July 20, 2015
What happens when you talk about salaries at Google
a waste of muscular flesh
Worm fever, headmouldshot, quinsy, Derbyshire neck, and other medical terms of the 18th and 19th centuries.
"It's fun for me!"
...why bother? That seems to be a prevailing sentiment when the topic of any sort of big-ticket retro investment is broached online. After all, all of these games can be played through emulation for free; matters of legality aside, why not just load up MAME or RetroArch and call it a day?The Quest for the Perfect Retro Game Experience
Al Gore's Satellite
In 1998, Vice President Al Gore had a vision for "Triana," an imaging satellite that would continuously transmit a live "big blue marble" Earthview for the nascent World Wide Web. Designed, built, and scheduled for launch in 2001, the $150 million "GoreSat" became a victim of politics during the W. Bush administration, and was relegated to a closet at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Friendlier heads revived the satellite in 2009 as the NOAA's DISCOVR - the Deep Space Climate Observatory - and launched her on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket last year. Today, NASA published her first "epic" view of Earth.
Star Max
"Vengeance if necessary"
Anonymous group hacktivists are mounting a campaign to avenge a man “in a Guy Fawkes mask” shot dead by Canadian police in British Columbia on Thursday after being mistaken for a suspect. Cyber-attacks have already hit national police websites. [more inside]
No laughing matter
Sports Illustrated on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
"11 books, including memoir, history, detective fiction and juvenile novels; magazine articles published in everything from the socialist Jacobin to the resolutely Main Street Rotarian; a gig commenting on current events for TIME following a run as a pop culture columnist for The Huffington Post; two films about his life, including HBO’s forthcoming Kareem: A Minority of One; and appearances on shows such as Meet the Press, where he’ll pose questions such as, 'Why must peaceful Muslims like myself answer for violent perversions of that religion while their counterparts in other faiths get a pass?' After years of trying to break back into the NBA as a full-time assistant coach, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, 68, has found both comfort and a calling as a man of letters and a public intellectual."
Vanity Fair does Doležal
For a time this summer, it seemed all anyone could talk about was the N.A.A.C.P. chapter president whose parents had “outed” her as white. The tornado of public attention has since moved on, but Rachel Dolezal still has to live with her choices—and still refuses to back down.
What a Lovely Spray!
The fans of Mad Max: Fury Road have discovered Amazon.com's listing for Winton Silver Color Mist. [more inside]
(Let me be your) Foto-Eisbär
From the 1920s to the 1960s, German people loved to pose with actors dressed as polar bears. Large images here, smallish images here. In German: a gallery and a book article (The Foto-Eisbär: an unusual memento of beautiful moments). Other pictures from the internet: Wehrmacht soldiers with a person in polar bear suit. Revelers in polar bear costumes (with poodle), Berlin, 1929. And many, many others. [more inside]
"I knew in my heart this was his last fall."
Cartoonist Jack Ohman of the Sacramento Bee recently completed a four part series of cartoons titled "The Care Package" based on his experiences with his father in his final years: "Getting old ain’t for sissies", "The last time I went fishing with my dad", "What I wish my dad said before he died", "In my dad’s final weeks, I was still in denial".
“I ain't never run from nothing but the police.”
Vince Staples - Norf Norf [YouTube] [Video] [Explicit Lyrics] From the debut studio double album Summertime '06 by rapper Vince Staples. [more inside]
Bearded queens and genderfuck drag
Conchita Wurst (previously) might have made bearded drag famous with her 2014 Eurovision win, even popularizing it to an extent by inspiring mainstream outlets like RuPaul's Drag Race. But there's more to bearded drag and genderfuck drag than Conchita Wurst. Beards in drag have been around since the 1970s, notably as performed by The Cockettes and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence (previously). Here, bearded queens Lucy Stoole, Grace Towers, and Jeff Poulin
speak about why they incorporate beards into their performances. (NB: drag queens are not synonymous with trans women.)
a facsimile of intimacy, a love-shaped house for isolation to live in
"This is one of the ways in which my second adolescence was absolutely faithful to the first: it was so difficult, so emotionally overwrought, so suffused with terror and confusion and embarrassment. It takes a perverse kind of bravery to start over—it's a selfish and deluded thing to do, and you need that courage to deal with what comes next. It's one thing to burn your life down and walk out of the ashes, but nobody tells you the phoenix is born as a tender, featherless baby bird."
A Midlife Crisis, By Any Other Name: an essay by Jess Zimmerman (previously, previouslier) for Hazlitt. [via]
A Midlife Crisis, By Any Other Name: an essay by Jess Zimmerman (previously, previouslier) for Hazlitt. [via]
From uneasy dreams
100 thoughts on Kafka's "Metamorphosis" to mark the 100th anniversary of its publication. (via) [more inside]
De-segregating our schools
In May, the New York City Council passed the "School Diversity Accountability Act", which requires the city to "provide detailed demographic data & steps it is taking to advance diversity in NYC schools" and Resolution 453, which calls on the NYC Department of Education to establish diversity as a priority in admissions, zoning, and other decision-making processes. Education advocates are re-drawing district maps, and creating experiments which "range from developing specific diversity quotas for individual schools to redrawing school district lines to better reflect racial and economic diversity." [more inside]
“Mom,” I asked, “did the SWAT team come to your house?”
That Time the Internet Sent a SWAT Team to My Mom's House
My mom asked what I had said to make people so angry, and what I had done to upset strangers so badly.Caroline Sinders, an interaction designer and researcher with IBM, describes how researching ways to prevent online abuse made her, and her family, the victim of a SWATting.
I’ve never felt worse about myself.
You are Stephen Colbert. Congratulations!
Gamasutra: “TV host Stephen Colbert has jumped onto [Twine] with a new, free game: Escape from the Man-Sized Cabinet.”
Why I'm Glad Bernie Got Interrupted
You don't get any of those things by staying quiet. On the contrary, the best way to get politicians to listen, and to force them to deal with an agenda, is to frighten them. So BlackLivesMatter came to Netroots Nation, and it showed that its activists have a lot of energy, a lot of passion, and a lot of support. They forced Sanders and O'Malley to address their issues.Noah Berlatsky: Why I'm Glad Bernie Got Interrupted.
The 8$ Sheep Doll Would Be 200$ Today
With F. A. O. Schwarz's iconic 5th Avenue store closing for good last week (Gothamist photos), why not look back at the 1911 Spring And Summer catalog and the conversation effort to preserve the catalog at the Cooper Hewitt design museum..
Colourblind man sees colour for the first time, is emotional (SLKottke)
Beautiful video of a man experiencing purple (and green, and pink) for the first time. [more inside]
Next week, Billy, we'll discuss ten things you can do with a carrot.
Why Are You So Angry?
Innuendo Studios (tumblr | twitter) updates with a 6 part series discussing GamerGate, self-image, and innocence: Why Are You So Angry? [more inside]
I wonder if we still have to pay for using the birth center?
Husband films wife giving birth in the front seat of the (moving) car. "Should I stop or should I keep going? [more inside]
Very kraftwerk
Die Woodys - Fichtl's Lied: Eine Produktion von Tony Marshall. Superhitparade der Volksmusik 1984
Scribe By Night
Scribe By Night is a calligraphy Tumblr which seeks out calligraphy to reblog, from people just starting out to people who are very skilled. [more inside]
Goscelin, patron saint of academics on contingent, short-term contracts
Eleanor Parker of A Clerk of Oxford writes Public Engagement and Personal Enthusiasm, St Mildred and Me
I can't say how far the personal inspired the scholarly interest, or the other way around - perhaps I was drawn to Mildred because I'm from Thanet, or perhaps studying Mildred has made me more interested in Thanet's Saxon history, which I didn't really know about or think about when I actually lived there. It's probably a bit of both. Who can explain why they're drawn to the subject they study?
Nuut feckin' nuut!
Experts have discovered the identity of Pingu's spoken language: English in an Irish accent. (Bleeped, but possibly still not feckin' worksafe, y'old bollocks.)
Ashley Madison has been hacked.
Cheating website AshleyMadison has reportedly been hacked.
Besides snippets of account data apparently sampled at random from among some 40 million users across ALM’s trio of properties, the hackers leaked maps of internal company servers, employee network account information, company bank account data and salary information. They want the site taken down, not because of the cheating, but because the company offers a "total delete" function and charges for it, but doesn't actually do it.
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