September 23, 2020

"Away with your noisy hymns of praise

I will not listen to the music of your harps. Instead, I want to see a mighty flood of justice, an endless river of righteous living": How a Sean Feucht worship service convinced me I am no longer an evangelical
posted by clawsoon at 8:49 PM PST - 61 comments

Exit Mundi

How Humanity Came to Contemplate Its Possible Extinction: A Timeline is precisely, as they say, what it says on the tin. A history of ideas that led to the modern concept of extinction - and how it inevitably applies to ourselves. Careful not to have too much fun reading! [more inside]
posted by Lonnrot at 8:16 PM PST - 12 comments

It is time to decentralize and decolonize our understanding of fashion

Begun in 2017 by Professor Kimberly M. Jenkins, the Fashion and Race Database "provides an accessible, academic treatment to one of fashion’s most critical topics facing us today."
posted by jedicus at 8:11 PM PST - 2 comments

Failing State

The Election That Could Break America: "There is a cohort of close observers of our presidential elections, scholars and lawyers and political strategists, who find themselves in the uneasy position of intelligence analysts in the months before 9/11. As November 3 approaches, their screens are blinking red, alight with warnings that the political system does not know how to absorb. They see the obvious signs that we all see, but they also know subtle things that most of us do not. Something dangerous has hove into view, and the nation is lurching into its path." Longread article from the coming issue of The Atlantic spins out the signs and scenarios, including the potential for state legislatures to end-run the Electoral College. [more inside]
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:47 PM PST - 221 comments

Are we thinking about dyslexia the wrong way?

Sirin Kale has written a lengthy article in The Guardian revealing new research and new conversations around dyslexia. Kale talks to experts both iconoclastic and established in a report inspired by a local controversies in Staffordshire and Warwickshire of how to classify and respond to the diagnosis of dyslexia. [more inside]
posted by zeusianfog at 4:23 PM PST - 9 comments

"A remarkable consecutive history"

The Codex Zouche-Nuttall is a pre-Columbian document of Mixtec pictography, one of six known to survive. The codex is named for two women: Baroness Zouche, its donor and Zelia Nuttall, who first published it in 1902. Nuttall was a Mexican-American archaeologist who "investigated Mexico’s past to give recognition and pride to its present" at a time when Western archaeology was still obsessed with racist caricatures of Indigenous people. Shortly after publishing the Codex with a lengthy introduction, Nuttall moved to live full-time in Mexico as a single mother and towards the end of her life advocated for the revival of Mexican New Year traditions that had been eradicated after Spanish conquest. Aztec New Year is still celebrated in Mexico today. [more inside]
posted by jessamyn at 1:54 PM PST - 14 comments

Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list?

Anne Helen Petersen’s new book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, expands on her viral Buzzfeed article from January 2019. Read excerpts on the inescapable hellhole that is work (Wired) and how burnout has become the norm for American parents (NYT), along with an interview on the same (The Atlantic). [more inside]
posted by adrianhon at 12:27 PM PST - 52 comments

a horror story from 2003

"Kathleen Murphy gripped her can of Mace tightly as she rode the Red Line to work, hands sweating inside the latex of her surgical gloves. All around her, her fellow T riders were openly clutching Mace or pepper spray as well, all glancing around the car from behind safety goggles and surgical masks." "For the Plague Thereof Was Exceeding Great" by Jennifer Pelland is a short, dark science fiction story, published in 2003, about an epidemic and the religious cult that aims to spread it.
posted by brainwane at 10:12 AM PST - 20 comments

Coppicing and Pollarding

How to make biomass energy sustainable again (solar-powered website) (backup link if the solar is off)
posted by aniola at 9:15 AM PST - 21 comments

The Wound of Multilingualism: On Surrendering the Languages of Home

Learning a language as an adult or in your teens, especially with a history of repeated migrations between languages and countries, is extraordinarily difficult. It isn’t just about swallowing new words like passion fruit that glides down your throat. It’s like chewing on stones breaking your teeth in order to seed the foundations of that new language on your tongue already heavy with many idioms. In other words, it’s more than just words. It is about acquiring metaphors, learning the nuances, the synonyms, the history of words, the cultures, the rhythm of its roots. What is a cliche to a native speaker is a gem to a new learner. [SL LitHub]
posted by ellieBOA at 4:23 AM PST - 16 comments

I said, 'I'm afraid that I need men' / You said, 'Need me, then'.

The musical equivalent of a restorative, late-night conversation - "'The Baby' is a nod to the singer's nickname amongst her friends and family, and it kicks off with a recording of her Lebanese grandmother singing affectionately to Samia. 'That's probably my favourite moment on the record. I definitely think that the Arabic music my grandmother used to play has influenced my vocal style, like when I just randomly go up an octave on a note.'"
posted by kliuless at 3:45 AM PST - 3 comments

« Previous day | Next day »