June 6, 2019
Surveillance Capit^H^H^H^H Curriculum
[...]A year later, though, Securly also began offering "sentiment analysis" of students' social media posts, looking for signs they might be victims of cyberbullying or self-harm. In 2016, the company expanded that analysis to students' school email accounts, monitoring all messages sent over district networks. It also created an "emotionally intelligent" app that sends parents weekly reports and automated push notifications detailing their children’s internet searches and browsing histories[...]via Zeynep Tufekci on twitter
18hr 25min layover in Moscow
The most interesting musician who ever lived actually didn’t.
"We made this absurd comedy that has full frontal male nudity and all these drug jokes, that people are still moved by—that to me is a perfect movie." Dewey Cox Ain’t Dead: An Oral History of ‘Walk Hard’ [more inside]
Economic Possibilities
A Four Day Workweek Could Be Coming to the U.K. (a podcast for work! or leisure ;) - "If you live in the U.K., your workweek could soon be a day shorter if the political winds tilt more heavily toward the left. Jess Shankleman reports on how the proposal is gaining momentum and how it might affect Britain, then Bloomberg Opinion columnist Noah Smith joins host Stephanie Flanders for a deeper look at the economic questions raised by the four-day week."[1,2] [more inside]
Into The Longest Night Goes The Night Tripper
Dr. John, The Night Tripper, has gone into the night. Mack Rebennack has been not only a godfather of New Orleans sound, but also a messenger from more mysterious parts of the bayou.
At 77 on 6/6, RIP.
Ultimate limit of human endurance found
The ultimate limit of human endurance has been worked out by scientists analysing a 3,000 mile run, the Tour de France and other elite events. They showed the cap was 2.5 times the body's resting metabolic rate, or 4,000 calories a day for an average person.
Anything higher than that was not sustainable in the long term.
The research, by Duke University, also showed pregnant women were endurance specialists, living at nearly the limit of what the human body can cope with.
Yelp: The Billion Dollar Bully
Billion Dollar Bully Highlights Why Yelp Feels Unfair The overall argument of Billion Dollar Bully, the new documentary about Yelp released on Amazon and iTunes in May, is that Yelp extorts small business owners for advertising fees in return for helping to manage and improve reviews on their platform. [more inside]
The "Dead Consensus"
US conservatives appear to be having an internecine philosophical debate started by this creepily named manifesto, summarized well in the NY Times here.
In a nutshell, the pro-Trump pundits behind the manifesto reject the old Republican political alliance which was run by libertarian/pro-business/plutocratic types, and which relegated religious conservatives to back-bencher status. Instead, they favor a more explicitly reactionary conservative movement that denounces liberal values and emphasizes more communitarian social welfare (presumably for favored groups only) and the imposition of their moral vision on the nation, including via strong government action.
Young women around the world play Master of Puppets in their bedroom
Jassy J, MelSickScreamoAnnie, Zukky, Juliana Wilson, Nishat Anjum, Jade Justine, Juliette Valduriez, Paige Marina, Phatta, Noémie B. Not in a bedroom BabySaster, Tina S. Acoustic Biljana Sovilj. Piano Vika. Bass Anna Sentina. Drums Brooke C, Meytal Cohen. Guitar lesson Mel teaches the main riffs. Not Master of Puppets Ada Kaczanowska. Not Metallica Sakura Yoshida. [more inside]
They'll stare at you til they get your love. No matter how long it takes
Lovot is a robot that's built for loving. "With a luminoxity sensor, a 360-degree half-sphere camera, a half-sphere microphone that can detect the direction of sounds and voices, and a thermal camera (thermography) that can distinguish human beings from objects. LOVOT can make an accurate scan of an entire room and find its owner immediately." So when it looks up for you and asks for a hug, you'd better hug it. [more inside]
It just hits you straight in the belly
The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices (formerly Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, formerly the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir) is a Grammy-winning musical group that sings arrangements of traditional Bulgarian folk music. Founded in the 1950s, the group became known to Western audiences in the 1980s through the work of ethnomusicologist Marcel Cellier and the record label 4AD, and even appeared on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show (including a rendition of "O Susanna"!). Here's a more recent performance for KEXP. The current iteration of the group is touring with Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance, and are profiled in the Guardian. Want to learn how to sound like a Bulgarian folk singer? Dessislava Stefanova of the London Bulgarian Choir shows you how (via).
“Our special sauce at this point has been nostalgia...”
EverQuest: A game born in an era of dial-up Internet is still doing well after all this time—how?! [Ars Technica] “Twenty years ago, a company in Southern California launched an online game that would go on to serve as the model for many more titles to come in the massively multiplayer online RPG (MMORPG) space. And unlike many games that sought to replace it over the years, this one is still going today. No, this isn’t about World of Warcraft—that game only turns 15 in 2019. Before there was WoW, there was the MMO pioneer EverQuest. This sword-and-sorcery-based game was developed by a small company, 989 Studios, but it eventually reached its pinnacle under Sony Online Entertainment after SOE acquired that studio roughly a year after the game's launch. Today, EQ marches on with a dedicated player base and another developer, Daybreak Games, at the helm.” [YouTube][20th Anniversary Trailer] [more inside]
Animals Such As They Are
Peruse Les Animaux Tels Qu’ils Sont, a book from the 1930s that shows how to draw animals starting from basic shapes (though the jump from second-to-last to the finished animal can be sizable). (via kottke.org)
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City
Berlin: die Sinfonie der Großstadt [Berlin: Symphony of a Great City [video], or Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis, 1927] is a silent film by Walther [Walter] Ruttmann " is perhaps the quintessential early iteration of that celebrated genre that dwells within the interstices of the documentary and the experimental film" [more inside]
D-Day 75th Anniversary
D-Day 75th Anniversary. On this day 75 years ago, Allied forces were storming the beaches in Normandy. The Associated Press is documenting stories of the surviving D-Day soldiers, their fallen comrades and those working to keep the memories alive today. You can follow all of the AP’s coverage at the link. [more inside]
"The world is 9, it is never complete and it’s never perfect."
Living in Addis Ababa for the past nine years has been a lesson; a lesson in humility, and a lesson in what it means to return to a land that was foreign to me. Over the past nine years, an expression of my grandmother has stuck in my mind – she would say, “The world is 9, it is never complete and it’s never perfect.” I thought it was interesting, but it wasn’t until much later as an adult that her voice echoed in my thoughts of whether we can live in this world with full contentment. [...] I have chosen to continue working on body painting, which is inspired by traditional body art from across Africa. Each work is a reflection of conscious and sub-conscious manifestations of time and space. -- Aïda Muluneh, The World is 9 [via Everlasting Blort] [more inside]
The Means Of Distribution
“ILWU International President Harry Bridges pushed to have a few Japanese Americans, interned for most of the war, admitted to the Stockton division of Local 6 (Bay Area warehouse) in conjunction with the government’s War Relocation Authority.” Dockworkers Show Us How Unions Can Be a Powerful Force Against Racism (In These Times) “The dockworkers were very involved in Latin America in general but in Chile after the coup, the dockworkers were the first to refuse to handle cargo from the dictatorship. They let fruit rot on the quays, and they refused to discharge other cargo.” Worker Power on the Swedish Docks (Jacobin) “If longshoremen in San Francisco could find a way to support Black workers in South Africa, it would help the liberation movement there survive and win. ” RIP Leo Robinson, self described ‘Red’ and Soul of the Longshore. Professor Peter Cole on the power of dockworkers (Who Makes Cents? 46:42) In the logistics industry, from port workers to truckers to delivery drivers, time is of the essence. Their potential control over that time gives workers enormous leverage in the global economy.
The Giant Birds of Harlem
'Write to me and tell me your heart.'
Love letters from Leonard Cohen to Marianne Ihlen as featured in an upcoming auction.
The Special Collections Library of the Living Dead
The University of Pittsburgh Acquires Romero Collection, To Found Horror Studies Center. The University of Pittsburgh’s University Library System has acquired the archives of pioneering horror filmmaker George A. Romero (1940–2017), including correspondence, scripts, footage, promotional material, and props from his legendary films. These include Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, both shot near Pittsburgh. The new archive will form the foundation for a future horror studies center, building on collections already housed in ULS archives and special collections and funded in part by the George A. Romero Foundation. [more inside]
Man, It’s a Hot One
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