December 14, 2014
After 5437 days, it better be worth it
After nearly 15 years of waiting, neo-soul artist D'Angelo released Black Messiah, a follow up to his 2000 release Voodoo. [more inside]
The Office: Middle Earth
On this week's Saturday Night Live, writers decided to play to host Martin Freeman's strengths by combining two of his best known roles: Tim Canterbury from BBC's The Office and Bilbo Baggins of The Hobbit. The Office: Middle Earth. (Video may be restricted in your part of the world. Here's a YouTube link instead.)
Money in the Harry Potter Universe
While there has been speculation and answers about how money works in the Harry Potter universe, no one has ever written about how the witches and wizards in the books might manage their personal finances after the end of the series. Until now.
Potato Chip Cookies with Raisins "country style"
"Okay out there in radio land, it's time to listen up, I've got something good to tell you and we gonna make some potato chip cookies" [SLYT]. I can't put my finger on what makes this video so enjoyable. Maybe it's the cavalier attitude towards recipe measurements, his assurance that "it might be good for you with them raisins in there" and all the non sequiturs. I can't speak for the cookies themselves but I guarantee you that this video is "gunna be good."
Whisper it quietly...
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.” -- Robert Jordan [more inside]
The art of making a book, in various forms
The art of making a book (original video on Facebook, without added music) takes you through the traditional manual process of bookbinding, from selecting and setting the individual letters to finally binding the book in leather and adding finishing touches. If you'd like to try your hand at something similar but with some modern flourishes, there are plenty of tutorials and guides, linked below. [more inside]
CURSE YOU AND YOUR DOGGY SPEED!!
Baby Elephant gets Frustrated Chasing a Dog. [slyt | cute]
'smile regimes'
Incorruptible Teeth, or, the French Smile Revolution
In 1787, Madame Vigée-Lebrun, painter to France’s royal and aristocratic elite, displayed a canvas at the Paris Salon. It was a self-portrait depicting the artist in an affectionate embrace with her daughter. Vigée-Lebrun is smiling—a sweet, broad smile revealing white teeth. There is little about this pose that seems in any way exceptional, yet exception was furiously taken. “An affectation which artists, art-lovers and persons of taste have been united in condemning,” wrote an anonymous commentator, “and which finds no precedent amongst the Ancients, is that in smiling she shows her teeth. This affectation is particularly out of place in a mother.”How the smile came to Paris (briefly), aka Grin City. [more inside]
Situation in Sydney
Global news sources are reporting a what appears to be a hostage taking at the Lindt Chocolate Café in Martin Place, Sydney, also home to the Reserve Bank of Australia. [more inside]
Wait a sec. Do two make a row? Just curious.
Animals sing "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" SLYT. What it says on the Xmas tin.
Lindsay Lohan Loves Living in London.
Given the time stamp, I was likely extremely drunk
Why We Don’t Know The Size Of The Transgender Population In 2001, Kerith Conron was working on LGBT issues in Boston’s health department. She discovered that homeless transgender people were sleeping on benches because the shelters, which were segregated by gender, didn’t know what to do with them. As a result, transgender people weren’t included in the city’s assessment of who needed shelter.
Angela Davis on police violence
‘There is an unbroken line of police violence in the United States that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery, the aftermath of slavery, the development of the Ku Klux Klan,” says Angela Davis. “There is so much history of this racist violence that simply to bring one person to justice is not going to disturb the whole racist edifice.”
20 Best New Beers of 2014
"Here’s an understatement for you: 2014 was a great year for beer. Seriously, it’s hard to put into words just how awesome American craft beer was this year. IPAs got sessionable, then they got fresh-hopped, breweries collaborated like hip hop moguls, older (let’s call them classic?) breweries reinvented themselves with ambitious experiments while young breweries helped push the envelope of style and taste…there were hundreds, probably thousands of new beers hitting the shelves and taps all year long, challenging our palates and expectations day after day. It’s an exciting time to be alive."
“If you’re a crook, then I’m a crook."
The Minister Who Went to Jail for Financial-Aid Fraud
Ozel Clifford Brazil was a respected clergyman who helped thousands of African American teens get into college. What drove him to break the law?
Misguided Altruism Trailer
Ozel Clifford Brazil was a respected clergyman who helped thousands of African American teens get into college. What drove him to break the law?
Misguided Altruism Trailer
Pilot-wave theory “seems to me so natural and simple..."
This idea that nature is inherently probabilistic — that particles have no hard properties, only likelihoods, until they are observed — is directly implied by the standard equations of quantum mechanics. But now a set of surprising experiments with fluids has revived old skepticism about that worldview. The bizarre results are fueling interest in an almost forgotten version of quantum mechanics, one that never gave up the idea of a single, concrete reality.
The experiments involve an oil droplet that bounces along the surface of a liquid. The droplet gently sloshes the liquid with every bounce. At the same time, ripples from past bounces affect its course. The droplet’s interaction with its own ripples, which form what’s known as a pilot wave, causes it to exhibit behaviors previously thought to be peculiar to elementary particles — including behaviors seen as evidence that these particles are spread through space like waves, without any specific location, until they are measured.
Particles at the quantum scale seem to do things that human-scale objects do not do. They can tunnel through barriers, spontaneously arise or annihilate, and occupy discrete energy levels. This new body of research reveals that oil droplets, when guided by pilot waves, also exhibit these quantum-like features.
To the mom I used to be.
"What They Left Behind" is a 35 minute documentary produced by Sandy Hook Promise. Today, the families and community of Newtown, Connecticut honor the lives of the twenty first graders and six adult helpers who lost their lives in that school shooting. No public events will take place today in Newtown. [more inside]
"in Gary, racism clearly trumped democracy"
Yeah. Indiana’s got a constitution, which says you can’t pass special laws for one city, one town, etc. But they got around that, because instead of saying, “We want to eliminate the buffer zone around Gary,” they said, “We want to eliminate the buffer zone around a city that has a river that runs through it, and that has a steel mill…” and by the time you got down to it, there was only one city in the state that fit that description.Gary, Indiana: the city that split in two.
Nu scylun hergan Gehyrst Hlaf
I am irrationally pleased by God-night, Rune and The Cat in the Hwæt, two Old English translations by Cassandra Rasmussen.
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