February 21, 2019
SO COOL, they're hot!
Thought y'all might enjoy some cookstove theory from the Aprovecho Research Center. (pdfs)
"The bubble sort would be the wrong way to go"
“COME, LINK…. LET US AWAKEN…TOGETHER!!”
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s [re:]Awakening [YouTube][Switch Trailer] [Original Gameboy Gameplay] “Nintendo is bringing the 1993 Game Boy classic adventure The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening to Nintendo Switch later this year. The re-release is more than just a Virtual Console-style release, it’s a complete 3D “reimagining” of the classic Zelda adventure. As Link, players will once again return to the island of Koholint for new adventures. While the new Link’s Awakening will retain the top-down — and occasionally side-scrolling — view of the Game Boy original, the Switch remake will use 3D models and employ a stylish, toy-like aesthetic.” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
"goat-palated people" is the best thing I've heard all day
Sam Sanders, host of NPR's It's Been A Minute, addressed his Twitter followers
Tell me your Weirdest eating/drinking habit you had as a kid!
I’ll go first: When I was like 8 years old, I used to carry a little bottle of apple cider vinegar around wherever I went, taking a swig every now and then like a lush w/his flask.
As a child, my brother would eat sticks of butter out of the fridge, under cover of night. We were strange.
Scientists solve mystery of ‘art acne’ on Georgia O’Keeffe’s paintings
O’Keeffe’s “Pedernal, 1941”—a sweeping vista of pinks, greens, and yellows creeping up the canvas to the mountain’s darkened summit—is experiencing a peculiar kind of decay. The artist noticed it herself, remarking on granulations, discoloration, and small spots where the paint disappeared altogether in letters to conservator Caroline Keck in 1947. Known as surface protrusions, or “art acne”, this pimpling afflicts oil paintings from every time and place. But the reasons for O’Keeffe’s deformations, which only grew worse over the decades, remained a mystery. [PopSci] [more inside]
"My left shoe won't even reboot."
"It was a gift for me when I realized: I’m done."
At the beginning I never thought of becoming a candidate myself.
Immigrant, math Ph.D., farmer, and judge Dalip Singh Saund wasn't just the first Asian American elected to the US Congress. He was also a cofounder of the India Association of America and an activist whose work helped lead to the 1946 passage of the Luce-Celler act, which allowed immigrants from India and from the Philippines to be naturalized as US citizens. Ten years later, he won Burbank, California's seat in the House. "In the winter of 1957 I was able finally to keep the promise I had made in the campaign that if elected to Congress I would go to India and the Far East and present myself as a living example of American democracy in practice." [more inside]
This like a post on a private Instagram account called "brown eyed Earl"
True Facts: The Lemur. A fascinating and informative new short documentary on lemurs by natural historian Ze Frank.
San Francisco Diggers
Scary times in Portland's queer and leftist scene
On February 14th, local Portland, OR newspaper the Willamette Week reported that Lieutenant Jeff Niiya of the Portland Police Department had a friendly rapport with Joey Gibson, the leader of extremist right wing group and Proud Boys allies "Patriot Prayer", who are based out of Vancouver, WA, but are a constant presence in Portland due to the group's constant rallies, which have become a hive of violence between Patriot Prayer/Proud Boys and antifascist counter-protesters. [more inside]
Megachile pluto is Rotu ofu, (once and still) Queen of the bees
In the 1850s, Alfred Russel Wallace (Wikipedia), a tall, skinny, reserved young explorer, went traipsing through tropical forests in the Malay Archipelago (Wiki), collecting specimens to be sold back in England. One of them was a specimen a local brought to him, “a large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle,” (The Malay Archipelago, 1890 edition via Archive.org), and it was the largest bee known in the world. Megachile pluto (Wiki) was presumed extinct into the early 1980s, when it was re-discovered (abstract), only to disappear from sight again. Clay Bolt, Natural History and Conservation Photographer, wrote about rediscovering Wallace’s Giant Bee for Global Wildlife.org, and he shared a video of a specimen in action with Wired. [more inside]
Peter Tork has died at 77
The Washington Post has an obituary. He was my first celebrity crush and The Monkees was the first album I bought with my babysitting money. I am sadder than I should be about this.
Not to be confused with Dipsy's Hat, which contains untold powers.
Ong's Hat: The Early Internet Conspiracy Game That Got Too Real "On a sunny morning in early 2000, Joseph Matheny woke up to find conspiracy theorists camped out on his lawn again. He was making coffee when he noticed a face peering in a ground-floor window of the small, three-story building he rented in Santa Cruz. Past the peeper, there were three other men in their early 20s loitering awkwardly. Matheny sighed and stepped outside. He already knew what they wanted. They wanted to know the truth about Ong’s Hat. They wanted the secret to interdimensional travel." (Ong's Hat previously.)
asking the important questions
Matt Levine, Money Stuff, Bloomberg: Should index funds be illegal?
I have been writing about it since 2015, and I’ve enjoyed phrasing the question maximally as “should index funds be illegal?” That is a little bit of a joke, but not really, because if you take this stuff seriously enough then it does seem like large diversified shareholders—index funds but also other mutual funds—would pose a problem under the antitrust laws, and you’d have to do something about them. One thing I should say about this theory is that, as far as I can tell, almost no one who works in the capital markets or corporate America takes it seriously.[more inside]
"He's a wolf."
“She never looks back”: Inside Elizabeth Holmes's Chilling Final Months at Theranos - At the end, Theranos was overrun by a dog defecating in the boardroom, nearly a dozen law firms on retainer, and a C.E.O. grinning through her teeth about an implausible turnaround. (prev, prev, prev, prev)
Road Trip For The Heart
One must imagine Sisyphus clicking.
There is the potential for elements (and children) being stressed
Illegal Lego builds. A brief, informative, wryly funny explanation of what you are and aren't allowed to do with Lego and Technic sets (if you're creating official builds for market).
MetaClean: “How often should you...”
The Guardian: "Experts on 10 modern domestic dilemmas" give their - varied - opinions on bath towels (ongoing MetaTalk), sheets, wearing shoes indoors, jean washing, toilet brushes (“...a fetid liquid bacteria soup...”), cleaning cloths, dusting, vacuuming, deep-cleaning bathrooms, and showering. The World Wide Web is full of opinions, hygiene shaming, disguised cleaning product ads and more opinions on toilet brushes, the frequency of vacuuming, bathroom cleaning, toilet cleaning, (CW) cleaning after intimacy (“Toss the sex towel in the hamper”, “Dick in the sink”) showering frequency, and various cleaning in general. There is also science around cleaning agents and sprays, cotton towel bacteria, decontaminating kitchen cloths, hand hygiene, and toilet flushing.
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