July 15, 2018
Their sorrows in the present instance are also our sorrows
In April 1941 only two decades after the rancor and bloodshed of the Irish War of Independence and its Civil War, with the cautious assent of the first Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland Éamon de Valera who had maintained neutrality from the Allies and the Axis, crews of volunteer firefighters crossed the border into the North (~40min podcast) to help battle the blazes ignited by Luftwaffe bombing in the Belfast Blitz. [more inside]
that strangely tender malice, at once so delicious and yet so purifying
The New York Yankees Are a Moral Abomination: "Soberly considered, the New York Yankees and their fans present a moral dilemma. Our consciences, naturally abhorring everything abominable, tell us that such things simply ought not exist. And yet we also know that the evil they represent is one we would not really want eradicated. " (SLNYT by David Bentley Hart)
Why functional programming? Why Haskell?
Haskell is most likely quite different from any language you've ever used before. In Haskell, we de-emphasise code that modifies data. Instead, we focus on functions that take immutable values as input and produce new values as output. Given the same inputs, these functions always return the same results. This is a core idea behind functional programming. [more inside]
"To see oursels as others see us"
In those files, as I found from my own Polish dossier, it’s not only a younger half-forgotten self that you meet. It is also an unrecognisable stranger – yourself, as others have seen you. For nearly thirty years, hundreds of thousands of people have been reading their secret police files, the records of surveillance, denunciation and manipulation compiled by the spooks of communist Europe.
The Glue Famine
"It was December 18th, 2016 when we noticed that all the glue was gone and we had no clue why. So when the cavernous shelf was filled, only to be emptied again immediately, we began to speculate. Something as simple as Elmer’s Glue, although a little oddball, did not seem an unlikely victim for whatever might have been caught in the crosshairs of a Pinterest trend. We’d survive- whatever it was. I was in no way prepared for the reality. " [more inside]
The Science of Ballet
Cigarmaker Creator, Healer & Man
Almost nothing is know of Cuban American Felipe Jesus Consalvos apart from his obsessive body of work—over 750 surviving collages on paper, found photographs, musical instruments, furniture, and other unexpected surfaces—discovered in 1980 some 20 years after his death.
Have we reached Peak MoviePass?
MoviePass, the $9.95/month movie-a-day movie theater subscription service that has changed the moviegoing experience and has nudged the largest movie theater chain in the US to introduce it's own rival service, has reached three millions subscribers. However, because of it's shaky economics the company is not exactly celebrating this milestone. (Previously) [more inside]
Psychology & Failure
You learn better from failure than from winning. [guardian] Learning from the team psychologist for England's football team. Alternately, just enjoy seeing the team in a pool on unicorn floats. [more inside]
Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip...
"Earlier this week, an important chapter in fingernail history came to a close: Shridhar Chillal of Pune, India, got his nails cut for the first time in 66 years." The record-setting nails on his left hand, taken together, measured a total of 909.6 cm. Chillal, 82, has sold them to Ripley's Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum for an undisclosed sum.
Emily Brontë was born on July 30, 1818 -- 200 years ago this month
Sandra Leigh Price, "Emily Brontë and Me" (The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 2018): "The first time I read Wuthering Heights a whole world opened up to me: the language – the words steeped in weather landscape, the structure an intricate clockwork of intergenerational trauma, and there was Emily Brontë herself – an astute observer of the natural world around her. The book was like a storm-glass in my imagination – large, wondrous and wild." Other personal essays: SA Jones, "Wuthers: The Book That Saved a Life," and Emily Sullivan, "The Walk To Wuthering Heights." [more inside]
“We now have a zero percent escape rate with criminals,”
Burglar breaks into “escape room” business, panics, and calls 911. [Ars Technica] “A burglar in Vancouver, Washington, made four panicked 911 calls after breaking into an "escape room" business last weekend—and having trouble getting out. Escape rooms are timed challenges that let groups of customers test their wits against a series of intricate puzzles. But NW Escape Experience's three escape rooms apparently so unnerved accused burglar Rye Wardlaw that he called 911 on himself.”
“I bloody love a pork pie”
In which Jay Rayner eats a pork pie, the product of a town which takes its food seriously. Very seriously (live blogging). This staple, magnificent and traditional West and East Midlands Christmas breakfast has variations, from Yorkshire to Evesham to Rutland. But it should be moist and formally blessed before judged and be from here. Make the pilgrimage to Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe in Melton Mowbray, get one from HRH or a posh shop, or make old-fashioned ones (takes a while) or with piccalilli or aniseed or apple chutney. This is not a pork pie and it is not Australian but can be found in New York. Work off your pork pie ice cream with some golf. Sadly, there is always politics in Brexit-Land, but expect many at the annual PieFest (2017). [previous but generic pie post]
Catastrophic
The wet and cold Arctic climate allows extraordinary preservation of archaeological remains. But new research is showing that we've lost much of the evidence in less than generation due to climate change. [more inside]
Whales on Mars
« Previous day | Next day »