October 6, 2017
"None of it was cool."
The Legendary Roots Crew Presents: "I Am Slave" (SLYT). Slavery history meets Schoolhouse Rock. From an episode of black-ish.
Frank, still my hero
"Wrap your penis in cold steel" said no doctor, ever.
In 2014, the American College of Physicians went so far as to recommend against pelvic exams, citing the "harms, fear, anxiety, embarrassment, pain, and discomfort" associated with speculum examinations. -- The Speculum Finally Gets a Modern Redesign (Arielle Pardes, Wired)
A weekend with the Order of Tents
Founded in 1867 by two ex-slaves, the Order of Tents is a semi-covert fraternal sororal benefit organization founded and managed by Black women. They do good works but keep a low profile. Author Kaitlyn Greenidge spent a weekend with them.
Death at a Penn State Fraternity
Caitlin Flanagan in The Atlantic, reporting on the death of Tim Piazza, a Beta Theta Pi pledge at Penn State. A story of abuse, gas-lighting, and perverse incentives in the Greek system that has led to at least one death. [more inside]
smells like a 4th grade scholastic bookfair on a chilly tuesday in 2007
"[T]the Scholastic Book Fair? That week where your elementary school was packed full of books and pens and erasers and you could just wade right on in and go wild? Oh, man, that’s the good stuff." Constance Grady, for Vox: The nostalgic joys of the Scholastic Book Fair, explained.
Spot the toothbrush
Perspective (as in Rashomon) in Short Films
Six short films illustrating perspective and its influence, as with Rashomon. 6 films | 1 hr 3 min
Experiencing the world from other points of view is a crucial component of cinema (and any sort of creative endeavor, really). For this month’s Mixtape, we’ve chosen a selection of shorts that play with perspective. You’ll see a son’s attempt to re-create video footage from his mother’s last day on Earth, a married couple living very different lives, a bystander’s view of a bank robbery, and more.
an informal inquiry
The Informal Inquiry Into Gender and Sexuality Differences is a detailed attempt to inquire about intra-LGBTQ attitudes, beliefs, and identities on online communities. Released initially in June, it has currently amassed over 4,000 responses and will continue to collect responses until August 1, 2018. Interestingly, the survey's curators are happy to answer any and all questions about the data collected to date and provides the raw (and anonymized) dataset for anyone to view every 500 responses. While the survey team is not a university-affiliated unit, it is particularly interesting in the broad flexibility and diversity of identity terms available to respondents.
y-life
Okay, let’s begin. Every story needs to begin somewhere, so it makes sense to start with how I got embroiled in the “Y-life”. So, in this first instalment, I will tell you how I was reeled in like a carp on a fisherman’s hook, in… Chapter 1 – Getting Reeled In- Elle Beau writes on getting sucked in to Younique, a multi-level marketing scheme for makeup. [more inside]
Away message: RIP AIM 1997-2017
AOL Instant Messenger is shutting down December 15. Launched in 1997 as an instant messaging service that broke down the wall between AOL and the wider internet, but somehow unable to make the transition to today's ubiquitous messaging environment, AOL has announced that AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) will cease operations in two months. Time to take one last spin through your Buddy List before signing off for good.
Pick a month, guys. Every month of 2017 has been a treat.
MeFi's own, John Scalzi, writes about writing and the inability to focus, in this era of Trump. [more inside]
“THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!”
"Molson's stock price fell sharply on the news of Bill Eves' passing"
Perhaps most important to Bill was educating people on the dangers of holding in your farts. Sadly, he was unable to attain his life-long goal of catching his beloved wife Judy 'cutting the cheese' or 'playing the bum trumpet'—which he likened to a mythical rarity like spotting Bigfoot or a unicorn.Silly obituaries. More silly obituaries. [more inside]
This Is Your Brain With A Yeerk
40 of the Creepiest Book Covers of All Time selected & riffed on by Emily Temple, Associate Editor at Literary Hub
De burgemeester van Amsterdam is overleden.
Eberhard van der Laan, the mayor of Amsterdam, has, not unexpectedly passed away. A well like man who, in the fashion of the Dutch, did not mince words.. Recently thousands gathered outside the official residence to applaud for almost 20 minutes.
Why didn't they ask Evans?
The tragic death of Scott of the Antarctic and four companions on the return of his scientific expedition to the South Pole in 1912, has long been blamed on poor planning by Scott. But the discovery of new documents by University of New South Wales researcher Prof Chris Turney revealed today in the journal Polar Record show how the actions of another expedition member brought about their deaths and why it has been covered-up for over a century. [more inside]
I am vengeance! I am the night! I AM BATMAN!
A big house, a big big house
The Confession of a Funeral Home Batman
"It was a gig I had for about two weeks in October of 1989. I was broke, ready to take any job. And I ended up dressing in a Keaton Batman-like suit and attending wakes and funerals in a suburb South of Chicago." (scroll down)
Here comes the fun!
Trailer for Happy! A tv series based on the graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson, produced, written and directed by Brian 'Crank' Taylor (SLYT, NSFW)
"I love the monster that the artist creates."
Nick Pinkerton interviews Gérard Depardieu: "When I met with Depardieu on the patio of The Mark Hotel in New York on an overcast morning in mid-September, he was markedly disinterested in talking about any of his movies, in town as he was for a talk at the French Institute Alliance Française to promote his slender new book, Innocent. The book is more scattershot manifesto than autobiography, its title a double meaning—its author both describes his personal philosophy, of which a doctrine of innocence is an essential element, and protests his own innocence before an imagined jury of the media, who have made tabloid fodder of him."
The Nazis were not lefty socialists...
The Nazis were not lefty socialists...(Extreme language warning. Probably appalling to Americans. You've been warned about the language. [more inside]
In the loop
The Academic use Facebook Live's video delay to make a mesmerising music video for their song Bear Claws. [more inside]
You are the byproduct
All of it, [former Apple engineer Chris Marcellino] says, is reward-based behaviour that activates the brain’s dopamine pathways. He sometimes finds himself clicking on the red icons beside his apps “to make them go away”, but is conflicted about the ethics of exploiting people’s psychological vulnerabilities. “It is not inherently evil to bring people back to your product,” he says. “It’s capitalism.” [Paul Lewis, SLGuardian] [more inside]
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