July 12, 2019
In 2018, BBC Proms shined a little light on women composers
In 2018 the BBC Proms made an effort to highlight women composers of classical music. There are some well-known names such as Alma Mahler, Clara Schumann and Delia Derbyshire (creator of the original Dr. Who theme) as well as less-familiar past and contemporary composers.
Dr. Airy's "morbid affection of the eyesight" (the migraine aura)
Hubert Airy illustrated his experience of progressive migraine auras (National Geographic) in 1870. There was no concept of migraine at the time—he referred to it as transient half-blindness. A modern opthalmologist calls it "an iconic illustration ... It's so precise, like a series of time-lapse photographs." [more inside]
The House of the Century
When the so-called House of the Century rose from the swampy earth back in the early 1970s, it arrived as a vision of the future, a biomorphic experiment in modern living. Back then it was a bright white jumble on the shoreline, and depending on your angle of approach, it looked like either a man's erect genitalia or a giant schnoz.
I'm really a tree and mountain type person.
Where are all the Bob Ross paintings? Why can't you buy one? What happened to them? An 11 minute video from the NY Times.
The ravelled sleave of care
The Sleep Blanket, A visualization of [Seung Lee]'s son's sleep pattern from birth to his first birthday. Crochet border surrounding a double knit body. Each row represents a single day. Each stitch represents 6 minutes of time spent awake or asleep. [more inside]
despise not the truthful word of those who possessed the Stone before us
Four hundred years ago, Basil Valentine created a cipher. He believed he was on the trail of the philosopher’s stone. He designed twelve keys describing the steps required to find it. His later keys were conjecture, but his early ones can be replicated. [WaPo] [more inside]
The Rugged Road
December 1934, Theresa Wallach and Florence Blenkiron left London for South Africa on 600cc single-cylinder Phelon & Moore Panther motorcycle with sidecar and trailer. They rode straight through Sahara desert without a compass in record breaking time, arriving in Cape Town in July 1935. [more inside]
The Dreaded Cut Direct: Killing You With K̶i̶n̶d̶n̶e̶s̶s̶ Etiquette
“The person delivering the cut direct would make eye contact with the other party upon meeting them, acknowledging their bow or salutation with nothing but a hard stare and a stony silence. To be a true cut direct, there must be no doubt that cutter was fully aware of the presence of the cuttee and was deliberately cutting them.”
Not brutal enough for you? How about the cut infernal as defined “BY A MEMBER OF THE WHIP CLUB ASSISTED BY Hell Fire Dick”?
A fluffy, three-foot-long killer found in Wyoming is the oldest known
Meet Lori, a tiny dinosaur that may help explain how birds evolved flight The newly described dinosaur, reported today in the journal PeerJ, specifically comes from a layer of roughly 150-million-year-old rocks called the Morrison Formation, which covers a vast swath of the western U.S. centered on Wyoming and Colorado.
Attention all heterotrophs
Journey to the microcosmos is a YT channel dedicated to microscopy and the diminutive denizens (heterotrophs as well as autotrophs) of that minuscule world. Marvel at the mighty Stentor! Partake in the thrill of the chase! But first all, enjoy the beautiful pictures by microscopist James Weiss.
How Inmates Play Tabletop RPGs in Prisons Where Dice Are Contraband
In correctional facilities across America, inmates cluster around tables in the common room to play games like Dungeons & Dragons. D&D has become so widespread, some correctional facilities even have specific rules that address it. Even in states where RPGs are allowed, restriction on the use of dice can complicate gameplay. In an effort to crack down on gambling, most correctional facilities in America don't allow offenders to use or create dice. But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention.
The least weasel isn't least in my heart
Get Power! Fresh Feeling!
CHAI is Mana, Kana, Yuuki, and Yuna, a four piece pop/punk/rock band from Nagoya. Their Neo-Kawaii attitude of inclusion and celebrating our imperfections attempts to dismantle and subvert notions of cuteness that its members feel are so repressive in Japan. Neo-Kawaii is exemplified by their song N.E.O. (live version), from the 2017 album PINK. More from PINK: Boyz Seco Men, Horechatta. Their 2019 album PUNK continues the theme, with a more expansive sound: Choose Go!, Great Job, I'm Me, Curly Adventure, Future. [bandcamp, (Spotify: PUNK, PINK), live stuff] Positive + Negative = POGATIVE!
"The implementation of this health reform is not a feat but a duty..."
How One Community Brought Child Mortality Down From 154 to 7 Per 1,000 Live Births (NPR) A seven-year trial in Mali provided house calls and health care at no charge for pregnant women and young children. The results, recently published by British Medical Journal Global Health, inspired the president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta to make announce unprecedented health reforms (7D News). Free contraceptives will also be provided across the country as tens of thousands of community health workers are introduced in a bid to provide more localised healthcare to Mali’s population of 18 million people (The Guardian). [more inside]
The Dirty Business Of Hosting Hate Online
The proliferation of hate sites online has been something that we all have seen with our own eyes, but there's a hidden side to it all - the companies who provide hosting and support for them, who rarely get mentioned. Gizmodo reporter Aaron Sankin looks into the companies who provide the hosting for hate sites. (SLGizmodo) [more inside]
No one understands Instagram better than Barbie
Buzzfeed's Delia Cai explains why Barbie is the ultimate influencer. Could it be that all the secrets of understanding Instagram influencer culture can be found on the account of a plastic doll?
Block Party! 🧱
Dragon Quest Builders 2 Is Much More Than A Minecraft Clone [Kotaku] “Dragon Quest Builders 2 makes me feel like a creative genius. It accomplishes this bold feat through use of brilliant game design. In summary, no, it is not a “Minecraft Clone. Dragon Quest Builders 2 is a full-length Dragon Quest game, which just so happens to supplement its cutscenes, exploration, and combat elements with cutely robust city planning mechanics. And, yes, perfectly fleshed-out, endlessly rich Minecraft building. [...] Dragon Quest Builders 2 is bigger, longer, deeper, and magnitudes more narratively exciting than the first.” [YouTube][Launch Trailer] [more inside]
counting to 10
OBBLOG 2: Logic blocks toy box: "OBBLOG contains all the possible logic gates with two inputs and one output."
example: binary tree [more inside]
From the Earth to the Moon and around the Moon
This week in space. The human race and its machines have been busy with projects beyond the Earth's atmosphere.
On Monday the Indian Space Research Organization (previously) plans to launch Chandrayaan 2, an orbiter, lander, and rover aiming to explore the Moon's south pole. [more inside]
On Monday the Indian Space Research Organization (previously) plans to launch Chandrayaan 2, an orbiter, lander, and rover aiming to explore the Moon's south pole. [more inside]
"They Set Us Up To Fail" Black Directors of the 90s Speak Out
If I had a penny for every time I was blacklisted and somebody told me, “You will never work again,” I’d be super, super wealthy. 'The thing they kept saying to me was, “Aren’t you grateful? How come you’re not grateful?” I’m like, “Do you ask your white filmmakers that? I wrote this film, and there was a bidding war, and I gave it to you, and you keep telling me I need to be grateful?”'
Pouring Resin
Black Forest Wood Co's Instagram has video after video of strangely beautiful resin pouring over wood and turning those results into furniture. Want a table? Here's their regular website.
"We absolutely have an emergency on our hands."
It’s Shocking How Badly New York City Is Failing Cyclists. "For [Robyn] Hightman, riding a bike was everything: It represented work, recreation, and family. But the city Hightman had embraced so completely wound up fatally failing them."
This Man Clearly Escaped From an Adventure Film
Guthrie police had quite the surprise when they pulled over a car with an expired tag – the car turned out to be stolen, and police said they found a canister of radioactive uranium, a rattlesnake, and an open bottle of Kentucky Deluxe whiskey. Not to mention the passenger's unlicensed handgun.
These are the seeds of a revolution.
Save Our Food. Free the Seed. Just 50 years ago, some 1,000 small and family-owned seed companies were producing and distributing seeds in the United States; by 2009, there were fewer than 100. Thanks to a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last few years, four multinational agrochemical firms — Corteva, ChemChina, Bayer and BASF — now control over 60 percent of global seed sales. (slnyt)
Crossing the Avengers with Xanadu
“The Perfect Storm of Inequality.”
"The West Virginia teachers’ strike emerged as one of the clearest visions of the new labor movement. It inspired education strikes in other states, including Kentucky and North Carolina. But understanding the strike requires knowing a century of southern West Virginia history, notably its infamous labor uprisings, from the Mine Wars of the 1920s to big coal’s union-busting campaigns of the 1980s. When momentum to strike built in early 2018, teachers in West Virginia’s coal country were among the first to mobilize and put action to a vote. In a Facebook group, they used coal country’s labor history to portray the strike as not only urgent and just, but also natural—something that people like them had been doing for generations. " Finding the Future in Radical Rural America by Elizabeth Catte author of "What You're Getting Wrong About Appalachia" with responses from Ash-Lee Woodward Henderson (The work is happening , how do we support it?), Hugh Ryan (Radical Rural Queer Spaces), Jessica Wilkerson (Appalachia's Women Activists), Bob Moser (Genuine Change is happening in the South) and more. Catte's concluding essay.
Promotional War and Peace
With the launch of AEW, WWE has real competition for the first time in years. As history shows, this is great news for wrestling fans. [more inside]
How to assess the quality of garments: A Beginner's Guide
Pop Womp Womp
A popup window that's also a working trombone. [Only works in desktop browsers]
Pictures From 22,000 Miles Away Sent To Your Backyard
The Market Assistant
If you find yourself suddenly transported back to 1866 New York, you may have some questions. Chief among those, of course, is the primary concern - "What should I eat?" [more inside]
SEASONAL BIRD IN OVEN
WHAT ARE YOU?
In the dusty cabinet something lurks
"Nobody’s willing to endure this masochism to figure this out."
The Pollination Secrets of Florida’s Most Elusive Flower: He set up trail cameras he hoped would be triggered by a large moth but never were; he sat on ladders, infrared camera in hand, for hours on end waiting to press the shutter when the moths appeared, but they never did. Houlihan slept in the swamp, donating countless drops of blood to south Florida mosquitos. By the time Stone asked for his help, Houlihan was about to give up. “My first response was kind of like, ‘Good luck,’” he says. But he knew Stone and liked the idea of spending a few months climbing trees, so he agreed to give the project—and the mosquitos—one final summer.
"Why? 'Cause I hates all cruelty."
The Trial of Bill Burns Under Martin's Act (SLYT). The British folk singer and researcher Jon Wilks revives a forgotten 1820s ballad about animal cruelty and the earliest UK legislation created to counter it. Click the video's "Show More" link for info on the song's origins. [more inside]
I'm sorry, the question again, Dave?
Generalise, don't specialise
Why focusing too narrowly is bad for us . The 10,000-hour rule says intense, dedicated practice makes perfect – at that one thing. But what if breadth actually serves us better than depth?
The Knack
What happens to Spelling Bee champions when they get old? "It's like knowing someone who won a $50,000 scratch-off lottery ticket, or a girl who won Miss America.” [more inside]
Navigating Hyrule by sound alone
Video games from the 8-bit era hold a certain timeless appeal, and many gamers still enjoy the iconic pixelated graphics with their limited color-palettes. But what if you take the video out of the video game? Some classic (and modern) games without their video make an enjoyable challenge for a skilled player, leading to the "blindfold challenge" becoming increasingly popular with speedrunners. One such player recently became the first to beat the original Legend of Zelda's Second Quest while blindfolded. [more inside]
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