December 13, 2015
An unexpected bird, heard over and over in music since 1989: the loon
Listen to the "Loon Garden" sample from one of the E-mu Emulator II's stock library of sounds, and it may sound familiar in an unusual way. Instead of invoking a feeling of being near the Great Lakes, you might get taken to dance floors or mixes of the past and present, from 808 State's "Pacific State" and Sueño Latino's "Sueño Latino (Paradise Mix)" (both vaguely tropical numbers from 1989), to the more recent Rustie's "Up Down (feat. D Double E)" and Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" (NSFW). Philip Sherburne tracked down the story of a sample that keeps coming back, collecting more examples and getting some great insight into a number of notable tracks.
Project 880
Watch it live, sorta
If you hurry, you may be able to catch Apollo 17 taking off from the Moon.
“It involves my life, my legacy, my career, my history, my reputation.”
Alan Dershowitz on the Defense (His Own) by Barry Meier [The New York Times]
Last month, demonstrators at Johns Hopkins University interrupted Alan M. Dershowitz as he was giving a fiery speech defending Israel. The disruption normally would not have fazed Mr. Dershowitz, a former Harvard Law School professor who thrives on controversy and relishes taking on opponents in and out of the courtroom. The protesters, however, were not challenging his Middle East politics. Instead, they held up a sign reading, “You Are Rape Culture.” Mr. Dershowitz knew what it meant. A decade ago, he had defended a friend, a money manager named Jeffrey E. Epstein, after authorities in Palm Beach, Fla., found evidence indicating that he was paying underage girls to give him sexual massages. The lawyer led a scorched-earth attack on the girls and, with a team of high-priced lawyers, cut a plea deal for Mr. Epstein that the local police said was too lenient.[more inside]
I'm Worth It
Goldieblox brings you the most adorable Year in Feminism.
H is for Hawk (and Hunting)
"Want to introduce you guys to my new hunting partner for this season, and possibly longer if she does well. This is Natasha, a passage (meaning on her first migration) female red tailed hawk." From AR-15.com, a first-person account of training a hawk to the hunt, complete with glorious photographs. [more inside]
Precision beats power, and timing beats speed
Conor "The Notorious" McGregor took just 13 seconds to knock out José Aldo and thereby become the UFC featherweight champion. [more inside]
In my dreams, I was inventing literature
Gabriel García Márquez began writing Cien Años de Soledad—One Hundred Years of Solitude—a half-century ago, finishing in late 1966. The novel came off the press in Buenos Aires on May 30, 1967, two days before Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, and the response among Spanish-language readers was akin to Beatlemania: crowds, cameras, exclamation points, a sense of a new era beginning. In 1970 the book appeared in English, followed by a paperback edition with a burning sun on its cover, which became a totem of the decade. By the time García Márquez was awarded the Nobel Prize, in 1982, the novel was considered the Don Quixote of the Global South, proof of Latin-American literary prowess. [...] How is it that this novel could be sexy, entertaining, experimental, politically radical, and wildly popular all at once? Its success was no sure thing, and the story of how it came about is a crucial and little-known chapter in the literary history of the last half-century.The Secret History of One Hundred Years of Solitude
Feared by ticks, fearless of snakes
Opossums are pretty great. They kill ticks in droves, and they're immune to several kinds of snake venom. Plus, they're heaps cuter than they're given credit for. A mother opossum is basically a living school bus. During tough times, a friendly dog can function as a surrogate school bus. What to do if you find injured or orphaned opossums. [more inside]
Don’t do it. Don’t fight Sisko.
What poet should I fight?
the short answer is: every poet. but here’s a brief (ok, that’s a lie. this is really long) list i typed up during accounting instead of learning about accounting for inter-corporate investments
Clowns Vs. Firefighters, Toronto Edition
If one year during the Toronto International Film Festival you’re engaging a Hollywood producer in conversation and have only a few seconds to pitch your action script before the bouncers drag you out from under the door of her bathroom stall, just fire off a three-word description of the two unlikely antagonists. Hollywood loves oddball enemies even more than unlikely buddy cops: cowboys versus aliens, mercenaries versus dinosaurs, Predators versus future governors of American states. Yet, inexplicably, no movie has been made of Toronto’s contribution to the genre: clowns versus firefighters.
priorities matter.
The Tail End: "No matter what your age, you may, without realizing it, be enjoying the very last chapter of some of the relationships that matter most to you." (via) [more inside]
I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
The Brompton Cemetery Time Machine
Necrokitty Comic Sans
When the pet crematorium sends her poems purporting to be from her dead cat, Hannah Chutzpah responds in poetry. (And are you sure this is from her? / Only I think her scansion would be better)
George Saunders reads & discusses short fiction
George Saunders reads short short stories by Grace Paley and Barry Hannah and discusses them with Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of The New Yorker. The podcast is less than 40 minutes long and each of the stories fit on a single page of the magazine.
MRA Dilbert
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