October 20, 2017
Life Is Peachy: Nü Metal And America
Invisible Oranges on the rise of nü metal and its reflection of the emptiness of Clinton-era suburbia.
So you have a mass a teens growing up in pointless “towns” with no discernable industry or economy in a nation that had declared itself to have reached the “end of history,” in which no big dreams ought be strived, run by parents dedicated to the fiction that life is a non-event bereft of hardship. Who wouldn’t be miserable? Who wouldn’t be angry?
You make me so happy it turns back to sad
Taylor has a new song out. I find it more appealing than LWYMMD. In fact, it's Gorgeous.
The whisper network
“[The] news has brought to the surface the private conversations women have been having — the warnings whispered to each other to avoid getting hurt. As women have written in the past few days, these whisper networks are a lifeline...
They have helped keep me safe. But a concern keeps gnawing at my conscience, and I don’t have an answer: What about the women who don’t get this information?
Relying on a whisper network isn’t enough; the current situation is unacceptable, and we need to think about what we can do to change it.”
It’s time to weaponize the "whisper network”
They have helped keep me safe. But a concern keeps gnawing at my conscience, and I don’t have an answer: What about the women who don’t get this information?
Relying on a whisper network isn’t enough; the current situation is unacceptable, and we need to think about what we can do to change it.”
It’s time to weaponize the "whisper network”
Fornasetti Small-Scale Archtecture
He's been called a surrealist but he seems more of a classicist with a touch of surrealism. Back in the 1950s Fornasetti, along with Gio Ponti, started making limited editions of architecturally interesting furniture. Most of them are in museums now but here's one went that went to auction, having once been owned by Henry Bernard, the French architect and Fornasetti's friend: Sinai & Sons Auction (be sure to click on "Read More") [more inside]
A national seance
“I wanted the whole nation to be terrified,” he continues. “And yet they would be creating the very thing they’re terrified of. What if they wanted to see a ghost to the extent that they actually created it? What if they supernaturally held hands in the dark, millions of people all wanting the same thing to happen at the same time?” - 25 years later the cast and creators tell tell the story of Ghostwatch, the one of the BBC's most spooky and controversial shows. (Previously)
Funny Girl
"There was an expectation that girls would be quieter. And wouldn't ruin their dresses and wouldn't be roughhousing and cracking jokes in church," she says. "And I was very often doing a lot of those things," thanks in part to her father's encouragement to let her be what she was: funny. Today we encourage our daughters to be ambitious and athletic, opinionated and outspoken. We want them focused on STEM and outfitted in T-shirts that read, "Who runs the world? Girls." But what if raising truly empowered girls also means raising funny ones? What if we teach our daughters that humor is their turf — just as much as any boy's? -- Want to raise an empowered girl? Then let her be funny. (By Ellen McCarthy, Washington Post)
The judge who codes
Profile by Sarah Jeong of U.S. District Court Judge for Northern California William Alsup, 72, the presiding judge in Oracle v. Google (about Android and Java APIs) and also will preside in Waymo v. Uber (previously.) Judge Alsup is a long-time ham radio operator and programs in BASIC.
Not your average felines
Adventure cats! They climb rock walls, they swim in the ocean (don't miss the instagram), they ride bicycles and motorcycles and skateboards and surfboards! But don't make them walk. [more inside]
Beating on someone else’s drum is a big no-no. It’s a big dis …
An oral history of the 2002 movie Drumline. Nick Cannon's greatest gift to popular culture (and arguably the 'most sports movie ever' despite not featuring any actual sports) was inspired by superstar music producer Dallas Austin's years in his high school band, but it ended up becoming about the culture of halftime events at HBCUs. [more inside]
Am successfully passing as a cat. No one suspects a thing. Woof.
This is Nathan the Beach Cat, and she loves the beach. Video evidence [Facebook, cheery music]. Instagram
A Mortician's Tale: “What would a mortician’s private emails look like?”
Video games have never really gotten death.... Death in games is a punishment, a roadblock, a temporary setback, an opportunity. It's not a real end; it's mechanical, never philosophical.... A Mortician's Tale ... takes death—the real thing, that universal human experience of being divorced from all sensation, from existence itself—and handles it in direct, even quotidian ways. It makes the end of life visible, and in doing so crafts one of the only meditations on death in videogames that feels authentic.[more inside]
The head of a fool on the neck of an ass
JP Koning presents a pictorial history of the Spanish dollar and its legacy around the world.
Playboy to Feature Its First Transgender Centerfold
...where the reckoning of self happens.
What Miyazaki’s Heroines Taught Me About My Mixed-Race Identity, by writer and poet Nina Li Coomes. [more inside]
Human Extinction
Kids? Just say no is an essay wherein the author propounds risk aversion, wrapped in a moral imperative to do no harm, or "anti-natalism". In Tropical Depressions the authors circumvent an idea of "human utilitarianism" in order to survey affective disorders and ecological expressions of morbidity. Bookmark this apocrypha between streams of "Electric Dreams" and Blade Runner 2049 in your First World Problems folder.
Alternate histories and the "Mournful Dowry"
The Guns of the South and C.S.A. strike radically different tones, but both begin with the same ambitious objective: to venture an answer to the question of whether, given a change in historical course, America’s original sin might be redeemable. The black filmmaker answers a resounding “no,” while the white science-fiction writer a hopeful “maybe,” but they both exemplify the genre of alternate history at its best and most compelling: savvy, thoughtful, entertaining, and provocative. They do more than speculate about history as it might have been: they challenge their audience to think about history as it is, and history as it is told.Renee de Groot examines some of the more than 150 American Civil War alternate histories which have been written since 1900.
Stuck
If you hold one mental image of [mathematician] Andrew Wiles, he wants it to be this: not the triumphant scholar with the medal around his neck, but the child learning to glory in the state of being stuck. Wiles is famous for cracking Fermat's Last Theorem. He was asked by blogger Ben Orlin what themes he would like to share with a broad public audience. So he talked about being stuck. [more inside]
“It’s so complicated,”
Rupi Kaur Is Kicking Down the Doors of Publishing [The New York Times] “In the three years since her blockbuster “Milk and Honey” was first self-published and later picked up by Andrews McMeel Publishing, she has dealt with all the issues other women face on Instagram and off: comparisons, aggression, bullying. But she has also built a community and an audience there in particular, with 1.6 million followers. Daunted by the tough stuff, she remained, because “it came back to the accessibility,” she said. “Instagram makes my work so accessible and I was able to build a readership,” Ms. Kaur said recently in a cafe in SoHo. “But then I always feel like within the literary world there’s of course downsides, because you have that label attached to your work and then, for some reason, that means you aren’t a credible literary source.”” [more inside]
The Colonel Rocks Social Media
Just last night, someone on Twitter noticed that the official account for KFC was actually following some people - eleven, to be precise. He took a closer look to find out why.... [more inside]
A Catfishing With a Happy Ending
Pretty much your run of the mill "lonely old man deceives lonely young woman on the internet" story, but with a nice (and heart-warming) twist.
You're a quack smudge on these lockers called life
San Marino wants YOU ... to compete at Eurovision
After limited success since joining the contest in 2008 -- one Grand Final appearance in eight tries -- San Marino's national broadcaster, RTV, is teaming up with 1in360.com to find "The Internet Candidate" for the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. Ten finalists will have the opportunity to compete to represent the country in Lisbon; keeping in line with Eurovision's mission to promote technological innovation, "parts of the [final round] will be filmed and broadcast in 360 and virtual reality."
If you wanna be seen by everyone, wanna be in the dream and have some fun ... if you wanna be on the hook, simply take a look! [more inside]
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch
Cosmic Crisp is the next thing in apples -- 12 million cloned offsets to be planted, their apples in stores maybe in 2019. Higher prices for sweeter crisper fruit. [more inside]
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