October 8, 2018
United Daughters of the Confederacy Problematic History
Things the UDC don't want you to know about them. "It’s helpful, in the midst of any conversation about this country’s Confederate monuments, to understand who put these things up, which also offers a clue as to why. In large part, the answer to the first question is the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a white Southern women’s 'heritage' group founded in 1894. Starting 30 years after the Civil War, as historian Karen Cox notes in her 2003 book 'Dixie’s Daughters,' 'UDC members aspired to transform military defeat into a political and cultural victory, where states’ rights and white supremacy remained intact.' In other words, when the Civil War gave them lemons, the UDC made lemonade. Horribly bitter, super racist lemonade."
Graduate Student Solves Quantum Verification Problem
Urmila Mahadev spent eight years in graduate school solving one of the most basic questions in quantum computation "How do you know whether a quantum computer has done anything quantum at all?"
Dr. Mahadev's (she recently finished her PhD) paper, Classical Verification of Quantum Computations has been described as “one of the most outstanding ideas to have emerged at the interface of quantum computing and theoretical computer science in recent years.” [more inside]
Good food
Grace Stone Coates (1931), "Wild Plums": "I knew about wild plums twice before I tasted any." Benjamin Rosenbaum (2001), "The Orange": "An orange ruled the world. It was an unexpected thing ..." Shing Yin Khor (2018), "Say It with Noodles": "I have forgotten how to speak two languages. But I have learned this one."
A woman and her dog go camping
All Cats Go to Heaven
Bruce and Terry Jenkins run a retirement home for old cats (The Atlantic). Their charges are rescues, often having been abandoned due to the death or sickness of a previous owner. Cats Cradle is a short film about them. And where do they go after they die? The Rainbow Bridge, according to Kirk Rudell at the New Yorker.
Pizza pizza!
Then a hurricane came, and devastation reigned.
In the span of less than a week, Hurricane Michael has gone from being a low pressure system on October 2nd, all the way to a full-fledged hurricane by October 7th. By the time it makes landfall tomorrow, it is projected to be a major Category 3 Storm. [more inside]
“We are a people who have historically been on the verge of extinction”
On Lupe Fiasco' seventh album, the conscious hip-hop fallback poses a revisionist fantasy about underwater slaves sinking other slave ships— [Pitchfork Media] “...Drogas Wave, a wildly unrealized 24-track, 98-minute concept album with a surreal premise: What if African slaves thrown overboard during their transatlantic passage had managed to survive underwater and dedicate their existence to sinking other slave ships?” [more inside]
To join the Highpointers club, just keep climbin'
If the Seven Summits (Wikipedia; previously) are a bit too daunting, or the number seven isn't your jam, you could work on climbing (or strolling) to the top of extreme elevations in countries around the world (sortable Wikipedia list). In the United States, there's the Highpointers Club who have the goal of getting to the highest points in all 50 states, plus D.C. (Peakbagger). Wikipedia also has a list of (major) cities by elevation and capitol cities by elevation. Peakbagger takes it to another level with more than 200 lists of peaks by continent and country.
Final Call to save the world from 'climate catastrophe'
The most recent climate report from the IPCC minces no words. We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN. [more inside]
Don't see evil
"...any hope for a rescue is unlikely."
Obituary: Rick Stein, 71, of Wilmington was reported missing and presumed dead on September 27, 2018 when investigators say the single-engine plane he was piloting, The Northrop, suddenly lost communication with air traffic control and disappeared over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Rehoboth Beach. Philadelphia police confirm Stein had been a patient at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital where he was being treated for a rare form of cancer. Hospital spokesman Walter Heisenberg says doctors from Stein's surgical team went to visit him on rounds when they discovered his room was empty....
The end is nigh
Good Omens - Official Teaser Trailer. Based on the best-selling novel by renowned authors Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, this series follows the story of Aziraphale, an angel, and Crowley, a demon, who have formed an unlikely friendship spanning 6,000 years and have grown fond of life on earth. However, the end of time grows near with the approaching Armageddon and they must now join forces to find a way to save the world.
"Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare..."
Some of the most remarkable lost artefacts from the ancient world were the titanic wrecks of the Nemi ships. In their 1st century heyday they held gardens, palaces & baths in a floating wonderland. But barely a decade after their recovery, they were lost forever.
Once upon a time in Sichuan...
Vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒, Weibo link, verified YouTube channel though I'm not sure what's up with that given YouTube's status in China) cuts some bamboo down and makes a living room set, forages for and prepares mushrooms, makes paper, and cooks a lot of traditional foods over wood stoves and coal braziers. There are costume changes, flute music, and more puppies than you might initially suspect. Also an oven shaped like a cat. [more inside]
"It’s a start, a step.”
Visual rare grooves ripe for sampling
"I’m sorry. By the end of this post, I will have completely eradicated all productivity from the rest of your day, simply by mentioning fulltable.com." (Via) Full Table previously. [more inside]
The City At The Bottom Of The Sea
I’d never known my grandfather to show any interest in boating but, even at seven or eight, I understood that this was how he did things, with an impulsiveness so decisive and so laconic that the whole question of premeditation seemed somehow beside the point. Explanations, generally speaking, ran counter to my grandfather’s mode of being. If he had an idea about how to farm pigs more efficiently, he became a pig farmer. If he wanted to fly, he bought an airplane. Was there a boat he liked? Let’s hit the water. Why would someone need to know what he was thinking, when anyone could see what he was doing? [slNewYorker Personal History]
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