June 10, 2013
The Hymn of Acxiom
Singer/songwriter Vienna Teng has released a demo for The Hymn of Acxiom, a haunting, vocoded choral composition written from the perspective of a marketing database. [more inside]
How A War Hero Became A Serial Bank Robber
How A War Hero Became A Serial Bank Robber. "Army medic Nicholas Walker returned home from Iraq after 250 combat missions, traumatized and broken. His friends and family couldn’t help him. Therapy couldn’t help him. Heroin couldn’t help him. Pulling bank heists helped him." [Via]
"It felt like I had driven back in time."
The Guardian has an excerpt of Neil Gaiman's latest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. You can also watch him reading an excerpt of it, and he writes about it a bit (and links to several reviews) on his blog.
He's dancing all night on a Star Destroyer
IG-88: The Dancing Robot [slyt]
177. erotically denying them use of a line in a google doc
Slaughter Nick for President
Twenty years after thinking his fifteen minutes of fame were up, Canadian actor Rob Stewart discovers via Facebook that his cheesy Magnum PI ripoff had taken Serbia by storm. Sweating Bullets (or Tropical Heat, as it was known outside the US) had a three-season run in syndication before becoming popular escapist fare in Milosevic-era Serbia. Stewart visits Serbia to meet this previously-unknown fanbase with a camera crew in 2012. Trailer
The evanescence of vision: a journey in search of sight
Into the Light
Humanity has paused on Jones Street near the summit of Russian Hill in San Francisco. Tourists, businessmen, café workers, the homeless – all seem to have taken a collective breather at this steepest of places, a city peak where stairs are carved into the sidewalks so people don't topple. Only one person keeps climbing, and he's talking, too; he's saying that you can't stop here, that if you just keep pushing, you'll see things no one else will see, that Macondray Lane is just over the hill and that it's the most magical place in all of San Francisco, but you'll never see it if you don't keep pushing, you'll never see Macondray Lane unless you really know how to look.[via Slate]
He's baaaaack!
Google the Wild Things
180 Years of Saturdays
The Spectator Archive was announced today, with searchable, browsable content of the weekly U.K. (conservative-leaning) magazine, from 1828 through 2008. [more inside]
A New Path Between the Seas?
Nicaragua has awarded a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. With uncertain costs and impact to the environment, the canal is expected to pass through Lake Nicaragua, and will accomodate ships of 250,000 metric tons- twice the size the Panama Canal will accomodate even after upgrades.
This is not the first time a canal through Nicaragua has been attempted. [more inside]
Moz. Boz. Auntie.
Anecdotally... yup
The Simulation Dream
There’s an old dream in game design. It drives the design of games like SimCity, Dwarf Fortress, Tropico, The Sims, and Prison Architect. I like to call it the Simulation Dream. - Bioshock Infinite designer Tynan Sylvester on games, complexity, stories and simulation.
Acme Supply Co. Presents...
Andrew and Luda Versus The Volcano
Tolbachik is a volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia. Andrew and Luda are two Kyrgyzstan-based photographers who wanted to take some video inside an active volcano. Tolbachik was happy to oblige. (SLYT)
Despite what memes keep telling us, reading is not sexy
"You never know what will happen next."
As the plane descended into Rangoon's international airport, I noticed a slight change in my heartbeat. I felt calm, but also excited, knowing that I was about to return to Burma for the first time in 24 years. Former student dissident and exiled journalist Aung Zaw spends Five Days in Burma. [more inside]
A Desert Road
I'm Waiting Here is a bonus track off of David Lynch's forthcoming album. The video pairs the dreamy vocals of Lykke Li (reminiscent of the sound work on Twin Peaks) with a visual of rolling desert landscape (reminiscent of Lynch's Lost Highway). [more inside]
Jamaican mixtapes from Brazil
DJ Magrão from São Paulo is usually into Jamaican sounds, but he also has his Brazilian favorites. Over 10 hours of downloadable mixtapes, 100% vinyl.
"There is no single way to sum up what it means to be a trans man."
The Test Shot is an online visual project that aims to document and celebrate the variety and strength of transmasculine style. Ballet dancing "princess boys", dapper transmen fresh out of a golden age musical, hipstery trans* boys, preppy boy dykes, and video journalists in traditional Pakistani menswear showcase the diversity in how people interpret and express their gender through their favorite clothing. Original Plumbing [warning: non-explicit ad for porn site] is the premier print magazine dedicated to the sexuality and culture of FTM trans guys. OP documents diversity within trans male lifestyles through photographic portraits and essays, personal narratives and interviews. Read an interview with the creators, Dr. T's medical advice column, or check out blog entries on living in an all-male dorm,, how to get into queer porn as a trans guy,, and deciding to carry a baby after transition.. [more inside]
From Harlem to Hastings; high art and low culture.
Edward Burra was an English artist with a priviledged background who embraced the unrespectable.
More an illustrator or cartoonist he was variously described as eccentric, varied and bleak.
When the Royal Academy rang to ask if he would consider becoming an associate, he shouted downstairs to his manservant, who had picked up the telephone:
''Tell them to fuck off, I'm busy.''
More an illustrator or cartoonist he was variously described as eccentric, varied and bleak.
When the Royal Academy rang to ask if he would consider becoming an associate, he shouted downstairs to his manservant, who had picked up the telephone:
''Tell them to fuck off, I'm busy.''
Looks like Cersei finally got that Tyrion problem licked.
Actors Laughing Between Takes. A lovely little collection of still photos from between takes in movies showing actors, in costume, having fun.
The Welsh Space Campaign
The Welsh Space Campaign. The suit is made of the fabric woven in the last remaining wool mills in Wales. The astronaut boots are traditional Welsh clogs crafted by a traditional clog maker. The whole pressure system that will enable the astronaut to sustain life in outer space was built by a Welsh plumber.
The aim of the designer is to reveal that Wales has the capacity to explore space, and to show that off-world culturalisation can be achieved through a collective communitarian effort; as a way to allow the people involved to reconsider their role and skill in relation to these cosmic contexts. -- We Make Money Not Art
Ai Weiwei releases heavy metal music video
Dumbass
"So many people think they can improve the situation or collaborate. I think that's very wishful thinking in this political structure. It makes people not very conscious of what's happening," he said
Tax-paying for Fun and Profit
Today, despite our interconnected and indeed “flattened” world, taxes are still being collected on a model not substantially different from the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs. [more inside]
If You Can't Buy One, Build One
Ken Imhoff wanted a Lamborghini Countach, but didn't have the money to buy one. So, over the next 17 years, he built one in his basement.
Art And Education And Tumblr
Art History explained using Gifs (related: The true story of an art history grad student explained via gifs)
Hiring the Next Wave of Multicultural Librarians
For starters, he’s preparing for a career in librarianship, an industry largely dominated by white women. As an African-American male, Alston is what some would consider a double minority. Many of his friends and relatives wonder about his future after having spent many years earning a master’s and now a Ph.D. in library science. “What will you be doing all day?” “What’s the future viability of libraries?" Someone even teased him once, “That’s no kind of profession for a man.”
Maybe go back to Rockville after all...
Montgomery County MD, a wealthy, sprawling suburban county outside of Washington DC - its blandess famously mocked by REM's ("Don't Go Back to Rockville.) - is moving towards adopting some of the most progressive and potentially transformational approaches to suburban/urban planning in the US. Driving the change is a concern that young, creative millenials are no longer interested in moving out to the suburbs.
I wear a kippeh because I am Jewish
Women are finally allowed to pray aloud at the Wall in Israel. Women of the Wall have been fighting to be allowed to pray and sing in their tallitot at the women's section of the Western Wall. The first day ended peacefully. They were not allowed to bring a Torah.
Citizens of the World, I am Deric Lostutter, and this is my story
The identity of the hacker KYAnonymous aka KnightSec, who exposed the Steubenville rapists has been uncovered as cybersecurity expert and aspiring rapper Deric Lostutter after being raided by the FBI. If he is convicted for hacking-related crimes, he could spend up to ten years in prison, more time than the rapists. His story is here and an interview here. [more inside]
TGIF! Is it happy hour yet?
Surgeries on Friday Are More Frequently Fatal. New research shows that "operations performed on Fridays were associated with a higher 30-day mortality rate than those performed on Mondays through Wednesdays."
Televisions Suuuuucks! BROADWAY FOREVER!
Broadway stars Andrew Rannells (of the now-cancelled TV show The New Normal), Megan Hilty (of the now-cancelled TV show Smash), and Laura Benanti (of the now-cancelled Go On AND The Playboy Club) join host Neil Patrick Harris at the 2013 Tony Awards to sing the joys and heartaches of Broadway-actors hiting the small screen. [more inside]
John Oliver: "The most formative comedy of my teenage years."
There was no wink and they never sold it out for these half-hour, densely, beautifully produced pieces, which is, for all possibilities, obscuring that this doesn’t at all sound like a comedy show. It is all the production elements you would use in a full-scale news production. All the gravitas, but just inflated to a point that it has no gravitas whatsoever. And I think that is where it became this excitingly subversive thing because it just showed that BBC Radio 4 and everything it stood for was just a big bag of shit.John Oliver on why he's a fan of On the Hour. On the Hour, of course, is the legendary BBC news radio program created by, among other people, Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It, In The Loop, Veep), Christopher Morris (Jam, Brass Eye, Four Lions, Why Bother?), Stewart Lee (41st best stand-up comic ever), and Steve Coogan (Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge, I'm Alan Partridge). Short-lived but influential, On the Hour mimicked the tone and production of other radio news shows but replaced the content with what Oliver describes as "unremitting bullshit". On the Hour was aired in two six-episode series (S1E1 S1E2 S1E3 S1E4 S1E5 S1E6; S2E1 S2E2 S2E3 S2E4 S2E5 S2E6), and begat a television series called The Day Today. That show in turn added Graham Linehan (Black Books, Father Ted, The IT Crowd) to On the Hour's already all-star lineup, upped the already-insane levels of overproduction, and ran for six short-but-glorious episodes (one two three four five (WAR!) six), as well as a special 9/11 radio report. [more inside]
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