January 27, 2016
It's Wednesday night
the mystery of the disintegrating laundry
Why was laundry disintegrating on urban clotheslines in the 1920s? Chemical Heritage Magazine has the answer!
Who lives / Who dies / Who remixes your story?
Why Hamilton is the Perfect Mashup for Every Fandom Writing like you’re running out of time, making an impact on history, sabotaging yourself, stepping in and out of the narrative—could there be a more accurate depiction of what it is to be a fan?
“I became weirdly obsessed with this novel years ago...”
‘2666,’ a Most Difficult Novel, Takes the Stage [The New York Times]
“2666,” the Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño’s darkly enigmatic, wildly digressive, sometimes densely philosophical and above all extremely long final novel, has awed, mesmerized, baffled and exasperated readers around the world since its posthumous publication in 2004. “It would take 45 minutes just to explain what the novel is about,” Mr. Falls, the longtime artistic director of the Goodman Theater here, said on a recent afternoon. But that hasn’t stopped him from turning it into a five-hour stage adaptation that begins performances on Saturday, Feb. 6, the culmination of what he describes as a nearly decade-long effort to wrestle Mr. Bolaño’s baggy monster to the theatrical ground.Previously.
"And when you let them in, you don't grimace"
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who built a barbed wire fence around his country to keep out the migrants, was also [at a Brussels summit]. He saw, and enjoyed, seeing [Angela] Merkel in a fix. He took the floor and said: "It is only a matter of time before Germany builds a fence. Then I'll have the Europe that I believe is right." Merkel said nothing at first, a person present at the meeting relates. Only later, after a couple other heads of government had their say, did Merkel turn to Orbán and say: "I lived behind a fence for too long for me to now wish for those times to return."-The Isolated Chancellor: What Is Driving Angela Merkel? by Markus Feldenkirchen and René Pfister of Der Spiegel.
Why Buffy, why now?
The Chosen One still gets chosen. Almost thirteen years ago, I put my first post up on Metafilter. It was a goodbye to my favorite show. It wasn't heavily commented on. In the intervening time, we've had Buffy conventions, Buffy sing-alongs and a huge amount of scholarly work! [more inside]
Make sure your friends never want to play Monopoly again
Rudd vs Hawking at Quantum Chess
Caltech's Institute for Quantum Information and Matter in association with Trouper Productions bring you a chess match for the ages: Paul Rudd vs Stephen Hawking in a game of Quantum Chess, narrated by Keanu Reeves.
photography, life, art, and Los Angeles
Kwasi Boyd-Bouldin has been documenting the Los Angeles urban landscape for over a decade. His latest project, The Los Angeles Recordings, examines the physical structure of neighborhoods and how they are molded and reconfigured by outside elements (demographics, gentrification, the passage of time.)
“The Los Angeles Recordings is a project I’ve been working on in some way, shape, or form for over a decade. Very soon after getting into photography, I recognized the medium as a way I could show others the city as I viewed it. LA’s people, landscape, and topography exist in a state of constant change that is, in my opinion, rarely portrayed from street level." [h/t] [more inside]
Where The Wild Things Aren't.
The home of late artist/illustrator Maurice Sendak may or may not become a museum. It may be more difficult to house a wild thing than it would seem. Controversy broils over Sendak's disputed legacy.
You're able to move on and have a great day
Las hijas de Violencia are responding to street harassment in Mexico using confetti guns and punk rock. AJ+ has made a short video showing how las hijas are bringing their song Sexista Punk to the streets.
Boston students bury those with no one to witness
NPR covers Boston-area students who attend the funerals of those with no one to witness. In a time when a lot of our interactions are fueled by fear or blunted by avoidance of perceived risk, it can be hard to reach out to those with nothing. Students in their senior year at the Roxbury Latin school attend the funerals -- and act as pallbearers -- for those who have no one. A local funeral home, Lawler and Crosby, handles the other details. [more inside]
"Stop wearing Keith Haring shirts."
Tic-Tac-Toe, 1952; Checkers, 1994; Chess, 1997; Go, 2016
The game of go, seemingly the last hold-out for games at which the most skilled humans can beat the best computer programs, has perhaps fallen at the hands of a computer. [more inside]
If I Could Only Fly
The singer
If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard
The songwriter
If I Could Only Fly - Blaze Foley
The songwriter's story
Duct Tape Messiah [more inside]
If I Could Only Fly - Merle Haggard
The songwriter
If I Could Only Fly - Blaze Foley
The songwriter's story
Duct Tape Messiah [more inside]
You could feel the desire.
Remembering Jonathan Larson, who died 20 years ago this week, weeks shy of his 36th birthday. The 20th anniversary tour of the show that began previews the night of his death, RENT, will launch this fall. [more inside]
Some Thoughts On Dining Out In Groups
Why the Calorie Is Broken
Horse Dope Sensation
Tits, boobs & Kelvin Mackenzie. A partial history of The Sun newspaper, starting from its launch in 1964 as a left-leaning broadsheet. [more inside]
A Movie in the Jacuzzi
This is What Hip-Hop Sounded Like, Back in [1989-2015] An interactive visualization of the top songs on Billboard's 'Hot Rap Songs' chart, 1989-2015.
The Reefer Madness of porn
Oregon Historical Society announces discovery of print of unusual and thought lost 1962 anti-porn film, “Pages of Death” (★★☆☆☆) [more inside]
Tools for Working with Data
Data Driven Journalism maintains a list of tools for working with data. Many of them are free to use or open source. [more inside]
The Dark Underside of the Show-Dog World
It was after the show, back home in Belgium, that Jagger began having such difficulty breathing that his alarmed owners called a veterinarian. By the time he got there it was too late: Jagger had collapsed and died. An autopsy found shocking evidence in the dog’s gastrointestinal tract: pieces of beef neatly folded with poison inside.
Few Kauaians share his malice towards feral chickens.
"Don't look at them directly,” Rie Henriksen whispers, “otherwise they get suspicious.” The neuroscientist is referring to a dozen or so chickens loitering just a few metres away in the car park of a scenic observation point for Opaekaa Falls on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. As the two try to act casual by their rented car, a jet-black hen with splashes of iridescent green feathers pecks its way along a trail of bird feed up to a device called a goal trap. Wright tugs at a string looped around his big toe and a spring-loaded net snaps over the bird. After a moment of stunned silence, the hen erupts into squawking fury. Biologists see in the feral animals an improbable experiment in evolution: what happens when chickens go wild?[more inside]
"The house is not a work of art, simply a place where one lives"
The NYTs announces a new exhibit at the Austrian Museum of the Applied Arts on Josef Frank, architect and designer now best known for his surreal and wonderful wallpaper and fabric designs. [more inside]
20 Years Battling For Access To Drugs For The Poor
A Win for Immoral and Scandalous (TMs), or Death to Section 2(a)
Last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided In re Tam, overturning a longstanding ban on the registration of "disparaging" trademarks. (On Simon Shiao Tam's and The Slants' fight with the law, previously.) The court left in place the prohibition on registering "immoral and scandalous" trademarks. However, "[i]n a letter brief issued Thursday, the Department of Justice conceded that § 2(a) [the immoral and scandalous clause] was no longer enforceable in light of In re Tam."
Radishes, Celery, and Finger Bowls upon request!
The unusual foods Americans loved a century ago. A massive collection of historical menus at the New York Public Library has been digitised for your perusal.
Ending the new Thirty Years War
Ending the new Thirty Years War "Why the real history of the Peace of Westphalia in 17th-century Europe offers a model for bringing stability to the Middle East."
What about JFK or Roswell or the Illuminati? The truth is out there
A study has examined how long alleged conspiracies could "survive" before being revealed - deliberately or unwittingly - to the public at large.Here is the paper itself.
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