August 7, 2018
A choice most of us will never make
The Choice of Whether to Hear We interviewed 14 of Dr. Madell’s former [Cochlear Implant] patients, those young enough to be born after cochlear implantation was viable yet old enough to have insight into the experience. They had navigated the frontiers of deafness, disability and the human experience. They spoke to us about identity, sexual intimacy and coming of age somewhere between sound and silence.
And they talked about the sometimes wrenching decision of whether to hear or not. That’s a choice most of us will never make.
“This is the stuff childhood dreams are made of.”
You can now buy a pair of Nintendo-themed Air Jordans for $1250 [Moneyish] [Pepsi Nintendo Blue] “Only ten pairs of the Jordan “NES” IVs will be made, but at $1,250 each, they aren’t cheap (FreakerSneaks is selling an “NBA Jam”-themed pair of kicks at a similar price.) That said, though the shoes weren’t made with the imprimatur of Nintendo, FreakerSneaks knows there’s a market of now wealthy Gen Xers who grew up playing NES that will be willing to shell out.” [more inside]
Big League Bullying: The Conspiracy To Humiliate MLB Umpire Steve Fields
Big League Bullying: The Conspiracy To Humiliate MLB Umpire Steve Fields (SLDeadspin) — Baseball consensus holds that umpires only get noticed when they make a bad call. Steve Fields’ career as a major league ump was bookended by two calls that put him in the spotlight. But he went to his grave insisting both were right.
"If Russia is real, show me it on this map, news pig."
It's been a thing lately, fake bot scripts created after said bot has endured 1,000 hours of various media, and the fake bot version of a Sarah Sanders press briefing by comedian Keaton Patti has some choice lines.
A page devoted to such is I Forced A Bot.
"should" is a very big word
Solving The 'Wage Puzzle': Why Aren't Paychecks Growing? With the national unemployment rate in the US at 3.9% in July, and parts of the country nearing full employment, if The Economy Is This Good why Aren't Wages Rising Faster? [more inside]
For queer women, it’s all caution tape.
The unimaginability of sexual or romantic desire between women that gives intimacy its alibi works in tandem with that other thing: the way in which we all grow up knowing not just that women can be used, but how to use them. We internalize both. We learn—we all learn—that we can lean on women in ways that we can’t lean on men, and, at the same time, that that leaning, the bodily closeness of it, is elevated, more pure, more innocent for its lack of want. We’re all complicit, and we’re all suffering.But some of us do want, too. -- Sadie Graham: how our cultural obsession with platonic 'girlfriends' sidelines queer women
AI nationalism or AI without borders?
New Manhattan Projects. Ian Hogarth (Twitter) explores how increasingly important AI can play a role in a new geopolitics. [more inside]
"The results were disappointing. There seemed to be no causal effects."
Workplace Wellness Programs Don’t Work Well. Why Some Studies Show Otherwise. Randomized controlled trials, despite their flaws, remain a powerful tool. (SLNYT by Aaron E. Carroll)
interesting skate video
Matt Tomasello AKA "Rodney Mullen on Bath Salts" (SLYT skate video). Gets interesting around 0:40. [more inside]
I’m fuckin’ angry, man.
You didn’t think any of the press about your being “difficult” or your drinking or your illness was cynical?
The “difficult” thing was pure gender crap. If a man comes on set and says, “Here’s how I see this being done,” people go, “He’s decisive.” If a woman does it, they say, “Oh, fuck. There she goes.”
What’s an example of that happening to you?
Here’s one that was very nicely resolved with [Coppola]: [...] I had dreamed a scene where my character was coming down the stairs [...] In my dream the camera was there. When I got on set, the camera was here. I was disoriented. I said to Francis, “The camera’s supposed to be over there” [...] and he went, “No, it’s not.” I said, “I’m telling you it should be over there.” He goes, “Well, it’s over here.” So we made a deal [...] He said that if I gave him as many takes as he wanted from where he had set the camera, he would give me two takes from where I wanted the camera. And guess what happened?
The take he used was from your spot?
Damn right.
Kathleen Turner, In Conversation
The “difficult” thing was pure gender crap. If a man comes on set and says, “Here’s how I see this being done,” people go, “He’s decisive.” If a woman does it, they say, “Oh, fuck. There she goes.”
What’s an example of that happening to you?
Here’s one that was very nicely resolved with [Coppola]: [...] I had dreamed a scene where my character was coming down the stairs [...] In my dream the camera was there. When I got on set, the camera was here. I was disoriented. I said to Francis, “The camera’s supposed to be over there” [...] and he went, “No, it’s not.” I said, “I’m telling you it should be over there.” He goes, “Well, it’s over here.” So we made a deal [...] He said that if I gave him as many takes as he wanted from where he had set the camera, he would give me two takes from where I wanted the camera. And guess what happened?
The take he used was from your spot?
Damn right.
Kathleen Turner, In Conversation
Oldest Building in Each U.S. State
How an Indigenous Chef Is Decolonizing Canadian Cuisine
There but for the grace of god go I
Gina Wohlsdorf writes for CrimeReads: Jean Harris was in a seriously embattled position at work, she was addicted to prescription meth, and her boyfriend of a decade and a half was slo-mo dumping her for a twinkie he had on the side. If she’d just outlined all that for the jury (the humiliation, the stress, the drugs) and followed it by saying, very simply, “Then I lost it and shot him,” she’d have been a free woman in a couple of years. This is not even debated, anywhere, in the ridiculously plentiful literature on Jean Harris’s case. But here’s what she said instead... [more inside]
142 Acre Dog Sanctuary...
Land of the Strays is a short documentary about Lya Battle and her dog sanctuary in Costa Rica. (Previously)
The Lady and the Shark.
Is that her?? Fiction author Joe Hill describes his interest in a 1974 unsolved murder and the possibility that the victim was an extra in the filming of JAWS. Full disclosure: Joe Hill's dad is a pretty good writer too.
Photography Tips for Capturing a Meteor Shower
How to catch meteors! NASA has tips for those of you who live where you can see the meteor showers and have a camera handy!! Perseid Meteor Shower is Coming up!!!
Continuation of a basic income project or cheaper beer?
Premier Doug Ford breaks a campaign promise and discontinues a basic income project begun by the Liberals, but hey, he's unveiling his Buck a Beer plan today. [more inside]
Somebody Gave Carly Rae Jepsen A Sword
Social media isn't always a disaster; sometimes good things come out it as well. For example, at Lollapalooza this year, somebody gave Carly Rae Jepsen a sword. [more inside]
An essay on assisted reproduction
All Reproduction Is Assisted (Merve Emre, Boston Review).
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