November 27, 2018
Giving Voice To Rural Resistance
Amy Ray [one half of Indigo Girls] released her 6th solo album, Holler, a couple of months ago. Musically, I'd call it maybe Sun Studios Country, banjo with a horn section. Definitely Americana. Lyrically, it's entirely Amy Ray. It might be just what you need right now. [YT Playlist] Side A: Gracie's Dawn (Prelude), Sure Feels Good Anyway, Dadgum Down [video], Last Taxi Fare [more inside]
Great Dam of Marib Damaged in Airstrike
One of the grandest engineering marvels of the ancient world victimof Yemeni war. Ancient Marib was the capital of the wealthy caravan kingdom of Saba (biblical Sheba, home of the legendary queen), which thrived during the first millennium B.C. Along with remains of the Great Dam, considered the most important ancient site in Yemen, excavations of the Sabaean capital have revealed two elaborate pre-Islamic temple precincts dedicated to Almaqah, the chief deity of the kingdom.
"What are these women going to look like?"
Kwame Brathwaite: Celebrity and the Everyday is an exhibit chronicling the work of Brathwaite, photographer of the "Black is Beautiful" aesthetic movement, which organized fashion shows in the early 60s of black women in natural hairstyles. [more inside]
Life won’t be the same in Bikini Bottom
‘SpongeBob Squarepants' creator Stephen Hillenburg dies at 57 The cause of death was ALS, which Hillenburg revealed he had been diagnosed with in March of last year. “Steve imbued 'SpongeBob SquarePants' with a unique sense of humor and innocence that has brought joy to generations of kids and families everywhere. His utterly original characters and the world of Bikini Bottom will long stand as a reminder of the value of optimism, friendship and the limitless power of imagination."
Fighting in the Age Of Loneliness
Fighting in the Age of Loneliness (previously) is a feature length documentary series about the history of MMA from a political and cultural perspective, made "for MMA fans, people who don’t care about MMA, and people who feel that it’s a stupid bloodsport for idiots and assholes." The series was written and narrated by Felix Biederman (Chapo Trap House, Carl Diggler), directed and produced by Jon Bois (17776, Breaking Madden, more). Here is the cast of characters.
A sampling of the topics covered thus far: Anderson Silva's jell-o leg; samurai honor; the invention of Ju Jitsu and Judo; the Gracie family; Ronald Reagan's attempt to primary Gerald Ford in 1976; the birth, decline, and eventual sale of the Ultimate Fighting Championship; the rise of P.C. culture in a newly corporatized America.
Content warning: This series contains depictions of graphic displays of violence. [more inside]
Veterans. Uniforms. Scissors. Paper-making. Craft. Art. Transformation.
Imagine shredding your combat uniform. Or the dress you wore to your son's funeral after his death in war. Imagine the fibers dissolving into a slurry, ground to pulp in a bath of equal parts water and memory. Be with student veterans as they turn the fabric of their military past into paper, into art, and into a kind of peace (YT, 17 minutes). And then join me below the fold for more about the Peace Paper Project and its Veteran Paper Workshop. [more inside]
coming home
After LRAD devices were used against protestors of police killings in Ferguson, MO, after the Pentagon-developed Active Denial System was proposed for an American prison, after "counterterrorism tactics" were used against the Standing Rock anti-pipeline protests (previously), and after tear gas (CS or CN, cf: LoAC) was fired across the U.S. - Mexico border, remember Michel Foucault:
that while colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms of power in the West,- "As our planet urbanizes more rapidly than ever before, an insidious set of boomerang effects, linking security doctrine in cities in the global North with those in the South, are permeating state tactics of control of everyday urban life." [more inside]
"That’s right … we’re not a library"
Jump down a rabbit hole and keep scrolling in Jenny Odell's [previously] A Business With No End (NYT), a dive into a world of mysterious packages, Amazon sellers, Newsweek, an indicted Christian university, a department store, and a confusing bookstore as it becomes impossible to "distinguish the virtual from the real, the local from the global, a product from a Photoshop image, the sincere from the insincere."
More lies from Big Cat
Scientific American reports on a study which claims that dogs are not exceptionally intelligent in the animal world. Twitter responds.
Are you Team Otter or Team Koi?
An adorable little river otter has somehow found his way into Dr Sun Yat Sen Garden in Vancouver and he is eating all of the Koi fish. At first I was Team Otter, because hot damn is he an intelligent little bugger. It also doesn't hurt that he is cute! But now I'm Team Koi because there are only 4 left, they are extremely old and now they're being moved out of their home which is stressful.
All in all, I can gladly say that I Love living in Vancouver when this has been the top story on the news for the last week!
“The corpse in the cart has been blotted out with brown paint;”
Peeling Back the Paint to Discover Bruegel’s Secrets [Kunst Historisches Museum Wien] “New imaging technology, created by a project known as “Inside Bruegel” offers some insight into these questions, by allowing us to pull the painting’s layers apart. The project was developed along with the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, for “Bruegel” a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition, featuring 87 of the painter’s works, and which runs through Jan. 13, 2019. “It’s a huge advancement if you want to look at Bruegel,” said Ron Spronk, a professor of art history at Queen’s University in Canada, and one of four curators of the exhibition. “You can actually see the creative process. You can follow the artist in how he makes decisions.”” [via: The New York Times]
"MATHS HAS CLEARLY ABANDONED US. NUMBERS MEAN NOTHING AT THIS POINT"
In a long, entertaining, and somewhat unhinged rant, one Twitter user confronts the horror that is...the imperial measurement system, where nothing lines up and madness rules. (SLTwitter) [more inside]
The cemetery that was swallowed by a GM plant
General Motors recently announced a series of plant closures in the US and Canada, which include its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant. When that plant was built in 1981, it displaced Detroit's Poletown neighbourhood. Left intact was the Beth Olem Jewish cemetery, which now sits on the grounds of the Detroit-Hamtramck facility: A peek inside Beth Olem, the cemetery that was swallowed by a GM plant.
Do What The Private Sector Refuses To Do
Beyond Single Payer: activist Tim Faust gives a talk about the jail to hospital pipeline, the grotesque inequality of the current healthcare system, compassionate care workers, and how a US universal healthcare system could have radical, far reaching effects on the country. (YouTube, 48:00)
Who Owns Oklahoma?
Who Owns Oklahoma? Today the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing Carpenter v. Murphy, reviewing a Tenth Circuit decision finding that the Muskogee Creek reservation has never been formally dissolved.
"If the Tenth Circuit’s decision stands—and if courts restore the reservation boundaries for all five civilized tribes—roughly half of Oklahoma will become, at a stroke, Indian country."
Small Farmers in Mexico Keep Corn’s Genetic Diversity Alive
self-care becomes a sticking plaster on the wounds caused by capitalism
Ironically, in telling us to take the pressure off ourselves, self-care discourse can feel as though it’s doing the exact opposite—adding “taking care of our mental health” as yet another task to put onto our plates, alongside finding a fulfilling, well-paid career, doing overtime to prove our worth, networking to maximize our chance of success, getting to the gym five times a week, finding the perfect skincare routine, practicing an interesting and resume-friendly hobby, seeing friends in a variety of glamorous locales, finding a partner, and creating an original yet classic décor theme for our homes. If it’s too hard, and you need something easier for a little bit, you are invited to seek solace in consumption.Self-Care Won't Save Us
Worldwide decline in suicide rates
“Globally, the [suicide] rate has fallen by 38% from its peak in 1994. As a result, over 4 million lives have been saved—more than four times as many people as were killed in combat over the period.” The Economist reports on the reasons for the worldwide decline in suicide rates. [more inside]
What's for dinner?
I'm a great cook. Now that I'm divorced, I'm never cooking for a man again.
MOdulator DEModulator
"Borders don't divide us. We have the same sky over our heads."
Viva La Vulva
Have you ever wished for a Fatboy Slim song to be lip-synced by vulva-shaped objects? (no actual vulvas, but still possibly NSFW)
The number two reason for buying more Lego
Intrepid researchers discover if eating Lego is dangerous.
Nexus 0.1
Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies - "A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing." [more inside]
The 9 plane plane: "not as stable as I'd hoped for, but ..."
Ran D. St. Clair Flex 9 Flight: 9 foam board planes, connected by a small piece of soft foam and wired up to work as one (more details in the Ran D. St. Clair Flex 9 Explainer video) [double link YouTube]
GM mosquito trial sparks ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ lab fears.
Thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes are to be released in Burkina Faso as a step towards the world’s first field test of “gene-drive” technology.
There are concerns this apparently benign application will be followed by riskier, profit- or military-driven uses.
Sword through the neck? S'cool, dude, no worries!
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