August 3, 2015
Or how to get ahead.
Pope Frankenstein, by the erudite and amusing Yanko Tsvetkov.
Why we can't have nice private corporations
Paid $1 to $3 a day, unauthorized immigrants keep family detention centers running (LA Times) "Cruz, 36, cleaned bathrooms, hallways and other areas of the government-contracted detention center for $3 a day. At the commissary, a bag of potato chips cost $4, bottled water $2. The facility in Karnes City is run by Geo Group, the country’s second-largest prison company."
Schedule I drug in the US, Class A drug in the UK, stupèfiant in France
There isn’t much magic left in the world today, which might explain the widening appeal of ayahuasca—the plant has made Joe Rogan’s “Scholar List” and apparently changed Sting’s life and saved Lindsay Lohan. But not everyone can come to the Amazon. Some believers think the solution is to bring the plant, and the ceremony, to the rest of the world. Tanner’s Ayahuasca Foundation, in conjunction with a Shipibo medicine man named Don Enrique, is training curanderos from all over the world how to lead ceremonies back home. So let’s talk briefly about things as they are in the real world. And then we too will cross over.[more inside]
A family walks into a talent agent's office ...
Nevada Public Radio has made an oral (no comment) history of the making of The Aristocrats, the infamous documentary about the offensive joke that comedians tell each other. The movie has many, many great performances, but I'm partial to Wendy Liebman's and Martin Mull's, which are kind of riffs on the joke and not the actual joke. For that, you need to see Bob Saget or Gilbert Gottfried.
Give us a wink and make me think of you
Album cover artist Mitch O'Connell has come up with an "unrequested poster" for Paul McCartney's current Out There 2015 world tour. HE claims there are about 50 Macca-related references, but I only count about 12 or so. If anyone is up to it and can site 50 or even close to it, please post to comments! It's done in the psychedelic style of 60s artist Peter Maxx, and is a curious and fun piece.
ICU Nurse, Blogger
An ICU nurse with a way for words details her shift reports elise the great is a Something Awful poster (in the hidden Goon Doctor section) who has a long history of frank and well-written posts detailing her shifts at work in a busy ICU. After a long period of trying to convince her to write a book, and a subforum experiment involving diary-style entries, she has agreed to a blog. [more inside]
The word 'Pajubá' mean 'gossip' or 'news'.
"Pajubá is one of the many queer anti-languages of the world. People study them in 'Lavender Linguistics'. It's hard to study those languages because their usefulness vanishes if they are not secret anymore. Pajubá is a moving target, evolving so rapidly that it can't be documented." — Pajubá: The secret language of Brazilian trans women [via mefi projects]
Learning to Speak Lingerie
"Days start late, and nights run long; they ignore the Spring Festival and sell briskly after sundown during Ramadan. Winter is better than summer. Mother’s Day is made for lingerie. But nothing compares with Valentine’s Day, so this year I celebrated the holiday by saying goodbye to my wife, driving four hours to Asyut, and watching people buy underwear at the China Star shop until almost midnight." Chinese lingerie merchants in Egypt. (New Yorker via Longform)
When Bicyclists Obey Traffic Laws...
Riders arrived at every stop sign in a single file, coming to a complete stop and filing through the intersection only once they were given the right-of-way. The law-abiding act of civil disobedience snarled traffic almost immediately. "The thing you say you want — every cyclist to stop at every stop sign — you really don't want that" [more inside]
We go down to the indie disco every Thursday night
Irish indie rock: kinda like Scottish indie rock, but way less beards. Have you thought about Irish indie rock since the glory days of Ash, Mundy and My Bloody Valentine? There's more than U2 and Hozier happening in the Emerald Isle. [more inside]
America's Own Little Greece
Puerto Rico Default: How We Got Here And What Happens Next "But Puerto Rico is unlikely to get much out of Washington. Despite calls by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton to let Puerto Rico use bankruptcy court, conservative lawmakers aren’t likely to allow it because they fear the reprisals of constituencies that regard municipal bankruptcies as backdoor bailouts." [more inside]
Dying for their Art
in hamburg in the twenties of the past century lived a girl who was a dancer named lavinia schulz with her boyfriend, who was a dancer too, named walter holdt.
They were known as the mask dancers.
Knowledge of their astonishingly bizarre and tragic art is obscure and largely based on the rediscovery in 1986 of artifacts deposited in a Hamburg museum back in 1925.
They were known as the mask dancers.
Knowledge of their astonishingly bizarre and tragic art is obscure and largely based on the rediscovery in 1986 of artifacts deposited in a Hamburg museum back in 1925.
The continuing crisis in Mexico - Now with more dead journalists
Last saturday Ruben Espinosa, a Mexican photojournalist, was found dead in his apartment in a middle-class neighborghood in Mexico City. With him, four women were also found dead, three of which lived in the same apartment, and a domestic employee. All five showed signs of torture and had been killed with a shot to the head, execution style. [more inside]
Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources
The Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources aims to document all given names recorded in European sources written between 600 and 1600.
Tired of image pressure on women of a certain age? Here's the antidote
This recent guest editorial (hopefully the first in a new intermittent column) is a cri de coer from an educated, intelligent and caring middle-aged career woman and mother For most women in the public eye their outward visual image is the most valuable currency available, and the booming cosmetics (and aesthetic surgery) industry banks - excuse the pun - on this. As a senior political staff writer this lady has spent many years in - or at least no more than a door away from - the corridors of power. Here she proves that the pen is mightier than the scalpel.
“I need you alive. Who knows when this piece of shit will break again?"
Hacking the digital and social system: Voja Antonić on being a microcomputer enthusiast in Yugoslavia (via Hack A Day)
Get Down, Get Down
The Muppets - Jungle Boogie (SLYT)
“What race is that?”: Whatever you want it to be.
...but buildings are too cold because they're optimised for men.
Fix sexism in air conditioning, save the planet: A quick article from Ars Technica (UK) talks about the frustration we've all experienced where buildings are often air conditioned to be too cold. Dress for summer and bring a sweater for the office. Enjoy the temperature preferred by your (likely older white male) managers. Original article is paywalled but the abstract can be found here. Finally, some (more) science to point out more obvious issues in the workplace. Not the genre-defining paper to lay all doubts to rest...but a good place to start.
Haven't you heard? Flash is dying!
Abbreviations Carrying Resonance of Names Your Members Shortened
You can tell no one here is high. It sucks.
United Nations of Food
Did you ask for that raise? You totally deserve one.
The Data Drive. "After twelve years spent relentlessly growing Facebook into one of the largest internet companies in the world, [Zuckerberg] unexpectedly fled the country in 2015, taking with him an industrial air-hangar's worth of hard-drives containing all of the information accumulated through his social network from its inception to the day of his mysterious departure."
The Man Who Shot Michael Brown
This March, I spent several days at his home. Wilson, who is twenty-nine, started receiving death threats not long after the incident, in which Brown was killed in the street shortly after robbing a convenience store. Although Wilson recently bought the house, his name is not on the deed, and only a few friends know where he lives. He and his wife, Barb, who is thirty-seven, and also a former Ferguson cop, rarely linger in the front yard. Because of such precautions, Wilson has been leading a very quiet life. During the past year, a series of police killings of African-Americans across the country has inspired grief, outrage, protest, and acrimonious debate. For many Americans, this discussion, though painful, has been essential. Wilson has tried, with some success, to block it out.
"What you have there is basically raw sewage"
Sunday, July 2nd, 1978
Farewell - ETAOIN SHRDLU: a short film documenting the production of the last edition of the New York Times to use hot metal typesetting. [via PrintingFilms.com]
How I Infiltrated a White Pride Facebook Group
How I Infiltrated a White Pride Facebook Group and Turned It into 'LGBT Southerners for Michelle Obama' Sort of like e-mails from an Asshole, but the trolling is directed at hate groups instead of innocent bystanders on the Internet.
Soylent's founder Rob Rhinehart shares his technotopian dream-reality
How I Gave Up Alternating Current - "I buy my staple food online like a civilized person. " [more inside]
Amnesty for some
The Guardian view on Amnesty International’s call to decriminalise sex work: divisive and distracting - "Obviously, Amnesty is right to say that sex workers have human rights and that these should be respected. But many Amnesty supporters believe that the trade itself tends to corrupt or to violate these rights, except for a lucky few participants. The broadest coalitions unite around the narrowest agendas. A call to decriminalise sex work is a distraction from Amnesty’s core mission, and dangerous to it too."
Yeah, you landed on the Moon, but where's your paperwork?!
The second man on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin, recently shared his expense reports and other travel documents from his road trip with Neil and Mike.
Like many things, this will require some patience to get through.
Why Time Flies: A visualization by Maximilian Kiener of philosopher Paul Janet's theory of why time seems to pass more quickly as one gets older. As Wonkblog explains it, The apparent length of a period of time is proportional to our life span itself.
HOOBASTANKONIA
Every day this month, I’m searching the word “mashup” on Twitter and turning 31 jokes into real mashups. Why? I don’t know. Probably as a distraction from real things I should be doing. [more inside]
Training Officers to Shoot First, and He Will Answer Questions Later
"When police officers shoot people under questionable circumstances, Dr. Lewinski is often there to defend their actions." ... "His conclusions are consistent: The officer acted appropriately, even when shooting an unarmed person. Even when shooting someone in the back. Even when witness testimony, forensic evidence or video footage contradicts the officer’s story." [SLNYT]
Fairest of Them All - Sequel to Mirror, Mirror
Previously on the blue, the fan produced Star Trek Continues series was mentioned. They have now produced four episodes. If you'd like to sample one, might I suggest watching episode 3, Fairest of Them All. It's a sequel to one of the most celebrated Star Trek TOS episodes - Mirror, Mirror.
Folks Went Wild For It: The Memphis Blues
The song Memphis Blues first brought the blues to a wide audience. In 2012, the BBC looked back the history of the song first published in 1912. [more inside]
"When you want 100 crore, just make a party video"
Award-winning actor Irrfan Khan and noted comedy collective All India Bakchod presents Every Bollywood Party Song [more inside]
"working with words is a kind of love, it's like being in love"
Words (part 2) is a performance by Scottish novelist and stand-up comic A. L. Kennedy about working with words. Kennedy has reflected quite a bit about the craft and practice of writing, including a blog called On Writing that ran in The Guardian from 2009-2013, and was collected into a book of the same name.
Biden 2016?
Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his associates have begun to actively explore a possible presidential campaign. Mr. Biden’s advisers have started to reach out to Democratic leaders and donors who have not yet committed to Mrs. Clinton or who have grown concerned about what they see as her increasingly visible vulnerabilities as a candidate.
"You cannot change fate. However, you can rise to meet it."
How Early-20th-Century Americans Taught Their Kids to Be Thrifty
Slate takes a look at some of the concepts in Andrew L. Yarrow's Thrift: The History of an American Cultural Movement including various methods of teaching thrift to children. One tool used was a chart that teaches children how much it cost their parents to support them.
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