January 24, 2020
Mac Miller's posthumous album
Circles - "I ain't coming down, why would I need to. So much of this world is above us baby." (Jon Brion and Zane Lowe - Circles Interview; Mac Miller - Interview with Zane Lowe; via)
The 30-something life crisis
The pressure to hit adult milestones is out of sync for many of today’s 30-somethings...Nearly every therapist I spoke with over email or phone talked about unmet expectations. “One of the main words I listen for in a session is ‘should,’” said Megan Bearce, who sees many 30-somethings. “I should have a child, I should be married by now, I should love my job.” [more inside]
fun center
EarthsWorld takes candid portraits of people at public events, mostly in the US pacific northwest. (via)
Cheaters never prosper 2017 update: they do sometimes win a world series
The Astro's cheating scandal gets an update as the punishments have been decided by the league office. The Astros manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended for only a year (though subsequently fired), and the team was stripped of it's first and second-round draft picks for 2020 and 2021. Alex Cora and Carlos Beltrán were also fired/resigned from managing the Red Sox and the Mets (though some could argue managing the Mets is punishment enough) [more inside]
Street maps
This tool draws a pared-down map of just the roads in any city. [Via Daring Fireball and Kottke.org]
“I am not in the entertainment business.”
Co-founder of PBS NewsHour and journalism legend Jim Lehrer has passed away at the age of 85. [more inside]
“My one ambition is to play a hero.”
One of the First Hollywood Heartthrobs Was a Smoldering Japanese Actor. What Happened? [Atlas Obscura] “If you think about silent-film era sex symbols, you probably conjure up a mental picture of Rudolph Valentino—even if you don’t know his name. Valentino has become synonymous with sex appeal in early films. But he wasn’t the first male star of American movies to make millions of American women go weak at the knees. That distinction goes to Sessue Hayakawa, the Japanese star of Cecil B. DeMille’s cinematic rape drama, The Cheat.” [A Brief Bio & Film History: Who was Sessue Hayakawa?][Career Highlights and Retrospective][IMDB][wiki] [more inside]
Spotted while resting: a ruin by a gentle river
Takuma Okada's Alone Among the Stars is a journaling game for one person. You play an explorer encountering strange animals, plants, ruins, and phenomena on far-off planets. All you need to play are a six-sided die, writing implements and a deck of cards. There is an online Twine adaptation, by Adam Roy, and an interactive Twitter implementation, by Matthew R.F. Balousek. [more inside]
"Outdoor public stairways are a window into the soul of a community"
Welcome to PublicStairs.com, the web site devoted to the discovery and documentation of major* outdoor public stairways anywhere in the world. This web site is a labor of love brought to you by Doug and Joan Beyerlein of Mill Creek, Washington. (* "Major" is defined herein as a continuous series of a minimum of 100 stairs.) The Stair Maps show that this is a very US-centric project, but there are some identified in Canada, UK, Germany, New Zealand, Thailand, Iceland, Italy, Saint Helena Island, Australia, Spain, and France, and the extreme list includes some notable stairs in other countries. Also, it's a charmingly Web 1.0 design, if that's a factor you consider for websites.
It's all of us caring for each other.
The Feminist Survival Project 2020 Emily and Amelia Nagoski wrote a book about burnout and ways to complete the stress cycle with concrete, specific, and evidence-based methods. Then they made a podcast about it. This podcast is changing my life. [more inside]
Confessions of a Hate Reader
The thing is, in consuming so much criticism, especially the bad faith nitpick-y genre-oblivious sort, I have interalised these critical voices. Much like how others have internalised the voice of a discouraging teacher or an overbearing partner.
And it has been bad for my writing.
Where there is a fête, there is murder.
Your guide to not getting murdered in a quaint English village: a list of people (e.g. the vicar, the impoverished aristocrat, the local historian who's just found something very interesting) and places (e.g. the village fête, local basements, and anywhere with a vat) to avoid if you find yourself in an English Murder Village and want to make it out alive! [more inside]
Our knowledge of the past is odourless
In the heritage context, experiencing what the world smelled like in the past enriches our knowledge of it, and, because of the unique relation between odours and memories, allows us to engage with our history in a more emotional way. Smell of Heritage explores the identification, analysis and archival of smells, from determining and describing culturally significant aromas, to the scientific techniques that can help us capture and understand the compounds that make them. [more inside]
Online Safety Tool and Procedure Kit
All the tools you need to improve your online safety. An easy to read, one-stop checklis of tools and procedure to keep yourself safe online. A nice feature is you can sort them by cost and effort. e.g. start with "quick and easy" for the low-hanging fruit. Security Planner is a project of the Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary group based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Their recommendations are made by a committee of experts in digital security and have gone through a rigorous peer review evaluation.
Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back - wait a minute. Go right. Stop.
Police to start using facial recognition cameras in London. The Met Police in London will use the system on a routine basis "overtly" and would warn people by "handing out leaflets". In tests, four in five of the people flagged by the system were innocent - but judges said a deployment in Cardiff was legal. [more inside]
文言文編程語言 A programming language for the ancient Chinese
文言, or wenyan, is an esoteric programming language that closely follows the grammar and tone of classical Chinese literature. Moreover, the alphabet of wenyan contains only traditional Chinese characters and 「」 quotes, so it is guaranteed to be readable by ancient Chinese people. You too can try it out on the online editor, download a compiler, or view the source code. Wenyan can also render wenyan scripts into the format of ancient printed books.
Crowdsource Bad Drivers
Evolving from the Twitter bot How's My Driving DC, the app Our Streets has been released, allowing vulnerable road users to crowdsource data on dangerous drivers. The app is intended to identify hotspots of dangerous activity like parking in bike lanes, aggressive driving, and speeding. Bicycling magazine provides a breakdown.
"We have been trashing the house, and then leaving it to our kids."
Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures? The post-war baby boom of 1945-65 produced the biggest and richest generation in British history. David Willetts discusses how these boomers have attained this position at the expense of younger generations. (YouTube, 47m) [more inside]
The heroin commuters of Öresund
When Denmark liberalised its drug control regime and opened safe injecting rooms for users, the rate of overdoses and drug-related fatalities dropped. One unintended consequence was an influx of Swedish heroin users into Copenhagen. Unlike Denmark, Sweden takes a zero-tolerance approach to illegal drugs, to the point of prohibiting mitigation measures which could be seen as encouraging drug use. The result of this is that some Swedish heroin users find it better to sleep rough in Denmark, where they have access to safe injecting facilities, than to remain in Sweden. [more inside]
Sailors and Saints Across the Indian Ocean
Car crash causes first denial of extradition to the UK by US government
No extradition request from the US to the UK had ever been denied. Until teenager Harry Dunn was killed while riding his motorcycle near an RAF base used by the US in Northamptonshire. [more inside]
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