August 6, 2018
Shatner: I said to Ben ”What are we gonna do?” He said, ”Tell the truth"
William Shatner’s ‘Has Been’: The Album That Broke Indie Rock for Good -- Dan Ozzi puts Shatner's first album since the 1970s* in context, in "a powerhouse [year] for indie rock" and the last year physical album sales trended up** in any serious way, then evaluates the album itself. "Has Been (YT Playlist; Wiki) is such an odd record—even the premise seems absurd: a then 73-year-old self-admitted past-his-prime C-list celebrity doing his. Trademark. Style of. Shattneresque break-talking. Over a. Pensive and… artful soundtrack? Composed. By. Respected musician... Ben Folds? ... [Pitchfork] praised Shatner as “the ultimate icon for Generation Irony” and noted that the album’s “humor and candor give it a fair amount of staying power.” " [more inside]
Celebrating Theodore Sturgeon's Centenary--so should we all.
There are multitudinous reasons why Sturgeon deserves to be better remembered than he already is, and we would probably require several conferences just to begin discussing them. [T]he strange beauty of Sturgeon’s stories has something to do with the weird incongruity they share with their own generic intentions; the technophilic logic of his plots never quite jives with Sturgeon’s compassion for his most fallible, messy and illogical characters. [more inside]
“Nobody has ever made head or tail of ancient Greek music,”
Ancient Greek music: now we finally know what it sounded like by [The Conversation] “...the sense and sound of ancient Greek music has proved incredibly elusive. This is because the terms and notions found in ancient sources – mode, enharmonic, diesis, and so on – are complicated and unfamiliar. And while notated music exists and can be reliably interpreted, it is scarce and fragmentary. What could be reconstructed in practice has often sounded quite strange and unappealing – so ancient Greek music had by many been deemed a lost art. But recent developments have excitingly overturned this gloomy assessment. A project to investigate ancient Greek music that I have been working on since 2013 has generated stunning insights into how ancient Greeks made music.” [YouTube][Documentary][15:39] [more inside]
Where Vim Came From
In some sense, Vim is only the latest iteration of a piece of software—call it the “wq text editor”—that has been continuously developed and improved since the dawn of the Unix epoch. 2500 words from TwoBitHistory.
"A. Imagine Trump's library." "B. You'd have to."
Dick Cavett, at 81, is killing it on Twitter but won't speculate on who might be the "next Cavett" on late-night TV. Most likely there never will be another one quite like Cavett, who was advised by Jack Paar not to interview his guests but to have a conversation with them. Cavett's tweet about Trump shows he can still pierce with the old dry wit. Oh, and even though a guest did die on his show, you never actually saw it on TV.
Historians will know us by our unsolicited flyers
Jean Shepard on the plane crash that killed four Opry stars
Jean Shepard's short (3 mins) interview about the plane crash that killed her husband and Patsy Cline. Shepard had a 15 month old baby and was eight months pregnant when her husband died. Four Opry stars died in the crash, Hawkshaw Hawkins, Cowboy Copas, Randy Hughes, and Patsy Cline. Here is the front page article in the Nashville Banner just after the crash. Here is a previous post about Cline.
MetaFilter: Code 128145
As more and more online accounts are breached, two factor authentication or multi-factor authentication (also shorthanded by 2FA or MFA) is becoming the next stop in account security. [more inside]
Dark gray t-shirt and blue jeans
The California Review of Images and Mark Zuckerberg is out with its 2nd edition documenting the perpetually apologetic mogul's visual culture. [more inside]
Put-downs bigger than the sum of their parts
I want to be angry, but I have to do some reading first!
Law and Sausages is a new project launched by the excellent Zach Weinersmith, of SMBC, SMBC theater, Soonish and the BAH fest.
It's about American civics and law.
Good news, everyone!
Alex Jones has been banned by Facebook, Apple, and Spotify Companies have started to target conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' show more broadly, rather than pulling specific episodes.
Meet the guy with four arms, two of which someone else controls in VR
These robotic limbs could someday help people work together when they’re far apart. Still very early, and obviously clunky, but an interesting story and prototype.
Indigenous Geographies Overlap in This Colorful Online Map
Native Land highlights territories, treaties, and languages across the U.S., Canada, and beyond. [more inside]
“I haven’t run a business but I have worked against a lot of businesses”
Abdul El-Sayed, The 32-year-old charismatic Muslim doctor is running for governor of Michigan and in the process trying to change US politics (The Guardian) his speech : The Epidemic Of Poverty and the Goverment Imperative . Abdul El-Sayed’s State level single payer plan everyone should be talking about (Current Affairs) One thing that immediately stands out is that, from Abdul on down, this is an undeniably youthful campaign. Almost everyone with a lanyard appears to be between twenty-three and thirty-five years old—an augur of the kind of voter that the El-Sayed team needs to turn out in droves to reverse the usual geriatric composition of the mid-term primary electorate. (The Baffler) Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are joining forces to elect an underdog but potentially history-making candidate on the ballot in Michigan (Politico) Abdul El-Sayed’s Policy Platform. The first-ever political endorsement from the Current Affairs editorial board The Michigan gubatoral debate (YouTube) [more inside]
Broken Time
In "Broken Time: 'Nardis' and the Curious History of a Jazz Obsession", MeFi's own Steve "digaman" Silberman brings us the story of the "Pale, bespectacled, and soft-spoken" jazz pianist Bill Evans and his obsession with Miles Davis's modal composition "Nardis". Evans recorded more than a dozen versions over the next twenty-plus years and played it countless times live. Davis never recorded the song himself, and said that only Evans played it "the way it was meant to be played".
Thanks I Hate It
Film critic and Metafilter fave Lindsay Ellis (previously on Metafilter) on That Time Disney Remade Beauty and the Beast. [more inside]
a stand-in for everything good — and evil
"Sugar is survival. It is a respite for palates swept clean of childish joy for too long. It is sexual desire and pleasure, and also temptation and sin. And it is a commodity, one historically produced with some of the most brutal labor practices on the planet. In the Western imagination, sugar is pleasure, temptation, and vice — and in modern history, it is original sin." Sugartime, by food writer and 2013 Great British Bake Off contestant Ruby Tandoh
They charged it to Univision because @#$% Univision
My mission to ruin a $250 Wagyu steak nearly destroyed my family --
Over the course of three days, I prepared this steak five different ways and, in the process, I developed a relationship with the steak. It became my secret lover. It even caused legitimate tension between my wife and me. Drew Magary for The Takeout
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