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"I would never marinate a Congresswoman."
People were surprised when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez set up her own Twitch channel, but she demonstrated why the channel was set up with a streamed game of Among Us to help get out the vote. The stream had a number of notable guests, from collegue Representative Ilhan Omar to streamers such as Pokimane, HBomberGuy (who got the first kill on AOC in game) and DisguisedToast (who made the statement in the lede right after proceeding to marinate the Representative.)
Tool's Danny Carey playing Pneuma
Video centered on drummer Danny Carey playing Pneuma from Tool's show in Boston at the end of 2019. I love how calm and centered he seems while doing something so complicated and powerful.
20 years of politics on the Grand Lake Theatre marquee, photographed
Two decades ago, a local photographer began documenting political statements placed on the iconic Oakland marquee by the theater’s owner.
“This is America, every vote should be counted,” read the marquee at the Grand Lake Theatre.… A photo of that marquee message—the first of many protest statements that Grand Lake Theatre owner Allen Michaan has placed above the theater’s entrance—is part of a Flickr photo archive curated by local photographer, musician, and radio host, David Gans. For the past 20 years, Gans has religiously photographed the now-familiar messages that regularly light up the night sky on the corner of Grand Avenue and Lake Park Avenue.
Remorseful Tech Insiders R US
The Social Dilemma is a Netflix documentary-drama on "the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations." But is their solution of "humane technology" the right one? An essay on LibrarianShipwreck argues that in a world of empowered arsonists, "humane technology" seeks to give everyone a pair of asbestos socks.
Getting Into Thrash Metal and Need Rec's Similar to Power Trip and Fury
I'm discovering that thrash metal is scratching my Trump Anxiety itch quite well and would like recommendations for bands similar to Power Trip and Fury. Meaning vocals that are understandable, extremely pissed off, and don't sound like a whiny suburban kid gargling with nails and ten bottles of Robitussin.
The gentrification of sharecropping
The NYT publishes a romantic story about a couple escaping to the countryside to start a farm. (alternative link) The excellent Dr. Sarah Taber explains how, by treating it as a design & style story instead of a farming one, they inadvertedly exposed the whole thing as just hipster sharecropping – as shitty and exploitative as it was in the Jim Crow era – and how this is a recurring problem in the "sustainability" movement. As another mefite remarked: Everything “disruptive” is just “how do we undo a century of progress on labor rights.”
Walk This Way
Walk Cycles is a collection of rotoscoped walking (and other movement styles) animation cycles by Lois Brooks, illustrating the artistry and design that goes into one of the most basic yet important animation cycles in game design. (SLTumblr)
Looking for information on Organizational Behavior.
I am looking for recommendations for books on Organizational Behavior. I have a textbook that I picked up at a yard sale, and it got me hooked. I am overwhelmed by the choices recommended by Amazon. I am interested in all aspects of OB, so organization theory and the human elements like decision making, motivation, psychology, etc. I just do not know what other books/sites/journals are worth reading, either because of my newness to the material and concepts or because they are just poorly written.
The Bromantic Theory of History
Years ago, I fact-checked two memoirs by powerful men. Their books wised me up to an invisible poltergeist in world events: the feverish infatuation of one straight man for another.
The Unravelling of America
As they stare into the mirror and perceive only the myth of their exceptionalism, Americans remain almost bizarrely incapable of seeing what has actually become of their country.Activist Anthropologist and Public Ruminator Wade Davis discusses the decline of the American Empire. But his former colleague at UBC Deanna Kreisel counters with her own attempted take-down of smug Canadian exceptionalism.
Sweatpants Forever
Even before the pandemic, the whole US fashion industry had started to unravel. What happens now that no one has a reason to dress up? (NYT).
What’s lurking beneath Lake Merritt? More than you think
Citizen scientists are documenting the strange creatures living in the lake, and helping us understand how to rewild it.
This year, Oaklanders will celebrate Lake Merritt’s 150th anniversary as the country’s first wildlife refuge. But the lake, once called the “Lake of 1,000 Smells,” has never quite been able to shake off its reputation as a polluted cesspool. Some people assume that the urban body of water is man-made, unnatural, and inhospitable to wildlife. Since the city was founded in 1852, the plants, animals, and other life that live in Lake Merritt have struggled with poor water quality and trash. However, its waters are far from empty. More than 600 species have been identified at Lake Merritt, including non-native lifeforms from all over the world.
Mrs. America: Reagan
In 1979, the original deadline for the ERA arrives. Phyllis celebrates by "danc[ing] on its grave" even though the feminists secured an extension to 1982. Yet more time isn't sufficient to grant the ERA's success. Carter abandons the Women's Commission and his successor doesn't have a place for feminists in his platform: Make America Great Again.
Junior engineer needing help growing
I'm a junior engineer trying to grow into a senior engineer. There are non-technical aspects of this process that I'm not handling well. I don't have anyone in my life to discuss this with, I'm hoping folks from the green can give me some advice.
The Last BronyCOrN
The Last Bronycon: a fandom autopsy.
Jenny Nicholson dissects the Brony Fandom in an easily digestible list, as she is known to do. She tracks the beginnings of Bronydom on 4chan as ironic fandom and its evolution into a community of genuine fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic that are mostly male.
Movie: The Old Guard
Four undying warriors who've secretly protected humanity for centuries become targeted for their mysterious powers just as they discover a new immortal. (Netflix Original, comic-book adaptation)
Looking for a magician/comedy clip
This should be very famous but I can't remember it. There's an old clip where the magician tells a young person to pay attention to the piece of like towel paper in his hand. And the entire trick is about how the magician just throws the pieces of paper towel away behind the recipient, for all of the actual audience to see. So for the audience there is no trick, it's just this guy throwing pieces of paper around and manipulating the attention of the person on stage. It's very famous? But can someone remember the magician and/or the link?
Learning oil painting onling — but need pressure of a live class
I want to learn how to oil paint (still life) and it needs to happen at home. I am a beginner and have been too scared of failing to pick up a paintbrush since high school art classes. To go through with learning, I need the pressure of a live class to actually do it. It can’t be prerecorded. It can’t be learn at your own pace. I need to feel like I would let down a teacher/class if I didn't show up.
DISRAELI GEARS - A bicycle derailleur collection
DISRAELI GEARS - A bicycle derailleur collection.
"I have been working in bicycle shops since the mid 1970s, and I decided to put together this collection to represent rear derailleurs that I have worked on, sold, heard about or seen at trade shows in that time. Some are gears that I had only heard of, vehemently discussed by crusty old geezers in draughty Cyclist Touring Club club rooms, some are models that I personally sold in their hundreds and some are exotic beauties that I dreamed of owning"
Engine Rebuilt in Stop Motion
A nothing short of triumphant stop motion renovation of an engine [SLYT].
LKW-Werksatt in Niederlauer, Germany, rebuilds a Mercedes Benz Actros OM471LAtruck engine.
"It’s not often that a paper attempts to take down an entire field."
"Yet, this past January, that’s precisely what University of New Hampshire assistant philosophy professor Subrena Smith’s paper tried to do. 'Is Evolutionary Psychology Possible?' describes a major issue with evolutionary psychology, called the matching problem." [Gizmodo]
That Chop on the Upbeat -- the origins of Ska
When I got back home and was trying to write about Jah B., doing my best to stake out some understanding of what was going on musically in Kingston in the late Fifties and early Sixties, I ran into the riddle that bedevils every person who gets lost in this particular cultural maze, namely, where did ska come from? That strange rhythm, that chop on the upbeat or offbeat, ump-ska, ump-ska, ump-ska... Did someone think that up?That Chop on the Upbeat
“We have nothing to lose but our leashes and the whole world to gain.”
Tired of seeing socialist messages in games compromised by both-sideism and wanting to make an unapologeticially left wing game, the developer collective Pixel Pushers Union 512 have created Tonight We Riot (available on Steam and the Switch), a side-scrolling beat um up where the player controls a proletariat mob bent on tearing down the old order, focusing not on the actions of one character, but having the player needing to control a group movement to succeed.
"It's very much like graffitiing except less likely to piss people off."
Oakland's Stealth Arborist
Last fall, two very different approaches to addressing climate change unfolded in the Bay Area. One Atmosphere commissioned a 60-by-30-foot mural of climate activist Greta Thunberg for San Francisco’s Union Square. Painted on the side of an eight-story building, the fiery teenager looks determined and unbowed, gazing down at pedestrians and traffic with eyes the size of windscreens. Per the sponsoring organization, a rendering of the Swedish teen as big as Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore is an effective way to honor and amplify a message of environmental stewardship for a warming planet. Meanwhile, across the bay, Tony Santoro’s Guide to Illegal Tree-Planting debuted. The 23-minute video—released the week before the mural’s reveal—is the work of a tattooed, foulmouthed Chicago transplant who for the past few years has been quietly greening up Oakland.
A nostalgia for misery, a relocation of poverty to aesthetics
Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before: A Study in the Politics and Aesthetics of English Misery, an essay by Owen Hatherley examining the journey of northern-English voters from anti-Thatcherite Labour collectivism to a spitefully reactionary nostalgic nationalism, as seen through the writings and public statements of sensitive miserablist turned fascist sympathiser Steven Morrissey.
Thomas Piketty Takes On the Ideology of Inequality
In his sweeping new history, the economist systematically demolishes the conceit that extreme inequality is our destiny, rather than our choice. - Marshall Steinbaum reviews Piketty's "Capitalism and Ideology".
Movie: The Conversation
Surveillance expert Harry Caul is hired by a mysterious client's brusque aide to tail a young couple. Tracking the pair through San Francisco's Union Square, Caul and his associate Stan manage to record a cryptic conversation between them. Tormented by memories of a previous case that ended badly, Caul becomes obsessed with the resulting tape, trying to determine if the couple are in danger.
raining blood from a lacerated sky / everybody's having fun
Mashup master Bill McClintock presents Slay-52's Raining Lobsters, a combination of Slayer's Raining Blood with the B-52s' Rock Lobster
America Is a Sham
Policy changes in reaction to the coronavirus reveal how absurd so many of our rules are to begin with.
All over America, the coronavirus is revealing, or at least reminding us, just how much of contemporary American life is bullshit, with power structures built on punishment and fear as opposed to our best interest. Whenever the government or a corporation benevolently withdraws some punitive threat because of the coronavirus, it’s a signal that there was never any good reason for that threat to exist in the first place.
An ominous-looking snail on the way to work
Modern Western secular assumptions about the relations between gods, human beings, animals and the Earth, or between men and women, or abstract and concrete entities, simply don’t apply to democratic Athens. This is the case Anderson wishes to make. To understand the Athenians properly, we must recognise that it isn’t just that they perceived the world differently, but that the world itself was different. What’s needed, he believes, is an ‘ontological turn’ in how we write histories of Athens.
What is the worst thing you could find while digging in your back yard?
Let's say you're the matriarch of a rich family who's bought a house in a very nice neighborhood, knocked the old house down, and built a newer, bigger one in its place. You're all moved in. On the day you break ground for an in-ground pool, however, the backhoe operator comes to you and shatters your happy life to pieces by telling you they've unearthed. . . what?
Safety Meeting
"We have safety meetings every Monday and Friday after lunch. Statistically, most accidents happen right after lunch, so the idea is to talk about it before it happens, as if talking is a kind of protective spell, a hex against fiery death, or crushing death, or the whirring blades of amputation, or decapitation. Every accident is preventable, will be said during the hex, and it will be believed too."
An excerpt from 'Work' by Bud Smith.
An excerpt from 'Work' by Bud Smith.
intersection of cyriak and that Going To The Store guy
This music video for Very Noise by Igorrr is a hell of a thing.
Semantic Noodling And Meaning Machines
"This is a question that has fascinated me for a long time: How Do You Think New Things?"
Christopher Noessel discusses divination, latourex, semiotics, constrained writing, creative matrices, The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table, John Cage, and more.
Christopher Noessel discusses divination, latourex, semiotics, constrained writing, creative matrices, The Official Creebobby Comics Archetype Times Table, John Cage, and more.
VLA on the move
The aptly named Very Large Array is an astronomical radio observatory consisting of 27 25-meter dish antennae (plus a spare kept in a shed) laid out on three spokes radiating from a central point. Every four months, the antennae are moved into a different configuration, covering a diameter of 1 km at their closest (Configuration D) to 36 km at their widest (Configuration A). For regular observations, they're mounted on piers sunk 9.7 meters into the ground, but to change configurations, they ride the rails—a double set of train tracks, carried on a custom built transporter. When a dish reaches its new position, the whole antenna + transporter assembly is jacked up, the wheel bogies are rotated 90°, and they then traverse a short rail spur into place (video bookmarked to the interesting part.)
“You’re My Present This Year”: An Oral History of the Folgers Incest Ad
Ten years ago, Folgers coffee first aired their now-infamous “Coming Home” ad. Little did they know, it would go on to inspire everything from parody videos to severely NSFW fan fiction.
Harbinger households: neighborhoods that reliably buy products that fail
In The Surprising Breadth of Harbingers of Failure (Sci-Hub mirror), a trio of economists and business-school profs build on a 2015 Journal of Marketing Research paper that claimed that some households' purchasing preferences are a reliable indicator of which products will fail -- that is, if households in a certain ZIP code like a product, it will probably not succeed. The original paper calls these "harbinger households."
44,000-Year-Old Indonesian Cave Painting Is Rewriting The History Of Art
In the 1950s, scientists evaluated primitive rock art discovered in caves on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia (Google maps), but assumed it younger than 10,000 years old because they thought older paintings could not survive in a tropical climate. Then, as reported in 2014, more recent analysis of the pictures by an Australian-Indonesian team has stunned researchers by dating one hand marking to at least 39,900 years old (The Guardian; paywalled article in Nature), placing it close to, if not pre-dating, art from the Chauvet Cave in France (Archeologie.Culture.Fr) that is dated as old as 37,000 years (PNAS). In 2017, the scientists in Indonesia found a massive hunting scene, stretching across about 16 feet of a cave wall. And after testing it, they say it's the oldest known figurative art attributed to early modern humans (NPR). They published their findings in the journal Nature (paywalled).
and now we tear one of them open
A Thermomechanical Material Point Method for Baking and Cooking, or: now we're cookin' with graphs. If you want the gory mathematical details, here's the paper. And, via a bread simulation segue, here's some tearing and breaking stuff.
The Communist Pleasure Activism Helping Erase Medical Debt in Appalachia
Mutual Aid Lube, a “vegan plant-based lube made by queers for queers,” partners with RIP Medical Debt, an organization committed to buying up and forgiving medical debt all across the country. So far, they have been able to help forgive $55,000 of medical debt in Appalachia.
A little conversation about topographical agnosia and self-compassion
"Some people “just know” how to get across campus and back to their car. I have very limited abilities in any of these realms, but I have developed another set of skills. I know how to remain calm. I know how to ask questions. I have my paperwork in order." Heather Sellers, the author of the memoir You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, offers the essay "Where Am I?" (Longreads), a lengthy reflection on recognizing and reckoning with her severe difficulties with respect to spatial relationships and perceiving direction.
Movie: Memory: The Origins of Alien
[From IMDB] The untold origin story behind Ridley Scott's Alien - rooted in Greek and Egyptian mythologies, underground comics, the art of Francis Bacon, and the dark visions of Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger.
Hypermedia next gen venture ultra super click bait - future of news
This man is not the adult in the room at the former Gawker Media, just as Kendall Roy was not the adult in the room at Vaulter and Alden Global Capital executives are not the adult in the room at any of the 100 newspapers they are destroying. Sending a copied-and-pasted company handbook, issuing vague edicts about becoming sites for “enthusiasts,” and making inexplicable changes for the sake of making changes are the professional equivalent of a small boy dressing up in his father’s suit: He is role-playing, deluding himself but no one else.
The public has a right to art: the joy and rebellion of Keith Haring
The public is being ignored by most contemporary artists. Art is for everybody.
Keith Haring did much more than provide cute cartoons. He was publicly minded. His art faced outwards. He wanted to inform, to start a conversation, to question authority and convention, to represent the oppressed.
People who believe satirical articles
Snopes investigates.
Republicans are more likely to believe the Babylon Bee. Democrats are more likely to believe the Onion, but not quite as much. People are much less likely to believe articles which are labelled satire.