March 27, 2019
The Chinese Burner
The Many Deaths of a Painting
“How many children are you friends with?”
Stranger Things 3 [YouTube][Official Trailer] One summer can change everything. Premiering July 4.
Tracking migrations and seasons
Journey North is a citizen science project that tracks animal migration patterns, such as ruby-throated hummingbirds, rufous hummingbirds, gray whales, and monarch butterflies. [more inside]
Just hold my hand while I come to a decision on it.
Of Byronic Heroes and Other Fuckbois
Fuckbois of Literature is a weekly podcast [iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud] about terrible men in literature, hosted by Emily Edwards. There have been three episodes so far, the first focusing on the "patron saint of the modern fuckboi", Lord Byron, featuring Alisha Grauso, Amanda Timpson and Jessica Ellis. In the second episode the host and Emmet Cameron defend Holden Caulfield. And in the latest episode "Doctor Manhattan, Put on Some Clothes", Edwards and Dave Child discuss Watchmen.
Fly as far into the crash as you can.
Steve "FlightChops" Thorne is a private pilot, bringing some of the more unusual corners of general aviation to YouTube. In a series of videos, he highlights an area many pilots overlook: what to do after a crash. [more inside]
There are many ways we can do this, and the choice is yours
To commemorate the 25 anniversary of their Elder Scrolls series of RPG videogames, Bethesda Softworks is making the third chapter of the series, Morrowind, available for free download on PC for a limited time. If you're wondering what the big deal is behind the game, Alex Kane from Polygon interviewed the creative team behind it in Morrowind: An Oral History. [more inside]
randomly selected balls were taken for microbiological analysis
Are children's ball pits really 'riddled with killer germs'? [NHS Behind the Headlines] The 2018 study by researchers from the Univeristy of North Georgia in the USA "was covered in The Sun and the Mail Online, which carried accurate and balanced reports of the study that were sadly let down by over-alarmist headlines." [more inside]
nice post-WW2 system you have there, shame if something happened to it
The Future Of The Liberal Order Is Conservative, Jennifer Lind and William C. Wohlforth [Foreign Affairs, Majalla]
The liberal world order is in peril. Seventy-five years after the United States helped found it, this global system of alliances, institutions, and norms is under attack like never before. From within, the order is contending with growing populism, nationalism, and authoritarianism. Externally, it faces mounting pressure from a pugnacious Russia and a rising China. At stake is the survival of not just the order itself but also the unprecedented economic prosperity and peace it has nurtured. The order is clearly worth saving, but the question is how.[more inside]
Man Is Above Politics Like Fish Are Above Water
“But Collier, Posner and Weyl are all reformists, whatever the self-styled “radicalism” of their ideas. They want, above all, to repair capitalism, and repairing capitalism is, whether they want to admit it or not, a political project. However deeply we might nourish fantasies of post-partisanship, to implement policies today we still need to pick sides. The ideas presented in these books are crying out for a politics — for groups with real power to adopt and champion them. But neither Collier nor Posner and Weyl, in stubbornly insisting on their superiority to both left and right, seem to care much about any of this. Nor do they command, on their own, the support of a known political constituency.“ Maybe What We Need Is ....More Politics? (Longreads)
When you feel lousy, puppy therapy is indicated.
National Puppy Day was March 23rd. Let's begin our belated celebration with this adorable comic. Follow it with a nice photo collection from The Atlantic. Finish with Popsugar's offering: 60+ puppies on a single page.
Joe Biden is all over Tinder
My thumb tacked from left to right as I swiped mindlessly through Tinder. Then I saw him: His white teeth shone. His eyes sparkled. He was tall. He was distinguished.
He was former vice president Joe Biden.
As far as I know, Joe Biden is not on Tinder himself. But in typical Biden fashion, he is somehow always there. (SLWP)
Birds on film
The Sierra Club has a list of six bird webcams where you can watch the great adventures of spring. Among others, you can spy on cranes, whose vocalizations entertain even when the sky is black and there’s little to see; puffins, whose antics one viewer described as “perfection”; and a variety of species on the Mississippi River, although passers-by at that site can be less cooperative in spring. If these migration-cams aren’t exciting enough for you, perhaps you’d prefer to watch the nesting behavior of barred owls, bald eagles, or the evocatively-named Hellgate ospreys.
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