April 13, 2016
"... I suppose I thought there’d be more of a narrative arc."
Julie Beck: How you arrange the plot points of your life into a narrative can shape who you are—and is a fundamental part of being human. [more inside]
The Djinn of Aiman
The Djinn of Aiman "IT WAS A DIM JANUARY AFTERNOON IN LAHORE, there was a power outage on Zahoor Elahi Road, and Farida Khanum had finally woken up. We were sitting among shadows on the floor of her living room: I on the carpet and she on a cushion that was at once a mark of her prestige (she is “The Queen of Ghazal,” the last of her generation’s iconic classically trained singers) and advanced age (she can no longer sit as she used to, like a mermaid, with her legs folded beguilingly beneath her). I had come to prepare Khanum for a concert she was to give in a week’s time in Calcutta, and was trying to engage her, in this fragile early phase of her day, with innocuous-sounding questions: which ghazals was she planning on singing there, and in what order?
Now that applications for Teach for America are down....
TFA chief executive is taking a fresh look at how to turn things around. Applications are down 35% over 3 years. The executive team is taking a "fresh look" at how to make things work, with the goal of doing things differently. [more inside]
It's the tops
They're all still falling down
Aaron's Inc has set a new Guinness World Record for most humans & mattresses successfully toppled in dominoes style, at 1200 people/mattresses, knocking out the previous record of 1150 set by German company Höffner Möbelgesellschaft GmbH & Co. KG back in 2012. (previously) [more inside]
...fucking hell, what have we been doing for half a century?
Brian Eno's favorite records in a longish interview with William Doyle of the Quietus.
At Tampa Bay farm-to-table restaurants, you’re being fed fiction
Farm to Fable Part 1: The restaurant's chalkboard makes claims as you enter from the valet parking lot. At the hostess stand, a cheery board reads, “Welcome to local, farm-fresh Boca.” Brown butcher paper tops tables and lettuces grow along a wooden wall. In a small market case, I see canned goods from here and produce from somewhere. Check the small print: blackberries from Mexico and blueberries from California. With the tagline “Local, simple and honest,” Boca Kitchen Bar Market was among the first wave of farm-to-table restaurants in Tampa Bay to make the assertion “we use local products whenever possible.” I’ve reviewed the food. My own words are right there on their website: “local, thoughtful and, most importantly, delicious.” But I’ve been had, from the snapper down to the beef. [more inside]
Climate Deniers Versus The Volcano
Anyone reading pundits and politicians pontificating profusely about climate or environmental science will, at some point, have come across the “volcano gambit”. During the discussion they will make a claim that volcanoes (or even a single volcano) produce many times more pollutant emissions than human activities. Often the factor is extremely precise to help give an illusion of science-iness and, remarkably, almost any pollutant can be referenced. This “volcano gambit” is an infallible sign that indicates the author is clueless about climate science.
He also heard the Hum
From Zug Island to Bristol to British Columbia, interest in a mysterious humming sound continues. Colin Dickey investigates The World Hum Map and Database Project, its creator, and some recent experiments, including the first Deming box. Stops along the way include TACAMO, tin foil hats, school shootings, Jesse Ventura's tv show, and noise-abatement laws. [more inside]
Dear Booger-Wiper,
If you care, here’s how it all went down.
Music journalist Bill Wyman (not the Rolling Stones member) on Liz Phair, Steve Albini & Me: The True Story of 1993, the Greatest Goddamn Year in Chicago Rock History.
Dedicated to the appreciation of the mundane in everyday life
The Umbrella Cover Museum is about finding wonder and beauty in the simplest of things, and about knowing that there is always a story behind the cover. [via]
A Surfeit of Sandboxes
You may be familiar with JSFiddle and CodePen, but there are similar tools for a variety of languages, some more practical than others. [more inside]
a moment-by-moment decision not to escalate
Women do what they need to do to survive. "Emergencies so often don't look like emergencies as we're taught to understand them when we are children. Monsters don't look like the monsters we've been taught to avoid." [cw: rape] [more inside]
Octopuses are famous escape artists.
Duluth!!!
Duluth: Who Loves Ya, Baby? (SLYTellySavalas)
That's a beauty.
"As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking."
Reader on Revolutionary Feminism "The Revolutionary Feminism reader includes a century of debates between communist, anarchism and radical feminists, extending from 1890 to 1983. Groups in 21 cities and four countries did study groups on the Revolutionary Feminism reader in the fall and winter of 2015. This collection is beautifully laid out, easy to share, and includes a lot of great material on lost traditions of queer and women's liberation movements." From Mefi's own alexkollontai, via MetaFilter Projects. [more inside]
Why Do Cats Love Bookstores?
Curbing toxic game culture
League of Legends has 67 million players and grossed an estimated US$1.25 billion in revenue last year. But it also has a reputation for toxic in-game behaviour, which its parent company, Riot Games in Los Angeles, California, sees as an obstacle to attracting and retaining players. So the company has hired a team of researchers to study the social — and antisocial — interactions between its users.
Gone in Six Characters
Gone in Six Characters: Short URLs Considered Harmful for Cloud Services [abstract] [pdf] [more inside]
I looked up and there you were
Here Are Your Eyes
How to Read a Neighborhood
Dating Historic Images A key to using clues in photos to narrow down the date of construction for historic vernacular architecture, from University of Vermont's Landscape Change digital image project. [more inside]
Not ALL Devo, Just Part of It
Gerald Casale, one of the original members of DEVO (and reported originator of the “Theory of Devolution”) was tired of waiting for another band reunion, so he wrote and recorded a new song with Italy's Phunk Investigation to be released physically and digitally on Saturday. But the video is available now, designed by collage artist Max Papeschi, with a visual mix of Energy Domes, Donuts, Drones, Dentures, Dinosaurs, Dropped Pants, Drumpf, Disney, Dildos, Dynamite and lots of other things that don't start with D, plus a new version of Devo mascot Booji Boy...
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for "Devo's Gerald Casale" with "IT'S ALL DEVO".
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for "Devo's Gerald Casale" with "IT'S ALL DEVO".
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