July 17, 2018
Wonder Woman 1484
An Egyptian-UFO Cult in Brooklyn
Nuwaubian group wound up labeled as a hate group by the SPLC. Not long ago in Georgia, black and gold pyramids stood proudly on the 476-acre compound of Tama-Rey. It was the holy “Land of the Sun,” a place where the self-declared God, Dr. Malachi Z. York, manipulated thousands of nationwide followers in the “Nuwaubian Nation of Moors” to believe they were cosmic purveyors of an extraterrestrial truth.
Piloting a tea-zeppelin on Mars is a lonely job
"I wouldn’t, if I were you ... but I do."
"I respect that bakers who are proud of their bagels might get pissed that someone is destroying their creation. But it’s a damn piece of bread. Eat it in a way that makes the most sense to you. If you want to enjoy your sandwich without half of the toppings falling out of the sides, then do what feels right: hold your head high and scoop out your bagel."
Fortune favors the brave
The facility, called Diamond Light Source, is one of the most powerful and sophisticated X-ray facilities in the world, used to probe everything from viruses to jet engines. On this summer afternoon, though, its epic beam will focus on a tiny crumb of papyrus that has already survived one of the most destructive forces on the planet—and 2,000 years of history. It comes from a scroll found in Herculaneum, an ancient Roman resort on the Bay of Naples, Italy, that was buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
'I punched him so hard he cried': inside the Street Fighter movie
In 1993, writer/director Steven de Souza battled a military coup, an ever-growing cast list and a self-destructing Jean-Claude Van Damme – and came out with a profitable picture. A loving, quite funny reminisce.
…some of the first feminist and intersectional writing my Nani ever read
Deeper, deeper, deeper
68-year-old artist/musician Lonnie Holley has released the video for his new single, "I Woke Up In A Fucked-Up America." [more inside]
Old Library Tickets
Library tickets, library cards and library pockets as historical or nostalgic objects: Is the Library Card Dying? by Sara Polski in The Atlantic. [more inside]
Professional ninja shortage: new recruits wanted
Iga, a small town in Japan, and the birthplace of the ninja, is seeking to combat decreasing population by recruiting more ninjas A short (9:30) podcast from NPR.
How Corelle plates came to dominate immigrants' kitchen cabinets
We kept all three types stacked high in a kitchen cabinet, a potentially disastrous placement for clumsy kids looking to set the table each night. But these weren’t any plates. They were Corelle, the seemingly indestructible kind still found in immigrant households across the country. [more inside]
Die (if you're) Hard
Watching the World Cup in Tehran
We lefts the stadium with no loss, no victory, but plenty of indignation. Thousands of us walked out onto the street through a long dark tunnel, lost in the all-consuming blow of horns and chants of Iraa-a-a-n. The trumpet of God seemed to be calling out the Day of Judgment: Iran gave its best World Cup performance in recent history, and women were allowed inside Iran’s largest stadium for the first time in decades. @Pedestrian writes about women and Iran's World Cup performance for Popula. [more inside]
None Dare Call It Treason
Donald Trump, current occupier of the Oval Office, has returned to the US after a tumultuous six-day international tour in which he again declared himself "a very stable genius" after disrupting the NATO summit in Brussels (Rolling Stone), lied about predicting Brexit while criticizing PM Theresa May over her handling of it (The Sun), called the European Union "a foe" of the US (CNN), and then met with President Vladimir Putin in a two-hour, closed-door, off-the-record session that culminated in a joint news conference so shameful (Washington Post) and obsequious (NYTimes) that people are debating if it was treasonable (Business Insider).
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And halfway through this trip, on Friday the 13th, Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued a new indictment (PDF) of 12 Russian intelligence officers in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign (NY Times), and on Monday, the Department of Justice DoJ Release: charged Russian national and NRA Mariia Butina, who lobbied the National Rifle Association and the National Prayer Breakfast on behalf of Russia (New York Times) and met Trump in 2015 (CNN), Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States (DoJ press release). [more inside]
“...a moral pretext for what is really just imaginative pleasure.”
Empathy Machines: Fellow feeling as a technologically mediated experience by Olivia Rosane “The narrative about the power of literature, like the current approach to VR, makes historical change not a matter of the resistance efforts of the oppressed and their allies but of relatively privileged people speaking to other relatively privileged people to spark a paternalistic response. [...] By focusing on bringing the experiences of the marginalized to elites, VR developers implicitly endorse a system in which a small number of people retain outsize power.”
Divine Feminine Energy is not the empowering narrative you think it is.
While the idea that women are innately nurturing and emotionally sensitive might sound harmless, these ostensibly positive stereotypes are hard-working components in the overall narrative that women are irrational, intellectually inferior, and servile beings who are most at home in the domestic sphere — the exact logic that’s always facilitated women’s oppression. And however innocuous it seems on the surface, this kind of benevolent sexism actually causes more harm than overt misogyny.For the love of goddesses, stop deifying women
When and where did we begin? What is a Homo sapiens anyway?
The New Story of Humanity's Origins in Africa comes from several new discoveries, which suggest that our species didn’t arise from a single point in space. Instead, the entire continent was our cradle. In reviewing and summarizing recent developments across multiple fields, 23 scientists pose the questions Did Our Species Evolve in Subdivided Populations across Africa, and Why Does It Matter? Researchers have determined that much of human DNA comes from Neanderthals, and at least two other hominid species. And with these re-evaluations come others, including the discovery of ancient (2.1 million year old) tools in China that suggests early hominims left Africa earlier than previously thought.
Unity With The Space Comrades!
“Outside of Posadism there was Peter Kolosimo, an Italian born anti-fascist partisan and early proponent of the “ancient astronaut” theory that alien visitors kickstarted civilization. After the war, he was kicked out of the Communist Party for his unorthodox views — not because of the alien stuff, but for his support of Tito’s anti-Stalinist Yugoslavian socialism. As a freelancer, he began to dabble in the occult and paranormal. His 1965 work, Not of this Earth, which argued that aliens had influenced — or created — early human civilizations, became a bestseller in Italy.“ THE SECRET HISTORY OF MARXIST ALIEN HUNTERS (The Outline)
(Democratically) Controlling Ownership of Production's Means
The Socialist Network - "At the heart of the split between liberals and socialists, at least in theory, is the question of what to do about capitalism. Liberals tend to see it as something that needs to be fixed. Socialists see it as something to be defeated. They say they do, anyway. As we've seen, the Millennial socialist intellectuals aren't really calling for government takeover of industry. Still, their stated opposition to capitalism-as-such has consequences for how we address the problems of the modern economy." (via) [more inside]
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Billy Wayne Ruddick for the American people.
Meet Billy Wayne Ruddick, Sacha Baron Cohen's latest creation. Dr. Ruddick (PhD) runs Truthbrary.org for the good of the American people.
Can Economists and Humanists Ever Be Friends?
One discipline reduces behavior to elegantly simple rules; the other wallows in our full, complex particularity. What can they learn from each other?
American Library Association: Libraries must allow hate groups
The American Library Association, through their Officer for Intellectual Freedom, has passed a resolution stating libraries must allow hate groups to book their meeting rooms.. Many librarians and library supporters have taken to twitter to express their opposition using the hashtag #NoHateALA, claiming this decision threatens the safety of their users and staff. Members of the Office for Intellectual Freedom claim the resolution was snuck past to the members. [more inside]
The Sky Road
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