July 16, 2019
How to, home and car edition
How to: change your car's oil,
change a flat tire,
flush your radiator and cooling system,
jump-start a car,
fix a running toilet,
replace a kitchen faucet,
diagnose and fix clogged drains,
fix a blown fuse and reset a circuit breaker,
install a light fixture,
patch and repair drywall, and
find wall studs
Debunking the Bystander Effect
"It's called a green screen Morty"
Relive last year's brief, dizzying green screen tattoo fad with work by tat2worthy: glasses; joshhermantattoo: TV; leerowlett_tattooer: Rick and Morty (alternate animation), dragon eye, Game of Thrones; Heathur Sawyer: Betty Boop; danowartattoos666: Rick and Morty (alternate animation), TV (alternate animation); inky_blinders: Ghostbusters, TV; madame.liesl: Gameboy. (All links to artist Instagram posts. SFW.)
It is a seemingly simple system.
I was PrOtOtYpE, A tranquil web residency for casual investigations into how we (from people to plants) interface with our planetary computer. [more inside]
"Actually, I like the way I look."
"What is new is that I have decided, at the age of 60, that I am a goddamn knockout. Like Dorothy at the end of the film version of The Wizard of Oz, I had the power I sought all along. I rub my thighs together — sorry, couldn’t resist — and tell myself over and over that I am beautiful and, what do you know, suddenly I am." Crime novelist Laura Lippman reflects on aging, eating, wanting, and leaping in her Longreads essay, "Whole 60." [more inside]
Sex Offender Registries Don’t Keep Kids Safe
At least 12 states require sex offender registration for public urination; five apply it to people charged with offenses related to sex work; 29 require it for consensual sex between teenagers. According to Human Rights Watch, people have been forced to spend decades on the registry for crimes they committed as young as 10 years old.
An article by Michael Hobbes
About My Daughter
I almost blurt out that my daughter fills her heavy bags with books and printouts filled with bizarre words, setting off across the country like an itinerant salesman. That she's a pitiful girl who eats a meal in her tiny car after class, takes a cramped nap, and comes back home to immerse herself in books and writing again until she falls asleep. These unspoken words pound me in the chest like an assault. And now here she was, paying me a rent that was more of a bribe, having barged in with some strange girl and shaming her parents. The words are about to leak out of my mouth. [more inside]
Richard E. Byrd's Antarctic Adventure, with stowaway Billy Gawronski
The Roaring Twenties in the United States was a time of numerous publicity stunts. One such example was Richard E. Byrd’s 1928-1930 Antarctica Expedition, which was sponsored by mass media (JStor Daily article) and the companies who provided typewriters to candy, paper to Byrd’s desk. His first exploration was recorded and presented in With Byrd at the South Pole and documented by Byrd in Little America : aerial exploration in the Antarctic, the flight to the South pole (documentary and book on Archive.org). But he was not the only self-promoter on that journey: meet the teen who snuck aboard a polar expedition (Nat Geo), a scrappy Polish American kid from New York’s Lower East Side named Billy Gawronski (New Yorker).
The Most Boring Tourist Trap in Every U.S. State
We've scoured the U.S. to find the least interesting and most skip-worthy destination in each state and Washington, D.C. We’re prepared for the fact that we’ll anger many locals, and we mean no offense with these choices. It’s likely we included many folks’ favorite detours. But just because you have a fond memory of a place doesn’t mean it’s worth anyone else’s time.
And you can be sure that if it claims to be the world’s “largest” or “best” of anything, it made the list.
"It’s a lot of history"
A look at some of the gems hidden away in the photo archive of Ebony and Jet magazines, set to be auctioned tomorrow. With more than four million prints and negatives in boxes and old file cabinets, the archive is considered the most significant collection of photographs depicting African-American life in the 20th century. Much of it has barely been seen by the public in decades, and few photos have been digitized. Now art historians fear a private collector could buy the archive and stash it away. [more inside]
Spareness
“They fascinated the public, not because of all of the possessions they accumulated but because of all the things they seemed to shun: ostentation, flamboyance, narcissism. Even as they lived in plain sight on the streets of New York City, they were a glimmering, beguiling mystery presumably to all but their inner circle.”
An appreciation of the style of JFK, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy on the 20th anniversary of their deaths by the Washington Post‘s Pulitzer-Prize-winning fashion critic, Robin Givhan.
standard level, short and sweet
dazzling, deep purple fins and a yellow head
Purple fairy wrasse named Wakanda discovered on reef in twilight zone "Scuba divers have discovered a new fish – a vibrant purple fairy wrasse. They have named it Cirrhilabrus wakanda" [New Scientist] [more inside]
I'm a shark cat shark cat shark cat shark cat
The battle to separate Safa and Marwa
The BBC tells the story of separating a pair of conjoined infant twins, from funding and visa issues to surgeries to aftermath.
The Feminist Novel is on the Rise in the Arab Gulf
a rewilding experiment that’s now been running for 25 years
In 2007, Colombia became aware of a peculiarly destructive invasive species making its home in its rivers: the hippopotamus. Descendents of a cocaine kingpin's menagerie, the hippos had been quietly breeding unchecked for more than a decade. Now they are spreading. Colombia is unsure how to handle the situation, having attempted culling, castration, and capturing the hippos to limited success. Hippos powerfully influence the environment in their native Africa, leading ecologists to worry about the impact to Colombia's native flora and fauna. A few biologists wonder whether the hippos might provide a replacement for long-extinct megafauna. Previously, previously.
There Are A Lot Of Lonely People Online
In 2017, I started getting regular messages from an anonymous Twitter user telling me my religion was ‘evil’. Eventually I responded – and he agreed to meet face to face. Hussein Kesvani meets his Islamophobic troll. Kesvani discusses the article and growing up Online and Muslim in suburban U.K on ‘What A Hell Of A Way To Die.’ (59:09)
I scream, you scream, we all scream for non-animal whey protein
Sufjan Stevens and the Curious Case of the Missing 48 States
More than 15 years ago, a young indie folk artist set a course to traverse the United States of America through song, accruing acclaim, a fan base, and lots of anticipation along the way. Or did he?
It's kind of an accepted practice.
She still wonders why no one ever asked her to come on the show herself. Content from historian Sarah Milov's forthcoming book on the history of The Cigarette was used exclusively as fodder for a segment on public radio's "Here & Now." The segment, America's Complex History with Tobacco, was presented by three men: two historians and the NPR host. Milov's name, nor her book, were ever mentioned. [more inside]
Tōhokudaigaku burūgurasu dōkō-kai
Sweet pickin' and singin', live from the Tohoku University Bluegrass Club. (mlyt)
Let Gandalf Go, You Monsters
Know your Roots: Ube, the Purple Filipino Yam
Filipino food in general is having a moment in the spotlight (see restaurants Jeepney Filipino Gastropub and Bad Saint in Washington DC. A particular purple tuber that has long been a staple of Filipino desserts is now popping up all over Instagram. [more inside]
SPY INTRIGUE
SPY INTRIGUE is one of the finest and bravest things ever produced in the [interactive fiction] medium: personal and true, technically masterful in both code and design, literary in the best sense. - Emily Short [more inside]
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