July 22
The Crane Wife
"Surely, I will cancel this trip, I thought, as I shopped for nylon hiking pants that zipped off at the knee. Surely, a person who calls off a wedding is meant to be sitting sadly at home, reflecting on the enormity of what has transpired and not doing whatever it is I am about to be doing that requires a pair of plastic clogs with drainage holes."
July 21
Under the sea
Chinese vertical dramas made for phone viewing show the future of mobile
What’s remarkable about vertical drama is that it’s not just any scripted content cropped for a vertical aspect ratio. These shows are specifically imagined for the mobile screen from the ground up. [more inside]
Do Good Recklessly
Literal: “to poop in the blue cupboard”
Twitter user @jazz_inmypants says
everyone please share your favorite not-english word or phrase. here’s one i just learned.
“Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy"
Language: Polish
English Equivalent: “not my problem”
Literal: “not my circus, not my monkey”
Bialystok, Poland has their first ever Pride, outnumbered 4:1
Ringed by riot police, around 1,000 pride marchers walked defiantly through the streets of the northeastern city of Bialystok as thousands of nationalist football "ultra" fans, far-right groups and others threw flash bombs, rocks and glass bottles. [It's the faces of the marchers in the top photo... determination and joy and so young...]
Fly me to the Moon please. Right now.
My mother won a ticket to the Moon. In 1969 Mrs Anna Dabbs won a ticket for a flight to the Moon. She never got to go.
Her son, journalist Alastair Dabbs, conducts a hard-hitting investigation in which he names names. Reputations are ruined. History is set straight.
(SLRegister)
And related subjects
Tor.com runs a column in which writers talk about non-writing things (and, sometimes, how they relate to writing). How to do karate in a victorian dress, for example. Or how about a firefighter's guides to fighting dragons and phoenixes. [more inside]
🙃👸🏾🎾
"To all the non-tennis-playing men who think they can win a point against Serena Williams, watch this..." (full video here)
No New Jails.
“Communities most affected by both crime and incarceration are overpoliced and underprotected. In 2018, the NYPD made 808 arrests for rape, but over 5,000 arrests for fare evasion. To remedy this, the city should facilitate community oversight of police and prosecutors, and significantly expand the scope and funding of its participatory budgeting program with a focus on communities that experience the most crime. “ Incarceration Is Always A Policy Failure
The Drug Trafficker Resocialization Program
“It became such a mess that the government as a whole just said f---ing bury this,” says Paul Craine, who was a DEA agent in Bogotá in the late ’90s. “If we try to unravel this, we’re going to have to prosecute FBI agents, DEA agents, prosecutors. It was so crazy, where do you even start?” ... “Without being presumptuous, I think I am one of the top money launderers who ever worked for the government,” Vega says. “But I have something that is called integrity.”
In the Mood for Infinity Glove
Now that Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has wrapped up with Spider-Man: Far From Home, the first half of its Phase 4 films and TV shows was unveiled at SDCC 2019, including Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings with Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and the HK legend Tony Leung as The Mandarin; Natalie Portman picking up the big hammer in Thor: Love and Thunder; Mahershala Ali becoming Blade; Wanda joining Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and so much more. [more inside]
New apple product hitting stores this fall
After two decades of research and development, WA 38 lands this fall. It could disrupt an entire industry. It's an apple. [more inside]
July 20
On Eve’s Temptation and the Monsters We Make of Hungry Women
“I find myself reflecting on other women depicted as monstrous for their hunger; Pandora and her box, Snow White and her apple. The appearance of lacking desire goes beyond the bounds of etiquette or being ‘ladylike’ and instead crosses into the realm of a moral imperative. Which is to say, a just, good, decent woman is a woman who is free of any type of hunger, be it physical hunger for food, hunger as desire, or hunger as ambition. Conversely, a woman sickened with sin is one who is riddled with said hungers, reduced to a gaping mouth never satisfied.” Nina Li Coomes on faith and desire. CW: contains descriptions of disordered eating
Baby names, round ten
"What's in a name? An analysis of American baby naming trends from 1918 to 2018", by Jay Lewis, is a series of interactive info-graphics on everything: [more inside]
🎵 She's Mollllly of Denali 🎵
After years of erasure and dehumanization, Indigenous youth will finally have something for themselves in Molly of Denali, the first nationally distributed children's show to feature an Alaska indigenous person as the main character and protagonist (US PBS show website, Canadian CBC show website). [more inside]
Mac & Cheese
Whether boxed or from scratch, traditional or modern, mac and cheese is a renowned American comfort food. [more inside]
"Escape From The Haunted Mansion" Board Game
Trying to hide out from the heat wave? Here's a little project -- the "Escape From The Haunted Mansion" Board Game. It's a paper craft project which is a 3D Haunted Mansion that is also a board game. So you can build it, and then you play it! Multiple pages of PDF files get printed, cut, glued, and then admired while you try to escape! [more inside]
Lemming Soufflé düh Shenanigan
Greig Johnson (previously) offers a beginner's guide to playing the ancient, elegant instrument known as the shenanigan. More of his work can be found on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
"Have you ever been a stranger to yourself?"
Star Trek: Picard The full trailer for the new Star Trek: Picard series has been released. [alternate US-accessible link] [more inside]
Meet Mayor Max
The mayor of Idyllwild, California, was born into public service. He took office at just 11 weeks old and spends nearly every day engaging with his constituents and spreading his hopes for world peace. He does it largely in the nude, though he wears a tie and an array of hats. Mayor Maximus Mighty-Dog Mueller II, age six, is a golden retriever on a mission: “In his heart, he would like to see peace on Earth in his lifetime.” [more inside]
“I took a fish head out to see a movie…”
He did the monster mash, he explained why bird is the word, and now…
Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads. Fish heads, heads heads, eat them up, yum!
David Buck returns to Tedium to write about Barnes & Barnes’ classic weirdo tune: “Eat Them Up, Yum!”
Tired of reading? Perhaps you’d like to watch the band’s semi-autobiographical / music video collection VHS tape: “”Zabagabee: The Best of Barnes & Barnes”
Fish heads, fish heads, roly-poly fish heads. Fish heads, heads heads, eat them up, yum!
David Buck returns to Tedium to write about Barnes & Barnes’ classic weirdo tune: “Eat Them Up, Yum!”
Tired of reading? Perhaps you’d like to watch the band’s semi-autobiographical / music video collection VHS tape: “”Zabagabee: The Best of Barnes & Barnes”
The 25 Works of Art That Define the Contemporary Age
Amber Ruffin and the Go Back to Your Country Girls
Patriotic Singing Group Responds to Trump’s “Go Back to Your Country” Amber Ruffin (of "Amber Says What", more on that inside) and the Go Back to Your Country Girls perform their hit song about people telling them to go back to their country despite them all being American citizens. From Late Night with Seth Meyers. [more inside]
The Algorithmic Colonization of Africa
A nanoelectronics-blood-based diagnostic biomarker for ME/CFS
“The idea is to stress the samples from both healthy and ill patients using salt, and then compare how each sample affects the flow of the electrical current. Changes in the current indicate changes in the cell: the bigger the change in current, the bigger the change on a cellular level. A big change is not a good thing; it’s a sign that the cells and plasma are flailing under stress and incapable of processing it properly. All of the blood samples from ME/CFS [myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome] patients created a clear spike in the test, whereas those from healthy controls returned data that was on a relatively even keel.” [more inside]
Private Games
Emily Short thinks about games made for specific recipients or small groups of friends. “Many of my favorite games to write have been written for specific people … The first computer game I ever completed, I wrote for my little brother because he was bored with math. It was a dungeon where the monsters asked you arithmetic questions as a form of combat. Astonishingly he liked it, which shows you something about the power of personalization. [more inside]
This Is Your Life Scientific
The Life Scientific is a BBC radio program where Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future. [more inside]
July 19
Here's what young activists are talking about this year
Teen Girl Activists Take On Skeptical Boys and Annoying Buzzwords -- NPR interviewed ten young activists at the Girl Up 2019 Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., this week. Girl Up (official YouTube videos) is a campaign founded by the U.N. foundation that promotes activism for 13- to 22-year-olds to work for the health, safety and education of girls.
Blissinformation
"Tag cleaners, as they call themselves, drown out gore, harassment, and more by flooding a user’s tagged photos with pleasant images. It’s benevolent spam. The most prolific accounts are usually reposting the same images ad nauseam in quick bursts." [more inside]
Do you get the Sound Mixing Nerd Spirit Orb?
"There is a war raging - right now - with the Magisterium."
His Dark Materials, Extended Trailer. The BBC and HBO released a glimpse of their adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantasy series, apparently due out later this year. The cast includes Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda as the Texan aeronaut. [more inside]
generating an electrifying conversation: do try not to be shocked
We all know about the ability of electric eels to stun their prey with a powerful shock. But how did the eels evolve this power? It didn't start as a weapon: the electric eel's knifefish ancestors, like its modern cousins, used weak electric pulses to talk to one another just as we use weak pulses of pressure to create sounds. (They're not unique, either--six lineages of fish have evolved this ability.) But electric fish like the knifefish aren't the only ones listening under the water: there are plenty of electroceptive predators paying attention, too. In a story that starkly resembles the pressures on acoustic communication, electric fish have to modify their signals to avoid being overheard. [more inside]
It's more involved than you might think
So tell me what you want, what you really, really want
When, through the nighttime murk of the Amazon River, an electric eel locates a feeder fish, what happens next is instantaneous: A jolt of electricity surges through the fish’s nerves. Its muscles contract simultaneously, and it is transformed into a living, floating statue. This is roughly the same reaction that women born between Labor Day 1985 and New Year’s Eve 1991, approximately, exhibit when exposed to the opening seconds of the Spice Girls’ debut single “Wannabe.” Pharmacists, statisticians, probation workers, bank tellers, event planners, bartenders, psychologists, paralegals, market research analysts, junior members of Congress, phlebotomists, journalists — in the void between the salutatory “Yooo!” and the song’s first plonked-out musical note, all of these become temporarily incapacitated, frozen between heartbeats with lightning in their blood. Caity Weaver writes for the NY Times Style Section on the Spice Girls Generation
It catches the sunlight and sparkles.
"Let's talk about peeing in space." Lots of fun facts in this Twitter thread by writer Mary Robinette Kowal, debunking the idea — put forth by some readers in response to her essay in the NYT on women astronauts — "that women couldn't go into space because we lacked the technology for them to pee in space" and explaining in detail how "we didn't have the technology for men to pee in space when they started either." (Also: extra fun facts on pooping, and farting, and belching, and periods in space.)
Tituss Burgess and an Ode to 45
Tituss Burgess (of Kimmy Schmidt and Pinot Noir fame) has released a video for his song 45. (Video. Lyrics.) The video features actor Daniel J. Watts, an empty mansion, Tituss in a straight jacket, and some weird eye makeup. [more inside]
The Kiss that Changed Video Games
The story of how The Sims (EA, 2000) ended up facililtating gay relationships - despite an earlier decision by the developers not to allow it. Also how an unscripted same sex kiss between background characters led to The Sims becoming the talk of E3 in 1999. (SLNew Yorker)
I learned to love you lucidly
The Spanish-Basque rock band Hesian's cover of Alaitz & Maider's song "Amets bat" ("A Dream"). The video includes a clip of Alaitz and Maider singing verse four of the song starting about 1:40. (previously) [more inside]
Woe To ‘Tango And Cash’
“I can’t wait to get back to the shop again and blow things up.”
The surprisingly engrossing history of How The Milwaukee Bucks And A Former Wedding DJ Won The T-Shirt Cannon Arms Race.
Harpsichord Drone
Popular Front
"This essay argues that socialists can effectively shape political debate in alliance with social democrats. I will limit my arguments, for the most part, to the rhetorical level, while recognizing there are larger questions about the relationship between socialists and social democrats that are essential to discuss. The battle over rhetorical space within key alliances is nonetheless central to winning political contests, which is why I focus on it here." Shifting Alliances: Socialists, Social Democrats, and the New U.S. Left
Look at the birdie
The award-winners and top 100 entries from the Audubon Society's annual Photography Awards. That is all.
"WARNING: this thread gets very very silly."
University of Bonn research assistant Erik Wade informs us of a hitherto little-known clade:
Thread: everyone knows that medieval art is filled with snails fighting knights, but there's actually a whole medieval snail ecology and society, from snail-birds to snail-monks. And, ofc, snail-cats.Twitter | Threadreader
A bad workday's lessons on building Stack Overflow’s community
The monster in this case is not one person, it was created when lots of people, even with great intentions, publicly disagreed with you at the same time. Even kind feedback can come off as caustic and mean when there is a mob of people behind it. No matter how nicely they say it, when a large group of people you really respect publicly challenge something you’ve done it can feel like a personal attack. 1600 words from Sara Chipps at Stack Overflow.
RIP BEEFTANK
Former college and professional football quarterback Jared Lorenzen has passed away at the age of 38. Known as "The Pillsbury Throwboy" and "The Battleship Lorenzen" for his size as a quarterback, his most notable contribution to pop culture was serving as the inspiration for CLARENCE BEEFTANK in Jon Bois' Breaking Madden series. Unsurprisingly, Bois has written a touching eulogy for Lorenzen and the feats he was capable of on the field.
Put that lad on the next courier, and we'll show it in London
The story of the invention of the black box flight recorder with subterfuge and ridicule. And stubbornness and humour.
I mean, who wouldn't want a gang of meerkats on their head?
There are fascinators, and then there are fascinators. Maor Zabar makes hats that really stand out, from sea creatures to bugs to fast food. He also has a shop on Etsy - but the prices are high.
Pansexual’s Labyrinth
Otamere Guobadia writes for Dazed about sexual fluidity, in his own life and in our expectations of celebrities who come out (or don't). "Man” and “woman” as described in our sexual orientations are not only necessarily imperfect characterisations, but they are flexible and porous categories; in our lifetimes and indeed in our everyday, our desires weave many times in and out of them. I have desired bodies that both uphold these categories, and bodies that fail them entirely, and everybody in between. I have had men wolf whistle at my skinny jean-clad legs as I walked down the stairs of a double decker bus, only for their leering to turn to agitation and anger when the rest of my torso came into view. Desire is a silly and changeable thing. [more inside]