March 13, 2014
Three Artists One Song
For a few years, Converse has been bringing three disparate music artists together to create a song. The most recent release "Hero" features Frank Ocean, Diplo, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon from the Clash. [more inside]
The Cinema That's Always Deserted
"On a sunny day at the very beginning of this millenniums, a crazy frenchman found himself in the desert of Sinai. After some puffs of a magic smoke he wondered - how come that there are no cinemas in the middle of the desert...?"
Elegy for a Country’s Seasons
In the end, the only thing that could create the necessary traction in our minds was the intimate loss of the things we loved. Zadie Smith on climate change at a personal level.
The California Aggie would have been 100 next year.
Today, the UC Davis student newspaper, The California Aggie, put out its last print edition. The Aggie has been in dire straits for some time. Ad revenue started to plummet in 2009 and the paper has been working off of its reserve funds. Publication was cut from five days a week, to four days a week, to one day a week. Very few of the staff have been paid at all and those who were earned around $2 an hour. Despite the print change, the paper was due to run out of money by June 2014.
Then came a last gasp, paper-saving measure: Measure 1, proposed for the winter 2014 ASUCD ballot, would add a $9.30 increase to student fees in order to subsidize the formerly independently run paper. But.... [more inside]
Information Management: A Silver Anniversary
"...the hope would be to allow a pool of information to develop which could grow and evolve..." Information Management: A Proposal is a brief technical paper first published on 12 March 1989. Within three years the author, Tim Berners-Lee, elaborated on the original proposal and created the WorldWideWeb. The W3C has launched a 25th anniversary commemorative website to mark the paper's birthday, and Berners-Lee will be giving a TED talk this weekend about the web.
Surfing On Sine Waves
Richard D. James is someone whose work can probably be considered outsider art. By almost anyone's standards, his work is eccentric, quirky and idiosyncratic. Its flaws (such as tape hiss and clipping) are arguably as charming as its finer points (such as whole worlds of original sounds), and its deviations from the norm are what make it so endearing, otherworldly and engaging. James seems a good subject for a case study due to how little music theory he took for granted, and how much he built his own musical principles from scratch, which is a noble goal for anyone trying to carve their own niche in the musical ecosystem.
Panti Bliss - The Best Gay Possible (Oppressive Dance Mix)
In a quick follow-up to this previous post... Pet Shop Boys have turned Ms Bliss's speech into a dance track: The Best Gay Possible (Oppressive Dance Mix). [more inside]
The Better Touch
(Mildly NSFW-ish lyrics) Youtube user strizzalo does a slow, sensitive, acoustic cover of The Bloodhound Gang's "The Bad Touch."
What a difference a 'y' makes
Ban Bossy : Beyonce: I'm not bossy, I'm the boss.
"When a little boy asserts himself, he's called a “leader.” Yet when a little girl does the same, she risks being branded “bossy.” Words like bossy send a message: don't raise your hand or speak up. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys—a trend that continues into adulthood." [more inside]
Shame on you!
You should be ashamed -- or maybe not. 'Shame on you. These three simple words can temporarily -- or, when used too often, permanently -- destroy an individual's sense of value and self-worth.' A paper by Thomas Scheff, professor emeritus of sociology at UC Santa Barbara 'The Ubiquity of Hidden Shame in Modernity' explores the danger of hidden emotions: ""In modernity, shame is the most obstructed and hidden emotion, and therefore the most destructive," said Thomas Scheff, professor emeritus of sociology at UC Santa Barbara. '"Emotions are like breathing -- they cause trouble only when obstructed." When hidden, he continued, shame causes serious struggles not only for individuals but also for groups.' [more inside]
The Cost of Kale: How Foodie Trends Can Hurt Low-Income Families
"If you want to be cosmopolitan, you’ll buy star anise, kimchi, and coconut oil. If you want to prevent cancer, buy collard greens, blueberries, and omega-3 eggs. If you want to eat food free of pesticides and high fructose corn syrup, buy organic meat, flour, and dairy. Compound all of these seemingly innocuous exercises in American Dreaming with diet fads like “clean” eating, Westernized veganism, or the paleo diet, and you’ll get a supermarket full of people staring at labels, searching the copy for proof of ideological and medical purity. I need to buy this if I want to be good, if I really want to take care of myself and my family. As it turns out, this moralistic way of framing choice is extremely profitable for food processors, restaurants, and produce retailers: we’ve been effectively held captive by our own consciences."(slBitchMagazine)
This shot, and one more.
The legendary TV production manager and inspiration for the film set term "Abby Singer Shot" has passed away at 96. [more inside]
"In a world..."
Hal Douglas, who for many of us was THE voice of movie trailers in the 1990's, has passed away at age 89. The Guardian pays tribute with a half dozen of his best trailers. And then, of course, there's the legendary trailer for "Comedian".
It's unknown whether these homebrewers went for insanely hoppy IPAs too
"As an important part of daily nourishment, women had always produced beer at home and for their own household. However, in Holland from the beginning of the thirteenth century beer production for the general market commenced. In the developing cities more and more labour was divided among specialised craftsmen. Professional breweries were established and the beer industry became a serious trade." -- female brewers in Holland and England, a paper by Marjolien van Dekken looking at how the brewery industry changed in Early Modern Times from largely homebrewed and controlled by women to a more large scale and male dominated industry. [more inside]
In war, not everyone is a soldier.
The generic war game has come under fire from many sides, prompting more thoughtful games, such as the recent Spec Ops: The Line (previously) and others. However, short of post-apocalyptic zombie-type games, no one has thought to make a game about the civilians - survivors living in the cities that other people battle over. Until now.
In This War of Mine, the focus is shifted away from military operations portrayed in most games. Instead, it is a dark survival game where players control a group of civilians trying to stay alive in a besieged city. During the day snipers outside stop you from leaving your refuge, offering players time to craft, trade, upgrade their shelter, feed and cure their people. At night they must scavenge nearby areas in search for food, medicines, weapons and other useful items. This War of Mine was inspired by real-life events and delivers a message. "This can happen in your city, in your country."
Gr8 deal on Odorless surprises! 2 baker's dozens @nonstopscrshop
Oh, I'm sorry, they're out of Odorless surprise. How about a new-to-you gamin? They never have that at the end of the week, they get it fresh on Monday. What about a Refurbished gintleman? It's been out for two weeks. They were expecting it this morning. Well, there's always more to browse at the Non-Stop Scroll Shop! It's online, unlike Apple Cabin and it's curious mailers (previously; more) [via mefi projects]
A Set of China with Every Fill-Up
Apparently back in those days your grandpa still goes on about when gas was less than a buck a gallon and air was free, service stations also gave away some cool swag.
Bayakou
"The only way to end Haiti’s cholera epidemic is to keep infected waste out of food and water. A subterranean network of pipes, pumping stations, and waste-treatment plants would be the ideal solution, but Haiti’s successive governments have had too little money, power, or will to build massive public works on their own.... International donors have been little help: in one case, the U.S. government, to protest the way an election was conducted, withheld funds to build water and sanitation infrastructure in northern Haiti for more than ten years. From 1990 to 2008, the proportion of Haitians with access to basic sanitation decreased from 26% to 17%. Cholera broke out in 2010. Four years into the epidemic, a trip to the bathroom for most Haitians still means looking for an open field or wading into a public canal at dawn. Those who can afford to, dig cesspools under outhouses. When the cesspools get full, it’s time to call a man like Leon." [more inside]
ATTENTION HUMAN MALES
Stacey Nightmare is a completely normal human woman who vines under the name Stacey Nightmare for no reason at all. She enjoys fitness and music. She has a pet spider named Gretchen. She lives in Brooklyn. [[Everything nsfw]]
The Fat Drug
IF you walk into a farm-supply store today, you’re likely to find a bag of antibiotic powder that claims to boost the growth of poultry and livestock. That’s because decades of agricultural research has shown that antibiotics seem to flip a switch in young animals’ bodies, helping them pack on pounds. Manufacturers brag about the miraculous effects of feeding antibiotics to chicks and nursing calves. Dusty agricultural journals attest to the ways in which the drugs can act like a kind of superfood to produce cheap meat.
But what if that meat is us?
he's the sort of genius who's not very good at boiling a kettle
Are the robots about to rise? Ray thinks so...
Google has bought almost every machine-learning and robotics company it can find... And it has embarked upon what one DeepMind investor told the technology publication Re/code two weeks ago was "a Manhattan project of AI"... Peter Norvig, Google's research director, said recently that the company employs "less than 50% but certainly more than 5%" of the world's leading experts on machine learning. And that was before it bought DeepMind which, it should be noted, agreed to the deal with the proviso that Google set up an ethics board to look at the question of what machine learning will actually mean when it's in the hands of what has become the most powerful company on the planet.In late 2012, Ray became Google's new Director of Engineering, empowering him with extraordinary resources and latitude. [more inside]
From working in an industry that fears death to one that embraces it
What do you get when your funeral director is a former women's magazine writer who describes herself as "a Kundalini-yoga-practicing Buddhist Presbyterian on the board of Brooklyn Heights Synagogue"? It's Amy Cunningham's blog The Inspired Funeral, chronicling trends, products, history, music and ideas related to all sorts of grieving traditions. (From this NYT article about boomers gravitating towards greener burials and funerals.) [more inside]
It's all the same...
A sports arena in Boise is being sued after it was revealed that their $4 "Regular" beer and $7 "Large" beer were the same size, though different shapes. Two fans produced a Youtube that proved it and it went viral.
found mike
A videoblogger from the U.K. named Jonny Benjamin started a social media campaign called #FindMike to track down the stranger who convinced him not to end his life in 2008.
Earlier this year, Benjamin found "Mike" (whose real name is Neil Laybourn) with help of Rethink Mental Illness, the organization that helped launch Benjamin's search. In the video, you can watch their heartwarming reunion.
Earlier this year, Benjamin found "Mike" (whose real name is Neil Laybourn) with help of Rethink Mental Illness, the organization that helped launch Benjamin's search. In the video, you can watch their heartwarming reunion.
How Target Blew It
"The breach could have been stopped there without human intervention. The system has an option to automatically delete malware as it’s detected. But according to two people who audited FireEye's performance after the breach, Target's security team turned that function off." Bloomberg reports today on "Missed Alarms and 40 Million Stolen Credit Card Numbers: How Target Blew It." (The Target breach, previously.)
Trains Are Wonderful And People…?
Come on in and sit down. I wanna talk to you about trains for a minute. That's pretty much it. Still chuckling...
It can't hurt to ask
Congratulations, you won the lottery and got offered a tenure-track job offer in the humanities! Now it's time to start negotiating. But don't negotiate on the terms, because your new colleagues might decide to rescind the offer. Further coverage at Inside Higher Ed.
« Previous day | Next day »