Favorites from Potomac Avenue
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Hau`oli la Hanau, Aloha!
In the spring of 2015, a billboard for the film Aloha was erected overlooking Logan Square in Chicago. It's still there today. While its fate and that of two others (mercifully blank) is fought over in court, fans of the billboard are planning a tiki party in honor of its first birthday.
Maggic Bioart?
"Artist-biologist, jungle-dweller, critical-learner, xeno-feminist, optimistic-fatalist, & proud-amateur, wavering between observer and doer, using documentary video to embed myself in the worlds I'm interested in exploring. If you are a biologist, artist, "bio-artist," DIY-biologist, hobbyist, bio-hacker, bio-punk, xeno-punk, and/or citizen scientist, please contact me"
I Wish Everyone Else Was Dead
Pretty Good, episode 7: 'I Wish Everyone Else Was Dead'. Jon Bois looks at 24.
I would say more, but I signed an NDA.
Uncanny Valley.
"Morale is down.. We are making plenty of money, but the office is teeming with salespeople: well-groomed social animals with good posture and dress shoes, men who chuckle and smooth their hair back when they can’t connect to our VPN. Their corner of the office is loud; their desks are scattered with freebies from other start-ups, stickers and koozies and flash drives. We escape for drinks and fret about our company culture. “Our culture is dying,” we say gravely, apocalyptic prophets all. “What should we do about the culture?”"
Jade and Eggplant
More than just an iconic paper cup design (previously), teal and teal+purple were the defining sports uniform of the 90s. Much of the blame can be laid squarely at the feet of the Charlotte Hornets, who kicked of the teal and purple craze in 1988. From there, suddenly teal-clad expansion clubs were popping up everywhere.
A Year In Glitch
I have been making (loosely) abstract expressionist (or colourfield) art on my phone. Naturally it's digital, and procrastinational. This is an essay-as-vehicle for a gallery of it.
Do not bid me remember mine end
William Shakespeare, playwright and poet, is dead at 52 of causes unknown.
Shakespeare often meditated upon death in his works, once stating "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/ And then is heard no more." In one of his last recorded texts, he urged sympathy for immigrants.
'Hope everyone pukes on your artisanal treats': fighting gentrification
A Guardian article on the Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights details the efforts of "an eclectic coalition of residents, business owners, feminists, Maoists and other activists" to fight against gentrification -- and against capitalism itself:
Games over
Big Play Films, the YouTube channel of PBF’s Nicholas Gurewitch (pre vi ous ly) has released a new video, “Mushroom Kingdom of Heaven.”
It's not secular stagnation; it's financialization.
Elizabeth Warren has a great idea for making Tax Day less painful
- "She's taking on TurboTax and other predatory companies."
modern send-ups of blues tunes transformed into dancing ditties
Black Trauma Remixed For Your Clicks
In viral videos, the real-life pain of black people is repurposed into fun, catchy songs for popular consumption. But at what cost?
In viral videos, the real-life pain of black people is repurposed into fun, catchy songs for popular consumption. But at what cost?
What is the process for getting a security clearance?
People in the United States who hold security clearances should be those: “...whose personal and professional history affirmatively indicates loyalty to the United States, strength of character, trustworthiness, honesty, reliability, discretion, and sound judgment, as well as freedom from conflicting allegiances and potential for coercion, and willingness and ability to abide by regulations governing the use, handling, and protection of classified information.” Executive Order #12968
Ditching Time Warner's Modem for Something Else
I've been lazy and just paying the monthly lease on the modem/router for Time Warner internet service in Brooklyn, NY. It's an Arris DG1670. I feel like I could both save money (eventually) and get better service by getting my own gear, but what? For use with a variety of mostly Mac devices, if that matters. Any and all suggestions would be appreciated.
The Djinn of Aiman
The Djinn of Aiman
"IT WAS A DIM JANUARY AFTERNOON IN LAHORE, there was a power outage on Zahoor Elahi Road, and Farida Khanum had finally woken up. We were sitting among shadows on the floor of her living room: I on the carpet and she on a cushion that was at once a mark of her prestige (she is “The Queen of Ghazal,” the last of her generation’s iconic classically trained singers) and advanced age (she can no longer sit as she used to, like a mermaid, with her legs folded beguilingly beneath her). I had come to prepare Khanum for a concert she was to give in a week’s time in Calcutta, and was trying to engage her, in this fragile early phase of her day, with innocuous-sounding questions: which ghazals was she planning on singing there, and in what order?
Great Blacks In Wax
“African American history’s been smoothed out. You lose focus of how it was, how cruel. But this is the most impacting museum I’ve ever been to. It’s amazing, it’s face-to-face, like reading Nat Turner’s Rebellion—though that was written by a white man.”
How a museum in Baltimore shapes African American history—in wax.
Not blackface but black faces. Well, blackface too.
He wanted to do not “Shuffle Along” but the making of “Shuffle Along” (official title: “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed”). He would tell the story of the original creators and cast and how they pulled it off ... Interesting approach, you say, sounds great. But to make it work, you couldn’t stint on the dancing and the songs. Those were what made the show go: syncopation, fire, artistry.
Baltimore and Baltimore-A Tale of Two Cities
“That’s the thing, though,” he continues. “All that is surrounded by vacant lots, boarded-up homes, and that junkyard—the scrap metal and salvage place where there’s always a line of people hauling stuff in. Down the street from Jubilee Arts, where those little girls do ballet in their pink leotards, I saw a metal coffin once being scrapped for cash.”
Nell pauses.
“But that’s the way Baltimore has always been",he says. “It’s what a good friend of mine who is no longer around used to say: ‘In Baltimore, beauty and chaos live side by side.’”
Changing minds on minority rights with a single conversation, revisited
Previously on MeFi, a pair of then-graduate students, David Broockman and Joshua Kalla, uncovered that some highly-publicized research, claiming to show that brief conversations with gay canvassers could cause lasting changes in people's opinions on gay rights, was in fact fraudulent, and was based on fabricated data. However, whether or not there was in fact any grain of truth to that paper's claims remained to be seen. Recently, the same team that uncovered the fraud has published their own study, showing that canvassing can really be effective at durably increasing support for transgender rights.
A Century of Beverly Cleary
“I owe my literacy learning and appreciation to a mother who loved reading, read aloud, and believed in the use of the public library, and to my teachers who were strict in teaching the tools of writing.”
Beverly Cleary celebrates her hundredth birthday next week. She recently spoke to the Oregonian about her long career.
This can't be happening at Macdonald Hall!
If you experienced children’s pop culture in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the nostalgia cycle has caught up with you, and the entertainment industry has accelerated the process of harvesting even your faintest memories. The sheer volume of revivals means that at some point a story small and forgotten enough to feel like a personal memory will be unearthed and dragged into the sunlight. The sudden reappearance of a once-loved TV show/book/slice of intellectual property forces you, the viewer, into an existential anxiety. To merely be the target of this deluge of content is a weird sensation. To be one of the creators—dusting off past work, bringing old versions of yourself into a new world and hoping to find the public’s affection—must be infinitely more bewildering.
"Spurned Elle Writer Goes On Truly Bananas Rant"
Last week, freelance reporter Jacques Hyzagi wrote a scathing account of the ethics, talent, and working practices of various media figures in what became a viral post for the New York Observer. Responding to the intrigue, The Guardian interviewed Hyzagi to "learn just who is he and why is his background a mystery?".
Practical Magic
Edward Lovett was a bank employee and amateur folklorist fascinated with charms and amulets and the superstitions they represented. He rambled early 20th century London collecting charms from soldiers, sailors, street vendors and others. Today the charms are preserved in the Wellcome Collection, Pitt Rivers Museum, and Horniman Museum.
Homeowners Insurance -- Newbie questions
Hi all. Mrs. Hall and Oates and I are home buying noobs and are a bit confused about how much we should insure the house for, and what our deductible should be. Hope us pleaes?
Glas and All That Jazz
"Glas won master film maker Bert Haanstra a well-deserved Academy Award® for Best Short Documentary in 1959. The film contrasts the production of hand made crystal from the Royal Leerdam Glass Factory with automated bottle making machines in the Netherlands. An industrial film with a bebop heart, its lyrical use of light and sound still looks and sounds fabulous, nearly 60 years after it was made."
Early american life insurance: goat rituals and tree stump headstones
Woodmen of the World was a fraternal society formed by the conveniently named Joseph Cullen Root, who wanted to form a group that would "clear away problems of financial security for its members," in a time before Social Security, when life insurance could actually be a threat to people's lives. How do you expand your membership and ensure members pay their dues? Lodge initiation devices, initially created by Ed DeMoulin and his brothers, Erastus and Ulysses, whose workshop became known locally as the Goat Factory. And tree-trunk shaped headstones were a nice benefit for members who had passed. They're parts of Goat Rituals and Tree-Trunk Gravestones: The Peculiar History of Life Insurance [Via Presurfer]
It's never to late to be a student of poetry: 20th National Poetry Month
This April is the 20th National Poetry Month in the United States and there are many ways to celebrate.
Here is the 2016 Multimedia "Dear Poet" project call to students and teachers to learn more about poetry. Here are the 2015 instructions.
SUBJECT 3 PRONE ON KITCHEN FLOOR
This House Has People In It. Footage demonstrating the capabilities of AB Surveillance Solutions, a company whose technicians will solve any surveillance problem you have, for the life of the problem. (The lifespan of some problems may exceed that of our technicians, this is perfectly normal.) Log in to get a quote. (Previously.)
Johnny Ramone's last interview
"He's almost a father figure, or a mentor to me," says Robert Carmine, the twenty-one-year-old singer for Rooney, who one night slipped Johnny a demo tape that Johnny liked. "He never had a kid. The Ramones were his baby that he was obsessed with. When he retired, he needed something else to focus on, and that's his friends and his wife. He's given me a lot of great advice: Play to the back row, not the people in front; get a straight mike stand, not a boom stand; own your section of the stage; watch the money; learn what other people did that was cool. He's turned me on to such great old music, like Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent.
"He's a much kinder person now than when he was in the band," Carmine continues. "But the thing with Joey is ongoing. We watched the documentary together in his house, and he couldn't stay in the room when they were talking about the Joey stuff. He's still got that pain and anger that he can't quite let go of and become the person he's mostly become."
Greatest Living Americans Bracket
"America is home to more than 100 people. These are the 64 greatest and most important. We did not forget anyone. Fill out the bracket, hit Submit, and find out how correct you are."
Dark Arts in the Classroom
Psychic High School is the leading transdimensional day and boarding school for psychic youth of all ages and dispositions.
needs more yaylı tambur
From Television To '10 Cloverfield Lane', A Composer Plays With Surprise
- "When a film starts, 'you have anywhere from two to 10 seconds to get the audience's attention', score writer Bear McCreary says. He gained this and other advice from his mentor [Elmer Bernstein: 1,2 (previously)], whom he met by chance." (previously: 1,2)
Another one bites the dust
“It’s not a human move. I’ve never seen a human play this move,” he says. “So beautiful.”
Go—a 2,500-year-old game that’s exponentially more complex than chess. As recently as 2014, many believed another decade would pass before a machine could beat the top humans.
Now, Alphago, Google’s artificially intelligent Go-playing computer system has beaten Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top players thrice to win their 5 match series.
When AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol in the first game, the result was shocking to many, but doubts still remained about its strengths and weaknesses.In the second game, Lee’s play was much better. His game plan was clearly to play solid and patient moves, and wait for an opportunity to strike.Even though Lee never found that opportunity, it was a high quality game and it gave hope to everyone supporting ‘team human’. Game three crushed that hope.
Funky Nassau
The name of this band is The Beginning Of The End. The Bahamas, 1970s. Three brothers and a friend, two albums of junkanoo-influenced funk:
The Peterson Farm Blog
We are glad you are here! This blog was created for us to address the many questions people have about farmers and modern day agriculture. We hope that our blog will be a source of answers for people who are searching for the truth! ... This blog will focus mainly on family farmers like us who live in the Midwest and grow typical Midwest crops and livestock (wheat, corn, soybeans, sorghum, cattle, etc). There are countless other farmers out there who grow all sorts of different things (fruits, veggies, nuts, etc.) and raise all sorts of different animals (swine, poultry, dairy, etc.), but since my expertise lies solely on Midwest USA farmers, that’s what I will generally be referencing! The point to take away here is that we need to appreciate all farmers, no matter what kind they are, and we should all do our best to thank those who help grow our food!