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I’m an unashamed member of #TeamSpeed when it comes to most audiobooks and podcasts. I am not alone in this ‘overclocking’.
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There’s something beautifully weird and obsessive about Waclaw Szpakowski’s “labrynthine” single-line drawings.
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Speaking of the beautiful weird, have a listen to Emil Amos’ Drifter’s Sympathy show.
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Play The Great Language Game and see what languages you recognize.
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Browse The Food Lab’s Top 30 Hot Sauces. My favorites are all in there except WUJU. Any others missing?
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Thanks, Reader B. for sharing an intriguing story On Dracula’s Lost Icelandic Sister Text.
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From Reader C., some links that should convince even the crustiest Clamorites that Twitter can be useful: @medievalpoc, featuring fascinating information about people of color in European Art History, and @discarding_imgs, routinely sharing tasty medieval images.
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Remembering Nüshu, the 19th-Century Chinese Script Only Women Could Write
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It’s a good day for sweets and the sweetums who love ’em: on this day in 1906, Kellogg’s is founded as the “Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company,” an offshoot of the Kellogg brothers work at a religion-based sanitarium (T.C. Boyle’s fabulous book Road to Wellville is based on this history); today in 1913, more than 100 years after its debut, Cracker Jack began putting toys in their tasty, eponymous product; and today in 1985, Cherry Coke is rolled out to the public a few years after a very successful taste test at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee.
WEB
Links, links, links…from a certain, uncertain mind.
Links: February 12, 2017
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A little perspective… → Hubble Space Telescope captures death of star in Rotten Egg Nebula
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Why monkeys can’t talk—and what they would sound like if they could (answer: unsettling). Pairs with ►Orangutan Found To Mimic Human Speech.
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Reasonable people may disagree with The Guardian‘s Top 10 Books About the Apocalypse. What say you?
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Moij Design’s origami inspired dishes, concrete art and ornaments. Thanks, Reader M.
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Phonetic Calligraphy (@IPAcalligraphy) combines the beauty of calligraphy with the charm of the International Phonetic Alphabet.
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Introducing Open Access at The Met, more than 200,000 images, all of which are searchable as part of the 10,000,000 images you can search with the new Creative Commons search engine.
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Today in 1809, future United States President Abraham Lincoln is born in a one-room log cabin in Hardin County, Kentucky. Certainly one of the most important US presidents, Lincoln saw the country through its deepest existential crisis, the Civil War, and who knows what influence he might have had on the fallout of that war and the end of slavery were he not assassinated in 1865. Lincoln was a deep thinker, significantly more complex than many popular cultural portrayals would have us believe on everything from slavery and authoritarianism to his own melancholy (that we’d now call clinical depression). The best way to know Lincoln is through his own words and the words of those who’ve studied him most closely, for which I highly recommend The Annotated Lincoln and the Library of America’s The Lincoln Bicentennial Collection. Also, given the WORK I chose today, you might enjoy “Men of Letters: Shakespeare’s Influence on Abraham Lincoln”.
Links: February 5, 2017
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An astounding project, YOLOCAUST “combined selfies from the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin with footage from Nazi extermination camps.” The project, the response—including from those in the original photographs—and the ensuing conversations are intriguing. You can see the original images in the Internet Archive (roll over the images). :: Pairs with Forever present: Digital immortality for the Holocaust’s last survivors
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“Bundespraesidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung isn’t just a mouthful—it tells an annoying political story” → Austria’s Word of the Year Has 52 Letters
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Be the best bard you can be! → Crowdsourcing for Shakespeare
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“Russian futurist book art from 1910 to 1915 combines dynamic lithographs with the sounds of zaum poetry. This interactive exemplifies the interplay of word-image-sound through audio recordings, Russian transliterations, and English translations of 10 poems, presented directly within the pages of the artist’s books.” → Explodity
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Cool visualizations → Constellations of first sentences from each chapter of short stories
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Weird, and I need to make this work for me. → Knowingly Taking a Placebo Still Reduces Pain, Studies Find
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From the Constitutional Post (est. 1774) to today, Winifred Gallagher tells the story of how The Post Office Created America in this 99% Invisible story and interview. See also, the New York Times review that includes Gallagher’s book.
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You don’t need to be a linguist to enjoy browsing the newly open Lexicons of Early Modern English site.
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Ha! → List: Concepts for Which I Suspect Germans Have a Single Word
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Today in 1951, cartoonist and artist John Callahan is born in Portland, Oregon, USA. A quadriplegic since a car accident at 21, Callahan drew his rough, dark, occasionally macabre, taboo-busting and very funny cartoons by holding a pen between his two hands. See also: Callahan’s NYT Obit and the Independent’s obit, Prophet of bad taste. Just a few months ago, there were reports that Gus Van Sant and Joaquin Phoenix had a Callahan biopic in development.
Links: January 29, 2017
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This On Being interview with Maria Popova is a few years old, but just too good not to share. And it couldn’t be more timely, really. And I adore Popova…if you aren’t a regular Brain Pickings reader, you should stop reading this and go there now (but do come back). → Cartographer of Meaning in a Digital Age.
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At first I thought, “yet more wireless earbuds.” But Here One is something else: AI-assisted personal listening. With big implications for the future of all kinds of audio experiences.
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Speaking of amazing developments hinting at a fascinating future, how about growing human organs in animals? → The Early Days of Organ Farming Are a Bit Gnarly. See also: Mice cured of diabetes by cells grown inside rats — are humans next?
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Google News Lab’s The Year in Language: 2016 is interesting and includes some fun interactive widgets to delve into the results (even if the by-state results don’t include Alaska or Hawaii. Grr.).
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Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying [Thanks, Reader B.!] :: See also, earlier WORKs from Nicholas Basbanes’ book A Gentle Madness that explores this topic.
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Hey, this newsletter is partly intended for word nerds, after all! → Interview with a Lexicographer (Jane Solomon)
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What Lincoln called the “hot letter” is a habit worthy of reconsideration. → The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter
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Research says…at least until the next study. → Smart, Emotionally Stable People Enjoy Morbid Humor
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Cat faces recognized as human and human faces recognized as cats by face-detection algorithms. → Cat or Human
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Today in 1964, Stanley Kubrick’s brilliant black comedy, Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb is unleashed upon the world after a delay due to U.S. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Good reading: Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True, Art of the Title on Dr. Strangelove and the 1964 New York Times review.
Links: January 22, 2017
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Thousands of terms for drunks and drunkenness → The Drunktionary :: Pairs with our previous links to an interactive “Timeline of Slang Terms for Drink, Drunks and Drunkenness” and maybe “Drunk Shakespeare: The Trendy Way to Stage the Bard’s Plays in the US & the UK.”. Oh, and Thomas Nashe on Eights Kinds of Drunkard.
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I encourage you to check out the free and open FutureLearn course Japanese Culture Through Rare Books, if only to watch (or download!) the extensive series of videos on Japanese books, materials, binding and culture. Fascinating.
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I try to stay away from direct politics here, but: Postal Service business is up, deficit is all politics.
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I prefer the magazine title “Those Magnificent Women and Their Typing Machines” → These Women Reporters Went Undercover to Get the Most Important Scoops of Their Day.
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Everything is f**ked: The syllabus :: Pairs well with Calling Bullsh*t in the Age of Big Data — Syllabus and “F*ck Nuance” a paper by Kieran Healy.
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Words of the Year 2016 from: Oxford English Dictionaries & Dictionary.com & The Chronicle of Higher Education & Merriam-Webster & The American Dialect Society (PDF).
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Today in 1561, Sir Francis Bacon—philosopher, writer, scientist and orator—is born in London. Bacon was a true renaissance man, excelling as a philosopher and scientist…and the field in which they overlapped. Bacon’s most significant legacy is likely his thoughts on the scientific approach to the natural world and what that means for our own conception of our place within and, possibly, over it. This was a particularly vital area given that Bacon lived and wrote during a time when science was beginning to challenge—and sometimes displace—religious thought. I’ve learned most from Bacon’s work through his letters and his commonplace book, even if the latter has been used by deluded conspiracy theorists to claim he (as leader of a cabal) must have been the real author of Shakespeare’s work (though the story of the audacious, brilliant, unrelated and not-a-little-cuckoo Delia Bacon, who originated the theory, is fascinating).
TELEMETRY
Links: January 15, 2017
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You should definitely read this magical Twitter story about typewriters and travel
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I’m unreasonably excited about Jim Jarmusch’s new film ► Paterson because it uses prose poems by the great Ron Padgett and stars Adam Driver, who I find intriguing. The New York Times has a solid, positive review. For more on Padgett and Jarmusch’s film, see interviews in Town & Country and Bleecker Street. And Padgett’s own site links to a solid, short profile of Padgett for readers.
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The headline is a bit click-baity, but the whole thing is still really cool (be sure to read the comments) → The mind-blowing AI announcement from Google that you probably missed.
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‘Tis the season… → ►DIY Science: How far does a sneeze travel? and the accompanying research articles: Snot Science: A snotty setup + Snot Science: Results are nothing to sneeze at + Snot Science: Taking mucus to the next level.
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Hey grrrl, let’s go on vacay. → 25 Words Turning 25 Years Old in 2017
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I was sure I’d shared this before, but Reader C.’s suggestion prompted me to look and apparently I’d kept it to myself. Word buffs using a Mac, enjoy! → You’re probably using the wrong dictionary
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This is actually good advice for anyone who makes things, whether a Trump supporter or not. → John Scalzi’s 10-point plan for getting creative work done in the age of Trump
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The title makes clear what it’s aboot → Why Do Canadians Say ‘Eh’?
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Today in 1919, 2.3 million gallons of molasses erupt from a broken holding tank in Boston, Massachusetts, creating the Great Molasses Flood, AKA the Boston Molasses Disaster. The 25-foot (at least) tall wave—moving at 35 miles per hour—engulfed the city’s North End, tearing buildings from their foundations and crushing them, killing 21 people and wounding more than 150 others in the process. Ultimately attributed to faulty tank construction and lack of testing before filling them, nearly 100 years later a group of scientists and students discovered why the winter conditions made the spill significantly more deadly. And more research. The Atlantic published some amazing pictures of the aftermath. See also: a story of the day from 2014, the London Beer Flood.
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