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Knowing where the trap is - that's the first step in evading it.
Omni Presents: The Top 10 Dune Art Tumblr Like Sites.
AM/FM - the story of London's pirate radio stations
Back in the eighties when I should have been studying, I ran a magazine covering London's pirate radio stations and their battles to stay on the air and go legal. At amfm.org.uk you can read the stories of the 25 most important unlicensed stations of the eighties like Kiss-FM, Radio Jackie and DBC, listen to an audio history of London pirate radio from 1975-1990 and dig into all eighteen issues of TX Magazine.
A chassis in stasis
The closure of the Hindustan Motors factory in Uttarapara, West Bengal, is the end of an era in Indian history. The Ambassador is the perfect example of all that was wrong with Indian policy towards industrialization, manufacturing and business. Protectionism and the license raj created a seller's market where people waited years to buy a car. Until liberalization in the 1990s, the Amby hadn't known any real competition, and there was no pressure to either modernize or improve quality. None of this mattered, at least we had a car. And there wasn't any other quite like it in the world. RIP, motor gadi.
Don't wait for the movie
On 28 June, Santa Cruz typographer Adam Lewis Greene submitted his Bible-as-literature project Bibliotheca to Kickstarter for one month of crowdfunding. Within 27 hours, the project had attained its $37,000 funding goal. People kept pledging support. By 26 July, following publication of a Verge article about the project, backing passed the $1 million mark. Two days later, when the fundraising period closed, the project had raised $1,440,345 from 14,884 backers. "No notes, no chapter numbers, no scripture verses. Just the text." What the Success of Bibliotheca Tells Us About the Future of Publishing.
Recycled Funny Papers
Since the merger of the Universal and United Media newspaper syndicates, GoComics.com has been the place to find 80%+ of all newspaper comics online*. And it has been noticed that two of the most popular comics, both in papers and onsite, haven't had new content in decades: Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes. As a result, GoComics is giving many other defunct funnies a second online run, including Bloom County, Kliban cartoons alternating with Kliban's Cats, and, most notably among recent syndication casualties, CulDeSac (as well as Richard Thompson's Poor Almanac). With the artists of FoxTrot and Doonesbury cutting back to Sunday only, the site (as well as some papers) is filling in the other 6 days with reruns. While Dilbert is exclusive to its own website, Dilbert Classics from the early 1990s are now rerun on GoComics. Even Luann, who just graduated high school (finally!) has a parallel run of Luann Againn (sic) showing her as 13 years old back in 1986.
But the most interesting example of recycling old comics comes from the current custodians of the 80-year-old Nancy, who, after observing "the Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn" become a meme, now offer a daily feature of a single non-sequitur panel from a classic Ernie Bushmiller strip in Random Acts of Nancy**. And they ARE random.
But the most interesting example of recycling old comics comes from the current custodians of the 80-year-old Nancy, who, after observing "the Greatest Nancy Panel Ever Drawn" become a meme, now offer a daily feature of a single non-sequitur panel from a classic Ernie Bushmiller strip in Random Acts of Nancy**. And they ARE random.
Slow see
A song by Bummed, a shoegaze-influenced band my friends and I have been working on. I'm on vocals!
Always on my mind
You were....
Falling (Theme from Twin Peaks)
In honor of tomorrow's blu-ray release, I recorded a new take on the classic Lynch/Badalamenti theme, "Falling," from Twin Peaks.
Give and take
DakhaBrakha electrifying vocal harmonies, beats and funky basslines.
Tourette Syndrome Update
One of the first Ask questions I ever asked was about my Tourette Syndrome. A few different commented or contacted me to say that they'd never seen TS described so accurately before. I recently rewrote and expanded that comment into an article for xojane, and as a result, have been asked to present a keynote speech at the Tourette Syndrome Foundation of Canada's yearly conference in October 2015.
Living Books About Life
"... a series of curated, open access books about life — with life understood both philosophically and biologically — which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences."
Although they offer "frozen PDFs," these books—on topics like biosemiotics, animal experience, and air—are curated collections of links to open access science articles, reviews, interviews, podcasts, sometimes with embedded sounds and videos. They have ISBN numbers and editors vetted by the Open Humanities Press, which is generally a gold mine of interesting books and journals. They feel perfectly at home on the open internet, evoking hope and nostalgia for a flourishing academic world wide web, without paywalls and login screens.
The Beauty of Iran
23-year-old Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji takes some amazing photographs and 360° shots of Iran's historical sites.
"This order alone exceeds the capacity of 10 tractor trailers"
Keen to win the contract to supply The State of New York with office supplies, Staples offered to supply many expensive items at one cent apiece, on the theory that profits on the sales of full-priced items would cover the losses on the one cent stuff. Um...not exactly.
considering & rethinking bathrooms
Why the modern bathroom is a wasteful, unhealthy design (The Guardian):
"Piped water may be the greatest convenience ever known but our sewage systems and bathrooms are a disaster"
You realize your body is bespoke.
There are many reasons people start sewing their own clothes: to break out of some of the cycle of fast fashion’s humanitarian and ecological issues (MF link), to be creative, to make quality clothes, to support local fabric shops and independent pattern designers, and to express their own style. A sometimes-overlooked benefit, though, is that of examining body acceptance.
OK: Now explain midichlorians.
With growing fascination for the large land vertebratomorphs that are so startlingly diverse on Tatooine, I secured Imperial funding for an expedition to Tatooine, to survey the exotic megafauna and search for fossils of Tyrannodraconis that might further illuminate their evolution. My ensuing report summarizes my trilogy of investigations and discoveries from this “holiday in the suns."
There's a lagoon, and it's blue. Surely this will work.
The Real Castaway (2001; 48:13) is a tense and awkward but sometimes beautiful documentary about a teenage boy moving to the Ulithi Atoll and seeking companionship to fulfill a romantic fantasy. [Via.]
"Beating the Globetrotters is like shooting Santa Claus."
Red Klotz, who led basketball’s biggest losers, the Washington Generals, dies at 93.
In his time with the Generals, Mr. Klotz lost at least 14,000 games, or 15,000, or, according to some estimates, more than 20,000.
“That sounds about right,” Mr. Klotz would shrug whenever someone tried to calculate the number.
“I don’t count the losses,” he told the Washington City Paper in 2007. “It’s easier to keep track of the wins.”
Mr. Klotz won six games, his biographer concluded. Or maybe it was four. Possibly just two. But definitely, beyond the shadow of any doubt, his team won one game for sure.
The benevolent alien invasion/hyperdriven arcade sounds of Oorutaichi.
Oorutaichi, an electronic musician from Osaka, “makes drifter music, strung through with expert percussion and electric rays, flowing on a river of magical chants, inspired loops and choruses written in an invented language, undiscovered country left and right.” Oorutaichi has several really, really good animated music videos.
Boyhood
Richard Linklater's newest film, Boyhood (trailer), breaks new ground by condensing 12 years of filming one cast into a single three-hour film and is receiving almost uniformly glowing reviews. "And yet the story in 'Boyhood' is blissfully simple: A child grows up." (Manohla Dargis, NYT).
The Miura fold: art and mathematics of origami
The Miura fold, a type of rigid origami that works by folding flat, rigid sheets with hinges, has a number of uses. For instance, It's great for folding a map, because Interdependence of folds means that it is very difficult to reverse them and the amount of stress place on the map, and can be used on solar panels that need to be folded and unfolded by automation, as deployment only requires one motor, and to transport materials for telescope lenses that originally would be too big to fly into space. Here's one schematic for duplicating the Miura fold (PNG), and a simplified version (YouTube). More information and fun with scientific origami at Robert J. Lang's origami website.
W56.22xA Struck by orca, initial encounter.
V91.07xD Burn due to water-skis on fire, subsequent encounter
I did not know water skis can catch on fire. Presumably, somebody's water skis did catch on fire, resulting in a trip to the hospital.
Law and Order is the old Orange
(nearly) Every actor from Orange is the New Black in their roles in Law and Order. From the bittiest of bit parts to some fairly substantial recurring characters. Contains very mild spoilers for S2 of OitNB.
The Ghetto Is Public Policy
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in The Atlantic:The Effects of Housing Segregation on Black Wealth. As the wealth gap widens between whites and blacks in America, and after reading this list and this list, he concludes The Ghetto Is Public Policy.
Switched-on Classics
Digital Classicists:
Scholars who study the ancient Greek and Roman empires are creating a growing array of 21st-century interactive, multidimensional presentations about people, places and events from the world of antiquity. If you dig around you'll uncover some deep and meticulous work by geographers, historians, archaeologists, and art historians working in digital space.
Not as equal as advertised.
Black Women of Brazil
From the ‘mammy’ to the Carnaval ‘mulata’, black women’s representation on Brazil’s airwaves remains very limited.
Although Brazil is a multi ethnic society some have remarked on the whiteness of the teams’ coaching staffs and fans in the stands of the 12 Brazilian stadiums.
Earlier in May there had been a particularily Brazilian protest of “somos todos macacos”
Brazil has a long history of constructing discourses of national unity, while simultaneously pushing their black and indigenous populations to the margins.
From the ‘mammy’ to the Carnaval ‘mulata’, black women’s representation on Brazil’s airwaves remains very limited.
Although Brazil is a multi ethnic society some have remarked on the whiteness of the teams’ coaching staffs and fans in the stands of the 12 Brazilian stadiums.
Earlier in May there had been a particularily Brazilian protest of “somos todos macacos”
Brazil has a long history of constructing discourses of national unity, while simultaneously pushing their black and indigenous populations to the margins.
Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation
7 countries' attempts to grapple with their troubled pasts
, and move beyond them.
"It reveals what we as a culture consider sexy and decadent today."
Did Hollywood Give the 1920s a Boob Job? 'Gatsby' Costume Designer Tells All
Breasts are everywhere in 2013’s new "Gatsby"… They’re pushed up to create cleavage, peeping out of frocks and fringed flapper dresses, and hugged tightly by clothes cut to show off curves. As Daisy Buchanan, Carey Mulligan is clearly wearing some sort of shapewear or bra under even her most modest clothes, to make her breasts seem perfectly perky.
Catherine Martin, the producer, production designer, and costume designer of "The Great Gatsby," says that she simply took the styles of the 1920s and amped up the sexy quotient—and made the dresses fit more like the designers intended.…
"Frankly, I am a bit shocked by Martin’s quotes regarding the 1920s—that she considers the clothes frumpy looking," [co-founder of the Fashion History Museum Jonathan] Walford says. "She was the wrong costumer to get the job if she can’t see the beauty in the real 1920s silhouette."
Come on Yolanda what's Fonzie like?
“Old school cool“ are recent history's coolest kids, from beatniks to bikers, mods to rude boys, hippies to ravers. And everything in between.
For example this stylish, handsome 1940’s swagger, which was found on this maternal family album.
All are taken from r/OldSchoolCool.
See all images on one page @ imgur.
And of course, an original source of The Cool Hall of Fame at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger
For example this stylish, handsome 1940’s swagger, which was found on this maternal family album.
All are taken from r/OldSchoolCool.
See all images on one page @ imgur.
And of course, an original source of The Cool Hall of Fame at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger
Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Meow. Here, Jonesy.
220 images from Alien
including behind the scenes photos, concept art and early effects shots.
“It’s depressing,..We were definitely depressed,” he repeated
I DON’T WANT TO BE RIGHT: why do people persist in believing things that just aren't true? The New Yorker asks. Alternatively, a BBC Future author offers up some beguiling and subtle solutions in The best way to win an argument.
Architecture for One
Mountain Lab: An Interview With Scott McGuire
"As a form of minor architecture," the resulting short article explained, "tents are strangely overlooked. They are portable, temporary, and designed to withstand even the most extreme conditions, but they are usually viewed as simple sporting goods. They are something between a large backpack and outdoor lifestyle gear—certainly not small buildings. But what might an architect learn from the structure and design of a well-made tent?" Amongst the group of people we spoke with that day was outdoor equipment strategist Scott McGuire, an intense, articulate, and highly focused advocate for all things outdoors.
A hue angle of 270 degrees, a saturation of 50% and a lightness of 40%
Eric Meyer is an expert on the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) system used to control the appearance of web documents. He's the author of multiple books on CSS, and the "chaperone" of the css-discuss mailing list. His daughter, Rebecca, passed away, and her family asked that those attending memorial services wear purple, her favorite color. Dominique Hazaël-Massieux requested that a purple be added to the CSS color list be named "Becca Purple" in her memory. Eric suggested that it be named
rebeccapurple because his daughter wanted everyone to call her Rebecca after she turned six, and she was six for almost twelve hours. Today, a co-chair of the CSS Working Group announced approval of the change. From now on, rebeccapurple means #663399.The Fansubbed Last Words of an Auditory Phantom
Eccentric Japanese bedroom musician Ventla is in the process of releasing 100 digital albums for free over the coming years, and he's already up to 25. Think J Dilla meets J-pop in the form of small, extremely evocative song sketches. At his most extroverted he sounds like a buzzing 8-bit executive lounge dance party, and when he's introverted it's like strolling through a rainy park full of sleeping flamingos.
The Hands of Robert Bresson
'This elegantly beautiful supercut on “the tactile world of Robert Bresson” by Kogonada for Criterion shows the great French director’s notoriously precise skill is applied even at the slightest hand gesture. There are no faces in this video yet the drama of these scenes is palpable.'
National Greatness
Francis Fukuyama on 'The End of History?' twenty-five years later: "liberal democracy still doesn't have any real competitors," but to get there...
Doooooorrrrroooooothyyyyy Gaaaaaaaallllllle!
The Sad, Century-Long History of Terrible Wizard of Oz Movies. Would you like an exhaustive list? Sure you would...
recontextualized hypnagogic 80s/90s fever dreams
BODYGOD combines chopped & screwed rock and pop loops with nth-generation VHS sources, often with unexpected emotional weight.
I Believe In Me, So You Believe In You
I Hate Myself
I'm Drunk and High at the Same Time
I Still Think About Her
I'll Always Be There When You Wake
When The Dogs Do Find Her
Burn Out
How Many More Times Can I Say I'm Sorry?
Everybody Seems to Think I'm Lazy
I Believe In Me, So You Believe In You
I Hate Myself
I'm Drunk and High at the Same Time
I Still Think About Her
I'll Always Be There When You Wake
When The Dogs Do Find Her
Burn Out
How Many More Times Can I Say I'm Sorry?
Everybody Seems to Think I'm Lazy
Low Flutes
From the alto flute, heard from time to time in Romantic classical music, to the hyperbass flute, which makes a sound like a star dying or being born, I give you: the low flutes.