October 7, 2017
......when the baby's asleep.
Justin Kuritzkes, best known for being the Potion Seller, writes sad, dark, funny songs, with excellent music videos. The name of his album, Songs About My Wife, maybe says it all, and so do the titles of his songs: Fuck Your Blood, I Slept With A Man, All I Want is a Fucking Bride, Even Though We Got A Baby, and—perhaps my favorite—Dance You Back To Life. Meanwhile, if you want another side to the Potion Seller, watch Dolores.
Singin' in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things
The Personal Property Auction of Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds is happening now. Day 1, Day 2, Day 3. Includes an incredible treasure trove of Golden Age Hollywood costumes, movie posters, and memorabilia. [more inside]
Dear catcallers,
20 years old dutch student Noa Jansma documented one month of street harassment on her @dearcatcallers Instagram account, taking selfies on the street with the harassers, to which they were happy to oblige, without the faintest clue of the situation, bar one. [more inside]
Are Clothes Modern?
Bernard Rudofsky is not so well known for his social critiques. But in 1944, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) put on an exhibition based on his book, Are Clothes Modern?. The museum didn't do another exhibition on this subject for 73 years. In the second link Exhibition Info, you will see info about the out-of-print book and link to "View the Publication" which will give a download pdf for the entire book. Below that is a link to "View the Checklist" which will give you a download of the list of all garments shown in the exhibition. [more inside]
Mean Girls: The Forbidden Lesbian Romance
What am I hiding ffff....?
Exciting new trailer for what appears to be an iconic Star Trek film! Editing courtesy The Alloy Foundation.
The Energy East pipeline is dead
The planned tarsands-transporting pipeline was canceled on Thursday after the National Energy Board of Canada insisted on "assessment of greenhouse gases generated by the fossil fuels to be transported in the pipeline".
What is this "doot" thing, with the skeletons?
Every October, this disembodied skull emerges from its slumber to doot across the internet with its trusty brass trumpet. Actually, skull trumpet never sleeps, and is kept alive by Le Doot Generation on Reddit and folks on Tumblr (and specifically The Skull Trumpet), as well as mashup makers, re-mixers and even live covers. [more inside]
As the Nights Get Longer, What Is Better Than Weird Audio Dramas?
A couple of years ago, it seemed like there were only a few paranormal podcast audio dramas (with Welcome to Nightvale Website Previously FanFare, the most visible), but more and more creators have decided to share their visions. Here’s a round up of audio dramas with paranormal elements for the spooky fall season. Most aim for chills, sometimes leavened with humor. [more inside]
Step 1. Acquire a corpse.
Eliminating the profit motive in health care,
Down with Copay. The history of copays in the American health system, and why they shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
👣
Historical Body Mechanics: Walk Medieval! [YouTube] “Before structured shoes became prevalent in the 16th century (and apparently in those places where they never have) people walked with a different gait, pushing onto the balls of our feet instead of rocking forward on our heels. It looks a little affected -- like a gymnast or ballet dancer -- but is apparently much healthier.” [via: Boing Boing]
Euromyths A-Z
”Do what you want with my music but don't make me boring."
Watching Brazilian artist Juliana Lepine sculpt an 18 cm/7.5 inch figure of Freddie Mercury is anything but boring.
The swinging piano sound of Ms. Cleo Brown
Lookie Lookie Lookie, here comes Cleo Brown, an accomplished stride/boogie woogie pianist, singer and composer active during the late 1920s to the 1950s. The Stuff Is Here and it swings: Brown recorded mainly for Decca and Capitol Records with the backing of such notable cats as Gene Krupa. She was a contemporary of Fats Waller, replacing him on WABC New York in 1935. (Think Your Feet's Too Big? Nope, you're just Breakin' In A Pair of Shoes.) [more inside]
Gen-X Women at Midlife: Fear, Anxiety, Anger
Generation X...They're smart. They're grateful for what they have. They're also exhausted. Some of them are terrified. A few of them are wondering what the point is.
I called my best friend, a reporter a few years older than me who grew up in the Midwest...: "[D]o you know anyone having a midlife crisis I could talk to?"
The phone was silent for a second.
Finally, she said, "I'm trying to think of any woman I know who's not."
A post of a good sort
This was how, for the first time in my life, I began to feel European
Before coming to Britain I had always thought that the tabloids were like a misanthropic counterpoint to Monty Python. Like many Europeans, I saw these newspapers as a kind of English folklore, laying it on thick in the way that theatrical British politicians conduct their debates in the House of Commons. Newspapers in the Netherlands would carry on their opinion pages articles by commentators such as Oxford scholar Timothy Garton Ash—giving the impression that such voices represented the mainstream in Britain. Watching QI before coming to the UK, I remember seeing Stephen Fry banter with Jeremy Clarkson and imagining the former was the rule, and the latter the exception. Living in London taught me that it is the other way around. George Orwell is still correct: England is a family with the wrong members in charge.How I Learned To Loathe England; the Dutch journalist, former British resident and former Anglophile Joris Luyendijk diagnoses a neurosis at the core of English society—an entrenched acceptance of arbitrary inequality as the very definition of fairness, a pathologically adversarial, zero-sum world-view with a contempt for compromise, and a hostility to the idea of trying to see the point of views of foreigners—and how, in light of it, something like Brexit was inevitable.
"As a young footballer, everybody is selling the same dream to you"
Of the boys who make it into football's elite scholarship programme at 16, past PFA research has found that five out of six are not playing professional football at 21.
The Guardian takes a look at the damaging outcomes for boys who wash out of the system.
[CN: mental health, suicide]
the most important part of learning is actually forgetting
New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning - "A new idea called the 'information bottleneck' is helping to explain the puzzling success of today's artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn."
« Previous day | Next day »