January 15, 2016
Marriage is like money – seem to want it, and you’ll never get it
'Silver Fork' or Fashionable Novels are the largely forgotten English popular novels of the 1820s and 30s which depicted aristocratic life and scandals as a how-to guide for rising middle-class readers while also exploring growing political and class anxieties in the post-Regency. Advice on how to romance, eat, party and raise children like a member of the upper class from Silver Fork novels via Bizarre Victoria (previously).
"I don't want to be what's broken."
Jake Roper from Vsauce3 talks about the frustration of recovery, creativity, and limitations. [more inside]
Flip and Rewind
Rashida Jones channels TLC, SWV, and MJB to take us all back to the 90s Because it's Friday and I want us to have nice things too.
One wore a shirt that extolled the virtues of waterboarding.
It was, in some sense, intended to be a memorial. People filtered into the stadium under giant waving flags on the stadium’s external jumbotrons. But once inside, they were greeted with the giant floating head of John Krasinski, better known as Jim from The Office, who plays the movie’s protagonist, a security contractor named Jack Da Silva.I Watched Michael Bay's Benghazi Movie at Cowboys Stadium With 30,000 Pissed-Off Patriots
When [Krasinski] was interviewed on the stadium’s immense on-field red carpet, as part of the pre-show, he spoke about working with the real-life Da Silva to develop his character. A man in front of me groaned. “Oh, so now we know that character doesn’t die,” he said. “Great spoiler, dude.” Yes: Jim from The Office spoiled Benghazi.
Symphony No. 4
Perhaps you remember Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 "Symphony Of Sorrowful Songs", which became a surprise international hit after a BBC DJ played its haunting first movement in its entirety one day, shocking and surprising everyone with its slowly building fugue of energy that peaked with the entrance of Dawn Upshaw's soprano voice and then slowly ebbed back down into nothingness again like a musical palindrome. Well, now for something completely different: NPR brings us the a First Listen to the posthumously completed (by his son, from a piano score with notes for orchestration) Symphony No. 4, "Tansman Episodes", which NPR says "pounds, growls, swaggers and confounds."
Absolutely Fabulous
Sweetie Darling, there's a movie coming. But maybe you've wondered about Jennifer Saunders. What has she done since? Well, there's Jam and Jerusalem. And, there's Vivienne Vyle. Now, a little Bolly? Just a smidge.
Attention, New York Wankers
"A sex toy company created a tiny male masturbation fort in New York City. No, we don't condone it.
On Tuesday, Hot Octopuss erected what it called a "GuyFi" booth on 28th Street and 5th Avenue in New York City, where men could, in theory, go to "relieve stress.""
brb getting a tattoo that says "The Hammock District"
Post-car culture: broader implications to a driverless society
How driverless cars will change cities: a 9 minute video from CBC News' The National, covering Morgan Stanley's 2014 prediction for the end of car culture as we have known it (PDF) due to the convergence of driverless cars and "sharing culture" technology like Uber (who will be testing their system soon), and idea that people would be less inclined to own their own driverless vehicle, gien that personally owned passenger vehicles are parked 95% of the time, all of which will mean potentially significant changes in how urban spaces are planned and designed. [more inside]
“Randolph Tech,” Mr. Newburger said, making up another college.
The (completely fake) 1941 football season of the (completely fake) Plainfield Teachers College.
Right to the midsection...
Follow Friday: @WWESubway uses professional wrestling GIFs to illustrate the vast panoply of experiences and emotions of the Subway sandwich shop aficionado. [more inside]
Where Your Country and My Country Eat Together
Saigon Deli Sandwich and Taco Valparaiso offers a lesson in cross-cultural communication. In 2011, Tony Torres, who owned a taqueria, approached Dieu Ngo, who owned the Saigon Deli banh mi shop, with a proposition that they join forces. The result was a classic multi-cultural fusion, and a budding romance.
Fable Friday: Venus and the kitty cat
“I hope it rains for the entire weekend.”
Stuck on Eden
Matt Schneider, who writes for the Christian publication Mockingbird, achieved a bit of viral fame back in 2014 when he wrote a critical assessment of Thomas Kinkade's body of work. He received some passionate responses from Kinkade's fans, which prompted a followup. Now, a year after that first response, Google has seen fit to push his original article near the top of hits for Kinkade searches, so he decided to take one more look at the beloved Christian painter: "Critical Thoughts on the Evangelical Embrace of Thomas Kinkade’s Escapist Art".
"It is an ugly fish. That's why I like it."
when the facts change...
Mathematics For The End Of Time
Interned in a Polish prison camp during World War II, French composer Olivier Messaien composed Quartet for the End of Time. To mark the 75th anniversary of its premiere at the camp, animator Simon Russell and mathematician Marcus du Sautoy have created a vlisualisation for the first movement, 'Crystal Liturgy'.
Mail Order Brides
"Marcia Zug is an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina who specializes in family law. She is writing a book due out in May 2016 on the international marriage industry, called 'Buying a Bride: An Engaging History of Mail-Order Matches.' The reason that mail-order brides continue to be popular, she tells me, is that conditions for women in some countries remain bleak, and as long as women have few prospects for a good match at home, they will look elsewhere for someone to start a family and life with. [more inside]
Working outside in the cold at the ISS
Britain's first official astronaut, Tim Peake, is hard at work today outside the International Space Station on a spacewalk, going on live as of 10:40am EST. [more inside]
Haydn's 107 symphonies
Joseph Haydn wrote a total of 107 symphonies, and is known as the 'Father of the Symphony.' You can listen to them all online at Haydn107.com, where each symphony is presented in different interpretations, along with introductory notes.
"Like a Vivian Maier of folk music"
Like many others, Connie Converse was a struggling musician in New York in the 1950s, trying to secure a record deal. She never did, and in 1961 she left New York and music behind. For 13 years, she lived a conventional life in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Then she disappeared, sending letters to her family and friends saying that she was leaving to start a new life. She has never been heard from since. Years after her disappearance, her music has been rediscovered, with fans calling her a pioneer of the singer-songwriter style that came to prominence in the decades after she stopped making music. How a 90-year-old missing person became a hit on Spotify. [more inside]
Something's Coming
"Yes indeed, it appears as though that long-talked-about sequel to the secretive Abrams-produced 2008 film Cloverfield is not only happening, it’s already in the can." [more inside]
By Wambui Mwangi
The big sleep
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