June 30, 2015
Counterfeit Content
"one of the strictest school vaccination laws in the country"
California Gov. Jerry Brown signs new vaccination law, one of nation's toughest "The bill, one of the most controversial measures before the Legislature this year, was introduced because of concern about low vaccination rates in some communities and an outbreak of measles at Disneyland that ultimately infected more than 150 people." (LA Times) [more inside]
Aarne–Thompson 410
What do Mark A. Bedau's Weak Emergence[PDF], Stewart Cohen's Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Structure of Reasons, Paul Benson's Free agency and self-worth, and Michael G.F. Martin's Perception, Concepts, and Memory have in common? They're all Sleeping Beauties. [more inside]
Powerful And Triumphant And Lonely All At The Same Time
“Happy people don’t need you to say you understand. As an artist I don’t have much to say to happy people. And that works out great because they’re busy being content. For the rest of us, coming to terms with rejection, failure, death, and the fragility of love is very important. Some people are self-conscious about these things and maybe they don’t want to talk about them, but sometimes it just feels good to know you’re not alone. Books and music do this better than possibly anything else."Author Joe Bonomo explores the sadness, yearning, and warmth of the music of Greg Cartwright. [more inside]
"The secret ingredient is imagination, fear."
"The idea is that Hannibal is always eating people, regardless of what he’s feeding you. So I wanted it to look like something that could be lamb’s tongue but probably was a people tongue. Lambs’ tongues are so homely, and once you cook them they just look creepy and unappetizing, and what I want more than anything is for the food to look so delicious that you want to reach into the screen and try it, even though you know it’s people. It’s the personification of Hannibal. He’s the Devil. Why do you like him? Why do you want to get to know him? Why do you want to eat these tongues? They’re people!"How Hannibal's food stylist, Janice Poon, creates hypothetical human meat
The Millennial Depeche Mode?
The New Division has a new album... Gemini. It's very New Wave 3.0 you can stream it here John Kunkel began writing new wave/synth pop songs in 2005 while attending California Baptist University in Riverside, California, heavily inspired by bands such as New Order and Depeche Mode.
Over the next few years, the New Division began to develop into a full band, with Michael Janz and Mark Michalski joining Kunkel on synthesizer, and Brock Woolsey contributing guitar. The group gigged heavily around Riverside, developing its modern take on '80s-inspired sounds, and began digitally self-releasing singles and EPs in 2010.
start here:
Introspection
a little darker here:
Alive
"I try to be as responsive as I know how."
The Ultra Hal chatbot converses with itself. Ultra Hal is a learning chatbot and virtual assistant from zabbaware, as well as a $29 ticket to an Uncanny Valley of sexism, materialism and banality.
The best New Works in every department of Literature
Well before Netflix, there was the circulating library. Although circulating libraries large and small were well-established in Britain by the middle of the eighteenth century--some of them, perhaps most (in)famously the Minerva Press, becoming publishing houses themselves--the most powerful circulating libraries came into being during the Victorian era. [more inside]
He's My Guy
Mighty Mouth Records has just released Volume 2 of The Best of Laurice. Vol. 1 was described as "70's rock meets mainstream British pop in an explosive style fusion of pre-punk, glam, psychedelic and gay themed musical gems." Featuring such catchy titles as "I'm Gonna Smash Your Face In" (as Grudge) and "Flying Saucers Have Landed." From MMR: "Recorded in the early to mid-70's at various studios in London, UK, these tracks, many previously unreleased, demonstrate the versatility and originality of a singer-songwriter who challenged society's rules ..." Vol 2 still available on vinyl. Both also on achem Spotify. Enjoy.
"So does a piece of shit!"
Comedian Jack Carter has died at the age of 93. The Comic's Comic site has some great clips, as well as a link to the Shit Jack Carter Says tumblr. Also this great anecdote: "William Morris sent Reggie Rose the screenwriter, you know. He came to one of our first meetings and said, 'A sketch has got to have a beginning, a middle and an end.' Larry Gelbart said, 'So does a piece of shit!' And that was the end of Reggie Rose."
No other WWII training accident took so many American lives.
DISASTER AT SLAPTON SANDS Scimitar was holed when she was rammed by another vessel and was ordered to return to port. Incredibly, no one bothered to inform the operation commander of this! This left tiny Azalea to act as the sole escort. As events showed, this might have been enough except for one unspotted typographical error in the orders. The American ships were tuned to the wrong radio frequency and could not transmit to or receive from the British ship or coastal stations. [more inside]
China’s annual human rights report on the US
Brighton's probably still pretty expensive.
It starts with a vanguard class of young creative types reclaiming zones of social and economic dereliction, setting up what Ehrenhalt sardonically describes as “projects through which a small coterie of local artists seek to display their sheer edginess to one another”. The hipster pioneers are followed by young couples with bourgeois-bohemian sensibilities – what the French call “bobo” – who breed and fill the pavements with space-age prams. I was that cliché once, wheeling my daughters around Hackney in the gentrificational transition between murder rates falling and Foxtons arriving on the high street. Then come the really wealthy types who like urban edge fully blunted by waves of demographic change. Before you know it a draughty three-bedroom Victorian terraced house in what was once a slum costs more than £1m. [more inside]
Take with a grain of salt
Are you ready to start using/buying "Artisan Salt"?
You can also buy over 100 different kinds of salt at The Meadow.
Male and female mice process pain differently, study finds
New research into the pain processing of mice has found male and female mice process pain differently, and the discovery may also apply to other species, including humans. Scientists are now questioning what this means for the future of medical research, which until now, has had a strong bias towards experimenting on male mice. [more inside]
A Rude Awakening
Sitting in his surgical gown inside a large medical suite in Reston, Va., a Vienna man prepared for his colonoscopy by pressing record on his smartphone, to capture the instructions his doctor would give him after the procedure. [more inside]
China Girls, Color TV, And Racial Bias
The Atlantic covers the fight over color TV, the women who helped push it, and how racial bias influenced the evolution of the technology. Of note is the history of bias influencing all sorts of imaging technologies, pushing towards fidelity of reproducing lighter skin tones at the expense of darker ones.
50 Shades of Flashheart
50 Shades of Flashheart. The immortal words of Christian Grey put into the mouth of Blackadder's Lord Flashheart. (Single serving tumblr.)
still cheaper than a condo
“I just want to spend my money on food & beers & going to hear music."
Chef Paxx Caraballo Moll is a rock-n-roll chef who creates inventive vegetarian food with the native foods of Puerto Rico.
They're also one of nine individuals profiled in Mala Mala, a feature length documentary exploring the lives of young Puerto Ricans in the trans community that recently premiered at the Tribeca film festival. [more inside]
They're also one of nine individuals profiled in Mala Mala, a feature length documentary exploring the lives of young Puerto Ricans in the trans community that recently premiered at the Tribeca film festival. [more inside]
Demons For Dummies Ca. 1775
"A selection of pages from an 18th-century demonology book comprised of more than 30 exquisite watercolours showing various demon figures, as well as magic and cabbalistic signs. The full Latin title of Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros, roughly translates to “A rare summary of the entire Magical Art by the most famous Masters of this Art”. With a title page adorned with skeletons and the warning of Noli me tangere (Do not touch me), one quickly gets a sense of the dark oddities lurking inside its pages." - The Public Domain Review presents illustrations from a 18th century guide to demons and demonology (NSFW illustrated nudity, snakes on bits.)
I will what I want.
Misty Copeland has been promoted to principal dancer of the American Ballet Theater, making the thirty-two year old the first Black dancer to hold such a position. [more inside]
Let me hear your balalaika's ringing out...
Life in USSR showcases in photos the daily life of the Soviet people.
The alphabet of months: a year of living with multiple sclerosis
I write a lot of notes to myself these days, but this one is different. Remember the body. A strange thought. How could I forget it? And yet I do.
[...]
I have had MS for a little over a year and this has been the surprising, sometimes embarrassing challenge in my particular case: where does the disease end and where do I begin? What is the illness and what is just my maddening response to it?Games writer Christian Donlan (previously) writes about neurology, language and life since his diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.
"Her body is never a plot point. It is simply allowed to be."
I am just about the biggest advocate for “representation matters” there is, but as a white woman I never really felt it applied to me all that much. Watching Fury Road, I realized how wrong I was. I’ve been this way my entire life and I’ve never felt “handicapped.” I’m disabled, yes – there’s shit I just can’t do, but an invalid I am not. For the most part I’ve always approached life with a “figure out how to do it and just get it done” attitude; I am loathe to admit I can’t do anything and I never give up without exhausting all the possibilities available to me. Watching Fury Road, I felt like I was watching my own struggle brought to life (albeit in a very fantastical setting), and I don’t think I ever realized how truly profound that could be for me.Laura Vaugh talks about her response to seeing a kick-ass woman with the same disability as her on the silver screen. [more inside]
The Life and Death of Misty Upham
“My name is Misty Upham, and someday you will know that name as the best living Native American actress.” This story is about her demise. How she went missing for 11 days. How she was found by folks enlisted by her family, and not by the police. How she was mocked when she most needed help. How she survived rapes. How she inspired kids. And how as an indigenous woman, she was not alone in facing injustice.
To bid them farewell.
For most of US history, our relationship with death was more intimate than it is today. Americans often died at home and remained there until burial, where they were washed, wrapped in shrouds, and laid out on boards while the family made preparations for a funeral feast and an at-home funeral. In addition to family, women known as “Layers Out of the Dead,” helped take care of the immediate tasks following a death. This homespun approach to death largely persisted until the Civil War, when embalming, hospitals and eventually funeral directors changed the way we dealt with our deceased. But now, with home funerals and even green burials slowly regaining acceptance, a new generation of “Layers Out of the Dead,” are emerging.
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