August 18
Trump’s plan to let employers discriminate against LGBTQ workers
It’s a political move with major consequences. The Trump administration caused an uproar Wednesday for proposing a policy that would give certain federal contractors the right to discriminate against people who don’t share their employer’s religious views...The proposed rule from the Department of Labor dramatically transforms the government’s decades-old policy that bars federal contractors from discriminating against employees based on their race, sex, religion, disability, or national origin. It would instead weaken these protections by expanding the policy’s one exemption: the religious exemption.
a vast ramshackle machinery that elevates men
One can no longer argue that equality can be achieved by simply waiting for young female scholars to emerge at the end of the academic “pipeline.” “The increase in women at later stages of the pipeline is the consequence of a slow ‘pull’ provided by the expanding pool of women at the beginning, not because of an effective ‘push’ that reduces attrition during career advancement.” Strengthening this push, however, means addressing the sexist practices that “push” men along the cursus honorum, because these practices tend to be the very same mechanisms that oust women from the academy. The zero-sum nature of this problem makes it difficult to discuss, let alone redress. Ugly small-brained misogyny explains only part — albeit an important part — of this result. More insidious are banal sexist practices that reinforce one another to compose a vast ramshackle machinery that elevates men to the pinnacle of the ivory tower. This durable, unjust structure largely depends on the attitudes and practices of three social groups: male scholars, male students, and male romantic partners.
Is it “lead” or “lede”?
And how do you write a good one? A definitive guide on how to describe the beginning or introduction of a news story, and most importantly, on the best way to write one, no matter how you spell it.
The Joy of Cod Reggae
When non-Jamaicans attempt to make reggae, the resulting music, sometimes termed ‘cod reggae’ (cod in this context meaning ‘faux, ersatz, false, counterfeit or synthetic’) often ends up smelling a bit fishy. But not always. John Doran at The Quietus challenged ‘crate digger extraordinaire’ Bill Brewster to compile a playlist using only the freshest of cod reggae fillets. [more inside]
August 17
Every bit of advice we’ve been given ... has been wrong
The Atlantic created a 10 minute documentary detailing the Verrückt waterslide tragedy. [ Schlitterbahn Indictment Previously ]
A Room of One's Own
"In 1976 Adrienne Rich wrote, “We need to imagine a world in which every woman is the presiding genius of her own body. In such a world. . .sexuality, politics, intelligence, power, motherhood, work, community, intimacy, will develop new meanings; thinking itself will be transformed.” The fight for abortion rights is a fight not only for women’s bodily needs, but for their creative power."
A map of 675 video walks around the world
On Reddit today, /u/watercookerch writes: "I made a map showing the locations of 675 video walks around the world." Direct link to Google Maps. The SlowTV and walking sub-reddits.
to come into right relationship with our own pain
"'You're not a thing at all,' or 'The political implications of Dunbar's Number.'" is a sermon that Doug Muder (the Weekly Sift guy) presented on May 12, 2019. It's about cooperation, stories, parts we play and expect, Tolstoy, Disney, gender, inadequate and obsolete scripts, and the ideal of the perfect rulebook. "We want to belong, but we also want to be individuals .... I think we need to recognize that no matter how necessary it might be to simplify our experience somehow, there's always going to be an injustice in putting people into categories and dealing with them through roles and scripts. That's an injustice that we both suffer and inflict on others." [more inside]
Nobody puts abnormals back in
"Researchers have begun to report preliminary but stunning evidence that mammalian embryos with abnormal chromosomes have the remarkable ability in some cases to “self-correct” during early development, either by editing out cells that possess chromosomal irregularities or isolating them in the placenta....Gleicher took the podium at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the largest professional society of IVF doctors in the U.S. He announced, for the first time in a public setting, that the transfer of abnormal embryos had produced normal human babies."
Art of the Squirrel Obstacle Course
Amazing Squirrel Grand Prix Furmula 1 Obstacle Course "Oh well, if you like squirrels, and weird and wonderful obstacle courses accompanied by a rather silly commentary from an eccentric/mad* Englishman, then this is the channel for you."
via the dodo [more inside]
The secret of happiness?
The Alliance Of Law And Capital
“Schmidt, a grandfather living on disability benefits from his war-related injuries, had no history of theft or fraud. But he found himself the target of an extraordinary alliance between private insurers and public law enforcement agencies — one that transforms routine claims into criminal evidence, premium-paying customers into suspects, and the justice system into a hired gun for a multibillion-dollar industry.” Insurance Companies Are Paying Cops To Investigate Their Own Customers (Buzzfeed News)
Protests in Portland: 'End Domestic Terrorism'
Portland prepares for city's largest far-right rally of the Trump era (Guardian, yesterday) Trump stokes tension over far-right rally (Guardian, today). [more inside]
Saruman the White 2020
"If the Free People are going to defeat Sauron, you need to let go of your elitist attitudes and choose someone who can appeal to the moderate orc vote. That’s why I support Saruman the White to lead the Council of the Wise."
Maybe the women were too moral...or too clever
Art crime expert Noah Charney on forgery, why forgers defy typical criminological classification, and how he's not found any female forgers. [more inside]
How the Hong Kong protests created the #BoycottMulan campaign
Months away from release, Disney’s live-action Mulan is facing political backlash. Disney’s upcoming live-action version of its animated 1998 film Mulan is still months away from its March 2020 release. And as has often been the case with the studio’s live-action remakes, the project has not been without some backlash since it was announced. But amid the ongoing political unrest in Hong Kong, 2020’s Mulan is also now a target of protesters there — for reasons that have little to do with the movie. Instead, it’s Mulan’s Chinese American star Liu Yifei’s public support for the controversial Hong Kong police force that has instigated a growing call to #BoycottMulan entirely.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Puzzles
Port and Sweep Solitaire is a new twist on the classic game of peg solitaire. The goal is to reach the position with a single peg, or counter. Two simple moves, one of which allows you to stack the counters like checkers, lead to all kinds of consternation. Start playing immediately (the interface lights up legal drag-and-drop moves) or read the interactive tutorial and get some strategy hints first. If you want a different game, there is [more inside]
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.
Between Seasons on the North Head Trail
No thanks, we're not for sale
The dealmaster in chief wants to buy some prime real estate, but no one is selling Thursday, WSJ broke the news that Trump has expressed interest in buying Greenland. It's behind a paywall, but the other news outlets were fast to bring their own stories (CNN) [more inside]
August 16
“being told you’re wrong is taken as proof you’re right”
Fragile Minds [audio only] is a PEN lecture by Australian journalist Erik Jensen about the state of journalism, how it handles criticism, and often fails readers who aren’t white men. His focus is Australia but his points are widely applicable. The lecture is introduced by the president of PEN Melbourne, Arnold Zable. The two speak afterwards and take questions from the audience. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole hour, Jensen goes over much of what he has to say in a 13 minute interview with Philip Adams.
New, Blue World
Impulse! Records is releasing a heretofore unheard set of recordings for John Coltrane made for a film project between Crescent and A Love Supreme. All but one are reworked versions of previous songs except a track called Blue World, which is pretty damn fine (SLYT). Happy Friday everybody.
The Center Won't Hold
Four years after the release of No Cities to Love and one month after drummer Janet Weiss left the band, Sleater-Kinney released its new album today. Called The Center Won't Hold it's a clear collaboration with Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and for better or worse, a clear departure from their older material. What it means to Listen to Sleater-Kinney now. (track listing inside) [more inside]
Everyone has chores around the house. 🦎🐈🐕🧹
You're a member of the family, you gotta do something to keep this place tidy. Even you, chameleon, you have some work to do. Max the cat, don't just lay around (or do, and I'll put you to work). But Jesse the Jack Russel Terrier, the most helpful dog in the world really tackles chores with gusto (bonus Jesse clips: useful dog tricks #1, #2, #3). [more inside]
Super Sad True Chef Story
What It's Like To Stage In A Michelin-Starred Restaurant In France: The French brigade system and the ritual of staging has defined what it means to train as a fine dining chef for more than a century — and it broke me after a week. [more inside]
humans don’t behave based on administrative units
"Even though there are different place associations that probably mean more to you as an individual, such as a neighborhood, street, or the block you live on, the zip code is, in many organizations, the geographic unit of choice. [...] The problem is that zip codes are not a good representation of real human behavior, and when used in data analysis, often mask real, underlying insights, and may ultimately lead to bad outcomes." Stop Using Zip Codes for Geospatial Analysis
Syndicalism In The USA
Arsenal For Democracy Radio’s summer series, Lend Lease, has dropped its most ambitious episode yet: an overview of American anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with a focus on theory and the IWW. Part 1 And a discussion of US government repression of anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism from the 1880s to the first Red Scare of the 1920s, as well as the controversial Propaganda of the Deed theory of violence, the role of immigrants in the movement, and the Sacco and Vanzetti trials. Part 2. It comes with over 20 pages of notes and citations.
What is the purpose to my human?
Three ideas. Three contradictions. Or not. Hannah Gadsby gives a TED talk about comedy and telling stories, while touching on grief, Autism, and trauma. "Speech has always felt like an inadequate freeze frame for the life inside of me."
All my life Ive felt like an alien
21 Comics About ADHD By A 29-Year-Old Artist That Only Got The Right Diagnosis A Year Ago, featuring the work of Pina, an artist from Germany who makes comics about her life as an smart, quiet, introverted woman with Attention Deficit Disorder.
"For 13 years I have written under a different name"
"As listeners to the Football Weekly podcast already know, I’m a laugher not a fighter. I would much prefer not to be writing this and to exist in a world where my transition did not require any comment. But since we do not yet live in that world, here I am. All I ask is for respect and kindness – for me and for transgender people in general – at a time when those commodities seem to be in ever‑shorter supply." Guardian football (soccer) journalist Nicky Bandini comes out as transgender and the reaction in both the comment section and on Twitter is an "outpouring of love".
Friday Flash Fun: pupy world
enter a world of pupy where jumping and digging are as easy as pressing some buttons on a keyboard, a world where forest animals will give you moonstones in exchange for completing quests, a world where everything is okay and spike pits and lava can't hurt you. [more inside]
The Myth of the ‘Underage Woman’
Throughout a number of sexual harassment and assault cases involving girls in recent memory, the press has been using a specific term of art to describe the victims - underage women. Writing for The Atlantic, Megan Garber discusses how this term affects how we see these crimes, and what it says about our cultural views of women and girls. (SLThe Atlantic)
I seriously thought this was satire
New Leech Found in D.C.-Area Swamps "America has a new leech -- new to science, that is. In fact, the big orange-bellied bloodsucker has been lurking around the nation's capital all along..."
I do get a science satire site in my RSS feed, so I initially thought this was from them. To my surprise, it's actually real.
This playground has no children chasing butterfly! Only Police
Elliott Spencer. A short story by George Saunders (SLNewYorker)
If you truly know yourself, one outfit is definitely enough.
A Walk in Hong Kong
A Walk in Hong Kong. The ongoing Hong Kong protests have made world news. What is it like to be in the middle of it all? Maciej Cegłowski, aka Idle Words, gives an immersive first-person account of his experience as a sweaty Polish-American in Hong Kong, marching along with protesters and experiencing surprises at every step.
August 15
The 25 Most Important Characters of the Past 25 Years
You'll look sweet / upon the seat
Now THAT'S what I call penetration testing.
When most people think of the Internet of Things (IoT), they think about light switches, voice controllers, and doorbell cameras. But over the past several years, another class of devices has also gained connectivity—those used for sexual pleasure. One such device, the Lovense Hush, advertised as the “world’s first teledildonic buttplug,” became the subject of a Sunday morning DEF CON talk this year after a hacker named “smea” managed to exploit not only the device and its associated computer dongle, but software used with it for social interaction (read: people remotely playing with each other’s buttplugs).
"Corn dog" is an unnecessarily restrictive term
Korean youtuber Foodie Boy provides a 19 minute documentary on the wares of Hotdog Chopchop, a restaurant in Seoul that deep-fries things like hot dogs on sticks. [more inside]
"Proof of concept of how to wage a post-truth information war"
"On August 15, 2014, an angry 20-something ex-boyfriend published a 9,425-word screed and set in motion a series of vile events that changed the way we fight online." How an Online Mob Created a Playbook for a Culture War: the New York Times opinion section looks at five years of Gamergate. [more inside]
Friday’s reputation is unearned. Do not let Friday swindle you.
nothing is neat, I promise you that's not how/things become other things
"A Sestina for January 20, 2017." by Lanna Michaels: "... things change and not always for the better, show / me something that stays constant, low / tide becomes high tide, the equal row is an optical illusion, and isn't real. So / .... I'm the fourth son, you must begin for me now ..."
Welcome! To LibraryLand. You can do anything in LibraryLand.
Adam Zand and Greg Peverill-Conti base their office-less PR company out of whatever public library they happen to be near; they've been to over 200 so far. So, they welcome you to their side-project, LibraryLand! Their ongoing mission: to visit all 483 libraries in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (and some in other states) and rate them on eleven criteria, sometimes providing reviews, while also collecting stories and learning lessons about exploring and working from libraries. [via who else but jessamyn]
Observe the changing tides of politics and beliefs in the lens of cinema
Born in 1952, Abou Joudé grew up at a time when Lebanon overflowed with cinemas. He says there were over 50 cinemas in Beirut alone. Joudé would attend the movies three to four times a week, watching everything from Aladdin to Kubrick. He loved the splashy, thrilling posters, depicting electrifying romps and grandiose fantasies, but over time he noticed that certain images would repeat again and again. “I discovered that those films, or the posters of those films about Arabs, continued the imagined picture of what was thought about Arabs in the 18th and 19th centuries,” he says. “The desert, the tent, the belly-dancing, the haram, the sultan, the king. Stereotyped images continued through the posters.” The Middle East as Old Hollywood Saw It (Atlas Obscura) [more inside]
Remembering Agnes Heller
Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller, who has died 19 July 2019 at the age of 90, was a Holocaust survivor, a dissident under Hungary’s communist regime, and one of the great modern political thinkers. Citation for Prof. Heller written and read by Judith Friedlander. Remembering Agnes Heller on the Philosopher's Zone.
NYT obit.
FT obit. [more inside]
Indigenous Knowledge and the Future of Science
Research on First Nation land often exploits the people who live there. What discoveries could come out of true collaboration? [more inside]
life is a good thing when you share it
Utsvulten is a "warm and intimate" desktop browser game about holding hands and feeding a friend. [more inside]
Where would you eat if you didn't have long to live?
What is says, and a bit more go read it.