July 10, 2016
It works by squashing the strings in all the right places.
Introducing the Chordelia. Tim of the utterly charming WayOutWestBlowinBlog Youtube channel has invented a device to assist in guitar playing for people who find all that chord business "tricky."
Secret Friends
Spanish photographer AnaHell specialises in... unusual portraits. Her latest series, Secret Friends, depicts "strange and wonderful creatures from another world, the kind that children create when they’re alone." [more inside]
Okay, prove you DIDN'T create this painting.
Peter Doig Says He Didn’t Paint This. Now He Has to Prove It. Scottish artist Peter Doig is renowned for his somewhat surreal, eerie, haunting landscapes and scenes of ordinary life. His paintings have sold for millions of dollars -- his White Canoe fetched a record-setting $26 million at auction in 2015.
Now, Doig is tasked with proving he did not create a particular work, in a case that has stunned art-law experts.
(Previously.
Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless
The inimitable Laurie Penny (previouslies) writes about our current economic and political climate, "the language of self-care and wellbeing almost entirely colonized by the political right," "progressives, liberals, and left-wing groups [beginning] to fetishize a species of abject hopelessness," and a third way with promise. [SLBaffler] [more inside]
Bloody Fist: Aussies inviting malice from 1994 to 2004
In the 1990s, a group of Australian misfits who made anti-rave music [NSFW audio, present elsewhere, too], influenced by their local Newcastle industrial heritage and the international sounds of gabber. In 1994, they bashed out some tunes and pulled together enough money to make 102 hand-stamped records, officially starting Bloody Fist Records. The label gained recognition world-wide, but abruptly closed shop in 2004, and a decade later Bloody Fist was celebrated in Newcastle with Fistography, an exhibit to the history and legacy of the label. If you missed any of this the first time around, you can stream and buy much of the label's catalog on their Bandcamp page. [more inside]
RPG StackExchange
So, apparently there's now a StackExchange for table top roleplaying games. Featuring questions like, "What is the easiest way a Wizard can copy-protect the scrolls he makes?" and "Managing a Medieval Low-Orbit Ion Cannon." And a bunch of generally good (though less comical) advice in the sorted by votes page.
The Italian Job
Autism, employment and tech
"Autism is seen like some sort of mental superpower where we can see math in the air. In my experience, this isn’t really the case." - Dispelling some myths about the autistic wunderkind programmer. Also: Why you might not want to get TOO excited about autism employment initiatives. Autism FAQ
No porn category exists in their honor. Yet.
Tired of the Treachery and Political Confusion of the 21st C?
If so, you can revel in the continual treachery and political confusion of the long history of England in its assorted forms via the History of England Podcast. The genial and enthusiastic David Crowther works his way through the tumultuous course of events, only occasionally enlisting his children to put on amateur theatricals to illustrate some dramatic moment or other. [more inside]
Was the world ending or was everything fine? I just had to make a call.
It was a late winter night in 1966 and a fully loaded B-52 bomber on a Cold War nuclear patrol had collided with a refueling jet high over the Spanish coast, freeing four hydrogen bombs that went tumbling toward a farming village called Palomares, a patchwork of small fields and tile-roofed white houses in an out-of-the-way corner of Spain’s rugged southern coast that had changed little since Roman times.
Part one: Decades Later, Sickness Among Airmen After a Hydrogen Bomb Accident [NYT]
Part two: Even Without Detonation, 4 Hydrogen Bombs From ’66 Scar Spanish Village [NYT]
How the World Fell Out of Love with Obama
"In countries key to the president’s legacy, people express profound disappointment in a man from whom they expected great things." [more inside]
These days, Degas abandons himself entirely to photography
Because we need to unwind
Ma’agalim, a bitter-sweet music video by the Israeli band Jane Bordeaux [Youtube]
(N.B.: first link includes sketches and models.)
(N.B.: first link includes sketches and models.)
Australia's AIDS Epidemic Declared Over
Good news for Oz: AIDS epidemic no longer a public health issue in Australia, scientists say. The nation's top scientists have declared "the end of AIDS" as a public health issue, as Australia joins the ranks of a select few countries which have successfully beaten the epidemic.
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