May 3, 2020
Tired: finding desktop artwork / wired: picking Zoom backgrounds
So you're trying to spice up your video conferences and looking into custom backgrounds (Zoom tutorial; Microsoft Teams guide; Skype guide), but what image to pick? Studio Ghibli shared 8 suitable movie backgrounds [via Spoon Tamago and Mltshp], or you can get official Star Wars scenery [via Mltshp]. Or you could browse through One Perfect Shot, a Twitter account from Film School Rejects [also via Mltshp]. Or get artistic and pick up something from the The British Museum's “major revamp” of its digital collection, with nearly 1.9 million images free to use for anyone under a Creative Commons 4.0 license [via Open Culture, who link to more interesting and educational resources; via Mltshp].
Oof! Pow!
Stuck at home and feeling a bit punchy? Stuntwoman Zoë Bell was. So she challenged a few friends to a little Boss Bitch Fight Challenge
You can't rewrite history, but you can re-type it
Can you read your grandma's handwritten recipe cards, or your great-grandfather's old letters? Turn your cursive skills to something useful -- help an archivist transcribe a document! The United States National Archive's "Citizen Archivist" initiative seeks volunteers to help out with documents from a wide range of areas, from correspondence from job-seekers at the Schyuylkill Arsenal during the US Civil War to the 1975 trial of Leonard Peltier: https://www.archives.gov/citizen-archivist But if these topics don't interest you, there are lots more projects under the fold. [more inside]
Third quarter phenomenon: the bacon wars
"In studies of people isolated in submarines, space stations or polar bunkers, researchers have found there appears to be an inflection point where the frustration and hardship of being cooped up inside gets suddenly harder to bear." Welcome to third quarter phenomenon. [more inside]
Well, I wanted to thank you for taking my letters and delivering them.
“I’m Emerson. You may know me as the person that lives here that writes a lot of letters & decorated the envelopes. Emerson likes sending letters. A story of an eleven-year old girl and the USPS in a time where sharing can be hard. (link to Twitter thread)<
Really, 2020? I mean, really?
Master of Stylophone
“He’s always being discovered”
“Daddy,” my stunned four-year-old son asked, “why did the lion die?”
Leo Tolstoy’s Children’s Stories Will Devastate Your Children and Make You Want to Die "In 1988, the children’s novelist and Russia expert James Riordan translated several of these for a collection called The Lion and the Puppy: And Other Stories for Children, published first by Henry Holt and Company. The cover has a nice picture of a lion and a puppy; the illustrations by Claus Sievert are lovely throughout. My children fell in love with that picture, and they wanted me to read them the book."
Scilicet cito, longe, et tarde.
Plague is a re-occuring historical event.
Public health officials might not have understand viruses, but they understood the importance of keeping a distance and disinfecting.
Hoping to halt the advance of bubonic plague, in 1377 the city of Ragusa issued a ‘trentino’, for anyone trying to enter the city. [more inside]
Public health officials might not have understand viruses, but they understood the importance of keeping a distance and disinfecting.
Hoping to halt the advance of bubonic plague, in 1377 the city of Ragusa issued a ‘trentino’, for anyone trying to enter the city. [more inside]
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The virus is rewriting our imaginations
"I was still shocked by how much had changed, and how quickly." After climbing out of the Grand Canyon, Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on how culture is and may be changing under the impact of COVID-19, from charismatic mega-ideas to societies within societies. [more inside]
Maybe there's astronauts, maybe there's aliens
My [six-year-old] kid wrote a song called, “I Wonder What’s Inside your Butthole” Quite honestly, it slaps. Twitter | Threadreader (Be sure to check out the remixes)
Computer games set in London
In 2016 the Museum of London held an exhibition about computer games set in London. Here is an interview with the curator, Foteini Aravani, and a post by her about London in video games. There were reviews of the exhibition from St John Street News and Londonist. Dave Curran, who was involved in restoring the hardware for the exhibition, also wrote about it.
generative chip design
AI Designs Computer Chips for More Powerful AI - "The designs are as good as, or even better than, what humans can manage... a machine learning algorithm that can turn a massive, complex netlist into an optimized physical chip design in about six hours. By comparison, conventional chip design, which is already highly automated but requires a human in the loop, takes several weeks." [more inside]
No, seriously, Dark Souls 2 is the best Souls game
In Defense of Dark Souls 2 [YouTube] “I know a lot of readers are already sharpening their pitchforks just from looking at that headline, so let me be super clear: I’m not just saying this to be controversial. I love this series. In fact, I’ve been on the Souls train from the very beginning. [...] his is in stark contrast to the general opinion of the wider Dark Souls community, which often considers Dark Souls 2 to be sort of a black sheep, the weakest entry in the series with tons of flaws. Notably, it’s also the only entry in the series not directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, though that famed head of the Souls franchise did have some hand in the game’s creation. So why do I love Dark Souls 2 so much when other hardcore Souls fans are more or less indifferent to it? The above video from YouTube essayist H. Bomberguy explains in far greater detail than I ever could.” [via: Polygon] [more inside]
Navel gazing: Let's explore belly buttons!
According to The Atlantic, The filmmakers of 1942's Arabian Nights were forced to remove depictions of dancers wearing belly-baring costumes. Some later movies sought to exploit censorship rules by adorning an exposed navel with a piece of jewelry, such as in Follow That Camel, featuring Anita Harris. Marilyn Monroe's final film, Something's Gotta Give, delayed from its original 1962 release, would also have been the first picture to show the actress's belly button. "I guess the censors are willing to recognize that everybody has a navel," she said before her death. When the TV show I Dream of Jeannie first aired in 1965, Barbara Eden was told to cover up her navel with high-waisted pants. [more inside]
Goonies Never Say Die!
Goonies Never Say Die Josh Gad, of Olaf the Snowman fame, gets the entire cast and creative team behind The Goonies on a group chat, including the Fratelli Brothers. The Goonies are indeed good enough.
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