed like seeds."
"The Testimony of Dragon's Teeth" (Uncanny, March/April 2018) is a brief new addition to Sarah Monette's bookish, M.R. James-ian or Carnacki/John Silence-like series of occult investigation short stories, "The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth," several others of which are online: "Wait for Me," "The Replacement," "White Charles," "The Yellow Dressing Gown," and "To Die For Moonlight." Monette is perhaps more well-known for writing The Goblin Emperor as Katherine Addison, under which name she has also co-written with Elizabeth Bear an upcoming historical mystery (relevant to her research specialty) that has sometimes been called, "Kit Marlowe, Boy Detective."
"Okay, but I'm gonna need you to write me a receipt."
All right, friends, gather round (or maybe mute me for the next hour or so), because it's just me and a bottle of local rum for this 4th of July afternoon and I'm waiting until later this evening to watch Captain America for the 97th time, so I'mma give you all a DRUNK HISTORY.In which @lasrina discusses the American Revolution, Fort Macon, Sergeant William Henry Alexander, Josiah Pender, and "how a 50-year-old dude with no backup and no firepower can use bureaucracy to be a hero." [more inside]
This Dude Still Abides
Achiever and Founder of Lebowski Fest Will Russell has struggled with mental health, addiction, media and an abandoned amusement park but now he's back with a new project.
But the topic here was wolves, and that weaponized everything.
Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf Scientist? "Rob Wielgus was one of America’s pre-eminent experts on large carnivores. Then he ran afoul of the enemies of the wolf." (slnyt)
THIS IS IRAQ
Baby genius, look how you've grown. Where do you go from here?
Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives: A BBC documentary about the man who first proposed the multiverse hypothesis academically and his rock star son.
The many worlds concept in quantum physics permeates modern popular culture (also metafilter). While it had been considered in science fiction (notably, by Jorge Luis Borges, who many believe influenced the theory), it was first formally proposed by Hugh Everett in 1957. His son is the main creative force in the band the Eels.
The many worlds concept in quantum physics permeates modern popular culture (also metafilter). While it had been considered in science fiction (notably, by Jorge Luis Borges, who many believe influenced the theory), it was first formally proposed by Hugh Everett in 1957. His son is the main creative force in the band the Eels.
Pounded in the butt by my anxiety over making a clever post title
With the "Chuck Tingle Humbles Our Bundle" book bundle you can get a finely curated collection of e-book erotic "tinglers", while also supporting the It Gets Better project. [more inside]
The Trap: Modern-day slavery
The Guardian takes a look at the burgeoning sex trafficking industry abusing incarcerated women in the US. The documentary (ten parts of 3 minutes each) is available for free online here.
The universality of free fall
Apollo 15 astronaut David Scott showed that a hammer and feather fell at the same rate on the Moon, a modern update to an experiment that Galileo probably didn't actually perform. But if E/c^2 = m, does gravitational binding energy also fall in a gravitational field in the same way as regular mass? Replace the feather with a white dwarf, the hammer with a neutron star, the Moon with another white dwarf, and let's find out! (Cute 3:50 video.) [more inside]
lasting dominance in the stateside ice cream cocktail arena
“One, you have a state that loves to drink. Wisconsin has a great thirst. Two, it’s America’s dairy land. If they can find a way to shove milk, cheese or ice cream into something else, they will do it. Third, the blender was invented there. It’s only natural that ice cream drinks are going to come out of that.” About Those Classic Ice Cream Cocktails: From a 1930s mix of "Chablis, gin and ice cream" to the Midwest’s beloved Pink Squirrel, a look at the evolution of the ice cream cocktail.
Westworld Timeline Explained
Symbols of humanity
For more than a decade, Mr. Kiefer worked as a janitor at the Customs and Border Protection center in Why, Ariz., before leaving in 2014. There, he collected tens of thousands of items that were confiscated and thrown in the trash by Border Patrol agents from undocumented migrants crossing the border from Mexico into the United States. He began photographing the items in 2007.
“I couldn’t leave them,” he said.
His direct object is the establishment of an absolute Tyranny
A day after the 242nd anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the former American colonies of the British Empire now see its executive branch headed by a figure reminiscent of the king they overthrew. And the British aren't looking forward to his approaching visit, either. [more inside]
Would you rather be told to smile or to calm down?
Browser extension Stylish phones home with urls you visit
The web browser extension Stylish can help you customize the CSS of any page you visit. By default, it also sends the url of every page you visit, along with an ID unique to you, to its new owner. [more inside]
“What if the fault lies in the nature of the corporate product itself?”
How video games demonize fat people [The Outline] “When I encounter the fat body in a video game, the disappointment that follows is so hot and pure that there is, as a matter of self-care, an urgent need to remove myself from the moment and get on a plane. I refuse to accept that in the world of prestige video games — AAA in industry speak — a body like mine and those of the people I love and admire, can only exist in one of two ways: a cheap laugh or a site of disgust, usually both. [...] In 2018, the AAA video game remains our most persuasive and powerful cultural product. And yet it almost exclusively depicts the fat body, my body, as a noxious threat, a monstrosity, an object of ridicule, something to be dealt with violently.” [more inside]
It's the work of the next 20 years. Good thing I'm only 100.
potofsoup has posted a Captain America birthday comic each year since 2014.
This year's features the statue of liberty. [more inside]
Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it in for me!
From the notorious to the half-forgotten, Queens of Infamy, a Longreads series by Anne Thériault, focuses on badass world-historical women of centuries past. [more inside]
We can dance, we can dance
The long hot crazy summer of rave... 500 years ago. The Dancing plague of Strasbourg in 1518 [more inside]
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