July 9, 2018
Theranos: The Denouement
Since last we checked in the SEC (Bloomberg, settlement pdf) had a go at Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes and Ramesh Balwani, followed by federal prosecutors indicting her on criminal fraud charges (Vox). [more inside]
Anything for my Ibis
"Anne-Gabriela Schmalstieg and Corinna Esterer aren’t your typical foster mothers. ...For six months each year the two 20-somethings dedicate their lives to the birds, living onsite in campers at the Schönbrunn Zoo in Vienna, Austria, and looking after the ibises from sunrise to sunset seven days a week. The entire first month the women must abstain from coffee, alcohol, and cigarettes because they have to spit in the birds’ food to make it easier to digest."
"Raising Northern Bald Ibis Chicks Requires a Lot of Cuddle Time ... and Spit," Audubon (Auto-play audio section at top for desktop computers?) [more inside]
Life Goes On
The extended interview transcript between John Mellencamp and Jane Pauley is charming and worth reading, across 5 pages. [more inside]
Qwirkle may cause insomnia; consult your doctor before playing.
Originally, this FPP was just to say that I have been playing Qwirkle online versus a bot... but then I found the parent site, UltraBoardGames, to house a few more online versions of popular board games, as well as being a repository of rules, tips, variations, Youtube walkthroughs, news, and project kickstarters for a ____ of other board games.
A gif in your mouth…
Sparkling Water Research Lab
Bad Vodka
Travel In Style
French photographer and animator Nicolas Monterrat brings his surreal sense of humor to historical photos, paintings, and other borrowed imagery at Un gif dans ta gueule…
Bad Vodka
Travel In Style
French photographer and animator Nicolas Monterrat brings his surreal sense of humor to historical photos, paintings, and other borrowed imagery at Un gif dans ta gueule…
"…only possible to drink from a glass, not from the floor…"
Elderflower wine is a traditional British country wine, “by far the nearest thing to Champagne you can make at home and an essential accompaniment to summer parties.” Recipes historical (Mary Kettilby, 1714; Eliza Smith, 1727) and modern (John Wright, 2011; Hank Shaw, 2016) are available (and not so very different from each other). [more inside]
Redefining the Hero
Tom and Lorenzo present a three-part essay series on costume design for heroic female characters. [more inside]
Moominmamma: "I believe she wants to be invisible for a while"
The Invisible Child by Tove Jansson, a Moomin short story translated by Thomas Warburton, as read by Bill Nighy.
Never Mind Form Follows Function
Nobody builds churches like they do in this part of India German photographers Stefanie Zoche and Sabine Haubitz noticed these structures during their trips to India between 2011 and 2016 when they were documenting the slow extinction of single-screen cinema halls. They immediately knew what their next photo project would be—churches built in post-colonial India.
The rise of 'pseudo-AI'
"It’s hard to build a service powered by artificial intelligence. So hard, in fact, that some startups have worked out it’s cheaper and easier to get humans to behave like robots than it is to get machines to behave like humans."
in the Wired
Cat provides levity. Film at 11.
During an interview about Poland's Supreme Court crisis, historian and political scientist Jerzy Targalski was interrupted by a persistent local authority. [more inside]
OUTATIME
Timehop, an app that reminds social media users about posts from their past, has disclosed that it suffered a major security breach on July 4. According to the company, 21 million users had some form of personal data stolen.
Some of y'all might get with this, and some of y'all won't, but listen
Let Me Clear My Wallet, a fun mix of DJ Kool and Super Mario Galaxy 2 tunes set to Super Mario Odyssey's release trailer, from prolific Youtube mashup artist BotanicSage. [SLYT]
Resisters of the Rust Belt
It's like a carpet and a chair, only with vegetation and buildings
As temperature rises in Wales, archaeologists are able to use aerial photography to discover the location of ancient settlements. [more inside]
The season finale of "Ooh er UK!"
An interesting week in the UK, with its new-but-old national (England only) anthem [post]. After Chequers [post], DD (not this one) quits, replaced by Dominic "workhouses for the poor" Raab, with the cabinet in disarray and Boris being Boris. Trump's visit [megathread] means a police redeployment and a large inflatable baby. A civilian dies from Novichok possibly related to the recent poisonings, shops continue to shutter, the heatwave continues [post], ancient sites reveal, CrumpetGate [post], and water supplies diminish. Led by Waistcoat Gareth and Harry Kane and followed by "supporters", the mens footballers are doing well [fanfare], seeds are knocked out of Wimbledon, while electoral law integrity struggles to be heard. [Post title via devonian and twitter, and explained] Ooh I say!
Pyramids puncture pungent ply; perpetrators pinpointed
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are industrially-useful molecules that, in high Antarctic clouds, destroy the atmospheric ozone that protects us from much of the sun's ultraviolet rays. In one of environmentalism's clearest success stories, 196 nations agreed to the Montreal Protocol banning CFC use, and the ozone layer gradually began to replenish itself.
But recently... [more inside]
Because womankind is both shaggy and smooth
Billie is a US razor brand that targets its products at women. Their recently released commercial is unusual, as it shows what their competitors always omit: women shaving – or combing – actual body hair. They have also created an image library devoted to normalizing female body hair on the internet, to which you can contribute using the hashtag #projectbodyhair.
Sneering at the English: nature-writing, nostalgia, reactionary politics
"[B]efore long, there was barely a single facet of English rural life that wasn’t being prevaricated about from the three-for-two table in Waterstones. Joe Kennedy in the New Socialist writes about the intersection of nostalgic cultural criticism, nature-writing, psychogeography, and 'benign' or 'progressive' forms of English patriotism. [more inside]
Cities of ladies
In 1999, officials in Vienna, Austria, asked residents of the city's ninth district how often and why they used public transportation. "Most of the men filled out the questionnaire in less than five minutes," says Ursula Bauer, one of the city administrators tasked with carrying out the survey. "But the women couldn't stop writing."
- How to Design a City for Women [more inside]
A clever title would get me more favorites
“I feel like so much of [Bo’s] online tale is about being young, but he’s just such a cranky old man.” — Aidy Bryant
In the three-and-change years since the last previously (and the seven-and-change since the one before that, YouTube-musician/comedian-then-just-musician/comedian Bo Burnham has: had a successful career; burned out of performing due to anxiety and stage fright; and directed the movie Eighth Grade about, well, being in eighth grade, surrounded by social media, and full of anxiety. Writing in The New Yorker, Michael Schulman profiles a young man observing the young, afraid of the world that made him.
In the three-and-change years since the last previously (and the seven-and-change since the one before that, YouTube-musician/comedian-then-just-musician/comedian Bo Burnham has: had a successful career; burned out of performing due to anxiety and stage fright; and directed the movie Eighth Grade about, well, being in eighth grade, surrounded by social media, and full of anxiety. Writing in The New Yorker, Michael Schulman profiles a young man observing the young, afraid of the world that made him.
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