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I Wanted to Believe in the Limitlessness of Resilience
As I watch the unfolding of extreme events across our planet, I find myself continuously relocated to that moment in the car with my brother. The sense of fracturing that ripples from a single shock event, even if the full extent of damage is yet to reveal itself. from The Great Forgetting by Summer Praetorius [CW: climate pessimism, mental illness]
TFG's Final Campaign
It was in that optimistic spirit, 28 days ago, that the former president, impeached and voted out of office and impeached again,
amid multiple state and federal investigations, under threat of indictment and arrest, on the verge of a congressional-committee verdict that would recommend four criminal charges to the Feds over his incitement of a mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol and threatened to hang his vice-president in a failed attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election results, announced his third presidential campaign. Since then, he has barely set foot outside the perimeter of Mar-a-Lago. For 28 days, in fact, he has not left the state of Florida at all.
Adrian Bliss: In the Body Compilation
"Hang on--Are you a dessert?"
A compilation of Adrian Bliss sketches about the body.
Timothy Snyder collection
Timothy Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University. On Tyranny (20 lessons, 10mins), On Tyranny Revisited (podcast interview 1 hour), On Tyranny (1 hour lecture), Timothy Snyder Speaks (12 episodes, 15mins), a comprehensive college level course on Ukrainian history The Making of Modern Ukraine (23 lectures, 45 mins), in podcast form, and Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (12 hour audiobook).
Climate Central - Interactive Map showing sea level rises and more
How sea levels rising will impact coastlines around the world
From the Web site...
"Climate Central is an independent group of scientists and communicators who research and report the facts about our changing climate and how it affects people’s lives. We are a policy-neutral 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Climate Central uses science, big data, and technology to generate thousands of local storylines and compelling visuals that make climate change personal and show what can be done about it. We address climate science, sea level rise, extreme weather, energy, and related topics. We collaborate widely with TV meteorologists, journalists, and other respected voices to reach audiences across diverse geographies and beliefs."
Probably helpful to determine where to NOT buy a house... and more... one of my favorite coastal day trip locations will likely be gone in less than 30 years. A home I used to own will likely no longer be accessible by road.
2022's Best Music...or Is It?
On this final day of the Year of Our Load 2022, a gallimaufry of best-ofs from largely reputable publications and sites both general and music-oriented.
In no particular order:
MOJO: The 50 Best Albums of 2022
MOJO: The 50 Best Albums of 2022
Fourteen Discoveries Made About Human Evolution in 2022
Fourteen Discoveries Made About Human Evolution in 2022.
Smithsonian paleoanthropologists reveal the year’s most riveting findings about our close relatives and ancestors.
The Yard Sale Model
Let's take a second to appreciate what just happened.
- You lost the first game.
- You won the second game.
- So you've won 50% of your games.
- But you have less money that you started with.
Grieving California and the World
It’s “really important to know that climate distress is not a pathology.”
Solastalgia, Albrecht wrote, “is not about looking back to some golden past, nor is it about seeking another place as ‘home.’ It is the ‘lived experience’ of the loss of the present as manifest in a feeling of dislocation;
Movie: Nope
Caretakers at a California horse ranch encounter a mysterious force that affects human and animal behavior. The third feature film written and directed by Jordan Peele.
Movie: Beast
Nate (Idris Elba) and his two teenage daughters find themselves hunted by a massive rogue lion intent on proving that the Savanna has but one apex predator.
A Totally Normal Interview with Author Emily St. John Mandel
Exactly what it says on the tin.
A brief, but informative interview with the author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, in Slate, about what she's been up to this year.
"The Color of Dreams"
From Serena Jones on Mastodon (@SerenaJ@historians.social): "The Albert Khan Museum in France has just made available for download thousands of early autochrome photos from around the world: Khan, a banker, had top French photographers travel the world documenting everyday aspects of global life which he believed would soon vanish as the world rapidly developed. Such prescience."
You got to vaccinate people against the hate.
Why Fascism's Returning to the World
- "It was the great John Maynard Keynes who pieced it together best. Fascism, he discovered, was the result of sudden, sharp plunges into poverty, especially unexpected ones, ones where people's expectations of upward mobility collided with the grim reality of downward mobility."[1,2,3] (previously)
"Alright, Billies... we're gonna do something new!"
For six years in a row, Billie Eilish has sat down with interviewers from Vanity Fair on the same calendar day in October to answer questions about her career, her life, and her state of mind, reflecting on an eventful 12 months of pop stardom and media scrutiny. (single link YouTube)
ooh.directory
It's a directory of blogs. Avoid your family today like it's 2006.
Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!
A Plethora of Unaired Pilots
A Plethora of Unaired Pilots
Warning: time destroyer. One YouTube user has posted over 50 unaired TV pilots.
How the Slow Cooker Changed the World
The Crockpot arrived amid a slew of innovations, from the microwave oven to the breadmaker, that promised to save women from the drudgery of cooking for their families. But unlike its technological contemporaries, the slow cooker didn’t speed up a working woman’s cooking, it slowed it down. The crucial part was being absent for almost the entire cooking process: A woman could actually leave the house and enter the workplace, without neglecting her wifely duties.
Alan MacMasters: How the great online toaster hoax was exposed
For more than a decade, a prankster spun a web of deception about the inventor of the electric toaster. His lies fooled newspapers, teachers and officials. Then a teenager flagged up something that everyone else had missed.
Kherson liberated (Ukraine war month nine)
Kherson celebrates liberation after 8 months of Russian occupation (Kyiv Independent photos). Buildings mostly stand, but infrastructure is largely severed. Zelenskyy says Russia has committed war crimes there, as in other occupied regions. 179 settlements on the west bank of the Dnipro River have been liberated. Russians continue defensive operations on the east bank.
I just thought I was a legend
Fern Brady comedy special (SLYT, 56:01m, subtitles/captioning).
Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View
Just a few years ago, climate projections for this century looked quite apocalyptic
, with most scientists warning that continuing “business as usual” would bring the world four or even five degrees Celsius of warming. ...
Now, with the world already 1.2 degrees hotter, scientists believe that warming this century will most likely fall between two or three degrees. ... Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years.
'Users interested in NSFW and cryptocurrency content grew'
'Where did the Tweeters Go?'
(Reuters) These “heavy tweeters” account for less than 10% of monthly overall users but generate 90% of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been in “absolute decline” since the pandemic began, a Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document.
Hope me, Obi-Wan Kenobi...
A curious thing: On 5 occasions in the last 9 days, I've seen AskMeFi posts containing the phrase "Hope me," in a context where I'd expect the questioner to use "Help me." Is this MeFi slang (or general/internet slang) I don't know about? Or just an odd coincidence?
Speech-to-text with Whisper
Whisper, from OpenAI, is an open source tool you can run on your own computer that "approaches human level robustness and accuracy on English speech recognition"; "Moreover, it enables transcription in multiple languages, as well as translation from those languages into English." Instructions on how to download, install, and run it. (I have successfully used Whisper and the results were very good. However, it is not fast enough to run during recording of an interview and give you live captions/transcripts; it runs after the fact, on already-recorded audio.)
Winter is coming to Ukraine and the war
As winter is approaching in Ukraine, the Kerch bridge has been heavily damaged, the day after Putin's 70th birthday. The very next day daily bombardments of Kyiv and other population centers had a massive increase in intensity, but this had probably been planned for a week already and mostly intended for the domestic audience. In a public debate where Western concerns dominate, the Ukrainian minister of defence Andriy P. Zagorodnyuk lays out the Ukrainian perspective on their path to victory.
The Most Visited Website in Every Country (That Isn’t A Search Engine)
We removed search engines from our results to discount “middle-man visits” and removed Facebook and YouTube as they would otherwise dominate the results. So we have identified and mapped the most visited website in every country around the world, and also the top news, banking, fashion, and food website in each region. [via]
Death By Social Media
In a first, a London coroner's inquiry has ruled that social media platforms such as Instagram held material blame for the death of 14 year old Molly Russell, who committed suicide in 2017 after falling into a social media negative feedback loop that pushed self-harm media to her. (CW: suicide, self-harm) [alt link]
The Process by which an Epidemic becomes Endemic in a Social Sense
How to Hide a Plague: How Elite Capture and Individualism Made Covid Normal
How large right wing business interests co-opted science to hamstring public health response and pull the classic capitalism move of individualizing risks, while convincing the public it was their idea.
Sterling pounded
The pound fell to record lows this week, prompted by a tax-break filled Tory budget.
Some mortgage lenders have temporarily withdrawn their products from the market in anticipation of rising interest rates and one economic commentator said investors view the Conservative Party as a 'doomsday cult'.
It pairs well with garum.
This miracle plant was eaten into extinction 2,000 years ago—or was it?
is an article in the National Geographic by Taras Grescoe [previously] about the potential rediscovery of the favorite herb of the Romans, silphion, [prev & iously] in Turkey by Prof. Mahmut Miski. Grescoe put a bit more info in a Twitter thread, and if you have access, you can read Miski’s scholarly article here.
Ukraine war month seven, Russia mobilizes
Russia has been on the receiving end of the Ukrainian counter offensive for about four weeks now, and things have not been going well for them. During the retreat from the Kharkiv area, the 1st Guards Tank Army, the most prestigious major unit of the Russian Army, was for all intents and purposes routed. Russia's major reinforcement unit, the 3rd Army Corps, was moved into theater and practically melted away.
In reaction to these events, the Duma has pushed through a new conscription law, and the Kremlin has announced a partial mobilization. How many people will be called in is unclear, as one clause of the order is secret. Russian industry has also been urged to ramp up production.
The Rotary Un-Smartphone
The Rotary Un-Smartphone
Justine Haupt, at Open Sky Technology, has released the rotary dial un-smartphone kit. It's a voice only cell phone with a rotary dial, a real physical bell, and an on/off switch that actually disconnects the battery. It's available in the classic handset colors of white, beige, sea-foam green, atomic hotline red or black. If you had described a hand held wireless portable phone to someone in the 1960s, this is what they might have imagined. Here's a video of it in action.
When stuck in a fog, sometimes the only option is to stand still.
One of Long COVID’s Worst Symptoms Is Also Its Most Misunderstood
“The stigma that long-haulers experience also motivates them to present as normal in social situations or doctor appointments, which compounds the mistaken sense that they’re less impaired than they claim—and can be debilitatingly draining. “They’ll do what is asked of them when you’re testing them, and your results will say they were normal,” David Putrino, who leads a long-COVID rehabilitation clinic at Mount Sinai, told me. “It’s only if you check in on them two days later that you’ll see you’ve wrecked them for a week.””
‘A new way of life’
The climate crisis will spiral out of control unless the world applies “emergency brakes” to capitalism and devises a “new way of living”, according to a Japanese academic whose book on Marxism and the environment has become a surprise bestseller. [SL Guardian]
The message from Kohei Saito, an associate professor at Tokyo University, is simple: capitalism’s demand for unlimited profits is destroying the planet and only “degrowth” can repair the damage by slowing down social production and sharing wealth.
"I'm tired of people thinking I'm some kind of joke."
It seems a lot of people didn't quite expect the upcoming Weird Al Yankovic biopic to be this serious about faithfully depicting the story of his life and career. [Link to YouTube trailer.]
Ukraine Update: The Counter Attack Begins
Six months into the Russian war on Ukraine, after weeks of seeming stalemate, Ukrainian forces launched their long expected counter offensive in the Kherson region north of the Dnipro river. Over the last month Ukraine has degraded the major river crossings, blown up Russian weapons depots and used American provided HARM missiles to destroy Russian air defenses. Meanwhile Russia has rushed 25,000 troops into the region to be ready to defend the region.
The umpteenth Joyce Carol Oates
What working at a used bookstore taught me about literary rejection.
I find a book by my undergrad professor. It’s inscribed with a lovely personal note to someone named Katherine. I guess she didn’t want it anymore. I tell myself maybe she died, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.