July 8, 2018
Because of her, we can
It's NAIDOC week! This year's theme is Because of her we can!, celebrating Australian indigenous women and their achievements. [more inside]
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on feminism, storytelling, and handbags
Last month, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave the keynote address at the Chatham House London Conference 2018 (slyt; 25 minutes). “I think men should read more stories by and about women. We know from studies that men read men, and women read men and women. Perhaps if men read more women’s stories, they would be more likely to see them as fully human and less likely to see them as objects that exist for the needs of men...Storytelling is the breath and final spirit of all knowledge." [more inside]
The Elsewhere Visitor's Guide, with dark IDM soundtrack by Face Culler
The Elsewhere Visitor's Guide is a service of The Lostlands Travel Council, designed to provide more information about some of the locations in Elsewhere*, with a mood-setting soundtrack of gothic dungeon synth, IDM and breakbeats by Face Culler in 12 tracks on Bandcamp, plus 2 tracks on Soundcloud (Castelo de Marcela and Ferryman Acid (tape)). You can also browse the map and location descriptions on Face Culler's Facebook gallery. [more inside]
Torus! Torus! Torus!
Now, if we do not take the removed dough to be the hole, then what do we take the hole to be? Are holes material things, where material things are physical (like tables and chairs), or are holes immaterial things, where immaterial things are not physical (like abstract entities)? Or are holes not even things at all?Suki Finn explores whether a hole is a real thing, or just a place where something isn’t.
Two articles about nothing
Humanity’s discovery of zero was “a total game changer ... equivalent to us learning language,” says Andreas Nieder, a cognitive scientist at the University of Tübingen in Germany. But for the vast majority of our history, humans didn’t understand the number zero. It’s not innate in us. We had to invent it. And we have to keep teaching it to the next generation. Other animals, like monkeys, have evolved to understand the rudimentary concept of nothing. And scientists just reported that even tiny bee brains can compute zero. But it’s only humans that have seized zero and forged it into a tool.
“...furthering the disenfranchisement of LGBT people on-screen,”
Scarlett Johansson continues problematic streak, will play a trans man [The Verge] “A year after Scarlett Johansson’s appearance in 2017’s adaptation of Ghost in the Shell, in which she played a canonically Asian woman and sparked a conversation about whitewashing in Hollywood, the actor has made yet another questionable decision: next year, she’ll be starring in Ghost director Rupert Sanders’ Rub & Tug, a biopic based on the real-life story of massage parlor boss Dante “Tex” Gill.” [more inside]
Counterfeit Queen of Soul
Mary Jane/Vickie Jones could belt like Aretha so why not "be" her? A strange and bittersweet ballad of kidnapping, stolen identity and unlikely stardom. Sadly, there doesn't seem to be any recording of Ms. Jones anywhere.
Space Opera + Queer x Cozy = Becky Chambers
If you grew up reading and watching Space Opera science fiction, you may have grown out of it because many of the tropes around gender and relationships are so retrograde. But from over the horizon, here comes Becky Chambers to the rescue! [more inside]
Cruises Are Awesome
Cruises Are So Uncool They Are Cool:
Everything about the weeklong Caribbean cruise is meant to buff life’s unpleasant edges into sea glass. If it sounds like I am making fun, I am not. I love it. Michael Ian Black for the NYT.
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