November 21, 2019
The unprecedented repatriation of the center of the Wiyot universe
In February 1860, the Wiyot people were massacred during an annual ceremony on Duluwat island, and in other locations around Humbolt County (American Cowboy Chronicles, with some graphic descriptions), as part of a brutal land-grab by white settlers. On March 28-30, 2014, the Wiyot Tribe held its first World Renewal Ceremony since February 1860 (Lost Coast Outpost), and finally with five simple words on Oct. 21, 2019, it became official — the island was being returned to the Wiyot people (North Coast Journal). "Unanimous yes vote. Motion carries." [via Atlas Obscura] [more inside]
That Guy Used to Stutter
“But whenever I asked Biden about what appeared to be his present-day stuttering, the notably verbose candidate became clipped, or said he didn’t remember, or spun off to somewhere new. I wondered if I reminded Biden of his old self, a ghost from his youth, the stutterer he used to be.” John Hendrickson of The Atlantic on stuttering, shame, and Joe Biden.
Red Panda Finder
Red Panda Finder is a database and genealogical reference for red pandas in zoos throughout the world. [more inside]
CELINUNUNU
Celine Dion has a gender-neutral line of kids clothing. “They were looking at princesses. And they all wanted to be Minnie Mouse. And then I said, 'But what about Mickey?' ... I end up saying to myself, 'You know what, it's OK.' You know why it's OK? Because they're talking, they're finding themselves.”
“We said a couple of New York things, and then we let it go.”
"A cloud of notoriety and Schadenfreude surrounds the [Park Slope Food ]Co-op in a way that does not seem entirely fitting for a grocery store. When non-Co-op people think of the Co-op, they picture snobs and brats, self-righteous foodies, hypocritical hippies, bougie mothers who have their nannies do their shifts, adult professionals who melt down like tetchy toddlers when kale is out of stock. [...]
Members’ own views on the place vary. 'It’s a user-friendly way of experiencing the pitfalls of communism,' a friend and former member told me." A colorful history and profile of the Brooklyn institution. (SLNew Yorker)
Juliana Hatfield Sings (and plays!) The Police
Juliana Hatfield follows her earlier cover album of Olivia Newton-John songs (Mefi thread) with a tribute to 80's giants The Police.
[Bandcamp , Youtube.]. A couple of reviews.
[more inside]
Likability as a fig leaf for misogyny
For voters and pundits, worrying about women’s likability is a nice way to express a nasty bias. Since voters aren’t working from any single accepted definition of likability—or coldness, or aloofness, or anger—it seems foolish to try to accommodate them. There is no accommodating them, because their judgments aren’t based on rational metrics. Sexist voters turned off by presidential candidates who just so happen to be women aren’t going to be won over by a pleasant lady who smiles and makes bland pronouncements of unity when faced with a climate apocalypse and a rapacious health care system....The waning of sexism in politics won’t be marked by people starting to like women in leadership but by the decline of likability as a political criterion—by people not liking female candidates, the same way they don’t like male candidates, and voting for them anyway.
What's the German word for wanting to keep English out of Germany?
"And next year... toilet paper."
How to use one paper towel
"You use paper towels to dry your hands every day, but chances are, you're doing it wrong. In this enlightening and funny short talk, Joe Smith reveals the trick to perfect paper towel technique."
"You use paper towels to dry your hands every day, but chances are, you're doing it wrong. In this enlightening and funny short talk, Joe Smith reveals the trick to perfect paper towel technique."
Capital Knows No Borders But Workers Do
“ When we unite all working people in the country, regardless of immigration status or national origin, our movement will be stronger. We must demand a policy of open borders not simply because it is the only morally defensible position, but also because it opens up an alternate strategy to building workers’ power.” Ten Arguments for Open Borders, the Abolition of ICE, and an Internationalist Labor Movement (Socialist Forum) “ The counterpart of capital, wage-labor, is likewise compelled to push past national constraints, as workers seek employment wherever capital offers it.” The Communist Case For Open Borders (Brooklyn Rail ) (Interview with the author on the Antifada) The West’s Obsession With Border Security Is Breeding Instability (Foreign Policy)
Failure is Inevitable. What Matters is How You Deal With It.
One good eye is good enough
Some prisoners in Illinois are being told having one good eye is sufficient. Despite losing depth perception, sensitivity to light, and other problems that come from having only one good eye, some Illinois prisoners are being refused corrective care to allow binocular vision. Documents from an inmate’s lawsuit include affidavits from doctors working for Wexford that say they denied a prisoner's eye surgery because one functioning eye is sufficient for the daily activities of a prisoner.
BIG badaboom
So, two massive stars a significant fraction of the way across the observable Universe exploded, blasting out death rays into space so energetic that when they reached Earth they created faster-than-light shock waves in our atmosphere.Phil "Bad Astronomer" Plait writes about two newly observed Gamma Ray Bursts and how incredibly powerful they were. [more inside]
“It was like stepping into a lost world,”
The Final Days of Anata No Warehouse, Japan's Most Incredible Arcade [Kotaku] “Japan is known for its video arcades, from the tiniest little collections of claw games in basements to entire high-rise buildings packed with floor after floor of video amusements. On Sunday, November 17, perhaps the most elaborately themed arcade in the country, Anata no Warehouse in Kawasaki, will shut down for reasons that remain unexplained. The five-story mega-arcade was the brainchild of Taishiro Hoshino, a set designer for kabuki theater, who opened it in 2009. Far from a simple collection of games, Anata no Warehouse (“Your Warehouse”) was a recreation of the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong’s New Territories, a gravity-defying mega-slum that had captured the world’s imagination until it was torn down in 1993. [...] Its reincarnation as a Japanese arcade was also a nod to its role as a place of community.” [more inside]
The View from Somewhere
In 2017, just after covering the inauguration, journalist Lewis Wallace wrote a piece struggling with the election as someone who is transgender and anti-racist: Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it. In response, Marketplace fired him. Refusing to sign an NDA, Wallace instead took two years to dive deep into the history of "objective" journalism, activism, and what it means to do reporting during an age of rising fascism and white nationalism. The result is The View from Somewhere, and its companion podcast. Descriptions and links of the episodes so far behind the jump. [more inside]
CGP Grey explains the math behind the US electoral college
CGP Grey's videos are often fast-paced and full of detail. His recent video on the US electoral college is no exception. But this time, in a bonus 'footnote' video, he spends 43 minutes walking through the spreadsheet that he created to make the video in the first place.
Well-tempered chocolate
Nina Notman discovers that controlling crystal structures and emulsions is the key to good chocolate.
Alan Moore's planning to vote for the first time in over 40 years.
Moore explained the reasons for his decision via this tweet from his daughter Amber. "I've voted only once in my life, more than forty years ago, being convinced that leaders are mostly of benefit to no one save themselves," he writes. "That said, some leaders are so unbelievably malevolent and catastrophic that they must be strenuously opposed by any means available. Put simply, I do not believe that four more years of these rapacious, smirking right-wing parasites will leave us with a culture, a society or an environment in which we have the luxury of even imagining alternatives." [more inside]
« Previous day | Next day »