May 25, 2021
Rare Vietnam War images from the winning side, 1965-1975
A perspective rarely seen in the West. A collection of photos taken by North Vietnamese photographers during the Vietnam War, 19**-1975. [more inside]
"Time began to slow down..."
The Mystery of Magic’s Greatest Card Trick. [NYT] "There are hundreds of ACAAN variations, and you’d be hard pressed to find a professional card magician without at least one in his or her repertoire. (A Buddha-like maestro in Spain, Dani DaOrtiz, knows about 60.) There are ACAANs in which the card-choosing spectator writes down the named card in secrecy; ACAANs in which the spectator shuffles the deck; ACAANs in which every other card turns out to be blank.
For all their differences, every ACAAN has one feature in common: At some point, the magician touches the cards. The touch might be imperceptible, it might appear entirely innocent. But the cards are always touched...." [more inside]
A colossal rock party happening in outer space, and that seems bad
Greeaat time to buy a house
"It has been hard to convey, through anecdotes or data, how bizarre the U.S. housing market has become. For example, a Bethesda, Maryland homebuyer working with @Redfin included in her written offer a pledge to name her first-born child after the seller. She lost."
Redfin's CEO weighs in on the current housing shitshow market. [SLTT]
When It's Over
The End IS Near. No, Seriously. What the end of the pandemic looks like, by Donald G. McNeil, Jr. (slMedium)
The Church Forests of Ethiopia
When he decided to become a forest ecologist, Alemayehu realized that in order to study Ethiopia’s native forests, he would have to study the forests surrounding churches. Until roughly a hundred years ago, Ethiopia’s northern highlands were one continuous forest, but over time that forest has been continually bisected, eaten up by agriculture and the pressures of a growing population. Now the entire region has become a dry hinterland taken over almost entirely by farm fields. From the air it looks similar to Haiti. Less than three percent of primary forest remains. And nearly all of that three percent, Alemayehu discovered, was only found in forests protected by the church.
“I was amazed to discover that,” he said. [more inside]
Divorcing "is like pulling thread from a seam...everything falls out"
The divorce announcement of Bill and Melinda Gates several weeks ago has spurred a flurry of internet news and analysis, with journalists covering Bill's relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda's newfound status as billionaire in her own right, the problematic nature of philanthropy, and the Gates' ownership of large tracts of farmland as private investments. Others are zooming out, looking at the sociological trend of gray divorce as a solution to empty shell marriages.
“How many times have we seen Black death go viral?”
The Suffragette-to-Fascist Pipeline
Lesbian Fascists on TERF Island explores the how (and muses on the why) a number of prominent UK suffragettes became (and, in one case, founded) British Fascism in the 1930s. Then she asks what that means for UK feminism. The author, Asa Seresin, is a PhD student at Penn. [more inside]
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