June 2, 2019
Mount Everest Records, the good and bad
Mount Everest's 2018-2019 season ended on a number of highs (USA Today): more than 825 climbers and Sherpas reached the summit this year, a record-breaking number; number of permits from the Nepalese government also broke records this year, with 381 issued; and deaths were at a four-year high, with 11 fatalities, most blamed on a combination of overcrowding, inexperience and poor weather limiting the number of days climbers were able to attempt to summit. Alan Arnette recapped the season's headlines. You can skip the crowds, save tens of thousands of dollars (Cost Freak, 2017 expenses), and enjoy Paul Oakenfold's Mount Everest Base Camp Mix (CD 1 and CD 2 on MixCloud; Discogs). [more inside]
The Butterfly Effect
From chrysalis to flight: The blogger behind TYWKIWDBI* lovingly documents the emergence of a female Black Swallowtail. (Single-link nice thing; * "Things You Wouldn't Know If We Didn't Blog Intermittently.")
Sometimes they would engage in a greeting, briefly touching noses.
Weee Weee Wrrr Wrrr ( Repeat Repeat Repeat Repeat )
40 minutes of a dot matrix printer printing, a banner of a hot dog. Review of the dot matrix printer. [more inside]
“There’s a fundamental hatred of people of color.”
The Lost Boys of Galveston - From the New Yorker, the story of one American helping as many migrants as he can. Terry Keel is the president of the Children’s Center, a nonprofit in Galveston that supports and houses migrant children who have been separated from their parents because of incarceration, deportation, illness, or violence. [more inside]
It's a resin-ator
I Built a Guitar Out of Epoxy Resin. Also: 8 Mega Jawbreaker Candies, some styrofoam, and pencil crayons.
New visa rules on social media
Want a Visa for the U.S.? You’ll Have to Hand Over Your Social Media Handles The vast majority of applicants for U.S. visas will now have to hand over their social media usernames along with previous email addresses and phone numbers, according to a newly imposed rule. Applicants for pretty much all visas, except for certain diplomatic and official ones, will have to give five years’ worth of phone numbers, email addresses, and social media handles as part of the application process.
Worlds about which we know almost nothing
Three talks from ParallaxNick on a lesser-known area of the solar system, and the people and history associated with it: Uranus and Neptune: Worlds of Water [30:13] – Worlds of Shadow and Light: The Moons of Uranus and Neptune [34:03] – Solar Ghosts: The Rings of Uranus and Neptune [21:37]. [more inside]
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