November 5, 2020
After Fifteen Years
System Of A Down - Protect The Land & Genocidal Humanoidz We as System Of A Down have just released new music for the first time in 15 years. The time to do this is now, as together, the four of us have something extremely important to say as a unified voice. These two songs, “Protect The Land” and “Genocidal Humanoidz” both speak of a dire and serious war being perpetrated upon our cultural homelands of Artsakh and Armenia.
The Forgotten History of Home Video
COVID surges, Republicans, and Democrats
This mesmerizing time-lapse graph by Dan Goodspeed shows COVID cases since June by state partisanship. The AP reports that counties with worst virus surges overwhelmingly voted Trump. [more inside]
US Election 2020 : Part 3
As the US 2020 national elections head into their third day of counting and updating vote totals in the remaining battleground states, a nation waits anxiously to see if mail-in ballots will be enough to allow former Vice President Biden to clinch the Presidency. [more inside]
Woman the hunter
Woman the hunter: Ancient Andean remains challenge old ideas of who speared big game "The researchers report that the burial was indeed that of a female, challenging the long-standing “man the hunter” hypothesis. Her existence led them to reexamine reports of other ancient burials in the Americas, and they found 10 additional women buried with projectile points who may also have been hunters."
Let’s talk about how words sound
Dying for movies
Suicide highlights labour issues in Canada's visual effects sector. Efforts to unionize have so far only produced a single success, though that success did come with a 98% to 2% vote in favour of unionization.
The Faces of Americans Living in Debt
(New Yorker article) [A] good deal of the power in the new book “The Debt Project: 99 Portraits Across America,” by the photographer Brittany M. Powell, comes from a kind of transgressive mundaneness. Powell set about photographing ninety-nine Americans who owe money ... and asked them to handwrite accompanying text about how much they owe, and to whom. [more inside]
The Ultimutt Pawlitical Showdown of 2020
Meet Wilbur, the New Mayor of Rabbit Hash KY Wilbur received 13,143 votes, the highest winning total ever. Overall, there were 22,985 votes, the highest total ever for a Rabbit Hash election, according to the Rabbit Hash Historical Society. Rabbit Hash has a population of under 500 people. Organizers claim to run the "only honest election in the country." The town trades votes for cash in the mayoral election that traditionally goes to the dogs. [more inside]
Cretaceous geological upheaval and African American voting patterns
How are ancient geological forces reflected in African American voting patterns? "Look at the electoral maps by county for the last few decades of US presidential elections. You’ll notice that the South goes almost uniformly Republican red every time ... But if you look closer, there's something else there - a Democratic blue swoosh running through the heart of the South.
I close my eyes and hear a flock of birds
Presentations on fictional naval forces
An evening of science fiction, naval analyses, and FICINT delivered right to your computer. Join NAVYCON 2020-A to explore parts unknown. (Signup free via Eventbrite). [more inside]
It became the main source of inspiration for my songs.
Why I Painstakingly Built My Own Analog Drum Machine. Reverb.com interviews Sam Dust aka LA Priest on the years-long process of creating a drum machine from scratch, which served as both the rhythmic center of his new album's songs and its namesake. He named it Gene. [more inside]
1.d4 d5 2.c4
The Queen’s Gambit is a hit seven-part Netflix adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel, following the life of an orphan chess prodigy during her quest to become the world’s greatest chess player, set in the 50s and 60s. Created by Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Minority Report, Logan) and starring Anya Taylor-Joy, it has impeccable chess credentials with Garry Kasparov and Bruce Pandolfini as consultants, along with gorgeous costumes featured in a Brooklyn Museum online exhibition. agadmator breaks down the most important chess matches in the show (1, 2, 3); a chess expert on what the show gets right (NYT). [more inside]
No more mink
Denmark announces cull of 15 million mink over Covid mutation fears Mink furs are a big part of the Danish economy, and the decrease in tax income + the expense of compensating the farmers is going tome a big blow to the budget. But it has to happen. The main point is that the virus is mutating fairly rapidly in mink, which may lead to the current line of vaccine research being ineffective, globally. Or in other words: a new strain of COVID-19 has developed, and we have to start over.
The regions where the farms are located are ordered into total lockdown. [more inside]
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