April 9, 2019
"stop exoticizing our tech-fueled wealth boom"
In San Francisco, Making a Living From Your Billionaire Neighbor’s Trash (NYT), or as re-titled by The Independent, War veteran who raids Mark Zuckerberg’s bins talks treasure hunting in Silicon Valley, is both "a signpost of the extremes of US capitalism" as reported in the NYT, and as rebutted by the SFist, "an example of the income diversity that still manages to exist in close proximity in the Mission, despite escalating rents." Jake Orta, called "The Finder" by his friends, is also an example of waste pickers, who are represented elsewhere by the Global Alliance of Waste Pickers "with groups in more than 28 countries covering mainly Latin America, Asia and Africa."
Hot air balloons, griffins, and goldfish
A fish chandelier in the collection of the Getty Museum. "The chandelier is a work of extreme novelty: it has 18 candles for illuminating a room after dark, and includes a glass bowl intended to hold water and small goldfish."
Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur
"SFIA is a YouTube channel which focuses on exploring the depths of concepts in science and futurism." As Trump rampages and the world burns, sometimes something surfaces on the internet that makes you remember, "Oh yeah, we're humans and we're potentially pretty awesome." These are smart, 30-minute long deep dives on real-world future possibilities raised by science fiction that don't try to sell you things (except Audible, at the end, but y'know), preach a theory, or fearmonger, organized in satisfyingly comprehensive playlists. They are also sedate, full of pretty animations/stock footage, and an ASMR-ey narrator. [more inside]
Think about how much there must be in that sample to override fish DNA!
I just got the results back from my class' foray in sequencing fish samples. ARE YOU READY? They're a mind-bender. (twitter thread) (threadreader)
Was Socialism Sexy?
80% of women living in communist East Germany always reached orgasm during sex, according to the Hamburg magazine Neue Revue in 1990. For West German women that figure was only 63%. [...] In short, they claimed, women had better sex under socialism than under capitalism because socialism treated women better.
A Massive Giveaway to the Tax Preparation Industry
ProPublica reports on the Taxpayer First Act, which, far from putting the taxpayer first, permanently blocks the IRS from providing for free taxpayer filing of income taxes. This is one of the few bills in the House with actual bipartisan support, including such liberal lights as Ron Wyden and John Lewis. [more inside]
Zora, Langston, and Sassy Susie
When Zora Neale Hurston invited Langston Hughes to join her expedition to Tuskeegee in her little old Nash coupe, nicknamed “Sassy Susie,” Langston happily accepted. (The car looked a lot like a Model T Ford, and could only seat two.) Langston adored the company of entertainers, and Zora was as entertaining as they came. Langston did not know how to drive, but Zora loved driving and didn’t mind a whit. They decided to make a real trip of it, “stopping on the way to pick up folk-songs, conjur [sic], and big old lies,” as Langston wrote. “Blind guitar players, conjur men, and former slaves were her quarry, small town jooks and plantation churches, her haunts. I knew it would be fun traveling with her. It was.”
An embrace of fluidity can be difficult to grasp
“The part of me that grew up feeling straight still feels like there’s this unlived dream of being with a man,” says Herzig. “But when you let go of that, you’re opening up space for this totally other big thing, which is the energy of myself with another woman. I have developed this appreciation for an expansion of attraction.”Women Over 30 Are Leaving Their Husbands and Boyfriends For Other Women
We are living in the midst of a strike wave
“The ramifications of Taft-Hartley have been wide-reaching. Decades of case law that progressively curbed the rights of workers were built on Taft-Hartley’s back, and expanded public sector bargaining rights in the 1960s and 1970s were largely modeled on the Taft-Hartley regime (or structured even more restrictively). The NLRA—labor’s “Magna Carta”—is no longer recognizable as what labor hoped it would be: a permanent power shift toward American workers and away from the vested interests that crashed the American economy, sinking the world into a global depression.” Labor has opposed Taft-Hartley for decades. Here’s why it’s time to repeal it. (Strikewave)
caress that precious ivory, smell its irate fragrance ...
Fundamental Law of Ice Cream Congestion
Time for the annual Ben & Jerry’s seminar in transportation economics: Substitute “freeway” for “free cone” and you’ve got a pretty good description of how transportation economics works. When it comes to our road system, every rush hour is like free cone day at Ben and Jerry’s.
as above
Declassified U-2 spy plane photos are a boon for aerial archaeology. Emily Hammer and Jason Ur created an index for photos publicly available in the National Archives. Enter the U2 Spyplane Aerial Photography. [more inside]
“accessibility means options, not easy gameplay.”
'Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice' Needs To Respect Its Players And Add An Easy Mode [Forbes] ““It's time, once again, to revisit an old saw. It was true of Dark Souls 3, it was true of Bloodborne, it was true of all the other From Software games and will keep being true until the only acceptable conclusion: one of these games finally puts in an easy mode. That hasn't happened yet, and so here we are. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice needs an easy mode. Hello, old saw. I'll be honest, it's not that nice to see you again.” [more inside]
"Her brother was not keen on her surfing at all."
Shamali Sanjaya, a confident, 30-year-old mother and surfer from the small Sri Lankan town of Arugam Bay, serves as the president of the country's first all-female surf club. She leads group meetings, organizes beach cleanups and coordinates surf trips for the small-yet-growing group of 17 local women surfers. But just a few years ago, Shamali's experience as a surfer in Arugam Bay looked very different than it does today.
A Tale Of Two Suburbs
An article by Claire Malone of FiveThirtyEight about two suburbs of Cleveland, OH, Parma and Shaker Heights, both traditionally Democratic. In 2016, Shaker Heights turned bluer and Parma voted narrowly for Trump. (Malone grew up in Shaker.)
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