January 25, 2020

People will hear about this.

Yesterday, NPR anchor Mary Louise Kelly sat with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for an interview. Pompeo stormed off when the interview became hard for him, then afterwards, invited Kelly to his office, where he berated her, cursed at her, and bullied her. Today, Pompeo released a statement.
posted by valkane at 8:54 PM PST - 116 comments

Werner Herzog Hears Paul F. Tompkins' Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog hears Paul F. Tompkins' "Yelp Review for Trader Joe's on Hyperion". Madness reigns. (via Studio 360)
posted by Etrigan at 7:01 PM PST - 32 comments

"...with time you will accept that I can sing...and you will listen"

Bertsolaritza is a form of improvised sung poetry traditional in Basque Country. In 2009, Maialen Lujanbio Zugasti became the first woman to win the Bertsolari Txapelketa Nagusia, a competition held every four years covering all regions of Basque Country. In 2017, she became the first woman to win it twice. She was part of the generation of young bersolaris that started to revive the tradition in the 1980s. [more inside]
posted by nangar at 6:38 PM PST - 4 comments

the ballyhooed initiative failed spectacularly

On the failures of charismatic technology, with the MIT Media Lab's "One Laptop Per Child" as a case study: Advocates presented a vision of student-led educational experiences as antidotes to stultifying American-style learning factories or “classrooms” in the Global South, which “might be under a tree.” Nicholas Negroponte explicitly referred to OLPC’s machines as the “Trojan horses” that would introduce the ideology of constructionism into foreign classrooms, undermine government control of education, and “provide a shortcut to social change.” At one point, he even suggested tossing the rugged green laptops out of helicopters and letting children teach themselves. “It’s like a Coke bottle falling out of the sky,” he explained.
posted by ChuraChura at 1:30 PM PST - 67 comments

N. K. Jemisin’s Dream Worlds

[N. K.] Jemisin’s writing process often begins with dreams: imagery vivid enough to hang on into wakefulness. She does not so much mine them for insight as treat them as portals to hidden worlds. Her tendency is to interrogate what she sees with if/then questions, until her field of vision widens enough for her to glimpse a landscape that can hold a narrative. The inspiration for her début novel, “The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms” (2010) [Amazon; Goodreads], was a dream vision of two gods. One had dark-as-night hair that contained a starry cosmos of infinite depth; the other, in a child’s body, manipulated planets like toys. From these images, Jemisin spun out a four-hundred-page story about an empire that enslaves its deities. The book established her as a prominent new voice. Overview and interview with The New Yorker (archived link) [more inside]
posted by filthy light thief at 1:07 PM PST - 13 comments

Megavalanche Megacrash

Megavalanche (nicknamed "Mega") is a downhill mountain bike race held annually at the Alpe D'Huez ski resort in the French Alps.
The event starts on the glaciated summit of Pic Blanc in Huez and descends to the valley bottom for a total of over 2,600 vertical meters (8530 feet) and a 20 km (12 miles) distance.
The mass-start race is known for its fast speeds and winding turns over varying terrain, with hundreds of riders descending the mountain at once.
Here is the big crash of 2019.
(Here's the Winner's full run, 32 min.)
Previously, the 2018 winner's SLYT
posted by growabrain at 11:30 AM PST - 22 comments

Happy Chinese New Year's!

And now let's eat! [more inside]
posted by storybored at 9:35 AM PST - 38 comments

Google Search Product Bluefilter

Google Dataset Search
Now-it’s-no-longer-in-beta announcement blog post: “Discovering millions of datasets on the web”
posted by Going To Maine at 9:24 AM PST - 11 comments

January 25, 1995. Selhurst Park, London.

The Kick. The press conference. 25 years on. In his own words looking back. [more inside]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 7:46 AM PST - 11 comments

Asian Americans and anti-blackness

Awkwafina's Past Makes Her a Complicated Icon of Asian American Representation. Who really owns the "Blaccent"? Awkwafina and the trend of Asian American creatives using anti-blackness to enter Hollywood. You can be both brown and anti-black: On Lilly Singh and modern day blackface . Eddie Huang's Misogynistic, Anti-Black Activism.
posted by toastyk at 7:35 AM PST - 25 comments

Would Happen If Stephen King Were Treated Like a Latina Writer

Would Happen If Stephen King Were Treated Like a Latina Writer Alisa Valdes imagines what would happen if America's #1 horror writer faced the same kind of issues latina authors do when they try and promote their books. [more inside]
posted by miss-lapin at 6:20 AM PST - 27 comments

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